End of Story Page 5

  “You telling me the dictionary tripped him?” said Moffitt.

  El-Hassam shook his head. “Didn’t see it happen, myself. The weight must have surprised him, coming off the shelf.”

  Morales was groaning on the floor.

  “The weight of a book?” said Moffitt. “Morales? He bench-presses four hundred pounds.”

  Perkins looked up from his work. “Angle make a big difference. Should be on a lower shelf.”

  “Heavy book like that,” said El-Hassam.

  Morales rose, his face white, his right arm hanging out to the side a little. His left hand supported the elbow; gently, as though it were a baby’s arm, easily damaged.

  “What’s with your arm?” Moffitt said.

  “Twisted in the fall,” said El-Hassam.

  “Wasn’t asking you,” said Moffitt. “Did you twist it in the fall, Morales?”

  Morales stood still for what seemed like a long time; and not quite still, but trembling slightly. Then he nodded.

  Moffitt’s gaze went from Morales around the room to all of them, then back to Morales.

  “What were you looking up?” he said.

  Morales said nothing. His skin glistened with sweat, the tattoos now colorless, gleaming like fish scales. His arm was out of the shoulder socket; Ivy could see the ball joint, pressing the fabric of his tan sleeve.

  Harrow was writing. Eyes on his work, he said, “Internal combustion.”

  “He was looking up internal combustion?” said Moffitt.

  Harrow nodded. “So he could write more about that Camaro.”

  “Fuck the Camaro,” said Moffitt. He turned to Ivy. “What did you see?”

  Somewhere in the prison a man started laughing, a shrill laugh that went on and on.

  “It all happened so fast,” Ivy said. “I really couldn’t say.” Her voice wavered at the end, a little unsteady.

  “No problem,” said Moffitt. “This shit goes down all the time.”

  Six

  Taneesha and another guard appeared, took Morales to the infirmary. By then the hour was just about up, no chance to read aloud. Ivy went over the car-wreck pieces when she got home.

  Perkins had written:

  The way to Dusty Death

  And All our yesterdays Have lighted Fools

  To the Last syllable of recorded Time

  Creeps in this Petty Pace from day to day

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and Tomorrow

  —exactly reversing the order of the lines he’d memorized before. Was he making some point about car wrecks? Ivy didn’t know. Was creeps a verb or a noun in this version? She didn’t know that either.

  El-Hassam, corrected for spelling—except for the title, which Ivy liked the way it was—had written:

  Car Rex

  A car waits in the alley

  Black car with wipers whap whap and lights

  Off

  Wait patient black car

  All the time in the world

  Wait wait rev rev day and year go by

  So patient

  Black car rev and rev

  Motor howl

  Wait for the white car to come in sight.

  And Harrow:

  There were two funny parts about the ice storm that killed my daughter. The first was how much she loved all kinds of weather. The second was that I always had a feeling she’d die young. A smart guy might have added up those two funny parts and figured some way to keep her safe. But that’s not me. Just ask around.

  Ever seen an ice storm? It’s like the whole world got preserved under glass, and not any old glass but a special glass blown out of diamonds. Of course it turns out to be one of those beautiful shams. Some people might say that’s life—a beautiful sham—but tell me: Where’s the beauty part? But back to the ice storm, a sham because the sparkle melts away and it ends up being deadly instead of beautiful. As you shall see.

  Except for what ended up happening, this ice storm was typical in every way. Probably boring to describe, so I’ll skip it and pick up where I’m driving home. This was one of those places I didn’t like living, down in a hollow at the bottom of Ransom Road. I liked being up high. That was back then—now I couldn’t care less. Joke on me, you say. But it’s on you.

  Ransom Road was steep and ended in a long curve down at the bottom. My daughter used to watch from the front window, all set to run out when I came home. She had these tight blond curls that bounced in the sunlight.

  One other boring thing, but this I can’t leave out if the story’s going to make any sense, was the state of my tires at the time. Retreads and old ones at that, practically smooth. They had that glazed look, like worn-out driveshaft belts. Glass on glass, if you see where I’m going. Never would have passed the inspection if I hadn’t

  Blank page after that. Out of time, or had Harrow stopped for some other reason? One more unknown.

  Ivy read Harrow’s piece again, and then once more. It got better and better. So many good things: alive on the page, for one thing, pictures you could see without effort, details that stuck in your mind; plus ideas popping up all over the place—and ideas popping up all over the place was right at the top of Professor Smallian’s list of what makes the very best writing.

  And what else? A kind of confidence, a confidence, Ivy realized at that moment, that was missing in her own writing. She thought again of Professor Smallian’s little aperçu about good and bad: You don’t have to be a good person to be a good writer—history shows it’s better if you’re not—but you have to understand your badness. Ivy had read Professor Smallian’s three novels, more than once. He wrote with confidence, too, lots of it. But—and now she was admitting it to herself for the first time—there were passages, and not a few, where she’d had to push herself to keep going, like reading uphill. There was nothing uphill about Harrow’s writing. A short piece, yes, and not even finished, but: airborne.

  “Plasma?” said Bruce Verlaine.

  “Third generation,” said the TV salesman, unaware that Bruce understood plasma in the context of blood only, also despised television in general and the idea of TV watching in Verlaine’s in particular. The TV guy opened a glossy brochure with lots of pullout spreads and laid it across the bar. “This sixty-four-inch babe would look pretty stunning right up there.”

  “Where my Dalí is?” said Bruce.

  “Dolly?” said the TV guy. He peered at the painting that hung behind the bar, a genuine Salvador Dalí Bruce had accepted years ago to close out a legendary tab. Lots to see in the painting—a bowl of fruit with a snake on top, metallic sunflowers, even one of those bent clocks—but no dolls or anything close. Bruce’s left eyelid twitched, an unequivocal danger signal. Ivy moved to the other end of the bar.

  A slow afternoon. That gave her time to flip open her laptop, do something that was only going to hurt. And what was the point? “Caveman,” version two, the one that started with Vladek oiling his body and ended with the surgeon saying—oh, irony!—it wouldn’t hurt a bit, was already at The New Yorker; unread, no doubt, but beyond recall. But maybe it really wouldn’t hurt, maybe the story would take off from the first sentence, airborne after all.

  Ivy, behind the bar at Verlaine’s, a low autumn sun filling the place with silvery light, reread “Caveman.” Airborne? Not from the first sentence or any other. Dead on the page, pictures it took effort to see, details that squirmed from your mind, refused to be nailed down. As for ideas: maybe a few, but not bubbling up all over the place. The whole thing was too laborious for that.

  Was Harrow—this…prisoner—the better writer, despite all her writing, the MFA, the workshop scholarship? How could that be possible?

  What did she know about him? Nothing. Maybe he’d stolen his little story—just a fragment, really—memorizing like Perkins a passage he’d seen somewhere. Would Dannemora inmates draw the line at plagiarism?

  Ivy stopped herself. What a nasty, backbiting line of thought, not her at all, please God. And she had no doubt the wo
rk was Harrow’s, knew it instinctively. Her best course was to—

  “Something on your mind, Ivy?” Bruce said.

  She turned, saw him watching from the other end of the bar. “No,” she said, closing the laptop, reaching for a dirty glass.

  Bruce held up his hand. “Lay off the busywork,” he said. “No one in here anyway, God damn them.” He glanced out the window, winced slightly, popped a few aspirin and washed them down with club soda right from the gun. “How much can you make off a novel, anyway?” he said.

  “I’m not sure,” Ivy said. “A lot, if it’s a bestseller.”

  “How much is a lot?”

  “Hundreds of thousands, maybe?”

  “What’s your percentage?”

  “Mine?”

  “The writer’s,” said Bruce. “On each copy sold.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fifty percent? Forty? Twenty?”

  “Probably toward the low end,” Ivy said. “Anyway, I’m concentrating on short stories right now.”

  “What do they pay?”

  “It depends on the magazine.”

  “For example?”

  She had no examples.

  “Your business plan needs work,” Bruce said.

  He looked out the window again. “Everybody picked this afternoon to join AA?” he said. “People have to drink, don’t they? Stands to reason.”

  “Is that your business plan?” Ivy said.

  Bruce looked annoyed. “What would most people rather do?” he said. “Read a book or get blotto?”

  “I want a raise,” Ivy said.

  Bruce’s face went through a number of changes. “Okay.”

  It got busy a little later, proving the rightness of Bruce’s plan. Danny Weinberg came in after work. Ivy was a little surprised to see him, given the way their last conversation had gone. He’d brought someone with him, an unshaven guy with tiny glasses and a deathly complexion.

  “Old friend from college,” Danny said. “Whit, Ivy. Ivy, Whit.”

  “Hi,” said Ivy. “What can I get you?”

  “Single malt,” said Whit. “What have you got?”

  Ivy handed him the list; a long one—Bruce was serious about single malts.

  Whit scanned it quickly, a very fast reader. “I don’t see the Glenmorangie eighteen-year-old,” he said.

  Bruce was working the other end of the bar, but the vibes from his back going up carried a long way. “Sorry,” Ivy said.

  “A Bud, then,” said Whit.

  “Same,” said Danny. “On my tab.” Ivy served them. “Whit works at The New Yorker,” Danny said.

  “Oh?” said Ivy.

  “Denial would be pointless,” said Whit.

  Had she ever disliked anyone so quickly? “What do you do there?” Ivy said, thinking, Sells ads, answers the phone, makes cold calls.

  “Edit fiction,” said Whit.

  “Oh,” said Ivy.

  “Whit was editor of the Crimson,” Danny said. “He’s got a book coming out from—who is it again?”

  “Knopf,” said Whit.

  “That’s how you pronounce it?” said Danny.

  “A novel?” said Ivy.

  “I wish I had more hope for the novel,” said Whit. “This is more of a refracted memoir.”

  Ivy and Danny were the same age; Whit had been at Harvard with Danny. So: a little young for memoir writing, no?

  “Of?” she said.

  Whit gave her a kindly smile. “Have to read the book,” he said.

  I’ll hang myself first, Ivy thought. She said: “Looking forward to it.”

  “I was telling Whit you’re a writer too,” Danny said.

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “And that you’d submitted a thing or two to The New Yorker in the past,” Danny added.

  “That’s not really anything I’d—”

  “Who’s your agent?” said Whit.

  “No agent,” Ivy said. “I haven’t published anything.”

  “Yet,” said Danny.

  One little word, but the most natural-sounding thing he’d said to her, and the nicest. Maybe it gave her the courage to say what came next: “But I’ve got something there right now.”

  “There?” said Whit.

  “At your office.”

  “And I suppose you’ve been waiting to hear for geologic eons,” said Whit.

  “I don’t expect anything soon,” Ivy said. “I understand it takes a long—”

  “What’s it about?” said Whit.

  “The story?” said Ivy.

  “Yeah,” said Whit.

  “Tell him the story,” said Danny.

  Danny sounded a little like a Jewish grandmother impatient with an insufficiently self-promoting grandchild. And he was right: this was a wonderful chance, out of the blue. Then she had another optimistic thought: What if Whit was the editor who’d read the “Live Entertainment” story and scrawled that encouraging message at the bottom of the rejection form?

  “Have you ever been to Utah?” she said.

  “No,” said Whit. “Is that where it takes place?”

  “No,” said Ivy.

  “Then why—”

  Off to a bad start. Should she explain that Utah part is nice thing? Instead she plunged off in another direction, talking too fast, brakes temporarily out of service.

  “It takes place here—New York. ‘Caveman’—that’s the title. About an immigrant who comes with high hopes and nothing goes right—worse and worse, in fact—but he ends up hoping even higher.”

  “Hey!” said Danny. “That sounds great.” He turned to Whit.

  Whit took a sip of beer. “Horatio Alger in reverse,” he said. “Nathanael West territory, with the immigrant angle grafted on.”

  “Well,” said Ivy, “I wouldn’t…” But he was right, completely. Or almost completely. “I left out that he turns into a Neanderthal man.”

  “Interesting idea,” Whit said.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Got a copy?”

  “I already sent it to—”

  “Another copy,” said Whit.

  “That you could give him personally,” said Danny, enunciating with extra care, as though to an idiot. “Now, for example.”

  “I—I have my laptop right here,” Ivy said. “Maybe I could use the office printer.”

  “I’ll hook it up,” said Bruce, suddenly appearing behind her.

  She went into the back office with Bruce. He connected her laptop to the printer. She couldn’t have done it alone, the way her hands were shaking.

  “Prick just saved his life,” said Bruce, handing her the pages.

  “What do you mean?”

  “None of my single malts good enough for him,” Bruce said. “Orders Bud. That’s how a guy ends up in an alley.”

  She went back into the bar, gave Whit the story. She expected him to fold it, put it in his pocket, something like that. But instead, without a word, he glanced at the first sentence—Vladek oiled his body—and started reading.

  He was reading it? Right there in front of her? All those writers with stories submitted, past and present, waiting in their individual degrees of agony for an answer, never sure that a real human being would read their stuff: and here was this real human being reading hers practically on demand; as though Shakespeare had popped in with a grin on his face and fresh pages.

  Had Ivy ever watched anyone as closely as she watched Whit now, trying to peer beyond the tiny lenses of his tiny glasses, through his eyes, kind of tiny, too, and into the part of his brain where judgments got made? It hit her that in Whit’s case that might be just about the whole organ. But one thing was sure: he was absorbed. Wasn’t he? Maybe “Caveman” was good after all, as good as she’d intended.

  Whit didn’t look up until he came to the bottom of page one; not a long time, but she’d already seen he was a fast reader. He met her gaze.

  “Can’t wait to see how it plays out,” he said, and now folded “Caveman�
�� in two and stuck it in an inside jacket pocket. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

  That had to be good, right? “Oh, thanks,” said Ivy. “No rush.” The most ridiculous thing she’d said in years.

  Whit rose. Danny shot her a private thumbs-up as they went out the door. Of course: nothing out of the blue about this at all. How slow she was sometimes.

  Ivy had a lot of trouble falling asleep that night. She just couldn’t stop going over things, trying out various redos, reexamining every word that Whit had spoken, every look that had crossed his pasty face. It was only very late, exhausted at last, that her mind wandered over to Harrow, and the girl with the bouncing curls waiting at the bottom of the hill in the ice storm.

  Seven

  Next day: no call from Whit. Same the day after, and the day after that. Also no call from Danny. What did that mean? Good or bad? Ivy went back and forth on that question for a while—had to be bad. Although it might be good if, say, Whit had told Danny he loved the story but wanted to keep it a secret until he’d contacted Brad Pitt about playing Vladek. She finally gave in to weakness and phoned Danny at his office.

  “Mr. Weinberg is in Hong Kong. I can put you in his voice mail.”

  Whit had said “soon.” What did soon mean, exactly? She even looked it up.

  And still nothing on Tuesday morning. Ivy gathered the Car Wreck pieces—all typed up and put in folders—and drove north, into the Adirondacks. Nothing good on the radio: she played a game she sometimes played with herself, a game that involved spotting little details here and there and finding some original way of describing them. Take how the leaves had lost their full flush of color, as though some fever had passed; and how fog hung low in the branches, like a death shroud: Was there a fresh, original way of describing that, making it add up to something new? Ivy tried and tried, tried so hard, without success, that she took a wrong turn off 22 and wound up on a dirt road that dead-ended by a lake.

  A few cabins stood by the shore. A sign on the door of the first one read: WILDERNESS LAKE CABINS: RENTALS—DAY, WEEK, LONGER. INQUIRE INSIDE.

  Ivy pulled up next to a minivan, walked toward that first cabin. An old pickup, painted a nonfactory shade of purple, was parked beside it; from round back came thwacking sounds. Ivy followed them. Behind the cabin she found a lean gray-haired woman in a red-and-black-checked shirt chopping wood. The woman saw her, paused with the ax held high.