The Best Kind of People (13 page)

“You can be as sexually liberated as you want to be, but the point is people have to
both
want to be doing it — otherwise it’s a crime. Sex is sex. Crime is crime.”

“I’m just saying not every situation is black and white.”

“I think men always think that.”

“When did you become such a feminist?”

Sadie swirled the coffee in her cup, took a sip. “I’ve always been a feminist. I just don’t use the word much because people lose all their rational thinking skills when I do.”

“The point is, this is our father you’re talking about.”

“I know, it’s different. It doesn’t make sense.”

“You owe him your loyalty. When something like this happens, you circle the wagons around your family. It’s just what you do.”

“Now who is sounding archaic?”

“That’s just the way it is.”

“I don’t know. I feel bad for him. I feel huge guilt even contemplating that he’s not innocent. But this shouldn’t be about loyalty — it should be about the truth and honesty.”

Andrew snorted. “If you really think our legal system is about honesty, you’ve got a lot to learn, little brain.”

“That makes me very sad for you,” Sadie said. “I thought you became a lawyer to do good in this world.”

“This thing will be over soon. I read some statistics last night and the majority of these types of cases are thrown out for lack of reliable evidence, especially when the accused is a good citizen like Dad. It’s all ‘he said versus she said,’ no hard evidence. It looks suspicious. We’ll go back to the way things were, and you’ll be out of this town soon, and Mom and Dad will go on their trip to Europe, and next year it will just be something we never talk about.”

“As much as that sounds lovely, Andrew, I have to say that I completely disagree with you. Dad is fucked. We’re fucked. Hasn’t it totally shattered your image of him?”

He shook his head.

“I agree with you that he’ll probably get off — only six percent of rapists actually ever spend a day in jail in the United States, and he’s only accused of impropriety and attempted rape — but that doesn’t mean things aren’t totally, irrevocably changed.”

“When did you become so Rain Man about statistics?”

“It turns out my memory is excellent. Mom got me tested.”

He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Fuck that school,” he said in his teenaged voice. “Take a break for a while. Catch your breath.”

Sadie reached into her kilt pocket and pulled out the weird postcard Dorothy had given her from the men’s rights group. Andrew read it, sneered.

“This is some end-of-the-world shit,” Andrew said. “They look like wing nuts, but I’m betting they’re more powerful than we know. ‘Save George Woodbury,’” he read. “This isn’t good. We need to make sure people know that our father is a reasonable man, who loves and supports women and their autonomy, and isn’t some crazy woman-hater like these insane people.”

“But you kind of sound like them, a bit. Automatically assuming the girls are lying.”

“No, I don’t. I’m not denying women are harassed and assaulted. I’m just saying that Dad deserves fairness and the benefit of the doubt, and that it is possible that there is some sort of framing angle, that’s all. I’m not making some pronouncement about gender,” he said, getting up and throwing the rest of his coffee in the lake.

EIGHT

KEVIN ARRIVED HALF
an hour early to meet his agent at Café Mogadaro in the East Village. He ordered a soda water with a wedge of lime from a tall, busty waitress in a blue A-line dress, a bird print circling the hem. It was technically lunchtime, but he couldn’t eat. He sat on the slim patio that edged onto the sidewalk of St. Mark’s, watching some children file out of a private school that looked like all the other tenement buildings on the block save for a small sign with the academy’s name. He was too nervous. His usual waitress here had been a fan. Angela with the baby bangs and the bob haircut always scrawled a heart on the bottom of his receipts with her phone number. He really wanted to see her today, because her delight in him buoyed his spirits. The busty waitress hardly glanced at him at all.

Everyone walking down the street was alone, walking dogs and talking on phones, carrying yoga mats. A man in a linen suit leaned against a car, yammering to the air. Twenty-something
NYU
students sat on benches outside the pudding shop, gesturing with their plastic spoons. Why were there suddenly restaurants that only served one thing? This neighbourhood had been cool and a bit dangerous when he was a teenager. He’d lived in Alphabet City for a year after his first book came out and he’d had a residency in the city. It still thrilled him to be here, and part of him wished he could have stuck it out. At the time it had been too expensive to contemplate living here, which was laughable, looking back, considering how much more expensive it was now. He appreciated how individualistic Manhattan was, that you could eat in a restaurant here by yourself and no one would bat an eye. The suburbs looked upon solitude with suspicion. People sat in groups even when they had nothing interesting to say to each other.

It had been a year since he’d met up with his agent, who’d cancelled their last two meetings. He was ten minutes late, no doubt a symbol of the recent shift in their power dynamics. In Kevin’s plaid canvas messenger bag were 287 pages of a new manuscript that Kevin knew didn’t “shine” the way it was supposed to. It was a contemplative novel written in a lyrical style, mostly about the meaning of death and consumer culture, that he had grown bored with writing nearly three months ago. He wrote and rewrote the sex scene between the professor and his intern, but that was all he could do. Those were the three pages he’d offer as “sneak peaks” at reading events, and they’d been published in an issue of
Tin House
, which generated a lot of interest. But that was three years ago now, and no one was offering anymore. For the last two weeks Kevin had been spending his afternoons watching
DVD
s of television box sets, staying up late at night, staring at the manuscript, unable to see how it might be improved.

Elaine’s career as a professor, a job Kevin used to think of as the worst kind of prison, began to look like a comfort. He’d done a few stints as an adjunct professor teaching creative writing, but he mostly hated it. Every terrible-student story felt like an insult, and their unwillingness to edit, or read challenging books, and their desperation to publish — it was too much to take. He’d turned down most offers when they came in. He hated to admit, even to himself, that he was sniffing around for contracts again. When he confessed he was open to teaching jobs, that he needed some stability, Elaine had joked dryly, “Welcome to adulthood. We’ve been expecting you for twenty years.” He had one thousand dollars left from his last book advance. The new manuscript was two years overdue for delivery.

“You’ve got to get back to the essential Kevin that characterized the first few books,”
his agent had written in his last email.
“
Reread them.
Then go for a long hike, connect with people, get out of that suburban house that seems to be ruining your creativity. Have an affair! Just shake it up, somehow. You’re not that 26-year-old genius-to-watch anymore. You’ve got to write a serious novel worthy of attention.”

The trouble was, Kevin was battling a feeling that was much more serious than the question of whether geographical banality might be ruining his creativity. He was feeling as though perhaps it was true, that he only had one great book in him and it had been published a decade ago. Every sentence he wrote felt leaden and embarrassing. New novels were coming out every month that were innovative and fresh and written by twenty-three-year-old graduates of
MFA
programs whose only publishing credits were in the
New Yorker
. They made the same lists that he had made ten years ago, those dreadful
“Hot Under-40” lists that were both meaningless and career-defining.

A patch of eczema on his foot itched — it flared up only when he was stressed out — and he longed to be able to scratch it. Instead, he banged his foot against the table leg and sighed, spearing the lime wedge with his straw. He watched the waitress lean over an older male customer and touch his shoulder. He remembered this tactic from when he was a bartender; light touching meant higher tips. She stayed leaning. He could see the top of a black push-up bra. He tried to remember the last time he had had sex with Elaine. They’d become like siblings; lately, she bristled when he touched her. He’d been falling asleep on the couch a lot. “We’ll get back on track,” she had said. “All relationships go through ups and downs.” He knew this, but he still felt helpless to change it.

Kevin scanned his Twitter feed on his phone. He’d been semi-flirting with a young novelist from
LA
via article retweets and quips on events of the day. He was scanning her feed when one news headline caught his eye:
AVALON
HILLS
TEACHER
ARRESTED
FOR
SEXUAL
INDECENCY
CHARGES
.
He clicked on it lazily as he sipped the last of his drink and looked over at the clock, reasoning a crime story in Avalon Hills was a rarity to say the least. When he saw George Woodbury’s name in the lead, he choked on the last of his soda water.

He texted Elaine, chewing on the straw.
Did you hear about George W.?

Kevin sat with the shock of it while waiting to hear back. She was in class, she taught back to back until eight at night, so he couldn’t just call.

The waitress approached to pick up his glass. “Another?” She brushed against his shoulder. It worked, he reasoned. He felt a connection that he knew wasn’t actually there.

“I’ll have a pint of whatever you have that’s light, actually. And the hummus with pita.”

When she handed it to him, lightly touching his index finger as though by accident, he took a sip of the froth and a feeling came over him he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He took a small notebook out of his bag, the kind of notebook he insisted all of his writing students keep with them every day, and which he hadn’t written in for six months. He’d filled two pages with a passionate, impulsive scrawl by the time Elaine responded to his text.
I’m hearing about it now. Jimmy asked if Sadie could move in for a while. I said yes. I hope you don’t mind.

TEN MINUTES LATER,
his agent arrived, apologized too many times to be sincere, and ordered a Turkish coffee while locking eyes with the waitress a little longer than was necessary. She snapped her gum and made sure he was the first one to break the stare before she turned away. His agent laughed and turned his attention back to Kevin.

“You look well, Kevin,” he said. “A young intern was very excited that I was meeting with you today. Seems your first book
changed her life
in high school,”
he said.

Kevin marvelled, as usual, at his agent’s silver hair, every strand shining in a puffy pompadour, a visible manifestation of his personality. Was it possible that Kevin used to like this man? Respect him?

“I never get tired of hearing that,” Kevin joked, running his hands through his own hair nervously, pulling some strands forward to hide what he thought was a receding hairline. Lately these compliments only served to cement his feelings of emerging obscurity. He had gone from “most promising” to “over the hill” without stopping on success mountain. He had no other skills, he fretted. What on earth could he do for work? Kevin finished the last sip of his pint. Why didn’t he learn a trade? Could he go to carpentry school now, or was his back too injured? He couldn’t risk losing his fingers in case he ever had a good idea again.

Good ideas seemed as far away as good, non-marital sex.

“So, did you bring the manuscript?”

“I didn’t,” Kevin said.

His agent frowned, looked out at St. Mark’s Street as though scanning for a cab.

“Because I have a new idea,” Kevin said, shaking his hands around like he was on a game show. The waitress placed the coffee in front of his agent with a little too much force.

Kevin pulled out his notebook and flattened the lined pages down on the table. His agent picked up the copper carafe, poured the coffee into his cup, and swirled it around, annoyed. A girl walked by in bright green booty shorts, holding hands with a flustered-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses. They were walking a giant bulldog. “Like I said, you’re a very smart girl,”
he was saying to her. She looked at her phone and then off into the distance as the man kept talking. Kevin and his agent both stared as they made their way down the street.

“So, hit me,” his agent said.

Kevin looked down at the notes, barely decipherable. His anxiety about his career had tipped over into
fuck it
territory
.
It could not possibly get worse, so who cares? Kevin ran his fingers along the paper and heard himself outline the project that hadn’t existed before he ordered his first drink, making it up as he went along. His agent nodded, first warily, then curiously, then emphatically.

“Kevin, you little shithead, I could sell that on the idea alone! It’s topical, it’s based on real life, it’s a fucking genius idea.”

Kevin nodded, flushed with the energy coursing through his body. He curled the notebook up, holding it in his fist. The schoolchildren cheered across the street.

“I think this may call for some champagne, no?” he said, laughing.

The waitress obliged with a bottle served on ice and two tall glasses. Kevin gulped the first glass down, shocked that he had somehow saved himself. By his second glass he felt the balm of his arrogance returning, like a sly old lover slipping him a hotel key card.

Kevin left the meeting with a slight buzz and instructions to write a two-page synopsis that would go out to publishers the following week. He walked north on First Avenue feeling drunk and high on his own ambition. He bought a copy of a Lorrie Moore book from the guy selling them on the sidewalk at East Tenth. He felt as though he could run away from his life in Avalon Hills and make up for the years of banal drudgery and failure. If his next book was successful, maybe he could move back to the city.