Foul Matter Part 28

"Which means no," said Candy.

Bobby got up in a sudden burst of bravado but was quickly waved back to his chair by two guns in motion.

Karl said, "We know old Clive here. In this business you get you can read character. Clive would never have thought this up."

Candy put in, "But you would, you little dips.h.i.t."

"So had Giverney signed a contract?"

"No." "Yes." Both Bobby and Clive spoke together.

Bobby stared at Clive. "What? When, for Christ's sake? And you didn't tell me?"

"That's what I came in here to tell you. We got-sidetracked."

"So you can die happy," said Candy. "Just a figure of speech, Bobby." He snickered.

"One last thing," said Karl. He pulled another envelope from his pocket, tossed it on the desk.

"What's this?" asked Bobby.

"Ticket."

"What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?"

"To Australia. Didn't you always want to see Australia? Melbourne? The Outback? Sydney Opera House? Kangaroos? We're sending you."

"I can't-"

"Bobby, you're always saying that. Sure, you can. For a while, six months maybe. You get back in time to take over the marketing of Ned's book. To convince everybody on your staff that no holds'll be barred. You can leave ol' Clive here in charge."

Bobby gave Clive a lethal look.

"Look," said Candy, "it coulda been worse."

Bobby moved the lethal look from Clive to Karl. "How?"

"We coulda written a book."

Candy and Karl howled.

FORTY-TWO.

Sally sat at her desk reading the book about Pittsburgh she had brought back. What she supposed she meant to accomplish by doing this was to be able to talk to Ned about the city. The one she was looking at now was heavy with ill.u.s.trations and old newspaper photos.

Was he interested in the actual history of the place? Or was he interested only in its symbolic history? He did not know about the Pirates' wins and losses over the years, or who the team's coach was, or how many people had filled Forbes Field. What he wanted to think about was the rush the spectators must have felt when Roberto Clemente slammed the ball out of the park; the way the clouds looked ma.s.sed in the gray . . .

Maybe that's not the history that draws me. He had said that a long time ago, arguing with Jamie. Maybe that's not the real history.

Tom Kidd came to stand in the door of his office. He'd been closeted or barricaded behind his stacks of books for twenty-four hours. She bet he hadn't gone home and probably hadn't eaten since that coffee cake Amy had brought around. Bobby's treat. Tom had been reading Saul's ma.n.u.script for a whole day and night and part of another day. He looked goggle eyed.

"Tom?"

He turned the empty eyes on her. Who're you?

He went back into his office.

When she looked out into the busy room-not as bad as a newspaper, perhaps, but not far behind-she saw Clive wandering in and out and around the cubicles like a b.u.m with an empty cup. He looked slightly delirious. A few people called after him, rising to look over the cubicle walls, calling their congratulations, or perhaps they were hectoring him.

Sally hoped he'd pa.s.s her by (but here he came) because she had too much on her mind to deal with Clive.

But of course he didn't pa.s.s; he stopped by her desk, lit a cigar (Bobby's Cuban) and dropped into the wooden chair. "Sally."

"What's going on? Did you finally sign up Paul Giverney?"

For everyone was waiting for this.

"Yep."

"That's wonderful, Clive! I'm really happy for you." It surprised her that she was. But he looked so happy himself that it was hard to feel her usual antipathy toward him. And then she thought, but he's changed in the couple of weeks. He'd certainly changed since Pittsburgh. What a strange experience that had been.

Sunken cheeked, he sucked in on his cigar, turned it in his mouth, withdrew it, exhaled, and said, "That ain't all, Sal-"

Ain't? Sal?

"-Bobby's taking a holiday. Six months, maybe longer. I'm taking over for him."

What was going on? "Clive-?"

"Cheap thrills." Tom must have picked up on something going on for he was standing in the door again. But he said this in a sporting, kidding way.

Sally was again surprised by her reaction to Clive's news. As though she'd been heavy with a weight that now lifted. If Bobby was leaving, if the contract was signed, then he'd have no reason to get rid of Ned.

Clive left and Tom went back inside his office, to leave Sally wondering about Paul Giverney. What was he like? Really like? From what she had gathered, he was bossy, arrogant, self-indulgent, a writer who commanded several million per book. Yet he had seemed pleasant enough when he stopped by her desk.

Sally was mooning over Giverney when Tom came to the door a third time, this time with Saul's ma.n.u.script in his hands. "I'm dead and gone to the sweet hereafter. Go make a copy of this and don't leave the copy machine until it's finished. And don't tell anybody what it is. But first, get me Jimmy McKinney on the line."

But of course it got around like wildfire. The buzz over Saul's book was exceeded only by the furor over Paul Giverney. To have cornered either of these writers was a coup; to get both of them was nothing short of miraculous. The parade could commence down Fifth, filled with ticker tape and confetti. All the other publishers could lay down their books; it was war's end.

Though Mackenzie-Haack hadn't actually signed up Saul, they would. He didn't have a publisher or even an agent-which might have been the reason for calling Jimmy McKinney, whom Tom probably meant to recommend.

To have both Ned and Saul under this roof, and Tom Kidd as their editor, made Sally happier than she'd been at any time in the last year. She returned to the Pittsburgh book, grinning at every line, and in this frame of mind her eyes skipped over the text, barely touching.

Thus, she would have missed it had there not been a picture of an Isaly's Ice Cream parlor, taken back in the forties, with several employees out front, smiling and squinting into the sun and holding the ever-popular ice cream scoop, like the one Ned kept on the shelf beside the picture of himself and three others, in front of the shop they worked in.

It wasn't the caption, but something in the picture that made her draw in her breath.

Oh, no, she thought. Oh, dear.

The caption read: "Outside one of Pittsburgh's famous ice cream parlors."

One of the people in the row, a teenage boy smiling beamishly, was holding a small sign, printed with the Isaly name, and more than the name.

"Isaly" wasn't a family name-or at least, it looked as if it wasn't the family name of the ice cream kingdom. Here, it was an acronym: I.S.A.L.Y.

I Shall Always Love You.

Ned wasn't an ice cream Isaly. Sally leaned her head in her hands. She just couldn't help it; she wept.

I SHALL ALWAYS LOVE YOU.

FORTY-THREE.

He was standing by his window, the one that looked down at the Luxembourg Gardens (or so Ned liked to imagine the little park), where Nathalie still sat on the green bench where he had left her. No, she was holding a letter and that meant she would have had to go back to the Ile St.-Louis to her apartment.

When had she done that?

Ned waited. He thought. He knew the source of the letter. Should she just hold it? Or should she read it?

"My dearest Nathalie, we both knew this had to end sometime-"

She wanted to tear the paper to shreds. It was that "we both knew" that made her furious, the furor nearly blocking out the sadness like the cloud that had just moved over the sun. We both knew. Patric had never shown such cowardice before; but when, she asked herself, had he ever been called upon for a show of valor? Or even backbone? Had she ever made any demand on him or tried to force him to choose? No, because she'd known how he'd choose. So perhaps it was she who was the coward.

"We both knew . . ." Yes, but had she? She had always feared it, but had she actually known the end would come? And the letter went on in its base and fainthearted way about this trip to Roquebrun, how it would be the occasion of his parting from Nathalie. He could not do it in person . . .

Ned thought he saw her turn on the bench and look up at his window, at him. And she said,Why have you done this? Why couldn't this story have ended a little more happily? Or at least in a more sanguine state-?

Because I didn't know it was ending, Ned thought.

Then I'm to sit here forever?

No.

Then what? What, then? I can't move by myself. That's always been the problem. I must sit here because you've left me here, holding this letter and very likely weeping forever because you've had a failure of nerve. You think it would be sentimental- No, that isn't it. Nathalie and Patric don't belong together.

Don't talk about me as if I'm not in the room, d.a.m.n you!

All right: you and Patric don't belong together. You couldn't have made a life together.

Because of his wife and children? You mean they would always be on his mind? What a cliche!

No, that's not why. It's because you don't really love each other.

What? What? Those nights in my flat, those long weekends in Provence-?

You're talking about pa.s.sion. That's a strange way of describing love, if you stop to think about it. Love is much more the breathing in of everyday air. Look: you don't have to take the blame for all of this. It's not all down to you. There's Patric. He's been far more selfish than you.

And he's not here to defend himself, is he?

He doesn't need to be. You'll defend him.

She started to say something, and stopped. She tried to leave the bench, and couldn't.

Ned, look: you've brought me all this way; you've watched me over four hundred pages; we've wandered-with not much happening, I might add- Your tone is unnecessarily acidic, isn't it?

-through the Jardin des Plantes and the Luxembourg Gardens-oh! How much time we've spent there! All of those cafes on the Right Bank (the Gold Coast, you called that), the Rue de Rivoli, the Boulevard Haussman; we walked around the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame- Unavoidable, in any book about Paris, you'll agree.

-the Boulevard St.-Germain, Florian's and the Deux Magots, Hemingway's haunts (used entirely too much in fiction, you'll agree?).

And now you're going to end this with my sitting here on this bench in the Luxembourg Gardens-in the rain, incidentally; it's started to rain-with this letter in my hand and Patric gone and nothing to show for this four-year affair-that's how long it's taken you to have me wind up with nothing. Four years wasted- But I don't think- You could at least let me get hold of a gun and go to Roquebrun and shoot him. It's nothing to you; it wouldn't hurt you and it would allow me to repay him-not to mention it would make a sensational ending that would sell far more copies of this novel than what you've got planned. Which is nothing.

An ending like that could easily come back to haunt me.

It's always about you, isn't it? You! You never think of anybody but yourself! So I'm to be left with this (she held up the letter) and Patric gets off scotfree, that's to be the end!

But he doesn't get off. He really suffers.

Oh, really? And how is it I don't seem to see anything about that here?

(Ned could almost hear her shuffling through today's ma.n.u.script pages.) He said, it's not written down; the thing is, you should know he suffers because of the sort of man Patric is- No. That was a lie. Patric doesn't suffer much, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But he could hardly tell Nathalie this.

You know this was hard for him. You know he was torn. You know he loves you. You know all . . . Lies, again. Patric was never torn. His jealousy-and certainly he'd been jealous-was not a mark of love but of ego. He couldn't stand the idea of another man with Nathalie, even though he wasn't, most of the time, with her himself. But Ned couldn't say that to her, either. So he said again to her: You know how he'll suffer.

There was a long silence.

I'll think about it, she said, and turned her face away.

The shadows were turning into night. She tried to see her future; it was full of blank pages. They fluttered away like the pages of a calendar in a film, dated but empty.

Nathalie did not know why she was here, or where she would go after here, or even who she was. There was nothing to hold her to the gardens or the page.

Ned recapped his pen and looked at these few lines. If it had been worth saying at all, he'd said it. There was just nothing else to say. He put these pages with the others and sat for a moment staring at them. Then he put a rubber band around the ma.n.u.script. And sat looking down at it, wondering why he'd done this, why he'd ended it this way.

He didn't have that sense of exhilaration he'd felt after the last book, after finishing any piece of writing. He was not really very proud of himself.

He had wanted to see how far she'd go, and so he'd cut her loose. She had not spread her wings, she had not broken away even though there was nothing to hold her to the gardens or the page.