Part 25 (1/2)
”They're still standing outside, the woods apparently being their Harry's Bar while in residence, while one of them starts reading some long involved blank verse and the other two are blowing smoke in my face and offering me the Montecris...o...b..ttle. I say, 'No thanks, see I'm really trying to write.' ”
” 'Write? Write? h.e.l.l, you can do that anywhere, boyo. Why waste a perfectly good weekend in the woods doing it?' ”
Paul laughed. ”That's good, that's really good.” He raised a finger to the waitress. When she appeared he asked her what kind of pie they had here.
”Oh.” She put on her pie-thinking cap. ”Well, there's berry, that's blueberry and strawberry, apple, lemon meringue-”
When Paul saw Jimmy drop his head in his hands, he ordered him a piece, too. ”Make it two apples. Thanks. And more coffee. Thanks.”
”There must've been a dozen of these little cabins; when I was being shown to mine, one of the managers or whoever she was pointed them out, each one buried in among the trees. It was an idyll, really. I mean, it should have been. Mine, for some f.u.c.king reason, became the hub. And where were these writers getting their booze? There wasn't supposed to be any drinking, I mean except at the main house just before dinner when they served c.o.c.ktails.” Jimmy drew in breath as if he'd just surfaced and went on.
”Finally, these three left and I thought I might as well go to bed. Sat.u.r.day morning I decide to skip breakfast in the main house and just write. So I make this sign on a piece of notebook paper: DO NOT DISTURB !PLEASE!! and scotch-tape it to the door-”
The apple pie arrived with more coffee. Jimmy shoved his pie aside and, with burning eyes, continued his tale: ”I'm finally getting close to four lines I've been grappling with-see, this poem is really hard because of its form; it's a.n.a.lyzed rhyme-you know what that is.”
Around a big bite of pie, Paul said, ”Sure.” No, he didn't, nor did he want to. ”I should have ordered this la mode. Do you want a scoop of ice cream?”
Jimmy went on as if Paul were merely a recording device. ”Around lunchtime, I hear this tapping on my windowpane, fingernails rat-tat-tatting, and I open the door, thinking it's my lunch delivery. I'm really hungry because of no dinner, no breakfast. I open the door and here's this girl-more of woman, she's got to be in her thirties, trying to look like thirteen, you know, like gypsy clothes, head wrapped in a polka-dot scarf, big gold earrings-”
”You're really good on details. You should write some fiction-oh, sorry.” Paul ducked his head toward his pie when Jimmy made a movement with his fist.
”She comes in as if my cabin is her cabin and plops down on my bed. She says, 'Kee-rist, what a night! I keep reminding myself not to drink Eddie's martinis. They're lethal. Hi, my name's Marie-'
” '-and I'm an alcoholic,' I say.”
Paul's laugh sputtered around piecrust.
”Well, that surprised her. She chirps, 'Oh, are you in the program, too?'
” 'Too? ' I manage to get some acid into my tone. 'You're saying you are? Ha. No, I'm not in the f.u.c.king program, what do you want?' ”
” 'My, aren't we tetchy this morning?' As if I'd been drinking with her or f.u.c.king her the night before.
” 'I came here to write, that's why I came.' ”
” 'So did I, so did we all. But you gotta take a break sometime.' ”
” 'This place is break heaven. That's all you guys do here.' ”
” 'Um,' she says; a lot she cares. 'Can I b.u.m a ciggy?' I tossed her the pack. She lights up and starts rattling on about her awful life, which is why she's here because she's writing a memoir about how she was abused as a child by her father, her brother, her uncle, her cousin-you know, your typical memoir-and what a great book it's going to be-'If you ever get around to writing it,' I say. And she says, 'Oh, I do. My self-discipline is legendary.' Legendary!” Even Jimmy had to stop being mad and laugh at that.
”She goes on. 'So I guess you don't want to f.u.c.k? Right?' ”
Paul snorted out another laugh.
” 'You guess right. Actually, leave, will you?' ”
” 'Awright! Awright!' She hands me back the Winstons and I tell her to keep the pack. By now, it's got to be two, three in the afternoon and I'm starving. I look outside and my lunch isn't there, so I figure the DO NOT DISTURB !sign made them hesitate about even leaving it. Didn't Hemingway say you could only write on an empty stomach?”
Paul didn't know, nor had he any intention of finding out. ”Are you going to eat that pie?”
Frowning over his cabin in the woods, Jimmy shoved it toward him.
”Thanks. Then what?”
”Finally, I get this stanza written, the a.n.a.lyzed rhyme. Do you know-?”
”Absolutely. Go on.”
”Seven or eight writers, so-called, including Marie and the Irish jerks-without the Montecris...o...b..cause they know they'll get drinks at the main house-come along and veritably herd me out of the door to go to dinner. I knew there was no way of avoiding all this because I had to get some food inside me even though I wasn't particularly looking forward to a whole b.l.o.o.d.y woodsful of writers like these. Off we troop to the main house, where I'm pleasantly surprised-for all of five minutes-to see that the other fifteen or twenty people there are reasonably quiet and reasonably sober. I'm hanging around the drinks table and this really tall fellow who looks like your paradigmatic poet-long scarf, black hair, sleepy eyes as if he can hardly bear to listen to one more person not himself-and I ask him what he's working on. Turns out he's not a poet, he's a sculptor. That pretty much stopped me cold, knowing as much as I do about sculpture, which is zilch. I say to him, 'I'm surprised this place has, uh, sculpting materials.' Brilliant, yes? He says, 'Well, they don't, do they? One brings one's own, doesn't one?' and walks away.
”I tried a few more opening ploys with a woman with huge hair, so d.a.m.ned thick it looked as if she'd borrowed other people's; it stuck out on both sides of her head like wings, and after a ba.n.a.l conversation, me providing the princ.i.p.al ba.n.a.lity, I decided I was better off with the rum drinkers and Dylan sayers than the others who were either insufferably snotty or insufferably boring or both. There was another orgy that night to which I just succ.u.mbed and Sunday morning, I was out of there. I started back to New York and checked into a Red Roof Inn along the way and slept.”
Paul, finis.h.i.+ng up Jimmy's apple pie, wondered where the silence had come from. The air had fairly crackled all around him in Jimmy's flow of talk-ah! He'd stopped! That was it. Paul, having grown unused to the sound of his own voice, then said: ”So, I guess the six months at Yaddo won't work for you.”
”You've got that right, boyo.” Jimmy drank his cold coffee, signaled to the waitress.
”I guess you're thinking you've learned to appreciate your home more.” Paul was disappointed.
”Are you kidding? h.e.l.l, no. I appreciate it even less. It's all part of the same thing. What I realized was how much I appreciated being alone. For those few hours right after I got there, I felt weightless. Privacy may be the f.u.c.king greatest gift you can find for yourself.” Jimmy moved his head backward. ”Behind this booth I've got my suitcase and my typewriter. I moved out of the house. I told Lily-that's my wife-I thought we should do a trial separation. All h.e.l.l broke loose, which is one of the reasons I wanted a trial separation, come to think of it. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stay in a hotel while I look for an apartment. All I need is a studio; probably I can find something in lower Manhattan or TriBeCa. My son's fifteen. Mike. This way I won't feel like I'm abandoning him because he loves Manhattan and can come to my new digs and sulk instead of just sulking at home. The only danger there is he might want to move in. At any rate, he'll think he's got enough to send me on a major guilt trip. Leaving his mother and the homestead, why, that'll give him more ammunition to resent the h.e.l.l out of me than he could ever hope for if I stayed. Lily, ditto. Imagine all the lunches and c.o.c.ktail parties where she can run me down.” Jimmy grinned. ”It's a good move all around. Then I'm going to tell Mort I'll work three and a half days, no more, so I can be your agent and agent for a few others I respect. If he doesn't like that”-Jimmy shrugged-”then screw it, I'll leave. I'll leave and open my own agency with you as top client. I hope you'll agree to that, but even if you don't, I'll manage with the few writers I think will go along with me.”
Paul shook and shook his head. ”Wow.”
”So, have you seen it?”
Paul frowned. ”Seen what?”
”How far I'd go.”
Paul grinned. ”Far enough. Way far.”
THIRTY-SEVEN.
Paul Giverney sat down in Clive's office without removing his coat.
Just to let me know he's hardly got time for me, Clive thought.
”So?” said Paul.
Clive surprised himself by saying, ”Look, I just had a very rough weekend. Take it up with Bobby.”
”I'd sooner take it up with a turnip. Bobby's always had a very rough weekend. Bobby lives for rough weekends.”
Clive frowned, thinking Paul Giverney more familiar with the Mackenzie-Haack mode of operation than would be expected of a writer not yet one of Mack-Hack's own. But of course Bobby's love affair with Glenlivet and the wines of Puligny-Montrachet was no secret in publis.h.i.+ng circles.