Dream Girl(50)

What was the right thing to say? He warred with himself, wanting to be true to art, yet not unkind to this young woman, who seemed unusually sensitive. But, hey, Jacqueline Susann was a novelist. Anyone could be a novelist. She hadn’t asked if she could be a good one.

“With hard work, disciplined habits, and an ambitious reading life, yes. My hunch is that you don’t have a lot of life experience. That will change. Believe me, that will change.”

“But you told us the first day that life experience was overrated. You talked about Philip Roth, how relatively eventless his life had been. You quoted Eudora Welty, the thing about having led a sheltered life, but also a daring one, because all serious daring comes from within.”

Shit, he had.

“There’s a big difference between eighteen and twenty-five, which was Roth’s age when he published Goodbye, Columbus. Also, it’s Roth. He’s only one of our greatest living writers.”

“I’m twenty-two.” Such a pedant, always fixating on the wrong details.

“Yes—still, I’d love to see a piece of writing from you that wasn’t full of wizards.”

“I showed you what I hoped could be the beginning of a novel the first week of class, but you said I had to work on short stories this semester.”

Ah, yes, her “novel,” that wisp of a scene about a girl who was sad, contemplated suicide, but then saw the sun come up and felt hope. If he had to choose, he’d take the wizards.

“A novel is impossible to complete in a semester, that’s why I discourage them. I think finishing something is important. People can get lost in novels, wander in and not come out for years.”

“Do you ever get lost in one of yours?”

The question startled him with its acuity. He thought of the abandoned books, about which he felt guilty, as if they were his children. Or, worse, wives. But he knew no other way to work. In order to find the book he was meant to write, he had to keep moving. At least he had settled down as far as women were concerned. Three was proving to be his lucky number.

“I suppose so,” he said, opting for the answer that would end this meeting as quickly as possible. “See you tomorrow.” Then, in an imitation of Dianne Wiest in that Woody Allen film, he threw up his hand and said in a hoarse, patrician voice. “Don’t speak!”

The girl frowned and gathered her things, insulted. If he had explained the reference, she probably still would have been insulted. People aren’t allowed to like Woody Allen anymore. He tried to salvage the moment.

“Good luck with your performance of The Silent Woman.” She looked at him, confused, clearly never having heard of the Ben Jonson play. Who was Gerry kidding? She’d never heard of Ben Jonson.

The next day, she showed up for class with two lines of tape across her mouth, in the form of an X, but she had to remove the tape to suck from her enormous fountain drink. He was glad she wasn’t speaking, as one of the stories up was by Mona, one of the best students in the class. Also the most beautiful, but that was sheer coincidence.





March 22




“WE NEED TO TALK.”

“Funny,” he says to Aileen. “I was about to say the same thing.”

Also funny, he thinks, how those words, the worst words a person in a relationship will ever hear, can be neutral in other contexts. Yes, he and Aileen need to talk.

“I guess you may go first,” she says.

She has taken to sitting next to him with her knitting in the evening, although they seldom speak. The click-clack of the needles drives him crazy; the click-clack of the needles also soothes him, helps him sleep. Along with the drugs, which he is still taking. To which he looks forward now, if he’s honest, his Ambien and oxycodone chased some nights with a calcium supplement. Without the pills, there’s no way he could sleep. It’s temporary, he assures himself. He won’t always need to dope himself up so much, not forever.

He tells her about the New York detective, shows her the recording on the phone, says she can listen to it if she likes.

“But it’s better if you don’t, I think, because none of this would be known to you. The key point, if he should come back to talk to you, is that you know nothing.”

She seems affronted. “I know everything.”

“Of course you do. It’s like playing a part, in a play. You have to remember—you never met Margot. Never saw her, never heard me speak about her. Victoria met her, drove her to the train station the first time, overheard our argument. But you know absolutely nothing about her.” He pauses, decides to air his worst fear. “Unless you and Victoria gossip.”

“How could we gossip? We never see each other.”

Fair point. Gerry’s being paranoid.

“Meanwhile, I’ve figured something out. How she came back, how she got in.”

“Huh.” Is it “Huh” or “How”? At any rate, he decides to tell her.

“Did you find my keys or the pass in her purse? You and Victoria always come and go through the lower level—”

“The service entrance,” Aileen says. Service or servants’? She really has the most terrible diction. A stray memory darts around his mind. Speak up, don’t mumble so. He sees a pen-and-ink drawing of a monstrous child. Augustus Gloop. Willy Wonka. Willy Wonka would accuse the children of mumbling when he didn’t like what they said. But, no, it was Mike Teavee that Wonka pretended he couldn’t hear.