Whether your words had an audience of one or one million, their merit lay only in their artful placement on the page.
And after we’d talked for a while, I’d ask to speak to Donna.
Unless, of course, it was Donna who answered the phone.
In either case I would not be nervous about the machine. I would simply push the record button as soon as I got a dial tone and leave it on for the duration of the call. Even for me, that was foolproof enough.
Unless it made a noise of some sort. Like an intermittent beep, or one of those disembodied voices—God forbid—that would bark out the word recording and betray me on the spot.
I consulted the owner’s manual when I got home to ensure that there were no telltale sounds when the recorder was on. Then I took a long shower and headed for the office. I would have preferred the bedroom, where I could stretch out on the bed and feel less formal, but the phone there was only an extension and lacked the necessary equipment.
I sat at Jess’s desk and took a deep breath, then dialled the number I knew by heart. After one ring I pushed the record button, but what I heard shortly thereafter was so bewildering I was sure I had made a mistake.
So I dialled again.
And heard the same thing: “We’re sorry. The number you have called has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please hang up and try your call again, or dial zero for an operator…”
SEVENTEEN
JUST TURN THE PAGE
JESS AND I ADDED THE LYCH-GATE several months after moving in.
I had grown up with one in Charleston and had loved the cozy enchantment of it: the shadows under its eaves, the way the honey-suckle would pile up on its roof in a fragrant yellow avalanche. It wasn’t very grand—my father had built it over a weekend out of two-by-fours and asphalt shingles—but I remember being intensely proud of it. It was exotic to me, a fragment of Old Europe, like the porcelain fixture that sprouted mysteriously in my parents’ bathroom after their first trip to Paris. “You pronounce it bee-day,” my mother told me demurely, though she declined to explain its purpose.
I knew the purpose of lych-gates. My English grandmother had told me that lych meant corpse, and these gates had been designed to keep coffins dry in rainy churchyards. Jess and I found another use for ours: repelling invaders. Before we built the gate visitors would zigzag all the way up through the garden to ring the doorbell.
And since the front of the house is just a series of French doors, the living room was utterly exposed. It would only be a matter of time, we believed, before one of us would look up from a blow job on the sofa to find himself eye to eye with a volunteer from the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.
Or, with any luck at all, a Jehovah’s Witness.
There was also the issue of my celebrity. From the second-floor bedroom we could already see discreet little groups of Noone at Night ers (identifiable by the books in their hands) casing the house from the sidewalk across the street. If we didn’t do something soon, Jess argued, I’d be signing autographs at the door in my nightshirt—whether I wanted to or not.
So we found a craftsman who could design us something sturdy but graceful—more Japanese than English, really—that would accommodate a buzzer and an automatic lock. Once the lych-gate was installed, the garden became just another room of the house, afford-ing a whole new level of peace and security. Now, when we heard a noise at night, the gate at least assured us that it couldn’t be anything human; had to be just another skunk squeezing under the fence, or a bird sideswiping the house, or the black bamboo tapping softly against the window in the wind.
Which was why, on this particular night, I leaped up from the sofa as if I’d just heard a scream:
There was someone on the steps.
Someone I hadn’t buzzed in.
Someone I could barely make out through the filigree of the tree ferns, a shadowy figure in black, climbing swiftly to the porch.
“Jesus!” I said. “You scared the fuck out of me.”
“Sorry,” Jess said contritely, peering in through the French doors.
“I wondered if I should buzz first.”
In his leather jacket and bike helmet he looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Despite my shattered nerves I was glad that he’d used his key. It seemed to suggest that he hadn’t gone for good, still considered this place his home. “No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m just jumpy.” He came into the living room holding a plastic bag, and set it down on the coffee table. Then he pulled off his helmet and placed it next to the bag, very delicately, as if it were a fragile heirloom. His face was a little blotchy from his ride, and he suddenly seemed older to me, more angular and careworn, closer to middle age than to the soft-featured boy I’d fallen in love with. I was unexpectedly touched by this, touched to be reminded how long we’d been fellow travellers, whatever our troubles were now.
He pecked me on the lips. “Who did you think it was, anyway?” I rolled my eyes. “Nobody. Anybody. You don’t wanna know.” Meaning that I didn’t want to tell him; that I was too embarrassed to admit the depth of my paranoia. For the past five days my guilty mind had been conjuring up things that weren’t even faintly rational, much less possible.
“I brought dinner,” said Jess, indicating the bag on the table, “in case you haven’t eaten.”
I wanted to cry, or at least to hold him for a while, but I was wary of his rigid body language. What had prompted this visit, anyway?
Was he feeling the remorse that I’d been feeling about our last conversation? Or was there something else altogether, some terrible news he had yet to break?
“Smells great,” I said. “Straits Café?” He nodded. “Spring rolls and okra. And I got us some of those barbecued oysters.”
Savoring the sound of us, I took the bag into the kitchen and began to arrange the food on plates. Jess followed and stood in the doorway, surveying the room. It was littered with dirty dishes and empty takeout boxes, completely betraying my state of mind.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Something awful’s happened.” He gazed at me solemnly. “I know.”
For a moment I felt a flicker of hope. “Did Pete call you?”
“No. Anna told me. She’s worried about you.”
“That’s nice.”
“Have you heard from him at all?”
“No. Nothing. They seem to be out of my life.”
“Did you talk to Findlay about it?”
“Oh sure.”
“What did he think?”
“He wasn’t very forthcoming, but…I’m sure he thinks this proves he was right all along.”
“That it was a hoax, you mean?”
“Or something.” I looked him directly in the eyes. “Is that what you still think?”
He hesitated. “Does it matter?”
“Oh, yeah, Jess. Absolutely.”
“Well…the main thing is: it’s not your fault.” I went back to arranging the oysters.
“You know,” said Jess, “for someone with such a healthy ego you always manage to think the worst of yourself. Why is that?”
“Look…analysis is the last thing I need right now.” Jess shrugged. “Maybe it’s the first thing.”
I tried to stay calm. I didn’t want another fight, but I didn’t want to be told how to fix myself either. Not by the man who’d left me.
“Where shall we eat?” I asked.
We ate where we always had—on the floor next to the coffee table—and our silence was long and agonizing. It was Jess who broke it: “I’m really sorry,” he said. “About last time.”
“Oh, sweetie, I am too.”
“You’re all I’ve really got, you know. Nobody knows me like you do.”
With no fanfare at all, tears began to spill down my face. I didn’t move though. I was afraid of taking this where it might not be leading.
“And I’m sorry about Pete,” Jess add
ed, “but I hated having to hear it from Anna.”
“I know. I wanted to call. I just didn’t know whether you’d—” I cut myself off.
“What? Say I told you so?”
“Yeah. Or tell me to stop feeling guilty.” Jess smiled faintly. “Like I just did.”
“But you understand, don’t you?”
“A little, I guess, but I think you might be—”
“I took away his voice, Jess. That’s no small thing.”
“Well…yeah…if he ever existed in the—”
“All right, if. If he existed, I took away his voice. He spent two years shaping that atrocity of a life into something he could understand. And I took that away from him overnight. Or caused it to be.” Jess shrugged. “So give it back to him.”
“What?”
“You still have that power.”
“C’mon. I have no power at all. I did everything but rim Findlay, and he wouldn’t even—”
“You don’t need Findlay. Forget him. You’ve got your own editor.”
“So? He’ll be no more inclined to publish it than Findlay was.
Especially when he hears that Argus has—”
“I’m not talking about Pete’s book, I’m talking about yours—the one you could write from all this. It’s better than any novel, babe.
Just start at the beginning and tell the whole thing. How you read his galleys and talked to him on the phone and got really close to him and…everything. It’s an amazing story, Gabriel. You couldn’t make this shit up.” I just sat there blinking at him.
“Don’t you think?” he asked, blinking back.
“I could never do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because, for one thing, I don’t know how it would end.”
“So get off your butt and go find out.” Jess widened his eyes in a playful, challenging way.
“Go where, for God’s sake?”
“Where else? You’ve got their address, don’t you?”
“Oh, no. Forget it. I could never do that.”
“Why not? You were all set to go last week.”
“I was invited then.”
“Oh, don’t be so damn well bred.” This was one of Jess’s pet themes: while he himself was poor white trash, brash as hell with nothing to lose, I was a timid little country-clubber who tried way too hard not to misbehave. “You don’t even have to write this book,” he said. “You’re living it. Every bit of it is there, if you’ll just turn the page.” The prospect of taking action, any action, after so many days of frustration was undeniably appealing. But I didn’t trust the fire Jess was trying to light in me, or the peculiar tingle I felt when I thought about shaping this story for my own purposes. It seemed too much like fun, and therefore totally inappropriate for the subject matter.
“This isn’t some Hardy Boys mystery, you know. We’re talking about a sick kid who could be dead in a month.”
“Exactly! So why are you just sitting here? You’ll never get any answers if you don’t go out and find them. Look…if Donna called tomorrow to say that Pete had died, would you even know what to think? You wouldn’t, babe. You wouldn’t know whether to feel heartbroken or totally fucked over. You wouldn’t have a clue. You’d be in limbo for the rest of your life.” He was right, of course, and such a ghastly moment was not at all beyond the realm of possibility.
I sighed. “I keep hoping it’s temporary.”
“What?”
“This…silence. Maybe they went unlisted because they needed a breather. That wouldn’t be unreasonable. Pete’s really weak right now and depressed about the cancellation. Maybe they just needed some quiet time.”
“Why wouldn’t they call and tell you that?” Good question. Was Donna pissed off at me? Had Findlay really left me out of it as promised, or had he revealed my doubts to Donna as a way of lending support to the cancellation? That would certainly explain my sudden exile. Or maybe Pete himself had finally told Donna of his own suspicions about the cancellation, and they had concluded that I was part of it. But Pete had been so trusting the last time we talked. Wouldn’t he want to hear the truth from me first, before shutting me out of his life forever?
I gave Jess a desolate look. “I can’t handle this much longer.” He took my hand in his. “I don’t mind watching Hugo.”
EIGHTEEN
A CONVENIENT PSEUDONYM
THE WOMAN ACROSS the aisle from me had been casting exploratory glances since we’d passed the Rockies, though she didn’t strike me as a fan. Seventyish and plump, relentlessly permed and pantsuited, she seemed more like a member of Oprah’s audience than of mine.
Which is not to say that such people don’t listen to my show; I just don’t expect them to recognize me on airplanes. This woman, I figured, was just lonely and cruising for a little conversation, so I tried to oblige her: “Comfy, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, flashing a row of way-too-perfect teeth. “These seats are just wonderful. I’ve never flown first class before.”
“Same here,” I said. “I’m usually crammed back there in steerage, eating my eight peanuts.” This wasn’t true—at least not lately—but I wanted her to feel at ease with me. I was already trying to charm her, I realized, a knee-jerk reaction I’d learned from my father.
Despite his vast catalog of prejudices the old man could be lovely with strangers, and no less gracious to a cleaning lady than he was to a visiting banker. It was his duty to be nice to people he didn’t know; it was how he proved his goodness to himself.
“My daughter sent me this ticket,” said the lady. “I always come out for Christmas, but this year they wanted to do something special for me.”
“How nice.”
“Mmm. Even got me my own suite at the Pfister Hotel.” A consolation prize, I thought. Up until now she’s stayed at her daughter’s house, but her son-in-law has finally put his foot down, paying dearly for the privilege. I imagined the lady knew this on some level, and therefore sorely needed me to confirm her great good fortune.
“The Pfister is marvelous,” I told her. “Huge high-ceilinged rooms and hallways. Very pretty.” I stopped short of saying that I’d stayed there once on a book tour, since I knew where that would lead, and I didn’t feel like trotting out my dog-and-pony show. This trip had already been a sort of out-of-life experience, and I wanted to keep it that way. Someone else could be Gabriel Noone for a while. I would be anyone this woman imagined.
“Do you live in Milwaukee?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Here. I mean, there.” I pointed behind the plane with a smile. “The Bay Area.”
“Same here. Walnut Creek.”
“Ah.”
“Nice and warm there.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So you have family in Wisconsin?”
“Yes,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation. “My son lives there.
With his mother.”
She bit her lower lip and frowned with concern, nodding slowly.
“I get to see him on holidays,” I told her.
“Well, that’s nice.”
“It is, yes. I can hardly wait.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirteen.”
“Oh…nice age.”
The hell it is, I thought. It’s a terrible age. It’s the worst fucking age of all.
“Do you have any pictures of him?”
I couldn’t help grinning. It’s hard to say which I found more preposterous—her June Cleaverish question or the Father Knows Best answer I was able to provide: “As a matter of fact, I do.” I reached for my wallet like any overproud parent who’s been given such an easy opening.
She studied the snapshot soberly for a moment, pursing her lips.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Just look at those eyes.”
“Yes. They’re something, aren’t they?”
“He has your nose and chin, though.”
“Does he?”
“Oh, yes. I’
m sure you’ve been told that.”
“Well…” I shrugged modestly and looked away. A passing flight attendant—male and cute in his brisk, bubble-butted way—locked eyes with me for the briefest of moments. This time the look was unmistakable.
“What’s his name?” asked the woman.
“What?” I turned back to my interrogator with a start.
“Your son. What’s his name?”
“Oh…Pete. Pete Lomax.”
She looked at the snap again, as if to link the name with the face, then handed it back across the aisle. “Well, he’s very handsome, Mr. Lomax.”
“Thanks.” I returned the snap to my wallet, blushing furiously, amazed at how rapidly I’d become such a fraud.
“My name is Vera, by the way.” The lady held out her chubby, ring-encrusted hand.
“Oh…hi…I’m Peter.”
“Aha,” she said, beaming. “He’s named after you, then. That’s sweet.”
I summoned a sickly smile.
“I have a granddaughter who’s named after me. They don’t call her that, it’s just her middle name, but still…it’s nice to have another little version of you out there in the world.” I was on the verge of changing the subject when that bubble-butted flight attendant did it for me.
“Excuse me,” he said, kneeling in the aisle between me and Vera but addressing only me. “I saw your name on the passenger list, and I hope this isn’t too pushy, but…well, I just want to say that I really appreciate everything you’ve done…you know…for us.”
“Thanks,” I said, as sincerely as I could. “That’s really nice. It’s been my pleasure, really.”
He regarded me a moment longer with great solemnity, then patted me on the shoulder and hurried off.
Vera was watching me, slack-mouthed. “You’ve done something for flight attendants?” she asked.