All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (13 page)

Please come to see us and please write. We worry about you. That’s really all I have to say.

Love,
Emma

I looked out the window, above the pink sign, across the two thousand dark miles of country to where the Hortons were, wishing I could be back where I had been. The sight of Emma’s round words made me sniffle. I had always been too impulsive. No one had told me not to marry Sally. It was because I didn’t have a family to advise me. Momma was dead and Daddy and my brothers too busy running their Pontiac agency to advise me about my life. In small towns every family needs a black sheep and I was theirs. I think they were glad I had gone wrong, to the extent that I had. If I hadn’t, one of them would have had to. I had no one to tell me who not to marry except my friends, and they didn’t advise me on such matters. I should have listened to Godwin. For all his problems, he knew more about things than I did.

Rivers and streams of emotion began to rush around in me, and I was too tired to handle them. I watched people walk up and down Geary Street and felt like I was back in the flash flood. I couldn’t see properly out of my eyes. I let the rivers and streams run out. When I had to go to the bathroom I discovered there wasn’t one on my floor. No wonder the room had only cost four dollars. I remembered
something about there being one off the downstairs hall. I went down, still sloshing with emotion. A door was open and a thin old lady stood in the doorway. She was one of the most made-up old ladies I have ever seen. She must have had literally ounces of makeup on, including eye-shadow. In the crook of her arm was a tiny black and white terrier. As I passed she pointed the terrier at me like a gun. The terrier bared his teeth and snarled. I went on to the john and when I came back she was still standing there. Her eye shadow was bright blue. She had a heavy string of amber beads around her neck.

“Hello,” I said. I felt embarrassed, passing without speaking.

Once again she pointed the terrier at me. It bared its teeth again and made ugly low snarls. It was a nasty little dog.

“A gentleman wouldn’t require the lavatory at this time of night,” she said, raising the terrier a little so it would be easier for him to spring at my throat if the need should arise.

“I’m new to the hotel,” I said. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.

“I’m waiting for my husband,” she said. “Usually he is in by this time. He must have been detained at his club. I am Russian by birth. There are no standards here. I’ve asked him to let me return to my country and my people.”

Her voice was old and throaty. The floor of the room behind her seemed to be covered with newspapers and movie magazines and there was a huge birdcage with a moldy black bird of some kind in it. The terrier stood up on her arm, leaning toward me, dying to bite.

“I’ve never used firearms,” she said. “You may come for tea sometime, but you must send in your card three days in advance. That is our inflexible rule. No impromptu callers.
In our youth we made exceptions on occasions, but we found that was not wise. Send in your card.’

She turned, and as she was shutting her door, I saw the little dog hop off her arm.

I stayed in the hotel almost three months, but her door was never open again.

NOTHING HAPPENED
for a while—actually, for a month or two. Sally lived on Jones Street, being pregnant, and I lived on Geary Street, in the Piltdown Hotel. Days and weeks passed. I had moved out on Sally in October and somehow it became Christmastime, with nothing changing. Once I had been amazed at how abruptly things could change, but what was just as amazing was how long they could go without really changing.

When my editor arrived, the week after New Year’s, and saw where I lived, he couldn’t believe it. He was staying only a few blocks down the street, at the St. Francis, but the ambiance of the two places couldn’t have been further apart. The Piltdown was full of old ladies with cats and birds, and the St. Francis, as near as I could judge, was full of people like Bruce.

Bruce was the sort of man who looks comfortable in three-piece suits. He was good-looking and sharp and quick-minded and universally informed, as I assumed all New Yorkers to be. My room at the Piltdown put him off badly. By the time he saw it it was half full of empty Dr. Pepper bottles and Fig Newton boxes. In those days Dr. Peppers
and Fig Newtons were among my staples. When I tired of them I ate other trashy things. I loved pork skins and potato chips, Mounds candy bars and Fritos. When I felt really nostalgic I ate jalapeno peppers and bean dip. Nutrition had never interested me and in the weeks after I left Sally it came to interest me even less. I got through my days on Fig Newtons and candy bars and an occasional chili dog. Nibbling took my mind off my troubles, so I nibbled all day. I ate wieners and rat cheese, Butter Rum Life Savers, Peanut Planks and Tootsie Pops. Anything would do. Trashy food was my heritage. I could live for months on cheeseburgers and an occasional plate of eggs.

Bruce was different. He had standards in food. I liked him sufficiently to conceal my more atrocious habits from him, and when he took me out to dinner at a famous French restaurant I ate every bite he ordered me and pretended I liked it. I watched Bruce eat and tried to conceal how ashamed I was of my palate. Fortunately I liked the wine. The big news he had was that my novel had sold to the movies. It was such big news that I had a hard time taking it in. It had sold for forty thousand dollars. When he told me, I couldn’t think of much to say. He expected me to go crazy with joy, I think. It was not an unreasonable thing to expect and ordinarily I would have complied. But somehow it was all abstract. I had led a numb, indifferent life for several weeks, writing bad pages and wondering what to do about Sally. I spent a lot of time watching the pink neon sign blink, and even more time on Market Street seeing cheap movies. Having forty thousand dollars was really so unimaginable, I couldn’t even become excited. Bruce was a little disappointed in me, I guess, but I couldn’t help it. Other than Jenny Salomea I didn’t even know anybody else who had forty thousand dollars.

“Well, you can certainly afford a decent place to live,
now,” Bruce said cheerfully. He had a twinkly expression, combined with what I supposed to be instinctive suavity. I couldn’t imagine his not being able to control his destiny. It made me slightly uncomfortable with him. I felt as ashamed of myself as I did of my palate. It had to be obvious to him that I wasn’t controlling my destiny. Sally had not even wanted to let me into our apartment to get a necktie, so I could go to the fancy restaurant.

“They want to see you as soon as you can go down,” Bruce said, eating profiteroles in chocolate syrup. By “they” he meant Hollywood. I could even write the screenplay of the movie, if I wanted to, Bruce said. I couldn’t think of any reason not to. My second novel simply wasn’t coming out right. It seemed to me I could probably do a better job of it if I waited until after my first novel was published. Writing a screenplay might be fun.

After dinner Bruce drove me down the peninsula to a literary party at Stanford. I was a little drunk from the wine, and the prospect of a literary party, after so many days of gloom and bad writing, was very exciting. Bruce wanted to know about Texas. He had heard that in Texas people fucked cattle and he wanted to know if that was so. I assured him it was a common practice. Then he wanted to know about millionaires. I was no help to him there. I didn’t know any. I only knew people who fucked cattle.

We wove up somewhere into Atherton and were at a party. Numerous real writers were there. Within half an hour Bruce had introduced me to John Cheever, Philip Roth, James Baldwin, Herbert Gold and Wallace Stegner. None of them noticed me and I was just as glad. I could tell it was an occasion at which I didn’t really want to be remembered. At the same time, it was interesting to watch. I went off to a corner to get drunk and watch. The writers at the party were obviously different from the writers I
met in the bookshops of San Francisco. These people had auras. I could enjoy meeting them and watching them because I knew I would probably never see any of them again.

The party was almost as abstract as my effort to imagine it. It was in a very elaborate house, with new art and old art, and a big garden. Lots of fancy women were there and I stopped watching the writers and watched them. I had never really been exposed to fancy women. They looked a lot more interesting than the writers, who were all drinking and talking intently of literature and things. The women smiled and moved about gracefully. I had felt dead for months but seeing so many women made me wonder if I had to be. I had assumed that things were hopeless, but maybe they weren’t. Conceivably a woman could happen to me again.

I watched Bruce move around the room, smiling and talking to people. I felt a little proud of him. He was wearing a handsome dark-red tie and he seemed to me the epitome of what an editor should be. He obviously knew everyone and what to say to everyone, and he had been in New York only that morning. It was amazing that he could cross the country and still know everyone. I didn’t even know anyone on the other side of Geary Street.

Watching the party made me realize how much I had to learn. Writing was obviously an intricate profession. I didn’t know if I was ever going to master the writing part of it, much less the knowing-everyone-and-everything part of it. Despite the exciting women, I became depressed. I had only written one slight book. It all began to look beyond me, over my head. I wondered if the Hortons would be very disappointed in me if I gave up writing and went to work full time as an exterminator. For half an hour the idea really appealed to me. Then I was drunk and it stopped appealing to me. My pessimism began to seem cowardly. I
decided I didn’t like most of the people at the party, perhaps not even the writers. Why were they talking so intently about literature? They knew it wasn’t really that important. And even if it were that important it seemed cheap to talk about it so knowingly at fancy parties. I felt high-minded in my drunkenness. Somebody had to live in the Piltdown Hotel. Atherton began to disgust me, it was so rich. I felt that something good was being cheapened. If I were famous I would undoubtedly cheapen it, too, at fancy parties, but I didn’t like the picture I had of things. I didn’t want anybody there to be a better writer than I was—I didn’t like them enough. I wouldn’t have wanted them to be better exterminators, either. I would have to keep writing out of pride, until I was good enough at it to be able to quit. Until then I wouldn’t have the right to give it up.

I felt complex bad feelings about things. I wasn’t even proud of Bruce, anymore. It was probably all too easy to fly from New York to San Francisco and still know everybody. Maybe it wasn’t an essential achievement, or even one to be admired.

No one spoke to me, so I had nothing to do but drink. Late in the party, I realized that most of the people were gone and that Bruce was introducing me to a beautiful lady. I had noticed her that evening. She looked rather haughty.

“Renata Morris,” Bruce said. “Danny Deck. He’s the luckiest thing to happen to Random House since you.”

“Hello,” I said. The lady nodded. She had long, lustrous black hair, but it was done up on top of her head. She had a very graceful neck. I had heard of Renata Morris and fumbled in my memory unsuccessfully.

“I know Danny knows your books,” Bruce said. “I wanted you to meet him.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Renata’s a love of former days,” he said to me. He made it sound like a compliment. My memory finally coughed her up. She had
written a famous first novel called
The Diary of a Jaundiced Woman
and two or three other novels that weren’t so famous. My memory refused to supply their titles. She looked at me silently. She seemed quite comfortable with her hauteur. Bruce was a little at a loss for conversation.

“The West Coast does have its charms,” he said.

Renata looked as if she wanted to give him the finger. “I haven’t had a decent meal since I left New York, eight years ago,” she said. “Except when I’m in New York, of course.”

“I’m just learning to eat decently,” I said, I guess inappropriately. Bruce looked embarrassed. No doubt he was thinking of the pile of Fig Newton boxes in my room at the Piltdown.

A man put his hand on Bruce’s arm, and Bruce walked away with him, talking intently. I expected Renata Morris to vanish, but she stayed in front of me.

“What a fucking bore he is,” she said. “I’m glad I left Random House. I can’t believe I ever screwed him. Love of former days, my ass. He caught me on a horny weekend. Long Island used to do that to me.”

She kept looking at me. I felt socially awkward. I had no fund of small talk.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” I said. “I like your writing.”

“For a kid you’ve got sexy hair,” she said.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked.

“I live here,” she said as she moved away. “This pile of shit was my bridal portion.”

I never found out where her husband was, or if he was even still her husband. I became too drunk to be perceptive. Renata Morris didn’t return to me for almost an hour, by which time Bruce had gone somewhere with someone and all the writers had vanished. I assumed they had vanished to boudoirs, with various of the fancy women, but I didn’t
care. In the midst of my drunkenness I began to wish badly not to be drunk. If I could stop being drunk I wouldn’t miss anything, but I had the sense that I was going to miss everything I didn’t want to miss. I remember walking upstairs holding hands with Renata. It was odd, because she wore a black dress and looked much too elegant and haughty to hold hands with. She had a very sexy, graceful neck. She took me out on a balcony and we looked at the lights on the peninsula hills and at the stars above the hills.

“I wish I weren’t so drunk,” I said. It seemed to soften Renata a little. She was almost drunk herself.

“Your hair’s not drunk,” she said. We lay on a vast bed for a while. I napped and we necked and Renata Morris played with my hair. I don’t know why she liked it. Hers was far more spectacular, when she finally took it down. I had forgotten how much I liked to watch women take down their hair. She began to tell me about her sexual adventures, in between my naps and our necking. She seemed to have had many. She once even had a cat that was good to her. Sexual adventures seemed to be her interest in life. Her voice changed when she talked about them. I began to swear to myself that I would never drink again. I hated myself for cutting myself off from the most interesting part of the evening. Even when we managed to escape from our dress-up clothes and were in the middle of the huge bed having a sexual adventure, I wasn’t quite there. Generally I was making love to Renata, but it was all too general. I couldn’t sense Renata. I was making love to her, but I didn’t know what she was like. It was disturbing. Locally, where I was supposed to feel the most, I felt the least. My only distinct impression was of the abundance of her hair. Renata kept saying dirty words in a breathy voice. It was very unlike her haughty voice. Maybe saying dirty words worked for her, but hearing them didn’t work for me. Liquor had
made me numb. I was just as glad to go to sleep. I dozed off, hoping I would get a better chance in the morning, but instead I got no chance. Renata was wearing tennis clothes and had two rackets under her arm when I woke up. It was very early, barely dawn.