Toll Call Page 30

  I gestured to the photo on the corner of Bryce’s desk, which was the oldest version of the rest of them. “Is that her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s all grown up.”

  “In some ways, yes; Jane Ann’s very precocious. But in other ways she’s frighteningly … regressive.”

  The modification hinted at complex psychology, in both Margaret and her daughter. “Why are you so worried about her? I mean except for the ways parents usually worry about their kids?”

  Margaret closed her eyes, as though better to picture her distress. “Marvin and I divorced when she was nine. For reasons that seemed important at the time, I chose to let Jane Ann grow up with her father. So …” Her shrug was massive enough to encompass her daughter’s infancy and adolescence. “Still, she survived, for which I’m thankful—so many don’t these days. But it wasn’t easy, for any of us. When she was seventeen she rebelled against Marvin’s strictures, his conventional values, his excessive expectations. She dropped out of high school just before graduation, refused to go to college even though she’d been admitted to one of the finest in the country, and began to associate with peers who were even less responsible than she was. And now she …”

  “What?”

  She sighed heavily. “That’s just it. What does she do? I haven’t the faintest idea. She is talented in art and takes lessons twice a week but she never seems to actually paint anything. She has no job, yet cruises the city in an expensive convertible, lives in a chic apartment, carouses to all hours. She’s had one abortion that I know of; she was arrested for possession of drugs when she was eighteen, though thankfully the case was weak and Marvin got it thrown out on a technicality. Her driver’s license is suspended, though that doesn’t seem to slow her down. I just … don’t know what to do.” A tear appeared in a corner of her eye. “She has always craved excitement. She lived on the roller coaster at Santa Cruz one summer; she adores those horrid slaughter films; she wanders the most frightening areas of the city without a thought for her safety. I’m afraid she …”

  “What?” I prompted again.

  Margaret struggled for the words. “I guess I’m afraid she’s gotten herself involved in something dangerous. And quite possibly criminal.”

  “Like what?”

  She opened herself to me for the first time, her bleak and bloodshot eyes a pink patina above a desperate plea for help. “Who knows? These days young people don’t seem to experience pleasure unless they’re committing an antisocial act.”

  There was some truth to that, particularly with regard to the children of the very poor and the very rich, but I decided not to point it out. “You don’t have any clue at all to what she might be mixed up in?”

  Margaret shook her head. “Just that she seems so edgy lately. She lives like she’s on the run—changing phone numbers frequently, spending lots of money with nothing to show for it, showing up here late at night in the company of a young man who looks more like a bodyguard than a boyfriend. I just …” The enormity of the puzzle silenced her.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “It’s gotten worse in the past month, but she’s been a problem for years.” Margaret looked away from me, to one of the photos of her daughter, this one showing Jane Ann waving happily from the back of a horse. In the one next to it she was several years older and on crutches, as though the years of adolescence had crippled her. “I have to tell you that it’s not impossible that Jane Ann has used some of the money her father and I have given her over the years to finance an illegal enterprise,” Margaret concluded grimly, “and that somehow it’s gone bad.”

  “If it’s drugs, she could be in serious trouble. The nuances of the social register don’t mean much to the Colombians.”

  She nodded timidly. “That’s why I was wondering if you could look into the situation for me.” Her expression congealed and became beseeching. “I know you think I’m a hard woman. And I am, in many ways. I’ve had to be. But I love my daughter very much. I neglected her for a long time, under the illusion that I wasn’t competent to rear her. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her now that I’m in a position to prevent it. Could you help me, Marsh? Please?”

  Because it was in such contrast to her usual demeanor, I found the entreaty moving. But nevertheless I shook my head. “Bryce called first, Margaret. I have to see what he wants me to do. If it’s something I think I can handle, I have to give that priority.”

  “I see.”

  “Your problems with Jane Ann sound like they need someone full-time. I’d be happy to recommend an investigator for you to talk to. A woman, if you think that would be preferable.”

  “What if I persuade Bryce to use someone else?”

  “I’m afraid the answer’s still no.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t mix friendship and business.”

  “You’re willing to work for Bryce.”

  “Bryce is different; Bryce is balancing the books.”

  “What about when the business pays twice your normal rate?”

  Flush with the profitable resolution of my most recent undertaking, I allowed myself a righteous smile. “Friendship pays better. In the long run.”

  “When you get to be my age, the long run is not a viable option.” Her lips curled bitterly. “Look at me. No wonder Bryce spends his every waking hour in here with these stupid books. Who’d want a woman whose flesh drips off her bones like this?”

  She held up an arm for me to inspect. It wasn’t by any means a teen’s, but it wasn’t as wattled as her rhetoric suggested. It was just a badge like the badges that all of us over forty carry around, badges worn within and without, badges we tear at when our lives go wrong.

  I sighed. Despite our disputatious history there was something pitiable in Margaret’s candor. Her inner demons seemed no more blameworthy, nor more governable, than my own. So, since she was fishing for a compliment, I gave her one.

  “You’re still an attractive woman, Maggie,” I exaggerated easily.

  Her smile was almost real. “Maggie. You’re the only one in the world who calls me that. I must admit I like it.”

  Somewhere between us, something softened. As it did, Margaret looked out the window, at the towers of light rising out of the financial district, at the fortress of wealth they defined, at the implication that those of us outside that electric forest were doomed to insignificance.

  After what looked like regretful reverie, Margaret looked back to whatever she saw as our relationship, her aspect firm and businesslike. “Bryce is certain the job he wants you to do for him will be his salvation. And Periwinkle’s. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m standing in the way of that. I love him, too, after all,” she added, as though I’d expressed some doubt.

  While I stayed silent, she framed a qualification. “But you should also know that Bryce’s dream is nonsense. If you don’t want to see him hurt, you should not encourage him to indulge his fantasies. And if you truly care about him, you’ll keep me apprised of what you’re up to. Otherwise, you may end up doing more harm than good.”

  With her final caution, Margaret left the room. A moment later the door opened once again. Bryce Chatterton walked to the chair his wife had vacated and sank to a comfortable slant, hands locked behind the sandy hair that crossed his head in tangled wisps, loafers and argyles perched like tropical birds on the corner of his desk. According to his wife, this was Periwinkle’s final hour but Bryce looked less like the captain of a sinking ship than an eager mariner who’d just sighted a new world.

  “Another legend launched,” he said. “I feel like Max Perkins must have felt the day he brought out Thomas Wolfe.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I’m kidding,” he said when he saw my look, which let me get comfortable as well—I’m uneasy with people who take themselves too seriously, which means I’m uneasy a lot these days. I sank to the chair across from him, crossed my legs, and took the measure
of my old friend, to see what time and his wife had done to him.

  As they had been a dozen years before, Bryce’s clothes were woolly and professorial, but now they were designed by Ralph Lauren, not assembled from a thrift shop. His body was still rotund and soft, less dissipated than untended, more bearish than porcine. Because his face was amply fleshed, it was sufficiently unmanageable to betray every nuance of his emotions, which had previously been extravagant but now seemed languid and serene. From my inventory, I was prepared to conclude that, more than most people I knew, Bryce Chatterton had thrived during the decade just past. But just as I was awarding him this unspoken accolade, his expression sagged toward melancholy.

  As though I’d just admired it, he gestured angrily at the clutter. “It’s not as impressive as it looks. By the time a manuscript winds up here, it’s already been rejected by every publisher worthy of the name.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, just to be saying something.

  “Hell, Marsh, I don’t publish books, I publish authors. If a manuscript is even remotely promising, I call the writer in to lunch. If I like him—or, more precisely, if I want him to like me—I publish. If not, I don’t. Behind the façade, essentially I’m a welfare program. I lavish Margaret’s money on souls who have less claim to her bounty than the homeless wretches who camp in Golden Gate Park or the Civic Center Plaza.” Bryce groaned heavily in an effort to cast off his sudden depression. “It was a nice party, anyway; Matilda was thrilled. Did you meet anyone interesting?”

  I shrugged. “Colt Harrison.”

  Bryce shook his head. “The eminent critic for the Chronicle.” The encomium was insincere. “I’m surprised he showed—usually Colt only writes up a collection after it’s been reviewed in American Poetry, so he’ll know what he thinks about it.” Bryce worked with the thought, then softened. “Poor Colt. He has his place; the problem is, it’s on a soap box, not on the book page. He has no concept of the difference between good verse and bad and lacks the vocabulary to articulate it if he did. All you need to do to get a favorable mention from Colt is parrot his politics—Colt doesn’t want to read about the world that is, he wants to read about the world that he thinks ought to be. Unfortunately, his politics are somewhere in the shadow of George Will’s. It’s the shame of my profession that such politics have become de rigueur.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If literature couldn’t put a stop to a nincompoop like Reagan, or expose the cruelty and corruption of the Visigoths who worshipped him, then what the hell can it do?”

  “I think that’s a job for journalism, not literature.”

  “Both, Marsh, both. And both have failed us miserably.”

  Bryce pondered his adjudication for another moment, then reached into his desk, pulled out a cigar, and lit it, as if shrouding himself in toxic gases would shield him from the failings he had just described. When he offered me one, I shook my head.

  “What were you talking with Margaret about?” he asked once his stogie was merrily befouling the room.

  “Literature, of course. She asked if I’d read the new Danielle Steel; I asked if she’d seen the latest Tom Clancy.”

  Bryce ignored the burlesque. “She was complaining about money, I’ll bet,” he speculated glumly.

  “Maybe a tad.”

  He closed his eyes. “She’s been saying she’s going to close down Periwinkle. It would serve me right, of course—I’ve treated her more like an underwriter than a spouse for years. Sometimes I think she suspects I’m seeing another woman, even though the only women in my life are those up there.”

  His finger anointed the books on the shelves that surrounded him, lingering long enough to suggest the relationship was indeed lascivious. As if buoyed by the possibility, his eyes flipped open and his expression brightened. “But if you come through for me, Marsh old buddy, Margaret’s funk won’t matter.”

  “Which brings us to why I’m still tasting the Sunday Punch.”

  Bryce nodded. “I wanted you to come to the party so I could give you a feel for why I care about all this so much. Gridlock may be silly—hell, all my books may be silly—but the impulse behind them isn’t silly. The desire to express yourself in the written word, to arrange the language in ways it’s never been deployed, to perpetuate what you’ve learned about life—that’s the best use of our brain there is.”

  “Literature’s fallen out of favor, hasn’t it? People seem more interested in facts these days.”

  Bryce wrinkled his nose. “What they want is consolation and expiation, and that’s all most of the so-called fact books give them. People don’t avoid fiction—good fiction—because it’s false, they avoid it because it’s all too true. A great novel is a mirror that shows us who we are; unfortunately, these days that’s not something many people want to know.”

  Bryce’s face reddened with ardor. “The truly great lives are fictional lives, Marsh: Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Silas Marner, Ahab—even Jesus. The Bible is the best-selling novel of all time, after all. The little monk in Lyon who chose which gospels to include in the New Testament was the world’s first great editor.”

  “That burst of blasphemy could get you tarred and feathered in certain states of the union.”

  “You know what I mean, Marsh. These are the lives that illuminate; these are the lives that suggest who we should aspire to be; these are the truest stories.” Bryce paused, then cooled to a simmer. “It’s stunning how many people want to write, you know. After TV has stolen the time we used to devote to reading, and movies have made us bored by anything but group sex and spatter murders, and politicians have so emasculated the language its glories have become mundane, people still want to write novels and stories and poems. How many unsolicited manuscripts do you think I get over the transom each year?”

  I shrugged. “A hundred?”

  “Five times that. And a big house like Random gets maybe five thousand. None of which they’ll publish. Which leaves a lot of left-overs for people like me.” Bryce stopped bending a paper clip into the shape of a triangle and looked at me earnestly. “I really don’t want to lose Periwinkle, Marsh. You’ve got to help me keep it.”

  “I’d like to,” I said honestly. “Maybe it’s time for you to tell me how.”

  Bryce nodded, then reached into his jacket pocket, took out a key, and unlocked the bottom left drawer of his desk. When he straightened he was cradling a stack of paper in his hands, a ream of it at least, gazing on it as fondly as if it were his newborn offspring. “This is the Holy Grail for a man like me, Marsh. At least I hope it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “A novel. A good one, maybe even a great one.”

  Behind his glasses, Bryce’s eyes slipped away to the vision of a life of fame and fortune and, since it was Bryce, of the satisfactions that come with the belief that one has added to the small store of truth in the world.

  “I still don’t understand,” I said finally. “What is it you want me to do with it?”

  The question tugged him back to the world of schemes and plots, the world of debts and obligations—the world in which I made my living. “I want you to read it.”

  I laughed. “I have to tell you there aren’t a lot of people who buy books based on what I have to say about them. In fact, every time I lend a book I’ve liked to someone, they invariably hate it. And forget to give it back.”

  Bryce waved me off. “There are lots of small presses like mine in the Bay Area, Marsh. Dozens. Most of us run on a shoestring, and most of us don’t survive more than a few years—the mortality rate for small publishing houses is worse than it is for health clubs. We’re competitive with and jealous of each other, but we have one thing in common—we want to make a splash, to make both a reputation and a profit by publishing more and more books by better and better authors. We not only want our lists reviewed in The New Yorker and The New York Times, we want to discover the next John Irving and Amy Tan.”

  I enjoyed his extravagance.
“Do these dreams ever come true?”

  Bryce’s eyes glowed like the neon blossoms in the sign outside. “Amazingly enough, occasionally they do. The most recent example is right over in Berkeley. For years the North Point Press was a lot like Periwinkle, publishing mostly stuff by friends and scholars. Then wham. They do Evan Connell’s book on General Custer and the memoirs of a hitherto unknown adventuress named Beryl Markham, and all of a sudden they’re big-time. Hundreds of thousands of copies sold. Expensive copies—hardcover and trade paper copies.”

  Bryce paused for breath, then regarded the loaf of papers in his hand with something close to awe. “The reason I asked you to stop by tonight is, I’m convinced this could make it possible for Periwinkle to do the same.” He fondled the manuscript another moment, then thrust it toward me like an alm.

  I hesitated, because Bryce’s fervor had made me uncertain I was worthy of its custody, because his wife’s caution had made me leery. But when Bryce didn’t withdraw the offer, I took the pile of paper from his hands and put it in my lap. Bound with twine and rubber bands, it was weighty and oddly soft.

  I read the title—Homage to Hammurabi—then looked at Bryce. “I still don’t understand what you want me to do with it.”

  “That’s easy.” Bryce’s smile was tinged with a desperation I had seen most recently in the eyes of his wife. “First, I want you to read it. And then I want you to find out who wrote the goddamned thing.”

  They are called the children of privilege—by this apparently is meant that they bear the burdensome privilege of wealth. They came to me possessing the grossest opulence along with perspectives more limited than an urchin’s. Never nudged beyond the narrow focus of their time and class, most were satisfied to remain as secure and stunted as the day they arrived at St. Stephen’s. But for the few who were eager and able to sample the fullness of the world in which they lived, particularly the inner world of people far different from themselves, it was my pleasure—indeed, it was the highest achievement of my life—to open doors.