It wasn’t until he’d finished coloring his hair that he realized he really was going to the group’s latest party. Throughout the afternoon, and for days before that, Summers had thought of various excuses he could make to Morton, who at this point hosted more parties per year than he wrote stories, yet he didn’t make the call. But why? Was he simply a glutton for punishment? Did he want to once more return to his apartment after the party feeling his mediocrity again confirmed in a public setting (though his career and overall life was no more mediocre than most of the group’s)? Perhaps it was a kind of programmed curiosity unconsciously motivating him. The fear that if he didn’t go, this would be the one party where something noteworthy would really happen, something along the lines of meeting a smart, successful literary agent who would take a sudden interest in him, ask him to send his few books, and eventually take him on and radically turn around his floundering career. Rationally he knew it wouldn’t happen, but apparently the irrational part of him was stronger. It was disappointing to have to once more realize this about himself, that he’d go to something like this party on a raw, rainy November night, having to take a cab from West Philly to Center City and then having to take another cab back when it was over (his soon to be ex-wife now had possession of their car), unless he could bring himself to ride back with someone from the group, probably Aaron—who would be self-promoting the whole ride or worse still, Lucas, the biggest, most self-deluded braggart in the group.
What contempt he felt for the group, albeit mixed with pity, as he pictured them “networking” at their latest party. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and finished applying a few dabs of cologne, realizing that he also harbored the secret hope of meeting an appealing woman there as well—something even more unlikely than his agent fantasy.
Another deep breath, followed by another closing and opening of his heavily lidded eyes. He felt calmer now. There was no point in thinking at all if he wasn’t going to be honest with himself, and to be honest he had to admit he also somewhat liked the group as well, or some of the members, though at the same time he found them unbearable, of course.
There was Emir, who could be warm and witty, sometimes even generous in praising the work of his peers. But once he turned to the subject of his thwarted career he quickly became obnoxious. How he’d hold forth with his exasperating, elevated eyebrows, which always rose paternalistically as he’d expound on his latest theory about how a country’s (by which he meant the United States) literary influence reflects its political influence and so dominates less powerful countries (by which he meant his native Argentina) in the literary marketplace. In reality, Summers thought, Emir’s theory was but the most recent explanation to account for his lack of success. That was the only literary/political issue that really interested Emir—though he never considered any purely aesthetic reasons for it, such as the arcane, precious, tediously academic quality of his prose. As Emir grew older and his failure (though he’d published a few novels with second-rate university presses) became more solidified, his theories became more grand, comprehensive, and conspiratorial. For some years now Emir’s true art form had, in fact, become his theories, always cloaked in international intrigue, not his writing, which he rarely attempted now.
With his pitifully transparent self-love and ill-disguised disappointment in his life, Emir was reason enough not to attend the party, Summers thought, but there were even more compelling reasons.
There would be at least five to ten other blowhards there, who were even more exasperating than Emir (Emir was capable, at least, in the midst of one of his tirades, of being intermittently amusing). There was, for instance, Aaron, the self-proclaimed literary avant-gardist, who would tell you with a straight face that his writing had forever altered human consciousness. He’d published only with tiny presses that Summers suspected were partially or wholly financed by Aaron himself. “I wear my rejection by the New York publishing houses as a badge of honor,” Aaron would repeatedly say. “If they ever slipped up and accepted my work I’d know immediately that I’d lost it, that I was no longer cutting edge.”
Aaron recently celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday by throwing a party for the group at his loft in South Philly. With great ambivalence, Summers attended, not quite ready to leave the group but vowing to do so to himself in the immediate, or at least near, future. Yet here he was, three months later, getting dressed for yet another group affair, this time celebrating the unlikely, indeed shocking, Pulitzer Prize for music criticism his former schoolmate, Howard Pike, had just won. Pike had actually left Philadelphia and the group for New York twenty years ago, to seek his fortune, which he’d clearly found as music critic for the Times. The fact that he’d consented to take a train to Philadelphia and attend a party in his honor was regarded as an act of great generosity on Pike’s part. Yes, the news about the prize was like suddenly being mugged. “I won’t forget it,” Summers said to himself, “It will always go on hurting me, and yet I’ll have to shake Pike’s hand and congratulate him if I go to the party.” But still he went.
It wasn’t his imagination; almost everyone in the group (except Aaron, who always wore “avant-garde clothes” that he designed himself) was more dressed up than usual, and even most of the men wearing jeans also wore ties and jackets. The women also wore nicer than usual clothes and a full compliment of make up and jewelry, and all because of their mighty visitor from New York, Howard Pike, who stood in the approximate center of the loft-style apartment, a Cheshire cat smile on his face as he accepted congratulations from one obsequious well-wisher after another.
Summers had already had a few opportunities when he could have made his move and shaken Pike’s hand, but despite two vodka punches was still hesitating, and while he stalled he found himself chatting with Emir and his American wife, Hanah.
“Big crowd tonight,” Summers said to Emir, half gesturing with his free hand.
“You noticed,” said Emir, in his dryly sarcastic mode, which Summers usually enjoyed, at least in small doses.
“And so well dressed,” Summers said, feeling self-conscious, in spite of himself, for wearing his typical group party outfit of a sweater and jeans. Emir was wearing jeans too, but also a cleanly pressed white shirt and a navy blue tie and blazer.
“Of course,” Emir said, “Americans, even American bohemians, like our group, must show the greatest respect to an American prize winner.”
Summers forced a laugh and also forced himself not to remind Emir that he’d lived in the States since he was fourteen and had been an American citizen now for many years.
“In case you’re wondering,” Hanah said, “his better half made him wear the sports jacket.”
“I commend you on your courage and good taste,” he said to Hanah.
Hanah forced a smile. She didn’t enjoy his or Emir’s sarcastic, bantering side and now looked as if she was only a few seconds from crying.
“Well, did you do it yet?” Emir said, pointing his plastic cup, no longer filled with white wine, in Pike’s direction.
“Do what?” Summers said.
“Make your pilgrimage to Pike’s Peak and pay your proper respects.”
“Alas, not yet.”
“Don’t worry, he’s still just Howie Pike underneath it all, just a little less self-deprecating now, as one might expect, but not really insufferable about it yet, by any means.”
“Coming from you that’s a ringing endorsement.”
Emir shrugged. “Life has finally forced me to be humble.”
“Really?” Summers said, as if playing his part to set up another joke, but the punch line didn’t come. Instead, of all things, Emir asked him about his ex-wife.
“Are you still in touch with Judy? Do you hear from her?”
“Sometimes. I talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Why do you ask?”
“I always liked her, and never understood why you two didn’t get back together.”
“Emir, you’re embarrassing him,” said Hanah.
“No, I’m not Hanah. Am I?” he said, looking directly into his eyes.
“No, of course not. Emir has put in enough hours listening to me whine about Judy that he can ask me more or less anything he wants to about her.”
“So, what’s your answer?” Emir said.
“Answer to what?”
“Are you getting back together? What else would I be asking?”
“Well there’s a short answer and a long answer.”
“The short answer is the only answer. Do we even have time now for anything else?”
“No, we’re not. I don’t think we ever will be either, I’m sorry to say.”
Emir rubbed his eyes for a moment, as if Summers’ answer had suddenly made him tired. It was amazing that he still didn’t wear glasses.
“That’s too bad. She’s a lovely person.”
Summers shrugged—a nonchalant response more typical of Emir, he thought, that he immediately regretted. Emir’s atypical line of questioning and oddly earnest tone must be disorienting him, he thought.
“So what’s the long answer?”
“An explanation of the short one.”
“Which is?”
He caught himself trying to think of a pithy reply, as if his primary purpose was still to entertain Emir, who, in turn, was continuing to surprise him with his sudden sincerity. Finally he gave up.
“It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. It just didn’t work out with our both being writers, I guess.”
He hoped that Emir wouldn’t point out that Judy had achieved considerably more literary success than him and that it was he who couldn’t really handle it well. Instead, Emir looked preternaturally sad. It made Summers glance quickly at Hanah, who also looked sad, as if they both were attending his funeral.
“But don’t you think that love is more important than writing?” Emir said.
“Whose writing?”
“Our writing, mine, yours, the group’s. What writer’s work is more important to them than a love they have for another person, for a wife or husband or for a child? Such a person, who lived such a life of illusion and escapism couldn’t be a good writer, anyway. Don’t you agree, Hanah?”
“I do agree, Emir, but I’m also staying out of this.”
Now in addition to feeling nonplussed and vaguely disoriented, Summers felt wounded and began to look over at Pike, who was finally standing alone.
“Well, I appreciate your concern,” Summers said. “I really do. I appreciate both of you and I will think seriously about everything you said, but now I think I need to pay my respects to the guest of honor. If I wait any longer it will be rude, don’t you think?”
Pike didn’t look as old as he should have, as if winning the prize somehow drained some of the age from his face. We’re almost the same age, Summers thought as he shook his hand. He shouldn’t look younger than me too. Isn’t the prize enough?
It was neither a tepid nor a strong handshake but it was a long one, as if Pike wanted to convey enthusiasm without a hug or any quotable words being said on his part.
“Congratulations,” Summers said. “The world has honored you, now let me join it,” he added, realizing that what he said was awkward at best and might well also be confusing. He thought briefly about explaining what he meant to say (i.e., he was already in the world, of course, and not waiting to join it, though it was true he often felt alienated from the world) but, of course, it was too late to explain anything like that.
“How are you, Roger?” Pike said, finally looking at him briefly.
“Pretty well. Can’t really complain, though I do,” he said, with a little laugh, and probably to be polite, Pike managed a laugh as well.
“The real question is how are you holding up against the world’s onslaught of attention?”
“The world barely knows, much less cares.”
“How can you say that?”
“Come on, Rog, it’s a newspaper prize. People don’t read newspapers anymore. Half the time I’m there I feel like I’m working in a museum or a crematorium. Hey,” Pike continued, “I didn’t see you at the big high school reunion.”
“You went?”
“Absolutely.”
“It never occurred to me that you’d go.”
“The fortieth reunion, how could I resist? You know I always suffered from terminal nostalgia.”
More like terminal narcissism, Summers thought. Of course Pike would go. How could he resist all the adulation from his fawning classmates, especially since he was such an inconspicuous, sometimes bullied, student back in high school.
“If I’d known you were coming I would have gone,” Summers said, averting his eyes slightly. “So what’s it like to see the old group?”
“Surprisingly emotional. I just recovered from the reunion; well, it was five months ago, and now this. I’m very touched really.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Summers muttered. As he feared, Pike then asked him about his writing, but in such a merely-to-be-polite, perfunctory way that it was relatively easy to exaggerate and even to tell a couple of lies. Lying was a standard, even expected, part of conversation by the group that rarely was even pointed out by anyone behind the liar’s back. It was paradoxical—“literary lying” was accepted as a normal part of discourse, but so was the chronic kvetching about literary rejection and failure from the same people who’d apparently forgotten their brazen lies and bragging from a half hour before. He himself had been guilty of this (although he did it less often than most members). Come to think of it, only Emir, old world gentleman that he was, never lied, though he was certainly guilty of complaining.
There was little to say after the opening pleasantries. Too much time had passed and, more important, there was too big a gap in success between them. Summers felt like a drowning man vainly reaching for an illusory life preserver as he tried to think of things to talk about—a couple of mutual friends from high school, a former creative writing teacher. Pike answered him politely but with little animation. And then suddenly Summers gave up, shook Pike’s hand a final time, congratulated him yet again, and turned his back, expecting to return to the safety of Emir and his wife. But he didn’t see them. He felt an odd bit of panic, then headed for the table to refill his vodka punch cup.
Really, it wasn’t so bad with Pike, he told himself as he quickly filled and then drank from his cup.
“Excuse me,” a woman said, who was surprisingly attractive. “Are you Roger Summers?”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, looking at her more closely now. She had surprisingly thick brown hair, but refined, almost elegant features. His memory, no longer as sharp as it once was, came up empty. But why wouldn’t he remember a good-looking woman who was so young—no more than thirty-five by his count? And how did she know him?
“I’m Renee,” she said, extending her hand, which he more than gladly shook. Was it possible that she’d read one of his books? Heard him read somewhere in Philadelphia once or was she perhaps one of his former students?
“Have we met?” he finally said.
“Not until now,” she said with a laugh, and he found himself laughing along with her. How charming women in their thirties could be! Especially when they were so enthusiastic.
“May I ask how you know my name?” he said, bracing himself for a tribute of some kind.
“Oh, I asked that man over there,” she said, pointing to Lucas, who was just now giving him a pricelessly jealous dirty look, which helped mitigate his disappointment. So she hadn’t read him, but still she wanted to meet him. Was he perhaps more youthful looking tonight than he realized?
“So I’m glad …” Roger said. “How did you happen to come here tonight?”
“I came with the man who told me your name.”
“With Lucas?” he said, incredulously.
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“I saw you talking with Howard Pike, who’s one of my idols of music, well of criticism in general, and Luke told me you went to high school with him, with Howard Pike, so I wanted to ask you what it was like talking to him and maybe if you could introduce me. I want to interview him for a magazine but, of course, I have to meet him first.”
“I’m sure Howie will be delighted. He loves any kind of … informed attention,” he said with more sarcasm than he intended. He felt his face might well be red now and looked away from her, at Aaron and his wife holding hands. He should have invited Judy to this, even just as a friend. These parties were now too painful to attend alone. It was yet one more thing that had changed these last few years.
“Come with me,” he said to Renee, “I’ll introduce you to him now.”
He came to a kind of rest stop by a window that was open a few inches. For ten or fifteen minutes he’d been walking in a circular pattern around the loft thinking of Pike and his new female admirer, among other thoughts. He looked out the window and felt the cool air. Often in his own apartment when he was pacing late at night he’d look out at the street and watch a man walking quickly (was he anxious about who he might encounter on the streets?) or see a car screeching to a halt, or a hooker smoking a cigarette while she waited for a client, and once a woman chasing a man down the sidewalk yelling at him. Had he stolen something from her or just broken her heart? Tonight he saw nothing but an occasional car, silently rolling by as if on felt. It occurred to him then that while he felt so interested and even drawn to them, he’d never written about the people he saw on the street at night, or during the day either, for that matter. Would it have made a difference? Was his whole approach to writing, like his whole approach to the rest of life, seriously off course? He’d been such a dutiful postmodernist, Summers suddenly thought, but had he ignored people in the process? He’d certainly drifted from his wife, who was now assiduously pursuing a divorce from him. Was it time to admit he was wrong about some things, certainly about the way he’d treated Judy? Perhaps it was too late to construct a new literary identity at this point, but was it too late to speak to his wife from his heart? Hadn’t Emir said love is more important than writing, or at least words to that effect?
Where was Emir? He suddenly wanted to talk to him with an urgency that surprised him, but when he scanned the room he didn’t see him. Instead, he saw Hanah standing fifteen feet from him smoking a cigarette by another window. She looked oddly upset, almost forlorn (he hadn’t ever thought of her as a woman who thought dark thoughts), but he approached her anyway.
“Greetings!” he said, hoisting his empty cup in a mock celebratory gesture. Hanah looked at him, as if puzzled in her grief, and nodded.
“Where is that elusive husband of yours?”
“In the bathroom for the last ten minutes.”
How typical of Emir! He himself could never go in someone else’s home, certainly not at a party, but Emir had the gift of being uninhibited.
“He’s not feeling well,” Hanah added.
Summers looked at her, surprised that she was smoking a cigarette, something so frowned upon by the group.
“It’s been like that for awhile now, because of the treatments. I told him to expect this. I urged him not to come tonight but he insisted. He loves the group so much.”
“Excuse me, Hanah, for asking, but what treatments? For what?”
“Oh, you don’t know? The radiation treatments—Emir has stomach cancer.”
Summers put his hand to his mouth.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I thought you did. I thought he told his friends a couple months ago.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Summers mumbled.
She continued to tell him how they found out and then decided to tell their friends right away, but Summers could scarcely focus on what she was saying. He was remembering, with unfortunate clarity, a number of calls Emir made to him—probably three calls—about a couple of months ago that he let go to voicemail. In his depression—it was shortly after Judy moved out—he hadn’t bothered to check Emir’s messages.
“I’m so sorry,” Summers heard himself saying again, and then when there was a brief silence he said it once more. He wanted to say something else, perhaps explain about the calls he didn’t answer. In his own depression then, he couldn’t bear to hear anymore group trivia. It was always the same, those phone calls, but now, of course, it was different.
“Is this party over now or is there some event coming?” Hanah asked.
“I think someone is going to introduce Pike, you know, the Pulitzer Prize winner, and then he’s going to make a speech.”
“Yes, the speech. That’s what Emir wanted to hear. He’s so proud of Howard. I hope, if he still refuses to go home, that he at least comes back in time to hear it.”
Emir only missed the opening minute of Aaron’s embarrassingly long and overly florid introduction. Pike at least kept it short and sweet and came off as one of the group, which, Summers concluded, was at least a substantial part of what he probably was.
After the applause died down and the toasts ended, Hanah drew Emir a few feet away from him and began talking animatedly. She was trying to persuade him to leave, Summers thought, but apparently didn’t succeed. When they returned she said, “He loves to torture me with his stubbornness. But since he won’t leave, I’m going to stay out of it and let you two talk,” she said, looking meaningfully at Summers. Then lighting another cigarette, she walked across the loft, apparently toward the punch bowl.
Summers looked uneasily away from Emir, wondering if Hannah had told him about their recent conversation.
“It never occurs to her that she’s stubborn too,” Emir said. “Still, I go on with her.”
“You’ve been married a long time. She’s your soul mate.”
“Over forty years,” Emir said, nodding. “At this point I think of her more as my tomb mate … in the future, of course. I can’t explain why I love her so much but I do know that I want to die next to her. I even hope we share the same worms, if it comes to that,” he said with a little laugh.
Summers watched him closely while he sipped from his new glass of wine.
“I didn’t know about your …”
“Yes, Hanah told me tonight. I’m so sorry. It must be hell.”
Emir shrugged and smiled ironically.
“It’s not a hopeless situation. It’s not impossible. But I’ll tell you, having done both, having cancer is even harder than writing an uncompromising novel!” Emir said with a laugh, and this time Summers forced a laugh himself.
“You know it’s funny,” Emir said. “When I was younger I thought that books could capture life, the sense of time passing, much better than films, because films are too short. Now that I have so little time left, whether I beat cancer or not, when I think of my past now it seems much more like a movie than a book, because it all seems so fast-moving and so short. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do know what you mean. I’ve felt it myself. I’ve been feeling it all the time lately.”
“Anyway, I shouldn’t be talking about such heavy things at a festive occasion like this.”
“No, no, you should,” Summers said, surprised for a moment by the passion in his voice. “It’s the most interesting thing I’ve heard tonight by far, believe me.”
“It’s just that, well for example, when you’ve been reading a long book, Don Quixote or Remembrance of Things Past, and you’re getting near the end of it you want to talk about the experience of reading it, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“It’s like that with my life now. Not that I want to talk about the particular things that happened to me, it’s that I want to talk, at times about how time is passing differently, as my memory of it is. I want to talk at times about how that’s all changed.”
“It’s changed for me too.”
“Really? Then we can talk about it even at this party?”
“We just did,” Summers said and both men laughed.
“We should talk more often, my dear Roger,” Emir said with a smile. “You shouldn’t steal yourself away and make yourself such a hermit.”
“Well, I came to this event. It wasn’t easy to make myself come but I did …”
He noticed that sad expression in Emir’s eyes again, his eyebrows dropping like flags at half-mast.
“Of course, I wanted to see you,” Summers added.
“And the others?” Emir said, gesturing with his arm. “They are your friends too, aren’t they?”
“Some of them, yes, I suppose. You must admit things get repetitious here, I mean all the complaining and defensive bragging.”
“Yes, of course, that is what people do. But they are your brothers also.”
“My brothers?”
“You share a common fate. They all want to give something to the world, to express something, and they’re all thwarted because their work has cancer and is going to die. They’re just a group of patients whose writing has cancer. But we still come together to celebrate, right? We’re still alive.”
He didn’t ask anyone for a ride, in part because he left early (a few minutes after talking with Emir) but mainly because he wanted to walk. He passed by the subway station without much of an internal debate and ignored a couple of cabs he could have taken. He was walking through Rittenhouse Square now, through the elegant lamplit park from which a strange half-purplish light seemed to emanate. Walking through the park late at night generally made him a little uneasy and he’d normally walk on the sidewalk by the clothes stores and restaurants, but with his head full of Emir’s words he somehow wanted to be among trees and flowers. Although it wasn’t always the case, he still believed he thought more clearly when he was close to nature.
He was trying to account for why he felt so energized that he was actually contemplating walking all the way home to West Philly. Why did he suddenly feel so awake instead of his usual nocturnal exhaustion? Almost everything at the party had been the way he’d anticipated—the awkward pain of seeing Pike, the fawning behavior of the group—which only thinly disguised their collective bitterness—his failure, despite three or four drinks, to call Judy. He’d met no new women, made no publishing contacts. It was his conversation with Emir, of course, that made the difference, though he had trouble acknowledging it in part because he’d learned tonight about Emir’s cancer. Was it right that he should feel so inexplicably alive from a man who was probably fairly well along in the process of dying? He didn’t know the answer, he would never know what was right or wrong about many things, he realized, but he did sense that Emir wanted his words to have impact. So then this would have pleased Emir too, he hoped.
Up ahead, at the edge of the park by a street lamp, Summers saw a woman in a short skirt. At first he thought she was unusually pretty, like a younger version of Judy, but as he got closer he saw the years on her heavily made up face. For an aging hooker, Rittenhouse Square was usually off limits. She’s not only too old to hook, Summers thought, she’s in the wrong place, too, almost as if she’s an alien.
“Hey mister,” she hissed at him as he walked past her, “You want a date?”
“No, thank you,” Summers said, reaching into his pockets and withdrawing a fifty-dollar bill. “But I have something for you.” The woman looked scared as if he were about to point a gun at her.
“Here,” he said. “Enjoy it.”
She looked startled but she took the money quickly.
“God bless you,” she said as he moved past her. Summers waved in response and blew her a kiss before finally leaving the park.