‘You want to come in, Mom?’ He wasn’t sure he wanted her to join him, but he was afraid to walk into the lobby alone. He felt his heart hammering. Get a grip, it’s only a hotel for Christ’s sake.
When Rebecca shook her head, he felt immensely relieved. The prospect of trying to make small talk with this stranger, his mother, was too daunting. He wanted her to go, and go quickly, but inwardly berated himself for his churlishness.
‘Naw, I’ve got a long drive back. Anyway, Jay, I think you’ve got some adjusting to do. Pick up some of the pieces. You got your release, your freedom. I never thought I’d see the day. It’s going to take some time to feel right on you, and you don’t want yer old ma getting in the way.’
Jay nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but some time I’d like to talk; just you and I.’ He held out his hand.
She took it, tentatively at first, then grasped it, and held on very tight as if she was drowning. ‘I know, son, I want to talk, too; there’s a lot to say, twenty-five years of catching up to be done. But not right now. You know me, I never was much good at talking.’ She no longer met his eyes and with a faraway expression on her face, she looked into the middle distance. ‘I’m sick, Jay, been sick for a good while now. I didn’t write you, no need, you got troubles of yer own.’ Still gripping him tight, she blinked rapidly.
He looked at the back of her hand, a patchwork of white skin, knotted veins, and dark brown liver spots. ‘Sick with what?’
‘Colon trouble, last year they gave me a handy little purse to shit into. But lately it’s not been working so well, and they want to operate again. So who knows, I might get a classy designer version this time round.’
Her stab at humour failed to mask the dread resignation he detected in her small voice. She was dying; of that he was certain. He didn’t want her to die, but he knew he wouldn’t miss her. But then who would he miss? He thought about the few friends he’d made inside, and that was it. Concerned, but not devastated, Jay reproached himself and said, ‘I’ll make some enquiries, Mom, find the best surgeon, and we’ll get you fixed up with an appointment.’
‘You’ll do no such thing. I don’t want any fancy docs. I’m OK with the one I’ve got. Charles Cornwell is a good man, he’s doing fine by me. Listen, son, I ain’t getting any younger and we’ve all got to go some time, it’s only a matter of how.’ Jay opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when you come home.’
Jay thought about home; where was home? The ramshackle wooden house in Sand Springs, Montana that poverty had hijacked long before he’d left? It was where he was born, where he’d started his journey, and he had no intention of ending it there. His mother had refused to leave, even after he’d had his first royalty cheque, and had offered to buy her a new apartment near her sister in a better neighbourhood.
‘I’ve got a few things to sort out here,’ he said, returning to the present. ‘As soon as I’ve done that, in a couple of weeks, I’ll come home, I promise.’
They both knew he was lying.
‘Well I ain’t goin’ nowhere so when you’re good and ready, son …’ She paused. ‘Then we’ll talk.’
For a few minutes neither moved. They held hands, like lovers reluctant to part, saying nothing, lost in thought. Had they compared those thoughts, they would have been surprised at how similar they were. Both were of deep regret.
‘This is great stuff, Jay!’
Ed Hooper was tapping a deep pile of foolscap on top of his battered desk. It was the manuscript of Jay’s latest novel. With the flat of his other hand the agent stroked the mahogany surface, thinking about the day he’d bought the desk. Spring 1968. His buddy, Abe Lesser, had been selling second-hand furniture at the time and Ed recalled how he’d haggled with Abe, who’d insisted the desk was early nineteenth century. Ed had beat him down to a hundred and twenty dollars; more than he could afford at the time. The antique was intended for a big space, and it had incongruously filled his shoebox office in SoHo. He’d named it ‘Samson’, after Bill Samson his first client, and in 1976 Samson had moved uptown with him to his new office on 76th and York. The grander premises suited Big Samson admirably; solid and important, the desk dominated the twenty-foot-square room. Samson had hosted six secretaries’ butts; been party to ten mega deals, hundreds of major deals, and thousands of minor ones. One crazy night after a party, Ed had even had a blow job under the desk; and he’d fucked his first wife over it. Samson could tell a tale or two. It was part of him, the one piece of furniture he’d ever felt really attached to, the one constant in his life. Samson looked good when cluttered; two cigar boxes, one for the legal cheroots the other for black market Cubans, helped the effect. As did a monogrammed ashtray from Ed’s mother, and the eclectic mix of junk he’d collected or been given over the years, including an engraved golf ball on a silver plinth from his teenage son, Josh. And a framed photograph of himself, and Josh at fifteen, on a fishing trip in Key West. Ed liked to put his feet on Samson, happy in the knowledge that he wouldn’t receive a scathing comment from his ex-wife Carole, who had repeatedly asked why he insisted on keeping such a beat-up old relic. Thank God he’d resisted her influence; he liked his office exactly as it was. The floor was carpeted in moss green; the walls were painted white and left unadorned; there was a free-standing rosewood veneered bookcase full of titles he’d handled, and of twentieth-century classics. The room also boasted a couple of leather chairs picked up wholesale twelve years before, and a Tudor oak chest acquired by Carole in a furniture sale. She’d kicked up a stink when he’d used it as a coffee table. But then Carole, after six months of marriage, had kicked up about mostly everything he did. Ed narrowed his eyes, registering the ironic fact that next week he’d be signing divorce papers on the very same spot where he’d first had Carole six years ago almost to the day. Bitch. Double-crossing, money-grabbing, beautiful, devious bitch.
Turning his attention back to the manuscript, he stroked the paper lovingly, a smile creasing his battered face. A ‘lived-in’ face, he liked to think, as he tried to convince himself every morning that what he saw in the bathroom mirror was not a short, pig-ugly, fat Yid, who’d inherited his maternal grandmother’s leathery pockmarked skin and deep-set eyes. His father, God rest his soul, had given him very little except a long hooked nose and a rubbery bottom lip. The pair of them had a lot to answer for. Ed hated being ugly. All his life he’d surrounded himself with beauty; had idolized beautiful women. This was a weakness for which he’d duly suffered, yet he kept repeating the pattern. His father always said that everybody makes mistakes; it’s only fools who don’t learn by them. If that was true then Ed had to accept that he was a prize turkey. He was addicted to beauty, basking in its reflection, hoping some of it would rub off. Just like those dumb idiots who married intellectuals on the same principle. Only it never quite worked out that way. His best friend Joe, when they were teenage kids, hanging out and trying to get laid, had said that with a face like his the only way to get beautiful women was to become successful. Make money, Ed, lots of it. Women love rich, powerful, ugly men. Look at Henry Kissinger, he’s had more pussy than he’s known what to do with.
Ed smiled. It softened his features and for a split second he looked like an old teddy bear; the kind kids cherish for life. Then he was talking again, doing what he did best: negotiating; bullshitting; doing the deal; making a buck, making a million bucks.
‘When I say great, I mean fucking brilliant, Jay! Like, the best. You’re a great writer, man; you know that? You’re a fucking born-again Hemingway. You listening to me, Jay?’
There was no reply. Ed shrugged, lit a cigar, and mentally digressed back to the time he’d read Jay’s first manuscript, Killing Time. A man calling himself Ivanov had delivered the three hundred and
