Little Reef and Other Stories Page 7

  She stared down into her swampy cocktail. Guys liked her. She needed to speak up more at work. Adonis had come in and there she was at her desk, and he was shy, offering her a coral-colored rose with his black-lace-gloved hand, demurring when she thanked him, saying shyly, “I always like to surprise the ladies.” A gentleman somewhat effeminate: that word, androgyny.

  “Not one of yours,” she wanted to mutter into her glass. “Sorry but that one’s hetero.”

  Disingenuous Hunter, she’d heard him that time she was out alone on the fire escape, and when Hunter drank or baked he got loud. He was a kid, with no self-awareness. His voice raised in the kitchen, not twenty feet away, he’d said to Jesse, “You know she eats sometime. Seriously, have you seen lately that chopper pad she calls an ass? Just attach a vacuum hose to her mouth.”

  Home in the last round before going off to hospice never to return, her father had said to her, “You understand what I’ve taught you and what the Gospels decree about forgiveness, don’t you, since it’s important even to yourself to forgive?”—and she thought she’d forgiven him. She felt a little chunk of ice growing and accreting in her aorta threatening to choke it in the end. But even that would be a relief. It must have been for him. He was cold; loved coldly, then forgotten.

  The boys came back, talking their goofy baby talk. “We’re hungry! Becca hungry too?”

  One day this would all be over, and she’d have to be fine with it; she could just move on.

  Ditch the bitch. Isn’t that what they’d probably finally say to each other, full of zingers?

  No round of shots for the road on Jesse tonight, it turned out. Poor, overworked Jesse.

  How could she break up with them? No, they’d leave her. Hunter ditched nice guys left and right, getting bored, finding little failings in their personalities, or getting wasted then waking up in some new guy’s bed while Hunter’s other, current boyfriend was out of town on business. How could you break up with a nice older guy who’d taken you to Paris and sprung for it all?

  “You guys leaving already?” the bartender said and began snatching up their glasses.

  It was a lovely early October evening, the sky blue ink seeping into orange sherbet, clear, bright. Her second winter coming on. Out on the sidewalk she smelled wood smoke and then it.

  She said, “Eww, who wears patchouli anymore?”

  What did it interest her to try keeping up with them and acting bitchy on their same level?

  “No kidding,” said Jesse, “seriously. Patchouli. Seriously?”

  “It’s making a comeback,” said Hunter, who was stylish, no questioning that, but still just an intern and at a kind of pseudo magazine that was purely paid for by some Gulf States emir.

  “Becca,” said Jesse, “you didn’t finish about Adonis. But what do you feel like eating?”

  She laughed and wished she had a cigarette for a prop and said, “Is that one question?”

  She didn’t know why she teased him. Jesse shined and could be unpredictably gallant.

  Then a bum came up to Hunter and said, “Pardon me, but could I trouble you for a butt?”

  Hunter brought out his cigarette pack, doing it automatically and cheerfully—like a little proud nephew in a tiny tux lofting the wedding ring on its eency ceremonial satin pillow, just so.

  Then the bum asked him for a light and Hunter, saying “Sure,” was again gracious. From emotional midgets—too beautiful to live inside their awfully conflicted selves—sometimes came great, kind gestures, and perhaps they, too, would be saved. Despite their sweet bastard selves.

  Hunter’s parents had died together in a car crash on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, which was supposed to be hard to do since usually traffic on the way to Miami Beach (they were headed to a fundraiser) went at a snail’s pace. She remembered it. He’d come over to her apartment, the old one on Roosevelt Avenue, not the new one on 69th Street, and said he had no one else. She’d let him sleep in the bed with her, and he’d snuggled close to her crying through the night, waking up periodically, his hand a moist paw on her neck, his wet cheek against her boob. Tender, grateful.

  Then again, people like Hunter were more common than not. There had to be more guys out there like Hunter than there weren’t. At least Becca hoped so—with a yearning like starving.

  Imagine being this hungry and feeling sated, just like this, at the same time.

  her biographers

  His days were all the same, weather his only variety—and not much variety at that.

  He’d fallen for the island immediately, and she had taken to its eccentricity. Tolerance for eccentricity, he knew, had never been his strong suit. He’d been the one to edit it out when it had appeared in Marion’s work apparently for its own sake. He had thought that the palette of human nature, manifestations of the spirit, did not range over a broad spectrum; that aberration could not explain the species, only obviate itself as a dead end. In Westchester County, Leo hadn’t seen so much variety in the people he’d grown up around. It wasn’t a town to stay in all your life; they’d erred on the side of conformity, but later it was comforting to be with a woman who’d known the same geography and natural features in her girlhood. (Coincidences being mystical forges.) The spring lilacs with their deep odor of evening, a matronly odor, aware of death. Spinsters recalled their youths and what might have been. They sighed in the houses they’d inherited. A long time ago, a boy had a pattern of bicycling past—but each time kept going. Harbinger March crocuses, a more hopeful sign going up and spreading out across the sunny lawn. Marion had shared some of the same galvanic tropes: Lenten tulips and Easter lilies. She was drawn to hyacinths but said their scent was so strong it suggested entire lives. She would remove a potted one from the room to give herself peace, quiet down her creative imagination: a little going a long way. On Martha’s Vineyard each year, the homely hydrangea would touch her more subtly, like grandmothers’ lace. Hydrangeas lasted into September, when slowly and finally the fatly massed heads of purple and sky-blue petals would fade and go papery, crisp up, curl, and die. Things at the beach were more evergreen. She would take long walks. Time to pack up. Another summer was come and gone.

  He’d met her all that time ago when she was thirty-one—when Leo was already fifty-six, just divorced. (In the spring, a hint of June. Deep into August, an annual knowledge of frailty, the bitter drying grasses a warning of fall, russet, gold, a flat powder gray, a moldy newsprint mole.)

  Rare was the word he’d used for her, but she hadn’t liked it, laughing it off with each use.

  How many more summers now, here where it was almost always summer? Where before they’d both always believed she would of course see him into winter …?

  If he’d had kids with Marion, the children would be adults and they might resemble these two polite, overall presentable young people he’d let into the house, just now, without getting up.

  He sent the girl, Andi, into the kitchen to make coffee, but she wasn’t acting put-out. She had sprung into action instantly, saying, “No, it would be my pleasure, Leo.”

  He was especially taken with Andi. The boyfriend, Josh, he was a little less impressed by.

  Answering Andi’s first question, Leo said, “No, it was up in Massachusetts. I was staying with friends who had Marion along, whom of course I’d heard of. By then Marion was a comer.”

  “And here you are, man,” said Josh from the sofa—smirking, Leo thought. “So cool.”

  Though he didn’t particularly like the sight of them, in the intervening pause Leo checked the nails on both of his hands—hands anymore like parchment-slipcovered claws.

  The kitchen did not have a wall to divide itself off. Andi called, “Do you like Key West?”

  He went terse, felt his neck stiffen, and he called out painfully, “Tolerably enough.”

  Talking was such a strain. And his gravelly haute voix, he knew, could be frightening.

  Andi came with the three cups on a tray. She’d found Marion’s
pottery service (the sugar bowl and little milk pitcher and matching cups and saucers), and Leo said, “Wonderful, my dear. I can see you’re clever enough to get top military secrets out of me … would that I had any.”

  She giggled at that last phrasing. He sounded, he realized, like the old magazine articles he’d started his career penciling up— genteel, bumptious, and with titles like “The Ideal Gimlet.” A glint of Eisenhower-era titillation. Breasts heaving almost clear of their red-velvet bustiers.

  He saw the little recorder on the coffee table and said, “Have you turned that thing on?”

  “It’s voice-activated,” said Josh. “Thing is, when it turns on, it cuts off your first word.”

  “It’s digital,” said Andi, handing Leo his cup and saucer. “I don’t understand it, either.”

  “Technology, man,” Josh added. “I think all it does is further enslave us, build walls.”

  Leo leaned forward with creaky difficulty to pour milk into his coffee, then took a spoon.

  Stirring, ignoring Josh a bit, he said, “So it’s on. What would you like to hear about?”

  “Mm,” said Andi, settling next to Josh on the sofa and opening her notes. “What did you think of Marion the first time you met her? This was in, what again, Martha’s Vineyard?”

  “Correct,” he said, knowing print no longer held an iconic finality. “A brunette vision.”

  “You said you already knew who Marion was. It’s what you meant by a ‘comer,’ right?”

  “I was editing at this one house, but the job wasn’t going to last. They liked me less than I liked them. I’m happy to report the company is no longer in business. They ran fresh out of dirty crossword puzzle ideas, I guess. I was keeping my eyes out for names to take with me. An author of mine who’d been at Iowa with her kept telling me, Marion Jillsen, Marion Jillsen … I was a tad—I didn’t know what to believe. He wasn’t one of those I was planning on taking with me.”

  “Not naming names,” Andi said amusedly. “But, so, you didn’t take him seriously?”

  “He could have been in love with her, had rose-colored goggles strapped to his great head of yellow hair, slept with her for all I knew. Never got the full story on that. Female mysteries.”

  “Which basically knocked her down on your scale, initially.”

  “Only until I got around to reading the samples, by which I was more or less impressed.”

  Andi hazarded, “Not bowled over.”

  “Not until I met her, but then I was impressed. Utterly impressed. A talented storyteller, whose work had somehow escaped me, smuggled into the safety of little journals and lit mags.”

  “What had you read of hers by then?”

  “I had read Xeroxes of a couple of her stories.”

  “You seem rather hard to impress, but you detected a little spark in the Xeroxes.”

  “I took them seriously. Xeroxes from respectable journals I had missed. In the old days, that’s how we got wind of things, like some kind of screen test. You know about screen tests …”

  “When a young actor or actress went to Hollywood trying to break into the movies.”

  “You got it,” said Leo. “It’s callous to say, perhaps, but look at it from a New York point of view. More than books we were looking for authors to publish. There was a sense of bringing an author forward, but gradually. Publishers used to be in it with their writers for the long haul.”

  “And Marion was the real deal. A strong female voice, not to say feminine necessarily.”

  “Anybody with taste could see it, and everyone I knew and associated with had taste.”

  “Books meant more then, didn’t they?” said Josh. “We’re philistines nowadays, I think.”

  It was as though there was an unnecessary echo. Josh should go get pizzas or something.

  Leo didn’t need help, was the deal. But here was this clueless kid, pretty stupid boy Josh.

  All he wanted was to feel the little click. Leo could draw that click out for hours now. His liver needed just the slight tickling and away he went. He could make two drinks last to bedtime.

  “Well, let’s put it this way,” Leo said. “What does a book mean to young folks like you?”

  For her part, Andi felt immense goofy vibrations of mad talent under this roof, orgasmic.

  She thought about her most joyous reading experiences, which of course were when she was small—before she had found out how awful the world was because of a few key people in it. How wonderful it had been then, believing a mouse might have his own car to drive and have his adventures in. Her father had given her Stuart Little, his very boyhood copy, an irony not lost on Andi—an irony that for a while made her bitter until finally it lacked all flavor.

  Leo smacked his dry lips and said, “Got any favorite memories of opening a book?”

  He should drink more water, he knew. Old people forgot to hydrate consistently.

  “Easy,” said Josh. “For me it would have to be Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary.”

  “I think I was a little too old for that one,” said Leo, propping his chin on his palm. The leather on the sweatiest days was too slick; his elbow would slide off. The chair was a gift from old friends who couldn’t be bothered to come down anymore, marking a monumental birthday. It was called the Papa Fauteuil, ordered from a catalog featuring the Hemingway Collection.

  “One thing’s for sure,” said Josh eagerly, “we ignore books and authors at our peril.”

  “Do we need something stronger?” said Leo. “I have all sorts of drink, no smoke. I don’t inhale anything since cancer. Situation scared the bejesus out of me. I’ve got beer and liquor.”

  “Ah,” said Andi, blinking around at Josh, “we have that plane to catch in a few hours.”

  “And we still have to get back to the hostel for our bags,” Josh elaborated.

  “I see. Presently I might want to indulge a bit myself, if you don’t mind.”

  Andi shook her head, saying, “This is an amazing moment for Josh and I, both big fans of Marion’s. Sorry, but we just really want to get this right. I guess the elephant in the room is—”

  “Why she left me,” said Leo.

  “Not what I was going to say! No, no. Just to ask what her personal appeal for you was, that first time you met—after that writer you don’t want to name brought you two together?”

  “He didn’t bring us together. The first thing I liked about Marion was when she indicated she didn’t care for him any more than I did. Or that was the third thing. It was pure chance.”

  “Serendipity.”

  Leo shrugged.

  He was thinking about that object of a preposition, “for Josh and I.” Leo had not finished college, but he had had a good high school education in Triermont. In those days, you could learn enough in high school to break into New York and start on the bottom rung right out of Korea. In no time they were handing you a blue pencil and getting you started marking up pages, judging.

  Leo said, “She was two worlds merged. Marion had a foot in each.”

  “You mean the old gentlemen’s world of publishing and the newer, crasser—”

  “Vulgar and debased and corporate publishing world—yes, I think it’s safe to call it that.”

  “Before literature became more of a commodity, right?” said Josh.

  Leo hadn’t had a conversation like this in years. When he got together once a week with the other fellows, to play Latin Scrabble, they moaned about their backs, arthritis, hemorrhoids, acid reflux. Their flesh hung like slack crepe from brittle bones. They remembered the old days without talking much about books anymore. They ought to play Seniors Scrabble: heating pad.

  “We did believe in literature as something unique. That it had a power to help us …”

  “See things?” she said and formed an adorable moue with her pertly lipped mouth.

  There was some of the eager beaver about Andi.

  “It was written entertainment. Whatever else it was doing, it h
ad to entertain.”

  “But smarter, more intelligently written than regular entertainment?” she said brightly.

  “Not always. I wouldn’t want to be too romantic about what we might call my era …”

  And she laughed.

  That morning, in the diaries of Thomas Mann, Leo had read about Weimar winking itself out from twilight to darkness. A kid on a scooter working for Episcopal Services had been good enough to pick the book up for Leo from the public library and deliver it, along with Leo’s daily-allowance tuna fish sandwich, flavorless scoop-sized garden salad, and boxed grape juice. Mann was Leo’s youthful idol, a multitasker whose intelligence seemed as big as the Fatherland’s, and yet as Leo settled into the Hemingway chair and snacked on the pale slices of cantaloupe women volunteers had packed in Tupperware and sent off with the boy on his loudly buzzing rounds, his attention had begun wandering—as Mann’s own attention seemed never to have. Between meals with his forbearing wife, Katia, and their countless eccentric, neurasthenic offspring, Mann would scribe off more warnings to himself about the shadowy, ever-nigh-drawing reach of the Führer—each entry exquisitely phrased in highly figurative terms of foreboding— then note with reserved pleasure that the Festschrift edition being printed in his honor had made it safely across the Alps.

  Leo had set the book down on the arm of the Hemingway chair and it stayed there for hours.

  “Son, if you don’t mind, go reach up into the cabinet over the kitchen sink and grab down that bourbon. You’ll find the glasses a cabinet over. And throw a little ice in mine, would you?”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Josh, looking nervously over at Andi. “Honey?”

  “Sure,” she said, but raised an unsure eyebrow. “This is fun!”

  Josh moved sluggishly but was built long and lithe. Young males these days, so indolent. Kid was like a noir slattern slotted into a skinny hippie’s body. Andi must have liked unwrapping the smelly layers. Sex was past Leo, and to feel in any wise potent he could at least run the show.

  “Just the one,” Leo said, winking at her as they sat waiting. “Indulge an oldie, my dear?”

  “What’s it like being you, Leo?” she said, studying him with her stare. “You’re a legend.”