“Hi, just wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday. Well, I wanted to talk for a bit to, take the temperature, you know. It’s been three weeks. Anyway, call me if you want, I’d like to talk. I love you, bye.”
He didn’t quite curse himself for making the call, and he wasn’t quite angry. He was dismayed at his weakness, though. He’d done so well for three weeks. Hell, he was 40,000 words into the novel. He wanted to tell her about the calls he’d received from the prospective publisher, who’d now become the publisher.
Since the first meeting with Gimel & Hines four months earlier, they’d been interested. He’d shown three editors maybe 5,000 very early, rough words then. He said he’d be ready to show them true work product in about ten months. But they’d called and written several times that summer. He’d faxed them about 15,000 close to finished words a couple of weeks earlier and the work was sold. It had been the moment he wanted her to share. He didn’t care that Kenny had negotiated an advance, enough to live on for a couple of years. He didn’t much care about the acclaim at Hamilton’s, or even Kenny’s out of character and extraordinarily ingenuous praise. He had only wanted her to know. Until the hiatus she’d reviewed the manuscript every week, given him new insight and direction.
He had the slim thought that she’d call back, but knew, in reality, she wouldn’t. He clearly couldn’t break the rule. If nothing else, he could break the rule or the promise. But he’d jump when the phone rang and check his several voice mails almost incessantly. Even his quotes were platitudes, “A watched pot never boils,” was about all he could think of. No erudition here. No style. His walks during the day became more frequent. He wondered always what she was thinking. Was she trying to get back to him? Or had Michael made the right moves? Could she get back to him in time? What did “in time” mean? He wondered how long he’d love her. There were fewer answers now.
And then came the cynicism. It was a vile suspicion that made him angry with himself. He was never angry at himself for being a fool. He did become furious at stupidity, particularly when it became his trait. He believed it was his now.
He should have known it was over when she left L.A. Hell, she told him as much when she talked of “getting” her third husband by marrying then divorcing him. He should have seen it. She set him up good, better than any grifter or scheme he’d ever investigated. “Essentially, I’m a stupid man,” he recalled from Islands in the Stream. Crap, not even good Hemingway. It was flabby Hemingway, like him.
But he loved her. Every now and then he’d try not to. He’d walk around Santa Monica or Brentwood surveying women. The results of the poll were always the same: There was never one who could compare to Maggie. He knew what he was feeling and he knew he had to go through it. It was all the dark alleys, all the high cliffs, all the hurricanes and all the high surf there was. You had to go through it. She was right. In the past he’d always run. He always had an exit. He kept one tiny exit in all his strategies. There was none now. Sure, he could have fashioned an out. He’d been a magician all his life and outs were important to the craft. He probably had the energy to do it, but not the inclination, not in the slightest.
