1

I have avoided speaking of myself, because whenever I do, what I say filters out as a thing of no importance. All the clients I handle have a kind of ego-madness; otherwise they would not hire a flak to keep their names in the press and their faces on the media; and I tried to blow my own ego-madness with Andrew Capestone. But I had to crawl into someone else’s shoes. Myself, I am Al Brody, born of an Irish poet who drank too much and whose poetry was just not good enough and of a Jewish mother who used his life insurance, when he drank himself to death, to send me to Harvard. I must have had a little something on the ball, because not many kids out of New Utrecht High School made Harvard, but maybe it was the war. At that time colleges were kind to GIs.

I wanted to be a writer, but I did not raise my opinion of myself enough, and I remembered what freelance writing had done to my father, who worked on construction jobs when he could get work. When my mother and brother died, breaking what few ties there were, I went out to the coast and got a job with a press agent. I married one of his clients, a starlet with a cold, beautiful face and very small talent, and I stayed married. I don’t know whether I was in love with her in the way love is supposed to be or whether I had been simply overwhelmed by the fact that she was willing to be dated by a chubby, freckled kid with thin red hair. I know one thing—I never loved her the way I loved Millicent Patience Cooper for five days. I never loved anyone else that way either.

Some loves die and some waste away and some turn into hatred, and I guess that some last, more or less, and maybe five days is better than nothing. I said I felt sick. That’s a small word. The feeling I had was that I had been reduced. Reduced to nothing. I moved, I functioned, but for the next few moments I understood what it means to be totally destroyed and yet to go on living and breathing and even, as you will see, talking.

“Well, let us sit down now that we’re all together,” the senator said. “Good food, good company, good wine. Here, Al.”

The general had moved around to help Millie into her chair. The senator moved mine for me to sit in. They were polite people. Good upbringing.

I was looking at Millie, but she avoided my eyes. I sat down, she sat down. I must have been fairly calm on the outside, but in my head a crazy film was running at a mile a minute, and another part of me was crying out, No, no, it’s a lie, it’s a ploy, it’s Millie being cleverer than any of them, using them, moving them, turning their own acts against them. The general kissed her. That square-jawed, cold-eyed son of a bitch had kissed her, the way you kiss total intimacy. My Millie, my beautiful, long-limbed Millie—a woman who had worked in my office for six years, faithful, loyal. Push it further—my partner. I accept, we’re partners, AL You and me. You may be forty-seven years old and fat and bald, but I love you. I gave you back your manhood. I showed you that you weren’t impotent. You can do that for a man you love. I’ll take care of you, Al. I’m a good cook. You eat half of what you usually eat. Painless. I took a course in criminal psychology at Wellesley.

Very slowly the anger began, very slowly, just a germ, just a nodule, just a beginning for a practice forgotten. Al Brody never gets angry. Al Brody never loses his temper. Al Brody, he’s the sweetest guy in Beverly Hills. He may be a flak, but he’s one in a million. You know how many people around the industry owe money to Al Brody? Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred, and it won’t be paid back, not a nickel of it, but that’s Al Brody. Never pushes, never drives.

They were talking around me, and then when they addressed me, I nodded. The waiter served a vichyssoise, cold, good, thick. Mechanically I had one spoonful. It was a great effort to swallow it.

“We have a French cook,” the senator was saying. “Not Paris, but Normandy. Sheer genius.”

I glanced at Millie. Our eyes met for a moment, then she looked away.

“Don’t care for the soup?” The senator or the general? Why did I confuse their voices?

“Try the Vouvray, clean, dry, cracking and beautiful. Noble wine.”

“More’s the pity” was running through my mind. “More’s the pity.”

“A man could come here for the air,” the general said. “Out of the pollution, out of the smog.” He was evidently an ecologist. “Add years to a man’s life. Not that I’m one of those Los Angeles carpers. Smog’s smog. You have industry, you have smog. But this kind of air—”

“More wine for Mr. Brody,” said the senator. I was dry and thirsty and had gulped mine down. “So pleased to see you, Al, really. Millie said she’d bring you. I don’t know how she did it. I said to the general, Brody’; intelligent, civilized. When he’s ready, he’ll sit down and talk. Marty’s impatient. Well, here you are.”

“Here I am,” I managed to say.

The wine was poured. I began to reach for it, then stopped. What did I want? Get slobbering drunk and tell them that they were all wrong, the senator, the general, Millie—all wrong, netted a fleshless fish. Drunk and weeping. This is Al Brody, good guy. I don’t know one damn thing, not why Millie went to bed with me, not why you brought me here, not what I am supposed to know or have, because the stinking bitter truth of it is that Andrew Capestone told me nothing, absolutely nothing, and that’s all there is to it. So please let me go, and let Capestone be dead, and I’ll keep my mouth shut, I swear I will. I’ll get down on my knees and plead for my wretched, senseless, boring life and my house on North Canon Drive and my office on the tenth floor of a Wilshire Boulevard skyscraper and everything the way it used to be.

All this as I reached for the wine, and then I let my hand drop to the table. Two words formed in my mind, “Fuck you.” I looked from face to face, the senator, the general and then Millie. The sickness began to go away. My thoughts broke away to my son and the enormous gap that separated us, and then I wondered how it was at Acapulco. I had never been there. I don’t tan easily.

“Shell roast, Al, or fish?” the senator asked me. “We have some lovely sand dabs, sautéed the way you’ve never tasted a very plebeian fish. Damn it all, we don’t get up here enough. The cooking’s the best in the state.”

“Best in the country,” said the general.

“Are many guests as lucky as I am?” I asked.

“Very few, Al. This is not a public place, as you may have gathered. It was once, but the general bought it.”

“And you’re his partner?”

“So to speak.”

“And Millie—is she also a partner?”

“We’ve thought of taking her into the firm.”

“I’m glad. Millie favors partnerships.”

“Can’t we get on with it?” Millie said.

“All in good time, dear. I will not talk business over a meal like this,” the senator replied. “Over cigars and brandy—yes, that’s reasonable. But not over the soup or roast. Have you made up your mind, Al?”

“I’ll have the roast. And beer if you don’t mind.”

“Good. Marty’s a beer drinker. We’re well stocked—Mexican, German, Dutch?”

“Montezuma?”

“Good taste. I think I’ll have some myself.”