Domestic Violets (24 page)

“You really liked it?” I whisper. Brandon is sitting next to me, droopy-eyed. “What did you like most? Did you think it was funny?”

“Stop being so needy. I’ll tell you what it
does
need, though . . . lesbians. They’re so hot right now. People love them.”

“OK, maybe I’ll try to work some in.”

And then we hear my dad’s name reverberating from the box speaker at the podium.

“The first time I read Curtis Violet, I was a very serious English professor.” Mickey Mantle’s doppelganger’s voice has changed. He’s been reading from index cards about people he’s never heard of, listing credentials and bibliographies. Now though, he’s talking about someone that everyone here knows, and the steady murmuring and rustling and clinking of glasses comes to a stop.

“I read a lot, of course . . . it was my job. But I’d always read with purpose. I’d read to study—to glean information that I could dissect and use to impress people later. But, about halfway through my used copy of
Tomorrow Is November
, I realized that I was just reading for reading’s sake. Reading for the sheer pleasure of it. Reading the way that we were all intended to read.”

Whenever Curtis is listening to something like this, he looks friendly and a little aloof, smiling politely at the nearest centerpiece. He’s a guy who’s finally grown too old to be embarrassed by the things he’s achieved.

“I didn’t know a lot about fiction then, but I knew that this young writer, Curtis Violet, was going to be somebody important. He was an author I was going to be reading for the rest of my life.”

The room has grown restless and people are sitting up, looking over at our table. In this strange little world, he’s a star, one of the biggest.

“Curtis Violet has won the National Book Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner twice, and the National Book Critics Circle Award three times, along with a host of other notable prizes and honors. His novels have been made into noteworthy films and have found themselves time and again among best-of-the-year and bestseller lists around the world. Perhaps more importantly though, he has become that rare writer, like Vonnegut and Mailer before him, who has managed to be celebrated here, academically, as well as among the far more elusive reading public. For my money, he is one of our greatest living writers, and he is this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction for his collected stories. He is Curtis Violet.”

When I look over at Sonya, I see that she’s crying, and amazingly, I think I might be, too. Only Brandon among us is unshaken. He yells, “All right, Curtis!” and claps his hands, and this begins what quickly becomes a standing ovation for my dad. On his way to the podium, as he snakes his way through the maze of tables, he shakes hands and smiles. It seems that everyone here has brought a camera, and now those cameras are fixed on him. Then I see Alistair Stewart again. The poor man has begrudgingly stood with the others, but he refuses to clap. Glaring at my dad, his arms crossed, he looks like a man with dynamite taped to his chest. My father is his nemesis, and his loathing is palpable, like humidity.

I nudge Brandon and nod at old, fuming Alistair. “Check it out,” I say.

Brandon just rolls his eyes, still clapping. “Oh for the love of Christ. When will you straight people get it? It’s not the end of the world. It’s just fucking.”

Chapter 34

B
etween 113th and
114th on Broadway, just a quick walk from Columbia, is where the West End Bar used to be. It was this legendary dive that was made famous by the beatniks like Jack Kerouac who used to hang out there and get drunk. The place was finally shut down a few years ago, though, after the last of many fraternity brawls and underage drinking busts. To the horror of alumni and the entire literary community, it reopened a year later as a trendy Cuban restaurant. The new owners tried to stave off some of the mounting uproar by naming it Havana Central at the West End, but the damage was done.

I remember reading about this a while ago, but I’d forgotten about it entirely until now.

“They totally changed that place, Curtis,” says Brandon. He’s walking arm-in-arm with his mother down Broadway, guiding her around a discarded slice of pepperoni pizza on the sidewalk. “How do you
not
know this? Everyone knows this.”

“Don’t be an ass, Brandon,” says Curtis. “They didn’t change the West End. They’d never be allowed to do that.”

“All right, man. Whatever you say.” Sonya tries to smooth Brandon’s hair. He’s doing the stylishly messy thing. “Mom, stop it!” he says, pushes her hand away like a nine-year-old.

There’s a line of about fifty people behind us, all award luncheon attendees dressed in suits and ties, following blindly. Cars and buses on Broadway are slowing to look at us. We’re like a funeral procession on foot. My father announced to everyone within earshot on the way out of the event that drinks were on him. Apparently this is what Violet men do at critical moments in their lives.

“I’m telling you, man, they gutted it out. It’s Mexican or Spanish or something.
El lamo es muy.
”

“I think he might be right, Dad,” I say.

He waves us both away, two stupid kids, but it doesn’t matter. Once a troop of marching academics and writers has its orders, there’s no turning back, even as those of us in the front see the bright orange awning growing closer and closer. No one wants to say anything when we actually get there.

“What in the holy shit?” asks Curtis.

“See, Pulitzer, what’d I tell you?”

Sonya shushes her son.

My father is staring up sadly at the big, tangerine-colored building. “How could this be? I played darts with Allen Ginsberg here.”

“Who?” asks Brandon.

A chalkboard sign by the door advertises
CREDIT CRISIS SPECIAL: MOJITOS 2 FOR 1!
“What in the hell is a mojito?”

Those who’ve followed are now loitering on the street, looking at the restaurant with indifference. Most of them didn’t seem to know where we were going in the first place. “Is this it?” someone asks. “Yeah, I guess,” says someone else.

Sonya asks my dad what he wants to do. “We’re here, Curtis. Maybe we should just go in. It looks . . .
festive
.”

Defeated, he nods.

The decor inside does little to appease my dad. I have to admit, though, the place looks pretty nice. I wouldn’t call it subtle, with pastel walls and flowers like Starburst candy, but it’s cool and open and, in the middle of the afternoon, almost completely empty. The two bartenders leaning against their counter look at us like an approaching invasion. At the very front of the assault is, unbelievably, Alistair, barking for a scotch and water. His attendance at the awards ceremony was reasonable, a professional obligation, but showing up, still fuming, to the impromptu after party seems like masochism.

For a good twenty minutes, Brandon and I wait to get drinks, and he types continuously on his BlackBerry.

“How can you type so fast on that thing?” I ask. “The keys are so small.”

“It’s all shorthand and symbols,” he says. “It’s like a whole new screwed up little language. It’s even infiltrated the biz. I’m working with this novel right now. Holy shit, you should see it. Some eighteen-year-old chick from San Diego wrote it. The entire fucking thing, every sentence, is written in text speak. LOL and IDK and BRB and smiley faces and all that. It’s infuriating to read. Every high school teacher in the free world’s worst nightmare come to life.”

“But you’re representing it?”

“Hell yeah, I am. Going to auction on the stupid thing on Tuesday. Two mojitos says I get the little ho a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar advance.”

“Jesus, what’s it even about?”

“Who the hell knows? From what I can tell, it’s pretty much
Romeo and Juliet
set in some high school in da ’hood. Pretty lightweight stuff actually, if we’re speaking off the record. But
MTV Books
wants to do it in a Podcast series. Bling, bling.”

I’m a dinosaur. I’m a giant, doomed lizard in a clearance-rack suit.

“Two mojitos and two tequila shots,” Brandon tells the bartender when we finally make it to the front.

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“When in Rome, Tommy.”

Like every tequila shot ever taken, this one goes down like shards of broken glass, and Brandon and I wince and hiss and cough at each other like longshoreman. I slap his back and he punches me in the shoulder. “Well, that was great,” I say. “We should do like nine or ten more of those.”

Brandon wipes tears from his eyes and sets to work on his mojito. “We’ll do that later. Right now I need you to seriously listen to me about this name thing.”

“OK. Bring it on.”

“I’ve been playing this thing for laughs so far because I’m happy to see you, but I want you to think about something. Your dad over there is one of the most famous fucking writers in the world. If you publish a book under a fake name—even one inspired by an eighties movie—you dork—people are gonna figure it out. It’s just a matter of time. And what about readings? Jacket photos? Promotion? I mean, you look just fucking like him. It’s not gonna take Nancy Drew to put the pieces together.”

“Couldn’t you have at least said the Hardy Boys?”

“Don’t try to throw me off track. I’m being serious here.”

“Well, what if I don’t do readings or any of that other stuff? What if I just publish it and let it exist on its own? Don’t people ever do that?”

“No,” says Brandon, plain and simple. “Well, sometimes dead people.”

It’s amazing how little I’ve thought this thing through, logistically speaking. Until now, it’s just been me and my imaginary kid in a car headed for California.

“Listen,” he says. “I get what you’re doing. You don’t think I can relate? Nobody’s gonna ask my mom for an autograph today, but she’s a legend. Curtis isn’t her only big client, you know. That’s why I spent my entire twenties trying to be anything
but
an agent. How could I be an agent when my mom was
the
agent? Sure, some people still think of me as Ross Lite, but fuck them . . . I had my first bestseller last month. Number seven with a bullet.”

“
New York Times
?”

“Close enough.”

“Don’t you ever feel like you’re . . . I don’t know . . . cheating?”

He takes a long sip and scans the crowd. “It’s not about how you get there, Tommy. Sonya won’t be around forever . . . and neither will Curtis. I’m an agent. A fucking good one. Screw
Entourage
. . . they should make a show about me. And you, whether you like it or not, are a writer. Now close your eyes and give me a kiss.”

I try to tell him that I just might, just to make him stop talking, but he tells me to shut up. “Holy shit,” he says, grabbing my arm.

“What?”

“Don’t look now, Bueller, but you’re not gonna believe who just walked in.”

I’ve never been good at
not
looking when someone says, “Don’t look now,” and so I spin around to the entrance where a tall, distinguished older guy stands in a tweed blazer. He’s hunching a little, like tall men do who are trying not to stand out, and he looks lost as he scans the crowd. I’ve seen him before, of course, this brilliant recluse, but only in pictures. Brought into three dimensions, it takes me a moment to realize that I’m looking at Nicholas Zuckerman. “Whoa,” I say. “Look how tall he is.”

“Actors are always midgets in person,” says Brandon. “But writers . . . they’re giants.”

“Wow.”

“Dude’s been in his cabin in the Berkshires for about a hundred years. He’s like the literary Unabomber.”

“He doesn’t look like a terrorist,” I say. “Do you think we should buy him a mojito?”

“I don’t see why not,” says Brandon, but we’re all talk. Neither of us has had nearly enough to drink to be delusional enough to think we can just walk up and start talking to Nicholas Zuckerman. He’s pushing eighty if he’s a day, but he still looks like he could kick both of our asses, and so we watch him from a distance, like some exotic old animal in the zoo.

Curtis spots Zuckerman quickly from his spot deep in the bar surrounded by people. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announces, raising his glass. “A round of applause for the second greatest living American writer.”

I’ve taken a conservative stance this afternoon regarding alcohol. Since having two more unnecessary tequila shooters with Brandon and finishing my mojito, I’ve been sipping at a perfectly reasonable Corona, which has grown warm in my hand. Brandon and I have separated, and I’ve become the social ghost that I usually become at these sorts of things. The TV above the bar is on the YES Network, which is running an old Yankee playoff game from the nineties. From my spot alone at the corner of the bar, I watch the room. Brandon is bouncing from group to group, chatting everyone up and handing out his business card. He looks like a kid running for student council president. I catch snippets here and there, loving every second of it.

“Wait, your agent lives where? You need someone here—in the city!”

“Really? I think you could expand that into a book. I see a market for that.”

“If Obama wins this thing, that could really sell. Here, keep me in mind if you decide to write it.”

“Are you kidding? If I sell twenty books a year, three are novels. Stick with memoirs. Fiction is dead.”

God bless his energy.

The Havana Central at the West End has had enough time to adjust to the sudden flood of thirsty writers, and two cocktail waitresses have been assigned to roam around taking drink orders. The prettier of the two, a lanky blond thing with a star tattoo at the back of her neck, has found several opportunities to chat with my dad—or vice versa. She’s just brought him another glass of wine and is laughing at whatever he’s saying. By the shade of reddish-pink that his cheeks have become, I’m fairly certain that my dad is officially drunk.

If I left now and simply wandered down Broadway toward Harlem, would he even notice? I squash this thought though, because it’s teetering on pathetic. I’m not a little boy hiding behind a rack of ladies’ dresses at Macy’s. I’m an adult, and I can go an hour without my dad paying attention to me. Can’t I?

That’s me giving myself a tough-love speech. I’m going to start doing that more often, I’ve decided. One might as well put his inner monologue to good use.

I take out my phone and hold down the number one. Anna answers on the third ring. “How was it?” she asks.

“Nice,” I say. “More boring than I thought it’d be though.”

“Well, you know, a bunch of writers congratulating themselves.”

I can hear phantom domestic noises in the background—
The Lion King
, Allie chattering about something, the steady hum of our house. I wish I was there; I’m also very aware of the fact that we don’t know where we are right now, Anna and me. We’re talking to each other carefully, like people who are friends but only through other friends, all guarded and superficial.

“So, I talked to Brandon,” I say.

“Yeah?” she says.

“Believe it or not, he loves the book.”

“I do believe it,” she says. “I told you it’s great.”

“He’s less than thrilled with the pen-name idea though. Apparently it’s something like publishing suicide. I don’t think he gets it.”

“I’m not sure I get it either,” she says. “But it’s your book, and you should do what you want with it. Either way, Brandon will live.”

“Probably,” I say, and then we lapse into silence. It’s these silences that do damage, that reveal glimpses of the distressed foundation struggling under the weight of things.

“So, where’s Curtis?” she asks. “Is he with you?”

“Sort of. He’s actually flirting with a cocktail waitress.”

“Curtis Violet? No way.”

“I don’t think she has any idea who he is though, which is oddly satisfying.”

And then again, just as we were beginning to volley things back and forth so well, we’re quiet again. “Tom,” she says. Someone across the bar laughs and I’m squeezing the neck of my beer bottle. “Are we going to be OK?”

I think of her collapsing on top of me the other night, her lower back damp with sweat. After a moment of catching our breath, we both just started laughing, and we went on like that for a while. If every moment in a marriage was as simple and lovely as that, there would be no strained conversations like this over cellular telephones and hundreds of miles.

“Do you want us to be OK?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I . . . I do.”

I can relate to that pause—that small, barely perceptible hitch in decisiveness. She knows that this won’t be easy, but she cares enough to be having this conversation in the first place. And so do I.

“I think I do, too,” I say.

“Then I guess it’s up to us then, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Do you remember when you were a kid,” she says, “and you always knew how you were supposed to feel because people told you—and so that’s how you felt? I miss those days. They were less complicated.”

“Sometimes I think I learned how to feel from reading my dad’s books.”

“Wow,” she says. “Then we’re all in big trouble.”

She laughs and so do I, and then for a moment we’re quiet again. It doesn’t feel as charged as those other silences. There’s an ease to it—a rhythm.

When I let her go, I finish my Corona and order another, just so I have something to do with my hands. On the other side of the room, my dad and Sonya are standing beneath the only semblance of the bar’s roots—a dented sign that says
THE WEST END
nailed to the wall between black-and-white pictures of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Among the pastels and jungle of flowers, they seem silly, like afterthoughts.