Charlie sat on the first stool in the corner, looking out the big open window of the no name bar at the people walking on Bridgeway. A warm day, lots of people out. Sausalito was getting popular. Charlie preferred it to Mill Valley, where he lived. Downtown Mill Valley was dull, just stores, but Sausalito had its waterfront, boat yards, yacht harbors, bars, restaurants, incredible views of the bay and San Francisco, everything you could ask for if you had your afternoons off. It had been a Portuguese fishing village before they built the Golden Gate, and there were still a few commercial salmon boats harbored just north of town. Charlie liked to buy his salmon right off the boat, pick up a whole fish for a few dollars, gut it, split it and grill it on his backyard barbecue. He was hungry just thinking about it. Charlie liked to eat.
His mood was strange. He’d gotten another manic phone call from Bill Ratto, begging for some new material. Charlie dreaded the thought of putting himself back in Kim Song, just to come up with even more “transition material” for his editor. Easier to sit here in beautiful Sausalito and drink beer, dreaming of walking down to the fisherman’s dock and picking up a nice little salmon. Kim Song was far away and long ago. Almost fifteen years.
Charlie spotted two men he knew, walking down Bridgeway together. He hadn’t seen either for years, and he’d never seen them together. Kenny Goss, an intense young writer he’d known in North Beach years ago, when they’d both hung out mornings at Caffe Trieste, drinking espresso with the Sicilian scavengers. And walking along with him, dressed in a blue workshirt and faded black workboots, Marty Greenberg, the Jewish intellectual from Portland, looking tanned, balding, and competent.
“Gentlemen,” he said as they passed the window. They stopped and stared. Charlie grinned and ran his fingers through his beard. “It’s me, Charlie Monel. I grew a beard.”
“I knew it was you,” Marty said with a grin. “I was just trying to think if I owed you any money.”
The two entered the bar and Charlie joined them at the front window table. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” Charlie said. Kazuko the barmaid came up and took an order for three beers.
“Nice-looking girl,” Marty said.
“Don’t waste your time,” Charlie said. “Her old man’s a junkie. She’s devoted to him. All her time and money go right into his bloodstream.”
“Obviously, you’re a regular here,” Marty said. He explained that he and Kenny were shipmates, deckhands on the Breck, home-ported about a mile up the road. They were fresh in off the sandbar, pay in their pockets.
“Like Dobbs and Curtin in Sierra Madre,” Charlie joked. He was delighted to run into them. The hardest part about being a successful writer was how to fill the time. Successful in the sense that he had a book in the works.
“Charlie’s been working on this huge novel for years,” Marty explained to Kenny, who hadn’t said much up to now.
“I know,” Kenny said.
“Kenny and I go way back,” Charlie said. “We’re fifties beatniks, aren’t we?” He lifted his bottle at Kenny, who gave a brief smile. He’d always been such a serious guy. “How’s the writing going?” Charlie asked him, just to be polite.
“Okay.” Kenny was obviously embarrassed by the question.
“You still married?” Marty asked him.
“You bet,” Charlie said. He’d assumed they knew all about Jaime, but after a few minutes realized they didn’t. Such was fame. Of course these guys spent most of their time out dredging sand. “Jaime’s book was on the New York Times best-seller list for two weeks,” Charlie said. Proudly.
Charlie told them all the happy news. Jaime’s book had been bought by the second publisher who saw it, Harcourt Brace & World, for a thousand dollars, and then like lightning she sold parts of it to several magazines, made a gigantic paperback sale, and then another big sale, to Paramount.
“Clearly, you’re rolling in money.” Marty seemed impressed.
“Jaime is.”
“What about your book?” Marty asked. “I know it’s a cruel question.”
“Not cruel at all.” Charlie told them that Jaime’s editor had asked about his book and had looked at a couple hundred pages, hadn’t had much enthusiasm for them but had passed them to a younger editor, Bill Ratto. Ratto had gone mad over the pages, flown west to read “absolutely everything” Charlie had written, spent a frantic three days in San Francisco, never leaving his hotel room, being visited by dozens of writers, boxes and sheaves of manuscript all over his room. Ratto had seen a lot of potential in Charlie’s stuff. “You could have another Catch-22 in here, or Thin Red Line,” he said, sitting on his bed with Charlie’s pages all around him. Ratto was a white-faced New Yorker whose Harvard accent slipped into New York Jewish. Ratto was not a Harvard man or a New York Jew, however. He was from Denver, but he was a committed editor. “We shall blow the lid off American Literature!” he told Charlie. Of course they were smoking marijuana at the time.
So Harcourt bought Charlie’s novel for a five-thousand-dollar advance, and Bill Ratto assured him over the telephone, “Just send the whole manuscript to me. Let me put it together. You just sit out there in California and write your next book.” Visions of Maxwell Perkins slaving over manuscripts. The famous editor who saved Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and more lately, James Jones. Charlie wasn’t so sure all those great writers actually needed saving. “He cut From Here to Eternity in half,” Ratto said with great enthusiasm on one of the hour-long phone conversations.
“I’d like to see the half he cut.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll make you a star,” Ratto said. He’d been fooling with Charlie’s manuscript for a year and a half, and they weren’t even close to a book. Bill kept wanting more material. When Charlie forced himself to write it and send it in, Bill wouldn’t be happy with it. “I don’t know,” he’d say, never exact as to what he didn’t like. “I’m no writer,” he’d say, if Charlie insisted on specific information.
“So you’re just sitting around waiting,” Marty said.
Charlie had to laugh. “I like sitting around.”
“You’ve gained weight.” Marty poked Charlie gently where his stomach bulged out above his jeans. Marty was fine. He wasn’t back with Alexandra Plotkin, but he was relatively happy. “She’s working at David’s Delicatessen in San Francisco,” Marty said. “She won’t even give me free food.”
“I have to go,” Kenny Goss said. Practically the only thing he said. They were on their way to the city, where Kenny kept a room. A change of clothes, then out on the town.
“Wanna come along?” Marty said. “North Beach, liquor, women, magic . . .”
Jaime was in North Beach. She’d been there four days, staying in their Genoa Place apartment. She wrote eight hours a day and had no time for Charlie or Kira, who was in Mill Valley with her au pair. Did he want to go to North Beach and risk running into Jaime?
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his beard. “I’d love to.”
“Why don’t you meet us at City Lights at around nine?” Marty said. “Bring Jaime.”