Cult Classic(7)

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To make this moment exponentially worse, Amos had, in fact, become a famous Amos. Time bends differently for each of us, but it had bent so favorably in Amos’s direction, it was clear any post-breakup curses had backfired. He’d written two novels and, last I heard, was compiling a collection of his poetry. The first novel was long and pretentious and inspired the kind of critical ire so extreme, you couldn’t argue he was doing something right by getting a rise out of people. The second was equally long and pretentious but about a Palestinian child who, while playing one day, wanders into a dilapidated house. He opens a kitchen cabinet and stumbles upon a Hamas-built tunnel that he crawls inside, but instead of popping out in Israel, he winds up in an alternate reality where there’s no such thing as war. It was on the bestseller list for four weeks, popular enough to amend the consensus about Amos’s first novel, which went from “unreadable” to “dense.” Suddenly, Amos was not a poet who’d tried his hand at fiction, but a novelist who’d dabbled in poetry.

The taller man with the messenger bag was probably his new editor. This person must have selected the venue and expensed the meal. He spotted me first. Amos clocked the break in his audience’s attention and followed the taller man’s gaze. He smiled and rocked back on his heels.

“Hi there,” I said, hugging him to buy myself time away from his face.

“Lola,” he half-whispered.

“I feel like calling you ‘Stranger.’”

“Go ahead,” he said, chin moving against my shoulder.

“Hello, Stranger.”

By the time we detached, he had this beatific look on his face. Here was someone who’d mourned well, whose memory was flushed of unpleasantness.

“Are you coming or going?”

“Neither,” I said, holding up the pack of cigarettes, “coming back.”

Amos smoked more than I did, or at least he used to.

“How are you?” he asked, as if having administered a truth serum.

“Just, you know, meandering the mean streets of Chinatown. You?”

“Oh, it’s far too much to sum up in a sentence.”

I had to refrain from flicking the lighter in my pocket.

“It’s good to see you,” he continued. “Are you still editing?”

“Are you still pissing standing up?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said, waving at the air. “Yes, of course I’m still editing. I’m at Radio New York.”

“The tech thing?”

“It’s not a ‘tech thing,’ it’s just funded that way. I’m a little disappointed you don’t know where I work.”

“Or am I just pretending not to know?”

“Now there’s a question. Clive and Vadis and all them are in there.”

“You’re kidding,” Amos said, looking over his shoulder as if their faces would be pressed against the glass. “I didn’t see them.”

“Well, that’s probably okay.”

“I never had a problem with those guys.”

“Clive’s toned it down,” I said, “since he found inner peace and a billion dollars. And Vadis’s not, I don’t know—”

“Barking at interns?”

“No, no barking. She’s gypsy chic now.”

“I’ll pretend to know what that means. But man, how did I miss seeing you?”

Should we just fuck on this pavement square and get it over with? Amos was shorter than most of the guys I’d been with. “Napoleonic sexy,” as Vadis dubbed him after a digital slideshow. Amos looking pained on a panel. Amos looking pained at a party. Amos looking pained on a dock in Maine. A real-estate broker who was not Amos at all. Success had unlocked his grooming. He’d always been a fancy person trapped in a starving artist’s body. It was the jawline, destined for good suits and clearly defined from the neck like a Pez dispenser.

I offered my hand to the tall man, feeling Amos’s eyes trained on my breasts.

“We’ve met,” he said, taking my hand, “a couple of times. Roger.”

I was sorry Roger didn’t have his own ex-girlfriend to screw on his own pavement square, but there was no need to punish me for it.

“Of course,” I said, shaking my head. “Are you guys working together?”

“As in, is he my author?”

No, as in on a construction site.

“Yes, as in that.”

“I wish,” Roger said.

“He wishes,” Amos confirmed, as if some fantastic joke had passed between them.

“So why aren’t you? I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Amos is a very brilliant writer. I’m sure he has another book or six in him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to mess with Jeannine.”

“Jeannine Bonner,” I said, just to prove that some people’s names were worth remembering.

“Jeannine is very proprietary,” said Amos, as if it were a burden to be claimed by a legendary editor, to be conversant in her personality.

Roger removed his glasses and began cleaning them on his shirt. He was at least five years junior to Amos and me, as many as eight. I got a whiff of a roommate. Laminate flooring. Roach traps.