Mao II Part 10

"What does a stage manager do anyway?"

Her smile widened and she looked at him as if he'd made the one remark that might prove he loved her.

"I remind the actors where they're supposed to fall in the death scene."

Gail came out of the bedroom and got a jacket from the closet.

Bill said, "Am I chasing you out of here? Stay around and referee. An Old Testament sandstorm is falling on my head."

"I have my hypnotist tonight. He's my last hope of taking off pounds."

"I tell her try not eating," Liz said.

"She says it like it's common sense. I have an outside range of maybe eight days' strict diet and then something comes on automatic and I know I'm cleared of blame and guilt."

"Talk to my father. Writers have discipline."

"I know. I envy that. I could never do it. Sit down day after day."

"Army ants have discipline," Bill said. "Don't ask me what writers have."

Gail went out and the two of them sat down to dinner. He had his daughter figured for the senior d.y.k.e in this tandem, the decision-maker and stancher of wounds. He tried being impressed. He poured the wine he'd bought after he left the taxi and went wandering in the area looking for familiar streets and houses because he realized he had no idea what the name of her street was and couldn't find her address or phone number in his wallet and wondered how the h.e.l.l he expected to get into the apartment even if he knew where she lived and finally spotted a phone and called information and she was not only listed but home.

"Now, look, I'm trying to remember what else I might have left behind last time."

"Gail wears your robe."

"Hypnosis. It could be the answer to everything."

"You left a billfold with traveler's checks and pa.s.sport. Look surprised, Daddy."

"I've been wondering where the h.e.l.l."

"You knew where it was. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"I'm here to see you, kid."

"I know."

"Christ, I can't make a move."

"It's all right. I don't spend my time obsessing over Daddy's motives."

"Only his negligence."

"Well there's that of course."

"Actually I wasn't even around when you were born. Ever hear about that?"

"Only just recently."

"I was at Yaddo."

"What's that?"

"It's a retreat, a place where writers go for some ordinary f.u.c.king peace and quiet. In fact this is the inst.i.tution's motto, engraved on a frieze over the entranceway. The u in 'f.u.c.king' comes out as a v, in accordance with cla.s.sical precedent."

He looked up from his food to see if she was smiling. She seemed to be thinking about it. He helped her clean up and then called Charles Everson in New York.

Charlie said, "Your man Scott showed up not long after you left. I was in the boardroom for a luncheon meeting. He apparently raised something of a ruckus in the lobby. Tried to get up to our offices. Security finally called up and asked me to speak to him. He wanted to know where you were. Of course I couldn't tell him because I didn't know."

"You still don't."

"This is true, Bill."

"You didn't say anything about our London chat."

"London is the last thing I'd tell anyone. But he's not an easy fellow to pacify. I finally had to go down there and talk to him. First I convinced security to produce the guard who accompanies special guests. Then the guard convinced Scott that he took you up and he took you down and you weren't lying dead in the elevator. Eternally riding. A warning to us all."

They talked about arrangements.

Then Bill said, "He'll call you. He'll keep calling. Not a word."

"I haven't revealed a thing about you to a single soul in twenty-five years, Bill. I keep the faith."

When Gail came back they played rummy for a while. The women wanted to go to sleep and Bill tried to keep them going with card tricks. The wine was gone. He read for an hour and made up the sofa, recalling how cramped it was. Then he found a scratch pad and a pencil and made notes for some revisions on his novel.

Scott came out of the bathroom with toothpaste on a brush. He looked at Karen, who was sitting up in bed watching TV. He stared, waiting for her to see him. There were times she became lost in the dusty light, observing some survivor of a national news disaster, there's the lonely fuselage smoking in a field, and she was able to study the face and shade into it at the same time, even sneak a half second ahead, inferring the strange dazed grin or gesturing hand, which made her seem involved not just in the coverage but in the terror that came blowing through the fog.

He stared until she turned and saw him.

"Then where is he?" she said.

"I'll figure it out. It's been a long time since he was a step ahead of me. b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"But where could he go?"

"Somewhere that makes sense only to him. But if it makes sense to him, I'll eventually figure it out."

"But how can you be sure he's not sick or hurt?"

"I went in the building and talked to them. We had an actual scuffle, some b.u.mping and pus.h.i.+ng. They have security at the level of war is imminent. Anyway it's clear to me he just walked out the door."

"Well then I think he's with Brita."

Scott stood with the toothbrush held level across his chest.

"He's not with Brita. Why is he with Brita?"

"Because why else would he stay in New York?"

"We don't know he stayed there. We don't even know for sure why he went there. He told me it was just a visit with Charles Everson. Everson told me they talked about the new book. No, he hasn't been in touch with Brita or I'd know it. The phone bill came the other day. The calls would be itemized."

"Maybe she called him."

"No, he's got something deeper. He's down deeper somewhere. "

"He's running away from his book again."

"The book is finished."

"Not to him."

"He never left without telling me where he was going. No, he's down deeper this time."

He went in and brushed his teeth. When he came out he stared at her until she realized he was looking.

"We need to do lists," he said.

"But if he's not here."

"All the more reason. We need to give his workroom a good going-over. "

"He doesn't like us in there."

"He doesn't like me in there," Scott said. "I believe there are times in the night when he definitely consents to your presence. In the night or in the late afternoon when I'm out buying the onions for the stew."

"Or the cuc.u.mbers for the salad."

"The workroom needs to be cleaned and organized. So when he gets back he can find things for a change."

"He'll call us in a day or two and we can ask him if it's okay."

"He won't call."

"I'm hopeful he'll call."

"If there was something he wanted to call us about, he'd still be here, living amongst us."

He got into bed, turning up the collar of his pajama s.h.i.+rt.

"Let's give him a chance to call," she said. "That's all I'm saying. "

"He's got some deep and dire plan and it doesn't include us."

"He loves us, Scott."

She watched the set at the foot of the bed. There was a woman on an exercise bike and she wore a gleaming skintight suit and talked into the camera as she pedaled and there was a second woman inserted in a corner of the screen, thumb-sized, relaying the first woman's monologue in sign language. Karen studied them both, her eyes sweeping the screen. She was thinboundaried. She took it all in, she believed it all, pain, ecstasy, dog food, all the seraphic matter, the baby bliss that falls from the air. Scott stared at her and waited. She carried the virus of the future. Quoting Bill.

9.

Bill reminded himself to read the pavement signs before he crossed the street. It was so perfectly d.a.m.n sensible they ought to make it the law in every city, long-lettered words in white paint that tell you which way to look if you want to live.

He wasn't interested in seeing London. He'd seen it before. A glimpse of Trafalgar Square from a taxi, three routine seconds of memory, aura, repet.i.tion, the place unchanged despite construction fences and plastic sheeting-a dream locus, a double-ness that famous places share, making them seem remote and unreceptive but at the same time intimately familiar, an experience you've been carrying forever. The pavement signs were the only things he paid attention to. Look left. Look right. They seemed to speak to the whole vexed question of existence.

He hated these shoes. His ribs felt soft today. There was a slight seizing in his throat.

He wanted to get back to the hotel and sleep a while. He wasn't staying at the place in Mayfair that Charlie had mentioned. He was in a middling gray relic and already beginning to grouse to himself about reimburs.e.m.e.nt.

In his room he took off his s.h.i.+rt and blew on the inside of the collar, getting rid of lint and hair, drying the light sweat. He had Lizzie's overnight bag with his robe and pajamas and there were some socks, underwear and toilet articles he'd bought in Boston.

He didn't know if he wanted to do this thing. It didn't feel so right anymore. He had a foreboding, the little clinging tightness in the throat that he knew so well from his work, the times he was afraid and hemmed in by doubt, knowing there was something up ahead he didn't want to face, a character, a life he thought he could not handle.

He called Charlie's hotel.

"Where are you, Bill?"

"I can see a hospital from my window."

"And you find this encouraging."

"I look for one thing in a hotel. Proximity to the essential services."

"You're supposed to be at the Chesterfield."

"The very name is incompatible with my price structure. It smells of figured velvet."

"You're not paying. We're paying."

"I understood about the plane fare."

"And the hotel. It goes without saying. And the incidentals. Do you want me to see if the room's still available?"

"I'm settled in here."

"What's the name of the place?"

"It'll come to me in a minute. In the meantime tell me if we're set for this evening."

"We're working on a change of site. We had a wonderful venue all set up, thanks to a well-connected colleague of mine. The library chamber at Saint Paul's Cathedral. Precisely the dignified setting I was hoping to find. Oak and stone carving, thousands of books. At noon today they began receiving phone calls. Anonymous."