“Shit, Jasper, it’s 2 a.m. I’m in bed!”
“Were you sleeping?”
“Sleeping isn’t the only thing you can do in a bed.”
“Ah.”
“Lottie says hello.”
In the background he heard Lottie’s voice that, with no rancor, was saying Hi, Jasper. She was good-natured.
“Forget it. What is it, are you lost again? Should I send Rebecca to get you?”
“No, no, I’m not lost anymore. But, in fact… to tell you the truth, I wanted to talk to you about her.”
“About Rebecca?”
What Jasper Gwyn thought was that that girl was perfect. He had in mind how the unquestionable beauty of her face provoked a desire that her body then denied, with its slow, placid manner: perfect. She was poison and antidote—in a sweet and enigmatic way. Jasper Gwyn hadn’t met her a single time without feeling a childlike desire to touch her, just slightly: but as he would have liked to put his fingers on a shiny insect, or a steamed-up window. In addition, he knew her, but he didn’t know her; she seemed to be at the right distance, in that intermediate zone where any further intimacy would have been a slow but not impossible conquest. He knew that he could look at her for a long time without feeling uneasy, without desire, and without ever getting bored.
“Rebecca, yes, the intern.”
Tom burst out laughing.
“Hey, Jasper, we’ve got a weakness for fat girls?”
He turned to Lottie.
“Listen to this, Jasper likes Rebecca.”
In the background he heard Lottie’s sleepy voice saying Rebecca who?
“Jasper, big brother, you never stop surprising me.”
“Will you cut out the vulgar remarks and listen to me?”
“Okay.”
“You’re in love?”
“It’s serious in the sense that it’s about work.”
Tom put on his glasses. Under the circumstances it was his way of opening the office.
“She persuaded you to do scenes from books that you’ll never write? I told you she was a smart girl.”
“No, Tom, it’s not about that. I need her for my work. But not that.”
“Take her. Provided you go back to writing, it’s fine with me.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“Why?”
“I want to make her my first portrait. You know, the thing about the portraits?”
Tom remembered it very well. “I’m not mad about that idea, you know, Jasper.”
“I know, but now it’s a different problem. I need Rebecca to come to my studio to pose for around thirty days. I’ll pay her. But she’ll tell me she doesn’t want to lose her job with you.”
“To pose?”
“I want to try it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe. But now I need that favor. Let her work for me for a month or so, and then you’ll take her back.”
They went on talking for a while, and it was a wonderful phone call, because they ended up discussing the profession of writing and things they both loved. Jasper Gwyn explained that the circumstances of the portrait appealed to him because they compelled him to force his talent into an uncomfortable position. He realized that the premises were ridiculous, but that was precisely what appealed to him, in the suspicion that if you removed from writing the natural possibility of the novel, it would do something to survive, a movement, something. He also said that the something would be what people would then buy and take home. He added that it would be the unpredictable product of a domestic and private rite, not intended to return to the surface of the world, and thus removed from the sufferings that afflicted the profession of writer. In fact, he concluded, we’re talking about a different profession. A possible name was: copyist.
Tom listened. He tried to understand.
“I don’t see how you will be able to get around the white arm resting softly on the hip or the gaze as luminous as an eastern dawn,” he said at one point. “And for that kind of thing, hard to imagine doing better than a Dickens or a Hardy.”
“Yes, of course, if I stop there defeat is certain.”
“You’re sure there’s something beyond?”
“Sure, no. I have to try, I told you.”
“Then let’s say this: I hand over my intern and don’t get in your way, but you promise me that if at the end of the experiment you really haven’t found something, you’ll go back to writing. Books, I mean.”
“What’s that, blackmail?”
“A pact. If you don’t succeed, you’ll do as I say. Start with the scenes from books you’ll never write, or whatever you want. But you give the studio back to John Septimus Hill and sign a nice new contract.”
“I could find someone else to come and pose.”
“But you want Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
Jasper Gwyn thought that all in all he didn’t mind the little game. The idea that failure would take him back to the horror of the fifty-two things he never wanted to do again suddenly seemed to him galvanizing. In the end he agreed. It was almost three in the morning, and he agreed. Tom thought he was about to recover one of the few writers he represented whom he could truly consider a friend.
“Tomorrow I’ll send you Rebecca. In the Laundromat, as usual?”
“Maybe a somewhat quieter place would be better.”
“The bar of the Stafford Hotel, then. At five?”
“All right.”
“Don’t stand her up.”
“No.”
“Did I already tell you I love you?”
“Not tonight.”
“Strange.”
They spent another ten minutes talking nonsense. A couple of sixteen-year-olds.