“Yeah?” Redmon said, unimpressed. “He’s overrated. Hasn’t stood the test of time. Not like Roth.”
“I just picked up A Month of Sundays. I thought the writing was pretty great,” James said. “In any case, it was an event, that book. When it came out in 1975. A book coming out was an event. Now it’s just like…”
“Britney Spears showing her vagina?” Redmon said.
James cringed as Jerry Bockman came in. Jerry wasn’t wearing a suit, James noted; suits were for bankers only these days. Instead, Jerry wore khakis and a short-sleeved T-shirt. With a vest. And not just any old vest. A fishing vest. Jesus, James thought.
“Can’t stay long,” Jerry announced, shaking James’s hand. “There’s a thing going on in L.A.”
“Right. That thing,” Redmon said. “What’s going on with that?”
“The usual,” Jerry said. “Corky Pollack is an asshole. But he’s my best friend. So what am I supposed to say?”
“Last man standing. That’s what I always aim to be,” Redmon said.
“The last man standing on his yacht. Except now it’s got to be a mega-yacht. You ever seen one of those things?” Jerry asked James.
“No,” James said primly.
“You tell James what I thought about his book?” Jerry asked Redmon.
“Not yet. I thought I’d let you do the honors. You’re the boss.”
“I’m the boss. Hear that, James? This genius says I’m the boss.”
James nodded. He was terrified.
“Well, to put it mildly, I loved your book,” Jerry said. “It’s great commercial fiction. The kind of thing every businessman is going to want to read on a plane. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. There’s already interest in Hollywood from a couple of my buddies. They’ll definitely pay seven figures. So we’re going to push the production. That’s right, isn’t it?” Jerry said, looking to Redmon for affirmation. “We’re going to push the hell out of this thing and get it out there for spring. We were thinking next fall, but this book is too good. I say let’s get it out there immediately and get you started on another book. I’ve got a great idea for you. Hedge-fund managers. What do you think?”
“Hedge-fund managers,” James said. He could barely get the words out.
“It’s a hot topic. Perfect for you,” Jerry said. “I read your book and said to Redmon, ‘We’ve got a gold mine here. A real commercial male writer. Like Crichton. Or Dan Brown.’ And once you’ve got a market, you’ve got to keep giving them the product.”
Jerry stood up. “Got to go,” he said. “Got to deal with that thing.” He turned to James and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you. We’ll talk soon.”
James and Redmon watched Jerry go, watched him walk out of the restaurant and get into a waiting SUV. “I told you you were going to want a drink,” Redmon said.
“Yup,” James said.
“So this is great news. For us,” Redmon said. “We could make some real money here.”
“Sounds like it,” James said. He motioned to the waiter and ordered a Scotch and water, which was the only drink he could think of at the moment. He suddenly felt numb.
“You don’t look so happy, man. Maybe you should try Prozac,” Redmon said. “On the other hand, if this book takes off the way I think it will, you won’t need it.”
“Sure,” James said. He got through the rest of the lunch on automatic pilot. Then he walked home to his apartment in One Fifth, didn’t say hello to the doorman, didn’t collect the mail. Didn’t do anything except go into his little office in his weird apartment and sit in his little chair and stare out the little window in front of his little desk. The same window a hundred butlers and maids had probably stared out of years before, contemplating their fate.
Ugh. The irony, he thought. The last thirty years of his life had been made tolerable by one overriding idea. One secret, powerful idea that was, James had believed, more powerful even than Redmon Richardly’s friggin’ sperm. And that was this: James was an artist. He was, in truth, a great novelist, one of the giants, who had only to be discovered. All these years he had been thinking of himself as Tolstoy. Or Thomas Mann. Or even Flaubert.
And now, in the next six or eight or ten months, the truth would be revealed. He wasn’t Tolstoy but just plain old James Gooch. Commercial writer. Destined to be of the moment and not to stand the test of time. And the worst thing about it was that he’d never be able to pretend to be Tolstoy again.
Meanwhile, on a lower floor in Mindy’s grand office building, Lola Fabrikant sat on the edge of a love seat done up in the same unattractive nubby brown fabric as the couch in Mindy’s office. She swung one sandaled foot as she flipped through a bridal magazine, studiously ignoring two other young women who were waiting to be interviewed, and to whom Lola judged herself vastly superior. All three young women had long hair worn parted down the middle, with strands that appeared to have been forcibly straightened, although the color of the women’s hair varied. Lola’s was nearly black and shiny, while the other two girls were what Lola called “cheap blondes”; one even sported a half inch of dark roots. This would, Lola decided, briskly turning the pages of the magazine, make the girl ineligible for employment—not that there was an actual job available. In the two months since her graduation from Old Vic University in Virginia, where she’d gotten a degree in fashion marketing, Lola and her mother, Beetelle Fabrikant, had scoured the Internet, sent e-mails, and even made phone calls to prospective employers with no luck. In truth, Beetelle had done most of the actual scouring, with Lola advising, but even Beetelle’s efforts weren’t easily rewarded. It was a particularly difficult time to find a job in fashion in New York City, with most of the positions taken by interns who spent their summer vacations angling for these jobs. Lola, h
owever, didn’t like to work and had chosen instead to spend her summers sitting by her parents’ pool, or the pools of her parents’ friends, where she and a gaggle of girlfriends would gossip, text, and talk about their fantasy weddings. On inclement days, there was always Facebook or TiVo or the construction of elaborate playlists on her iPod, but mostly there were trips to the mall and endless shopping sprees paid for by a credit card provided by her father, who, when he occasionally complained, was silenced by her mother.
But as her mother pointed out, adolescence couldn’t go on forever, and as Lola wasn’t engaged, finding the boys in her hometown and at the university nowhere near good enough—an assessment with which her mother agreed—it was decided Lola should try her luck in New York. Here, she would not only find interesting employment but meet a much more suitable class of male. Indeed, Beetelle had met her husband, Cem, in New York City and had been happily married for twenty-three years.
Lola had watched every single episode of Sex and the City at least “a hundred times,” and adored the idea of moving to the city and finding her own Mr. Big. If Mr. Big weren’t available, she would happily take fame, ideally becoming the star of her own reality show. Either option was acceptable, the result, she figured, being much the same: a life of pleasurable leisure in which she might indulge in all the usual pamperings and shopping trips and vacations with girlfriends—the only real difference from her current life being the possible addition of a husband and child. But her mother insisted she at least make an effort to work, claiming it would be good for her. So far, her mother had been wrong; the experience was not good at all, merely irritating and annoying. It reminded her of being forced to visit her father’s relatives, who were not as well off as her own family, and who were, as Lola commented to her mother, “frighteningly average.”