THE SOUND OF TINY CLAWS SCRATCHING, a burrowing, Andrew decided. What started as a post-Vicodin, pre-dinner nap was turning into an aural investigation. It came from deep within the couch. A mouse maybe. A mouse family maybe. It was a comfortable couch and no doubt deluxe accommodations for a mouse. Hopefully just a mouse. Andrew scratched the cushion to test the sound against the sound inside the couch. After a minute he wondered if maybe he was trying to communicate. He stopped. The scratching continued. Gnawing might have been involved as well. As an experiment, Andrew screamed into the crevasse between cushions, rather like a loon. The scratching, and the gnawing, stopped. Silence. Or not quite silence. The pressure within his ear crackled with a cochlear snow, like an internal blizzard. He thought of New York, the sidewalks and streets flattened white, the park quilted. There had been a few heavy snowstorms this year. Probably no more on the docket. Winter was done. On the horizon another spring. Andrew shifted on the couch. He began missing the mouse-like sound. He pressed his ear harder to the cushion and held his breath. He’d always been good at holding his breath. Charlie Topping once stopwatched him at two minutes and thirty-three seconds, a tremendous length of time when underwater. The key was to give up some air early and then sink and pretend to sleep on the bottom. Like the water was your dream. Upon awakening, Andrew would burst to the surface, lungs burning, and Charlie would exaggerate the click like he was a crusty trainer who could hardly fathom this kid. Unbelievable, he’d say, playing every syllable. Everything was un·be·liev·a·ble that summer of holding your breath. Andrew scratched the cushion in his closest approximation of rodent. You there? Hey buddy, you there? Still nothing. He pictured the mouse peering from around one of those springs, his mouse family cowering behind him, a beam of flashlight scanning the upholstery’s inner courtyard. Shhhh. Not a squeak, little ones. He always did want to write a children’s book. Too late now, he supposed. Ampersand was likely the last book he would ever write. At least there was some decent irony in that.
Only the epilogue remained. Edgar Mead had saved Timothy Veck in the cruelest manner imaginable, though he did thwart the even nastier plans of Messrs. Stimpson, Harfield, Matthews, and Rogin. But maybe a baseball bat to the head and a shallow grave would have been more charitable. Regardless, the book was essentially done. The last page of the last chapter rested facedown on that pile of Eaton twenty-pound stock:
You can never really know something, at least that’s my absurd defense, that life is unknowable even though all this time I’ve known the exact truth. But I pretend that my own mystery bends along with the mystery of the universe. My father wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t even in the war though the war did do something to him. That confident vigor, that Presbyterian aplomb, that square-jawed purpose thrust forward in old team pictures, that bygone breed of privileged American male, became unnerved once the civilized world lost its spin. My strongest memory of him was his funeral and all the kind if oblique words said as my hand was cranked for water. A terrible accident. A real shock. Yep, yep, and yep. His best friend – and my godfather – Tommy Archibald Jr. cabled his condolences from England. Most of his better friends were already in England or the Pacific. It was women and older lesser men who gave me their weak comfort. The good solid banker, Mr. Byers of Old Westbury and the Lafayette Flying Corps, he was there, and seven years later he would stand in my dorm as my stepfather, eyeing me like a between-the-crosshairs Fokker from the Luftstreitkrafte. He would let me live but with the understanding that I now belonged to him. “This is not how my son acts,” he said, picking up my suitcase like it was as light as my father’s good name. He had negotiated a suspension rather than an expulsion, and since he was a Hotchkiss man, the name on the future dorm would have to be my own. He led me into the hall. I should mention Alec Guinness in Kwai and “Tintern Abbey” and the dissection and the scrabble but is anyone listening? Does anyone care? This will all get redacted, and those who do care will find the proper business in the margins. I knew the red door would stick. Put some dick into it, Nancy, was what the seniors always told us. I strangled him a little. If I hadn’t stopped he would have died and I honestly don’t know how I stopped. A crack and the door opened. It was a cold New Hampshire evening. I remember the distant comfort of chimney smoke. And I remember imagining another fire, and everything burning, the air silent of human suffering except for the smell of boys going up in flames, my father included.
Putting this down on paper was like rendering a carcass into tallow, and Andrew was rather pleased with the light. Probably better than the original, he thought. Of course tomorrow he would have to cross the whole mess out, but right now he was satisfied and he was tired and he wanted to lie down and close his eyes around Isabel and her unexpected visit from this morning. She was still so beautiful. Gravity’s tedious cousin had no effect on her good company. If anything her aging was a move toward minimalism rather than his bombastic turn toward the grotesque. Years of his life reeled behind those eyes and he wished he could step in and understand himself in that context again.
“Andy,” she said.
“What?”
“Are you listening?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Andy?”
“The boys talked to you?”
“Why else do you think I’m here?”
That hurt. Andrew remembered that hurting.
“They’re worried,” she said. “They think you’re …” She left him undiagnosed.
“Oh I know what they think.”
Did he sound like Nixon here?
“Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”
“You believe me then?”
Isabel leaned back, which made Andrew realize he had pressed forward.
“Dolly the sheep was what, ten years ago?” she said.
“Longer than that,” he said.
“But humans—”
“Yes.”
“As far as I know humans have not been cloned yet.”
“As far as you know, yes. They—”
“They?”
“The Palingeneticists. They’ve been keeping samples since Nobel’s day but when the breakthroughs finally came, they had a much higher success rate with living donors, hence people like me. That’s changed now. They’ve perfected the process. All they need for Keats is a strand of Keats’s hair. Einstein. Mozart. Caravaggio. Whatever remaining shards they can get, they can use. No more ruin. In ten, twenty years the world will experience a new Renaissance, a new Enlightenment, a Golden Age of Golden Ages. I’ve even heard rumors of Shakespeare.”
“The more you talk the less I believe you,” Isabel said.
“I’ll shut up then.”
“Because …,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Like with his smile.”
“Yes, his smile,” he said, smiling.
“And the way he stood and moved.”
“Yes, the standing and the moving.” He rocked on his feet.
“And the eyes.”
He squinted.
“He’s …”
“Me,” Andrew said, like an enthusiastic toddler.
Could he take her hand now? Could he finally reclaim her?
“But why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?” she asked again.
“You never would have believed me.”
“So you let the world, you let me and your sons, believe that you had an affair?”
“It was the only reasonable explanation.”
“Because I was devastated.”
“Look at me,” he said, in hindsight too defensively, “look at me.”
Isabel’s brow creased as if ready to rip along the line.
“It was a mistake,” Andrew backtracked, “obviously.”
“… ”
“If I had known, I never would have done it. Of course not. If I had known. I do hope that’s obvious. It must be obvious. I thought it would be a bump, maybe a hard bump, but then we’d recover and on the other side we’d have this boy—”
“We already have boys.”
“Oh, I know, I know. But we would have this other boy and we could raise him together and maybe, and maybe …” His thoughts were sticking and the ones that crawled forth seemed malformed. “I thought maybe we could care for him.”
“This takes narcissism to a whole new level, even for you.”
“It’s just—”
“He’s not you, you know.”
“I know that. Believe me. I certainly did better in school.”
“This is sick.”
“I had pure intentions at the time,” he said.
“And what were those intentions?”
“What were they?” Andrew asked nervously, thinking a good answer might angle her into an embrace. “Maybe to give myself a chance to be happy. I know that’s a silly word. What does it mean to be happy? I don’t particularly trust happy adults. But sometimes I find myself running into unexplained and unexpected happiness. Like a particular late-afternoon light. A song overhead in passing. A pleasant stroll around the boat pond. Brief moments where time and space seem to conspire for my sole enjoyment. Like childhood, I suppose, and I’m happy until it reminds me of what’s been lost, the distance I’ve traveled from that point to this point. The bitter reason for the warm feeling. Better to go and lock myself in a room and focus on work and hope that might excuse my irredeemably shit existence. A shit father. A shit husband. A shit friend. Writing was just an alibi.”
“You talk as if you had no control over life.”
“I’m not sure I did,” Andrew said.
“Oh please.”
He was losing her. Again.
“If Andy had never happened, we would have stayed together, right?”
On this Isabel agreed.
“Even if you were miserable?”
“Yes, probably,” she said. “But I loved you.”
The past tense stung.
“I always saw you as that boy.”
“And now?” he asked.
“You’re just another man.”
It was like he was falling. “I haven’t been the same—”
“Please don’t, Andy.”
“I haven’t written—”
“Please.”
He must have sounded like a hand desperately reaching.
“I should go,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“This isn’t good for either one of us.”
“I should’ve just killed myself,” he said. “It was a consideration.”
“Stop.” Isabel started for the door.
“But Andy’s a good boy.”
“You should repaint the apartment.”
“He’s better than I am. Much better,” he said.
She grabbed her coat from the hall chair.
“You’ll check on him when I’m dead.”
“You’re not dying anytime soon.”
“Don’t be so sure. You heard about Charlie Topping?”
She stopped at the door. “Yes, and I’m sorry. I was at the funeral.”
“You were?”
“I arrived late.”
“In time to see me …”
“You were upset.”
Andrew’s breathing became stranded on the shallows.
“I need to go,” she said.
After a few insufficient breaths, “Don’t leave.”
“I have to.”
“I can get Andy. You can talk to him some more.”
Isabel shook her head.
“Please stay.” Every breath was a drawing of old smoke.
“I have to go.”
“You’re remarried now.”
Isabel opened the door.
“You still look so lovely,” he said.
“The boys are really worried about you.”
“They think I’m crazy. You just think I’m a son of a bitch.”
Before leaving she asked if anyone was taking care of him, her voice implying a soft touch to his cheek, a brushing away of a morning crumb, a rueful pout as she realized what a mess he was without her. But all of this was mere implication and possibly fabrication. It was more likely a technical question. Andrew told her rather glibly that there was nothing to take care of anymore. It was the doomed romantic reply. But a new effect registered as he lay on the couch and listened for the mouse or whatever it was to start stirring again. He imagined himself a lost boy. Not much of a leap really. It came quite easily. Andrew closed his eyes and unnested himself down to the most elementary scrap. A lost boy adrift in a strange world. He could practically close his palm around it.
“What the hell,” he said.
He got up from the couch and put on a fresh shirt, wanting to appear decent, after which, already exhausted, he poured himself a preparatory drink. The floor was littered with random slough and he decided it was time to clean up. Or get Gerd to clean up. For the first time maybe in his life he noticed the fireplace’s resemblance to a stage, the mantel its proscenium. A good detail, he thought. The hearth as family drama. He decided the mouse in the couch could put on plays here, the mouse fancying himself an actor. A mouse of virtue. It went without saying that a cat should be involved. It could be his next book. Why not? Andy could do the illustrations. He had the talent, if untapped. Before going upstairs Andrew stopped in the bathroom to get reacquainted with himself. His skin carried stains and specks that no matter the scrubbing remained intact. More than anything, getting old was just plain gross. Andrew splashed water on his cheeks, brushed his teeth, hoped there was still something recognizable in his face.
“I shall eat you up,” said the cat.
“But what about my last words?” said the mouse.
“I’m imagining a tasty dollop of scream,” said the cat.
“Aren’t you, as they say, curious?” asked the mouse.
Gouaches would work well. Andrew shuffled into the entry hall and started up the stairs, the banister an essential friend. He would tell Andy everything. Sit him down and explain things. No more cock and bull. (A rest on the sixth step.) You are me and I am you. That sounded Seussian. The two of us are one. That sounded like a corny lyric. We are identical twins separated by some sixty years. That could work. Best to avoid the c word, he decided as he reached the top.
“Now that you mention it,” said the cat, “perhaps I am piqued.”
“What are you in the mood for,” asked the mouse, “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragicalhistorical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited? I can sing as well.”
“Too bad you’re also a mouse and I’m a cat.”
“A fable from Aesop then,” said the mouse.
This fragile piece of inspiration was blunted by an odor that roved down the hall like a childhood game of blind man’s bluff. It was both unpleasant and intriguing, pure unadulterated teenager. Ass funk and toe cheese and sneaker rot and armpit rank and various other effluvia rushed past him, laughing. And maybe he caught a whiff of me coming from the room across the way.
Andy’s door was closed.
After a vain knock, Andrew peeked inside: clothes all over the floor, sheets in a heap, a glass half-full on the bedside table, a towel draped over the bathroom door, every dresser drawer open. From these clues Andrew tried to decode the boy, where his fingerprints might have clustered, why he had tossed a pair of socks into the corner, what he had seen from the window with the half-drawn shade. He pictured him with wet hair and a never-satisfying physique. A pinched sag of flesh for pectorals. A dartboard of pimples on his back that would resurface years later as moles. A belly button that caused unnecessary stress. How about the glass of water by the bed? Probably four days old, its potability debated every morning and night. Socks were an eternal frustration. Did he fear clothes in general, a shirt tipping into the same league as lunch, hence the future of grilled cheese with tomato every day and a bureau of plain white oxfords? In the smear of the bathroom mirror sat a smile that never quite clicked, even with practice, and frankly not the world’s greatest teeth. Soon an unwavering frown would emerge as the primary expression and anxiety about being judged would hide behind eyes that acted like corkscrews seeking cork. A sudden memory dropped from the ledge of the long forgotten: Jamie’s Exeter-era girlfriend, what’s-her-name, staying in this room back when it was a guest room. One afternoon Andrew found himself drifting around and he poked in and discovered a pair of her underwear on the closet floor. He lifted them like a small dead thing and brought them to his nose, breathed in their plural tang. He remembered needing this indecency, hungering for the outlawed intimate yet having no stomach for the experience. Whatever the sin seemed absolved by putting it down on paper, hence that scene in Eastern Time:
There they were, discarded on the floor with the other tennis whites. An hour earlier Walter had watched Louisa tumble onto the red clay after running down his drop shot, her legs splaying like a swan considering flight, where upon he was given a quick contextual glimpse. The amber inner thigh. The shadow near elastic. The prickled cotton. Joan of course volleyed this miraculous return hard down the middle and they won the point easily. Another game for Team Shalott. For the rest of the match Walter found himself playing drop shots and lobs, anything to imagine that speedy little cunt, barely contained. Walter glanced toward the window. Everyone was cooling by the pool, Joan probably swimming her laps. He toed the whites, feeling their implied nudity. The skirt still held the blush of clay. “Nice running, très flash,” he had told her, and Louisa panted comically before getting back to her feet and brushing her rear. Walter’s foot tweezed the butterfly from its chrysalis. Their athletic plainness added a steeper angle to the thrill. There was no lacey effort, no seduction involved. A glance toward the door. The villa was empty but for the cook singing downstairs. Walter reached down. They were heavier than expected. Damp. His insides turned to echo—past, present, and future seemed to wrestle for the clock. He brought the front to his face, his nose pressing in. More than half the pleasure was this image of himself, Walter Shalott, secret pervert, but those percentages quickly dropped as he breathed in the fug and all that echoing found its fuckable source.
Andrew shut the door as if barring a fast-moving ghost. Back in the hall, he was unsure of his next move, but the desire to see Andy veered into anxious vicinities. Where was he? There’s so much I need to tell him. The smell of teenage stink had faded, not really faded but become commonplace, as stinks do, and this caused further panic, like the boy himself was fading. Is he all right? What have I done? Andrew headed for the stairs. He must have seen the light under the door and thought maybe Andy was in there. But it was just me, the Druid of Dyer, sitting among that henge of boxes.
“Andy?”
The question was posed at eye level but I was down here, on the floor. “No, it’s Philip,” I said.
“Philip?”
“Christ, I know who you are.”
He sounded upset. Did he notice the open boxes, the letters spread all around me?
“Charlie’s boy,” he confirmed to the universe above. It seemed my prying had no discernible effect as he asked me, rather pathetically, if I knew where Andy was. He needed to talk to him, very badly, his limited articulation compounded by his refusal to swallow away an air bubble that tweaked his voice into a higher register. I told him I had no idea but then said, “Wait,” like a minor character in a procedural who casually remembers something vital, in my case something about a book party.
“A book party?”
“Yes,” I said, slow-dealing my information. “And I think, I’m not sure but I think it’s just across the street at the Frick, some young writer with a filthy rich dad. Andy was going with your grandson.”
“My grandson?”
“Richard’s oldest.”
“Right, right,” he said. “The one that was sick.”
“I guess.”
“And Andy was invited to this?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. Eavesdropping had its limits.
Andrew stared into the distance, as if seeing all the way to the back of his head. A goddamn book party. Another young writer. The publishing world. “And at the Frick,” he muttered aloud. It seemed to me he was slipping away, which was certainly the case in retrospect. Sense had broken into too many parts too difficult to handle so he tightened his grip around the few small meanings that remained. “I need to go,” he said, the recoil bigger than the blast. “I need to go find him and bring him back. Get him away from there. Yes, yes, we need to go right now, Philip.”
I have no idea how I split into we, but he was eager, his face full of cajoling madness. All my life, or most of my life, I desired nothing more than this desperate invitation, but seeing him and feeling the way I did, I was past enchantment. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“I’m tired.”
“Please, Philip. As a favor to me.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m almost begging.”
I said my final conclusive no and immediately regretted the decision, but the letters on the floor pressed with greater force and I let Andrew turn and leave and curse whatever was left of my name. He sputtered down the stairs, socks sliding. Another drink and another pill and on went the Wellingtons and the overcoat and the wool bucket hat. In the elevator, he almost reversed course for gloves, but once outside was dismayed to find the city benignly cool. I must look like a twit, he thought, prepared to ford a stream rather than a narrow street. But he was on a mission, whether snow or rain or pleasantly mild, and he passed through those smokers and breathed in their sociable exile before heading up the stairs. A young woman greeted him as if he were confused.
“Hello,” she said gently.
“I’m just going in.”
“Are you on the list, sir?”
“List?”
“It’s a private party. You need to be on the list.”
“Am I on the list? That’s the question?”
“Yes,” she said.
“In my day no one wanted to be on a list.”
“But this is a good list.”
“The nice-not-the-naughty list?” Andrew asked.
“Exactly,” she said, smiling.
“Well then, Andrew Dyer.”
She found his name with the earlier check. “You seem to be already here.”
“Hence my presence,” he said.
The woman, and she was young and attractive, and he was feeling old and nasty, but he was once young and attractive, as evidenced by what was inside, and to be honest the difference puzzled him, as embarrassing as that might seem, to be puzzled by aging, but back to the woman—she repeated his name and the relationship between name and face and literary occasion must have kicked in because she said, “You’re A. N. Dyer.”
“Yes,” he said.
They both felt foolish.
“I’m so sorry, please go right in.”
“Thank you.”
“I love your books, by the way.”
“And I think you’re doing tremendous work as well,” he told her. He was just trying to be clever, just giving her a taste of that old A. N. Dyer drollness, but he could see the injury the remark caused, his good intentions hiding a sharp stone. He continued in without checking his coat and immediately bumped into the mingling crowd, chattery and cheerful. It was hard to be in a hurry here. He envisioned a hundred small catastrophes of spilled drinks and apologies, sorry, excuse me, sorry, if he tried pushing through, overdressed in outerwear. He must resemble a senile farmer searching for his dog, and he was tempted to start calling for Smudge. The absurdity of this image gave him some armor, as everyone within elbow spar seemed to be from the same self-satisfied congregation, a particular brand of New York Calvinism that had strong opinions about predestination and free will, their existence justified by their own success, and while there were similarities with the ghosts of his era, the fundamental fervor burned more intense.
Where the hell was Andy?
Some lesbian offered him a tray of unidentifiable snack and then had the gall to explain said unidentifiable snack with a level of detail that bordered on the perverse. This scene replayed itself four times in five minutes, and there came a moment where Andrew wondered if active pursuit was involved. He waved away all offers until asking the last server if she had seen a dog.
“What’s that?”
“My dog. He’s lost.”
“No, this is a green-market pizzetta topped with upstate micro-farmed vegetables and Old Chatham Camembert cheese drizzled with truffle oil and smoked salt.”
“A shame. My dog would have loved that.”
But Andrew did accept the white wine, which was too sweet and too warm. Arms raised, he waded through a narrow fracture into the Living Hall. Museums, the movies, the theater, when did these institutions become a form of air travel? The Frick used to be one of his favorites. The old director would let him wander around when the collection was closed. “You’re our official writer in residence,” he told him, and he presented Andrew with a laminated card. See, Andrew thought, I once did have friends. The most breathable air circulated near the walls, and Andrew recognized More and Cromwell, Jerome and Aretino. They all looked the same, More particularly well preserved in his fur and velvet, as was the Man in the Red Cap. They whispered to Andrew that paint was finer than flesh. He wandered deeper into the rooms. Nobody noticed him beyond his Magritte-like incongruity, which was magnified by his desire to have a rest in one of those THIS IS NOT A CHAIR chairs. In the next room, he gave a nod to Lady Peel and Lady Skipwith, inspirations for Samantha Peel and Valerie Skipwith in I Saw Her, Waving. The sight of Lady Hamilton as Nature clutching her spaniel saddened him—my missing dog, he thought, forever lost in art. The truth is, a number of paintings in the Frick show up in A. N. Dyer’s fiction and perhaps being in their midst helps explain what happened next.
It started with an overheard snippet:
I told her, maybe because I was feeling soft from all our kissing, more stuck together than actual kissing, three minutes without a decent breath and I was chafed and recovering from the mugging, and she was saying how nice this was, the kissing, over and over again, how nice, her arm draped over my shoulder yet lacking any actual weight, just an impersonation of touch, but really, Penny was all right and pretty in a big-nosed way and her chest was there for the sacking, still all that talk of niceness made me want to push her to the ground.
Andrew turned and caught sight of the source not ten feet away. He was in horn-rimmed glasses and a suit with thin lapels and a bowtie gabbing with two women. There was a recognizable insouciance about him, in his easy if unreliable smile, in the sleepy shagginess, which enhanced his aura. Andrew stared at him, moving closer without moving, part push, part pull.
But instead,
he continued,
I told her about throwing that baseball at Bobby Hinkler during practice, I told her how I thought he was looking but he wasn’t—he was looking at a bird, I think—and I didn’t have time to yell and the ball smacked him right in the face. I threw it pretty hard too, more pitch than toss. I didn’t tell her that. And maybe I did know about his interest in migrating birds. But anyway, he fellumphed to the ground, and I smiled. I definitely told her how my first reaction was a smile, because it was funny, Bobby Hinkler falling flat on his back, though I caught my smile in my mitt and ran over. He seemed dead to the world. A crowd quickly gathered. I started to shake with laughter and everyone guessed I was upset, even poor Bobby Hinkler, who was now sitting up and wiping blood from his nose, and I said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, through the webbing, I’m so sorry, trying to break my unsettling glee. Even the coaches were concerned with my well-being. They thought I was wracked. I told Penny it was my biggest, most secret shame. Afterwards, I think she expected my hands to slowly travel to the upper decks, but I surprised her by sliding them home.
It was Edgar Mead straight from chapter 18. Even in his muddled state Andrew knew this was too fantastic to be true, that there must be a good explanation, perhaps within the mixture of pills and alcohol, the overexertion, the long nights rewriting, the possible guilt and the goddamn gout. The last week had been fraught and he was likely hallucinating. Would any other characters drop in? All in all, he was amazed by the magic of his imagination, however delirious, and with curiosity he watched Edgar Mead beaver his teeth at this stand of long-legged women. What would he do next? Possibly something from chapter 23? Instead he spotted someone in the crowd and he went and dragged him over.
Andrew’s gut reversed course.
It was Andy.
“Have you met my new best pal?” Edgar asked the swaying trees.
Before Andrew even considered the consequences, he rushed forward, moving as though properly dressed and every step was a slog through mud and rain. By the time he reached them he was soaked.
“Don’t you touch him,” he said, finger raised.
“Dad?” from a mortified Andy.
“You hear me?”
“Dad!”
Edgar Mead triangled his hands in front of his chest, like he had recently vacationed in the Ramayana. “I just want to say what an absolute thrill it is to meet you, Mr. Dyer.” He gave a shallow bow. “I’m a tremendous admirer.”
“Not another word from you,” Andrew said.
“Dad, stop!”
Edgar played hurt in typical Edgar Mead fashion. “I honestly hope I haven’t offended you. Because I know how annoying it is when strangers think they know you just because of your work. I feel that.”
“You’re not even real,” Andrew said.
“Dad, please.”
Edgar nodded. “I get it. Sometimes I wonder myself.”
“You have to leave me alone,” Andy pleaded.
“Am I just a product?” Edgar continued. “A faceless face?”
“I’m doing this for you, saving you from him,” Andrew said to Andy.
“From him? I’m having like the best time in my life.”
“I get it, the whole disdain for celebrity thing,” Edgar said.
“I want you to be different,” Andrew said to Andy, “a different person, the absolute opposite of me.”
“That’s not something you have to worry about.”
“But I do worry.”
“Trust me, I’m nothing like you.”
“That’s the problem. You’re exactly like me.”
Andy curled his hands into fists and seemed to pound on a willfully locked door. “Just shut up,” he said. “Shut up and leave me alone. Please, Dad. People are starting to stare. Just for now, go home and we can talk in the morning.”
“Or stay.” Edgar suppressed a yawn. “We can have a drink. No hard feelings on my part.”
“Please, Dad.”
“I bet you’re a scotch man,” Edgar said.
Andrew removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His skin clung to his clothes, and this compounded his sense of claustrophobia and introduced an element of vertigo. He needed something to hold. Whatever was in control of him was starting to abandon ship, jumping from a great height into a cold, dark sea. Basic function began to splash about and he thought, I might need help. Andy refused to look at him, while Edgar Mead maintained a freakish eye grip. Could a fictional character take him home? Reality, already taking on water, capsized even further when he saw Jamie approach, all beaten up, and Richard right behind him, along with his teenage grandson—Emile? Abbott?—and that girl who was friends with Andy, all of them appearing as if summoned. For a moment he wondered what he might conjure next.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Richard asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I got hit in the face,” Jamie said. “About time, huh?”
“Andy and I were just going home.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Andy told Richard and Jamie.
“Nobody is going home,” Edgar Mead pronounced. “It’s early still.”
“Does everybody see him,” Andrew asked, “or am I the only one?”
“Have the two of you met?” Richard asked.
“I already know him.”
“Don’t believe what you read in the tabloids,” Edgar said.
“Hence, horrible shadow!” Andrew nearly shouted. “Unreal mockery, hence!”
Jamie and Richard queered their eyes.
“That’s from Macbeth, right?” Edgar said. “ ‘You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, with most admired disorder.’ ”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Andy said.
“You okay, Dad?” from Jamie.
Edgar was beaming. “When I was seven I played Macduff’s son in La Jolla.”
This bit of backstory Andrew was unaware of. He noticed Andy slinking toward the corner with his grandson, Dermot? “Andy, wait,” Andrew called, his mouth starting to percolate something more sinister than saliva.
“Just let him go, Dad,” Richard said.
“But—”
“They’re having a nice time.”
Edgar Mead put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder and molded his expression toward the beatific. “He’s a good kid. I imagine him someday walking with a limp, which will suit him, the way he’ll scrape the ground with his injured iamb.” This initially threw Andrew until he realized it was from the end of Ampersand. “Oh, man,” Edgar went on, now in his own words, “everyone is just stoked by the chance of transposing this book onto film. With your blessing, of course. And with Richard doing the screenplay. Maybe we could get Jamie in on it too. A family affair. And with Rainer Krebs producing—where is Rainer? He’s somewhere around. Anyone? You’ll love Rainer.”
Andrew grimaced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, the saliva situation turning every swallow into a sour meal.
“We can talk about this later,” Richard told him.
Andrew swallowed again. “Strange things are in my head.”
“You really are a Macbeth fan, aren’t you?” from Edgar.
“Dad, you okay?” Jamie asked louder.
Andrew wished he could spit. “Where’s your”—swallow—“tooth?”
“Knocked out.”
“By what?”
“Like I said, from a punch to the face. You’re looking kind of pale.”
“I think I need to go home.”
Edgar Mead waved. “There’s Rainer. Hey, Rainer!”
A large head stopped and turned, towering over all other heads, the fellow guests appearing merely representational in his company, like the shallow end of a pool. He came toward them, paddling through well-coiffed water, with Dennis Gilroy and an earnest-looking young man following.
“Andrew”—Dennis’s eyes went Wow—“great of you to come.”
“I’m not really here,” Andrew said between swallows.
“Mr. Dyer, Rainer Krebs. It’s a pleasure. My great-uncle knew your stepfather.”
“My stepfather?”
“Friends during the war, I think.”
“War?”
“Andrew,” Dennis said, “I’d love for you to meet Christopher Denslow. He’s the young writer we’re celebrating tonight. He’s written a terrific first novel, which I really think you’d love. It’s right up your alley.”
This young writer stepped forward, obviously well bred and radiating a humble confidence, as though he were a force for good even if he occasionally found himself in offensive company. Like tonight. But you understand, Mr. Dyer, he seemed to say, shaking his hand like they were both privy to their own secret identities. “I met your son earlier, all three of your sons actually.”
“Yes,” Rainer said, “half the crowd seems to be made up of Dyers.”
Andrew grinned, his lips a dam.
“Rainer’s a producer,” Dennis explained. “He’s bought the rights to Chris’s book.”
“It’s a very exciting project,” Rainer confirmed.
“I might play the chimp,” Edgar Mead said.
“A bonobo,” Christopher corrected.
“In my defense, part of the chimp family.”
Andrew wondered if you could drown in your own spit.
“And this punk is only twenty-four,” Dennis said of Christopher.
“Almost twenty-five.”
“Younger than you with Ampersand.”
“If only there was a comparison to be made.”
“Jeanie, do you have a book?” Jeanie Spokes at Dennis’s command handed over a copy of The Propagators, which he passed on to Andrew. The cover was a crude but evocative drawing of a teddy bear scratched into dirt.
“Great cover, huh?” Dennis said.
The new-book smell and texture turned Andrew’s stomach even more.
“Christopher designed it.”
“I’m just glad it came out all right.”
“What’s the font again?”
“Dot Matrix.”
“Christopher’s also doing the screenplay,” Rainer informed them.
“I’m sure he’ll design the movie poster as well,” kidded Dennis.
“I do have my ideas.”
“I bet you do. Hey, you should sign Andrew’s copy.” Dennis took the book from Andrew and handed it to Christopher. “A passing of the torch moment.”
Andrew was pretty sure he only had so many more swallows left.
“It’s really something to be signing a book to you,” the young man said. His earnestness, while honest, was without warmth, his eyes darkly calculating all his good deeds, even the minor ones, like being friendly to people and putting up with stupid questions, in general remaining patient with those who were far less evolved, hoping this might excuse his other, faintly genocidal thoughts. “You were one of my heroes growing up,” he said.
Andrew listed to the left.
“I’m not sure if Richard’s talked to you about Ampersand,” from this Rainer character.
“My all-time favorite number-one book,” from Edgar.
“These guys do have an interesting take,” from Dennis, “and a good track record.”
Andrew listed to the right.
“The Erasers was brilliant.”
“It’s all about the script for us. That’s number one.”
Andrew turned toward Jamie. “I don’t understand these people.”
“Yeah?”
“I need to go home.”
Jamie was swaying a bit himself. “Okay.”
“Like now”—an uncertain pause after that last swallow—“I think I might throw up.”
A party photographer had appeared and was positioning for a candid of A. N. Dyer with Christopher Denslow, his hand nudging Christopher closer, there, perfect, now trying to get the attention of the old man, right here, right here, his fingers snapping for focus, but Andrew was on the verge of collapsing.
“No pictures,” Jamie said, stepping in.
“Hey, it’s a nice moment,” from Dennis.
Jamie took his father’s arm. “We’re going.”
“Yes. Please. Fast,” Andrew told him.
“Just one picture,” Dennis almost begged.
“Richard,” Jamie called.
Richard was busy watching Emmett talk with Andy, Emmett doing his best to cheer Andy up, which involved a series of animated gestures that Richard was desperate to understand.
“Richard, we need to go like now.”
Richard saw his father’s pallor. “Yeah, okay.”
“What about Andy?” Andrew mumbled.
“We’ll get him later,” Jamie said.
“No, no, no, we should get him now.”
“He’s already gone,” Richard lied. He took his father’s other arm.
“Wait, Mr. Dyer,” from Edgar Mead.
But the three of them were already hustling through the Library, through the Living Hall. Their hurried pace caused a small scene, these sons escorting their sick old dad toward fresh air. But the Dyer boys cut through the murmurs and the questions, steadfast with their guidance, no need for revisions or edits here; they were taking care, and with every step Andrew loosened and let his feet bounce along in a pantomime of walking.
“Faster,” he said.
“Hold on,” from Richard.
“Hang in there,” from Jamie.
All this spit and Andrew was parched. Water, water, every where … The word sequela popped into his head. He had always wanted to use that word in one of his books. As the boys swerved through people, Andrew leaned his head back and imagined the ceiling starting to buckle, a few drops coming from the cracks, the mansion groaning as the flow from above increased and opened bigger fissures and linked the drops into a solid gush that inspired chunks of plaster to come down, revealing an unrestrained torrent. Screams would follow. The proactive would proactivate but to no avail. A foot of water. Now two. Now three. Rembrandt would sit back and watch like John Jacob Astor on the Titanic. Turner would slowly find his equal. There would be no escape.
“Almost there.”
Andrew began to heave.
Through the vestibule and into the entrance hall and down the stairs, where the boys adjusted their grip and draped him between their shoulders in the style of soldiers removing the wounded, they got him into the cold, reassuring air and crossed the street, Andrew’s Wellingtons no longer pretending to touch the ground.
Behind him, the Frick pitched and rolled.
“Can you make it to the apartment?” Jamie asked.
“Mmmhmm” was all Andrew could manage, which meant I think.
His head seemed to stir his stomach into ever-widening arcs, accelerating the contents within, the specifics of which he tried to forget though he knew cheese was involved. They entered the lobby of his building, the doorman quickly closing the door like an onslaught was coming. Whatever the gastrointestinal g-forces that had held the mess together seized up and Andrew realized that however bad he was feeling was about to get worse. He rocked like a jockey begging his ride to go faster. The boys rushed him into the elevator, Jamie removing his hat, Richard removing his coat, the two of them promising, Almost there, Almost there. Andrew for some reason thought of a sparrow caught in a garage. He could relate to the bird’s confusion. Inside the apartment they hightailed him upstairs, through the master bedroom, into the bathroom, where they posed him in front of the toilet, unsure where their duty ended.
“Made it,” Richard said, breathing hard but victorious.
Andrew stared into that stale hollow.
“You’ll feel better afterward,” Jamie said.
Was there anything more humiliating than an old man with his head in a toilet? He spat into the eye of that Cyclops. At least the cool porcelain was comforting and gave him a favorable anchoring to the floor. He looked over at Jamie sitting on the sink and Richard leaning against the wall and had visions of mobsters trying to get a rat fink to talk.
“Just let it out,” Jamie said.
Andrew nodded, still baffled by the recent events. Poor Andy. He stared back into that clear cornea of water. Oh Polyphemus, look what you’ve done! He spat again. It seemed important to throw up, that not throwing up would somehow be a huge disappointment, perhaps even fatal. He closed his eyes. He wanted to cry but instead focused on the waves of nausea sloshing against his insides, like a careless boy running with a full bucket. All these metaphors. All these similes. A body trapped inside a body. Andrew gripped the rim tighter. You miserable fool. Just throw up. Snot untied from within his nose. He started to moan. Another wave formed, this one bigger than any boy, and Andrew let go and kicked for the gathering break, knowing he only had so much energy. The tide in his mouth receded as glands wrung themselves dry, and everything within him became liquid. Look out, look out, I’m going! It started small but grew larger, like a mouse chased by a cat.
Jamie went over and patted his back.
Richard wetted a washcloth.
“Is he all right?” I asked, peering into the bathroom.
I must have startled them.
“Get the hell out of here,” Richard said.