11

Lida picked up the aerogram in her mailbox and examined its face. Did she know anyone overseas? She turned it over and read the reverse side.

There it was, in lowercase letters: duvivier. She carried it to her desk and opened it with exaggerated care.

As the return address informs you, I live in a very small village in Spain, and letters come to me only most tardily. Accept this, please, in explanation of my late reply.

Your point concerning the childish counterplay (ref: precoital chat; menstrual reference) is well taken. Certainly such bright people as the two involved would not make a point of this. But you must recall that the Duvivier books (I write under three names and to three vastly differing readerships) are popular escapist literature, designed to appeal to millions of people in thirteen languages. As it is, I just manage to get away with the slight chidings and ridicule of conventions that I tuck in amongst the bashings and screwings that make the books popular. My mass reader—the Japanese bank clerk, the French soldier, the American factory worker, the English dock worker—is put off enough by the very mention of menstruation, for he is caught in a convention that heroes never defecate, and women never turn a hero down when he is generous enough to offer the comfort of his bed. These surrenders to the prejudices and preconceptions of the mass must seem to you dull and stupid.

I accept the criticism, but must mention that I use these books only to make money for the two other writers and the rather extravagant and expensive activities in which they engage.

You take a charming little shot at me (and you have a right to, since you were disappointed in your expectations of quality) by assuming that I am in my late 60’s and therefore to be forgiven. I am in fact in my early 60’s and am therefore to be forgiven.

Yours, by the way, was the first letter in English I have received in several months, and I was very pleased to read it.

May I suggest a more romantic and sophisticated look at human love than you will ever get from duvivier (Aren’t you, really, tired of his wise-assery?)? Sometime last fall in the United States, Seare and Jolly released a book by Paul Philippe Grisone entitled Fleur. I think you might enjoy it.

Thanking you for writing, I am …

Your servant,

duvivier

Lida wished she had worn a brassiere. She would have tucked the letter in her cleavage. As it was, she opened the collected works of Milton and placed it between Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

She dialed an outside line, then the Library of Congress. “Telephone inquiry, please.” While she waited, she wrote his name on the pad. Duvivier. Then, copying him, she wrote it in lowercase letters. She did this across two pages. Then, finally, someone picked up on her call. “Is there any way,” she said, tearing the pages free, “I can get the real name of an author using a pseudonym?”

Another wait on hold. Another person.

“Is there any way you can give me the real name,” she asked again, “of an author writing under a pseudonym?… Yes, that’s right.”

She drew an eyebrow on the pad, and below it, an eye.

“D as in dog. U. V as in victory. I. V as in victory, yes, again. I, again. E. R. That’s right.”

She opened Milton and reread the letter, then replaced the book on the shelf. She heard the footsteps of the clerk coming back to the phone. “What’s that?” Shit. “Thanks very much,” she said, deflated. But wait! He wrote, he’d said, under three different names! “Hey, how about Grisone? Paul Philippe Grisone. G-r-i-s-o-n-e.”

“You want the titles or cross-references or what?”

“All that. And, wait a minute …” Lida yanked at her middle drawer and produced the list of titles Seare and Jolly had sent. There were eight books on it, and she’d managed to buy all but two. “See if you have something called Renaissance Stagecraft.”

“This is going to take some time,” the clerk said. “And all of this information is available in our card catalog.”

“I’m bedridden,” Lida told her. “I’d love to come in and do it myself, but I can’t.”

There was a stiff silence. Then the clerk drew a deep breath. “Hold on,” she decided.

She returned with four Grisone titles, though Fleur, the book he’d mentioned in his letter, was not among them. The Grisone books were cross-referenced to a Jackson R.W. Bishop, and he, Bishop, had three titles. Renaissance Stagecraft? By a Ronald Wendolyn.

I write under three names … But now Lida had four: Duvivier, Grisone, Bishop, Wendolyn.

“One more thing …” Lida forced a cough.

“Tsk,” the clerk replied. But even so, she furnished the dates Lida requested.

The Wendolyn book had been published in the early 1960s. The others, in the ’70s. I write under three names … Ah, Lida decided, but he lived under the fourth. And it was Ronald Wendolyn. It had to be. She wrote it on a separate sheet.

She creased the sheet, making it into a paper airplane. She balanced it on her fingertips. Ronald Wendolyn. It was a fag name. Take him to a party and he’d probably start telling Tallulah Bankhead stories or something.

And if he wasn’t a fag, he was probably one of the Wrong Men. Just like all the rest. The Wrong Men, they were legion.

And anyway, maybe the temporary had been wrong. Maybe Ronald Wendolyn had nothing to do with Duvivier and the rest. What did temporaries know?

What was she getting excited about?

The paper airplane bearing the name of Ronald Wendolyn sailed through Lida’s office door and landed on the floor in the hall. But not quite on the floor. Actually, it rested atop the abandoned wrappings of a Reese’s peanut-butter cup and leaned against an empty milk carton.

Christ, Brady State. There it was in summary. Trash.

Lida knew that she had to get away. To the supermarket, that would be a start.

At the checkout, a woman in front of her, accompanied by a man and a child, presented a personal check.

“Phone number?” the clerk asked.

“Four-three-seven,” the woman said, “seven-one-eight-six.”

The man shifted to make his impatience known. The child tugged at the woman’s hemline, pointing at the candy rack with his free hand.

“Stop it, Bobby!” The woman jerked her skirt free and slapped back at the boy.

The man lowered his fist to Bobby’s face and shook it. The child cowered.

“I’ll need your driver’s license.”

The man pulled the wallet from his wife’s grasp, jerked a sheaf of cards free, and slammed them on the counter.

Lida, meanwhile, busily examined the Dr. Scholl’s display. Here, she thought, is God’s plenty.

When she came out of the store, the trio was there again. They were in one of those pickup trucks designed to look like passenger cars. The child pressed his face against the rear window, smearing the pane. The man glared alternately at his wife and at the stockboy hefting bag after bag after bag.

Lida looked back at the truck as she crossed to the lot. It bore a bumper sticker that read “HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY.”

“Oh, Ronald Wendolyn,” Lida said, squeezing her avocado and sniffing at the brisk fall air, “I feel sick.”

She sat on her unmade bed, notebook in hand. It would have to be a light letter, even breezy. He wouldn’t want her if he knew how gloomy she’d become. But at the same time, it would have to be sedate. Nothing flirty, nothing sexy. She was through with all that.

He was the perfect out. In his sixties. Probably couldn’t get it up anymore. She would be safe.

Still.

She put the pad aside, walked to her dresser, and stood before the mirror. She laid her hands on her hipbones, narrowed her eyes, and mustered a steely objectivity.

Hmmm. She could have a cuter nose, maybe, but basically she was hot shit. She stepped sideways, tossing her head. Her hair lifted, then fell back into place, thick and black and shining. Damn. She could do anything with her hair. And she had those fantastic cheekbones—Jesus, how many times had she heard that? And, oh, those geisha eyes. How long could he resist those geisha eyes? Damn.

She cocked her head and thought and thought.

For starters, she could wear her hair severely. Maybe pile it up the way Diana did.

With her fingers, she raked two luxuriant handfuls to the top of her head. Well, that would help.

And if she wore no makeup. Not even a trace.

Of course—she held her arms aloft and backed away from the mirror—there was still the body. Small tits, yes, but that never did seem to matter. She stepped toward the mirror again.

She could play the body down. Slump, maybe. Wear baggy cardigans with pockets stuffed full of Kleenex. Yeah.

And she would—what was that line she’d recently read? Yeah. She would, she resolved, “in her person elevate Plainness almost to a high art.”