Schmidt Steps Back (26 page)

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack
. Mr. Mansour smiled. You’re getting smarter all the time. There’s no telling how it will end! What was I saying? You should’ve been in Paris. You didn’t know it, but Caroline and Joe Canning were there as well. I didn’t take them with us on the plane, but I brought them back. Another thing you didn’t know: I got Canning into a writers’ retreat at Royaumont. Do you know about Royaumont? It’s a medieval abbey north of Paris that used to belong
to a rich family called Gouin. Rich, rich, let’s say they thought they were rich. They fixed it up and gave it to a foundation.
Clickety-clack clickety-clack
. I’m a member of a committee of leading businessmen that runs business programs there. As you can imagine, I’m influential. The foundation also has important cultural programs, and that’s where Canning comes in. He jumped at the chance to participate with five or six other well-known writers. Very prestigious! Ha! Guess why I arranged it!

Because you’re a good guy.

Wrong. Because you can’t bring your wife or your husband! For this retreat only the participants are allowed to stay at the abbey! No husbands and no wives! So I told the Cannings they could have a weekend in Paris, at no expense, organized by me, as my treat. While Joe is at his retreat, I take care of Caroline. After the retreat is over, I bring them both back to New York with me.
Pas de problème
. It all worked out! Joe had his seminar, and I had Caroline.

You’re a devil, said Schmidt. You should be ashamed of yourself. They’re a good married couple.

Who says they aren’t? But does Caroline have a life with that schmuck? I tell you she doesn’t. She likes the books he writes. All right. He likes the books she writes. All right. He gives it to her maybe once a month for old times’ sake. That’s all right too. She likes it—somewhat. What choice does she have, who can she compare him with? No choice and no comparison. Here is where I come in: I show her a really good time—the best restaurants, the best hotel suite—and then we do it like she’s never had it before. No comparison! A woman I’ve laid never forgets it, never gets it out of her mind!

That was not Gil Blackman’s theory, as Schmidt remembered; Gil was convinced Mike was a one-night-stand artist and even on that schedule was hardly able to get it up.

What’s your secret, Casanova? asked Schmidt.

Size. And I like doing it.
Pas de problème
. Oh, and I’m rich. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Wonderful formula, said Schmidt. No wonder I haven’t had your successes. And what happens later? I mean, if she can’t get you out of her mind?

Nothing. She’s smart. If she wants a refresher course, a couple of hours here, a couple of hours there, that can be arranged. Where’s the harm, I ask you? I haven’t taken anything from that silly schmuck. She’s still with him, just as beautiful, just as intelligent. What more can he ask? If she’s learned a new trick or two, maybe she’ll show him. He comes out ahead. I’ll tell you something else. She’s clean! And she smells good!

You’re atrocious, said Schmidt.

Sure—who’s disagreeing with you?

Dessert had been served. Key lime pie. Mr. Mansour helped himself to two pieces right away and asked for a third. It’s the best, he announced. Let’s talk about you. What about this Riker guy? Have you seen him? Do you want me to send him some work? I’m looking at buying a public company out of Chapter Eleven. It could be right up his alley.

Mike, Schmidt replied, you’re atrocious but also very kind. Sure, I’d like to send him some work. He’ll do a first-rate job. But please do it so that there is no mention of me, our friendship, and so forth. You know what I mean. The way things have shaped up, I need to be out of the picture.

Pas de problème
. I’ll tell you how it goes.

What is it about me, Schmidt asked himself, as he was getting dressed to go to dinner at Mr. Mansour’s, that makes me such a square? He liked Caroline and disliked Canning. Why should he begrudge her a good time? Why should it get his dander up that Mike has slept with her? Envy? He had never thought of Caroline that way. A stupid sort of conformism, wanting people to behave correctly? Painful though it was to admit, he thought the more likely answer was envy. Not envy of this particular exploit of Mike’s, but envy of people who are lighthearted, who can break rules without suffering his kind of sour remorse. One thing was certain: when they met at dinner, he would see Caroline and Joe, and indeed Mr. Mansour, through new lenses, ones ground to the great financier’s prescription. This dazzlingly serious and learned woman had succumbed to Mike’s blandishments, had been hypnotized by his billionaire tricks, and had experienced the wonders of size! Good heavens, if that was possible, then the sky was the limit for conjugal misbehavior! Did she also have sex with Joe—Mike had said she did, but how would he know? Schmidtie, you dodo, replied an inner voice, he knows because he asked her, and she told him during an interlude between one orgasm and another. And if Joe and she do sleep together, once a month or once a week, for old times’ sake, as the Egyptian fiend had reported, does she smile from ear to ear through the ordeal thinking of the Egyptian and his outsize tool? He had to give Mike credit: without question, he could have—perhaps he had!—a lifetime supply of hot and cold running starlets and models eager for the cornucopia of good things he could offer. But no, he had gone for a woman in her fifties, only a few years younger than he; he had gone for class, Caroline’s
intellect and charm as well as her fine body and lovely face. Or was this instead Mr. Mansour’s kinky side: his need to see whether he could cuckold the celebrated novelist and seduce the noted biographer, a desire for a richer-than-usual taste, such as connoisseurs seek in Auslese wines or in well-hung grouse? And Joe! For all his touted penetration of the secrets of the heart, he had left Caroline in Mansour’s care just so he could shoot the breeze with a roomful of French intellectuals. He had earned his horns.

After the main course had been cleared, Mr. Mansour proposed a toast to the success of the new project: Gil had moved beyond thinking about a film based on Joe’s new novel to a full commitment. He was going to make the film! Right, Gil?

Gil nodded. Subject to the usual outs. I look forward to it, if it can be done.

If I back a project, there is no way it can’t be done, announced Mr. Mansour, wagging the right index at Mr. Blackman. Or am I wrong?

Gil smiled and said nothing.

Canning, who until then had uttered only his usual monosyllables, suddenly piped up: Speak for yourselves! I haven’t moved beyond thinking. I wouldn’t know how.

Touché! Mr. Mansour laughed. Of course, I’ll be deeply involved, I’ve already shared insights with Gil, and I’m going to share them with you, Joe. I see the screenplay as a collaboration between a great novelist and a great filmmaker—with my input. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that they will be essential. You have
Chocolate Kisses
and its huge success as an example. It’s Gil’s and my joint effort.

That was one of Mr. Mansour’s claims that Gil rejected vehemently, though not in his presence.

The worry beads had been inactive. Now they went
clickety-clack
at their accustomed speed.

Joe and Gil, Mr. Mansour continued, listen up slowly. One issue we have to visit is how we lighten the mood of Joe’s book. You know, so that it will play in Peoria! The question is, Joe, the question is, why are people in your books so disagreeable?

Could it be because that’s how people are, Canning replied, or because that’s how I see them? Perhaps both.

Touché again, conceded Mr. Mansour.

Caroline, what do you think?

That Joe is the best!

Thank you,
chère amie
! Caroline and I got to be great friends in Paris, but that doesn’t mean she has to agree with me every time. I’ll call the next witness. Schmidtie, what do you think?

Whatever it was that ailed Mr. Canning must have been contagious. Schmidt answered: Think about what?

The book, cried Elaine, the book,
The Serpent
!

I found it gripping, said Schmidt. Gil gave it to me, and I read it straight through.

That’s no kind of testimony, Elaine broke in. I’m an investor in this film, and I’m with Mike! Something has got to be done to the plot! Listen slowly, like Mike said: A widowed father—a distinguished lawyer like you, Schmidtie, but living in North Dakota—tells his son who has just graduated from law school that he can live rent free with his great-aunt in her brownstone in Brooklyn while he is clerking for a judge in New York. What Joe could possibly know about North Dakota is another question. Who even cares about North Dakota anyway? I’d move the father to the Hamptons. Anyway, the kid
agrees; the great-aunt is thrilled. He lives with her for five years, until she dies. The father is the executor of her estate. Practically everything is to go to the American Red Cross. But the father does the executor thing and discovers there is no money, practically nothing left at all. His son had been robbing the old woman blind ever since he moved in. It gets worse. He had terrorized her! I think she was on to him but didn’t dare to protest or seek help. I got lost in the legal stuff about whether the father was absolutely required to turn the kid in to the police. I don’t know if it matters. The point is that the father makes it clear to the kid that he has figured it all out, and no sooner has he done so than he realizes his own son will try to kill him. Do I have it right so far, Joe?

Silence.

All right, it’s your book, but it’s going to be our movie, continued Elaine, and I have to tell you the plot made my flesh crawl. Besides, how can you have a major film without some major romantic interest?

But, Elaine, Schmidt interrupted, there is a major romantic interest, though maybe not a role for Julia Roberts. The romantic interest is Vincent the anthropologist, the expert on cannibals!

Well, well, said Canning, we’ve quite a team here. Elaine has got the plot right, and Schmidt has figured out the romantic interest. What do we do now, Mike and Gil? Do we ask them to rewrite my novel, Mike, or are you going to do it yourself?

Back at home after Mr. Mansour’s dinner, Schmidt wondered why Canning bothered to write those novels. It couldn’t be for money: Schmidt had a pretty good idea that a midlist novelist’s royalties, even combined with what Caroline
earned, couldn’t pay for the way they lived. They lived off his insurance company pension and savings. It must be that he wrote in order to people a small corner of the earth with characters as repulsive as himself. Then a more interesting question entered Schmidt’s mind: Could Mr. Mansour have designs on Elaine too, and, if he got Gil out of the way, if he sent him to L.A. or North Dakota, would she be his for the asking?
Pas de problème!
Look at Caroline! There she was, cool as a cucumber, on best terms with the Egyptian fiend and all the while listening indulgently to her schmuck of a husband.

Under the influence of these thoughts, which had awakened his sexual hunger, Schmidt found his resolve had weakened. It no longer seemed possible to wait placidly for Alice to call. He had to take action. It took the form of a short fax he sent to her home:
June seems difficult for you, but July is almost upon us. Can we see each other then? Weekdays, weekends, anytime at all and anyplace will do
. What astonishment and joy the next morning when he found on the fax machine in his kitchen Alice’s reply:
Darling Schmidtie, July 14, Bastille Day, is on a Friday. Take me away from the frenzied French! Let’s meet in London on the thirteenth and remain through the following Monday. I’ll bring a little black dress, in case you decide to take me to the theater. Yours in every way, Alice
. Facsimile suddenly became his medium of choice. He wrote back:
I’m already in seventh heaven. Rendezvous on the thirteenth at the Connaught
.

Why was he so sure of finding an accommodation in that sought-after hotel? He had come to have faith in Mr. Mansour’s secretary. There would be room at the inn for Alice and him even if all the world came to London to be taxed.

T
HREE AND A HALF WEEKS
until the rendezvous in London! Schmidt had never been so lonely, so starved for affection, not even in the weeks following Mary’s death. Then he had been numbed by the long vigil at her sickbed and stupidly busy with the myriad tasks required for the settlement of even a straightforward estate like hers. Trivia took time, time that would otherwise have been spent wallowing in booze and despair. Besides, Charlotte and Jon were at the house every weekend. Together with Charlotte, Schmidt had slogged through the most painful task of all: clearing out Mary’s closets. Except for the few things that either Charlotte wanted or could be given to the brigade of Polish ladies who cleaned the house, all her poor forlorn clothes—dresses, coats, shoes, the inventory of intimate possessions went on and on—were carted off to the East Hampton thrift shop. They burned Mary’s underpants, having been told by the thrift shop that it wouldn’t take them. Then there was Mary’s Toyota. First Charlotte wanted it, and then she didn’t. After what seemed like days of waiting at the Motor Vehicle Department office in Riverhead, Schmidt managed to transfer it into his own name. Then he put it in the garage, never to be used. The real
solitude began when all those tasks had been accomplished, when Charlotte returned to her weekend routine of running on the beach and spending what remained of the day with Jon, behind closed doors. They were never at home for meals other than breakfast. Otherwise, they ate out, alone or with friends from the city. Invitations to join them were rare and ungracious. Then came the first quarrels: over the boorish manner in which Riker announced to Schmidt their engagement, Schmidt’s failure to accept the Riker parents’ invitation to Thanksgiving with sufficient alacrity, Charlotte’s rejection of the gift he proposed to make to her of his life estate in the house, and, worst of all, her refusal to wear Mary’s bridal dress or to have her wedding reception at the house in Bridgehampton. Quarrels begat quarrels: he could expect from Charlotte heartache; never company or solace.