The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald Read online

  “Doesn’t pay to dwell on that. In the real world there’s no such thing as a fairness doctrine. You said you knew Boyd in school.”

  “I did. Dropped out in my junior year. Some personal problems. Bummed around upstate for a while. Tended bar. Cleared brush. Worked construction. Then I found myself back in the city knocking on his door.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “And here, for better or worse, I am.”

  The bartender returned with another Wild Turkey. This time Todd hurried off with it.

  We had reached the George Washington Bridge and turned around and started back down the river. The night air was clear and the skyline ablaze now in its fullest glory. I was standing at the rail admiring it, and marveling at how it could inspire such awe and wonder in me even when the city itself no longer could, when a young woman grabbed my arm and told me how much she’d admired the second novel. It was the guest of honor, Delilah Moscowitz, and her cardboard cutout didn’t do her justice.

  She was a tall, flamboyant peacock of a woman with a wild mane of frizzy red hair, creamy white skin, amused deep-blue eyes, and an upturned petulant upper lip. Her body was sculpted and sinewy, and she was showing it off. She was done up like a Place Pigalle hellcat in a lavender silk blouse unbuttoned to the navel, tight black leather miniskirt, and pink spiked heels worn without stockings. The vibes she gave off were humid enough to peel wallpaper out in Bend, Oregon.

  “Glad you liked it,” I said. “That makes you, my mother, and that lanky kid over next to Boyd — and him I’m not so sure about.”

  She swept her windblown hair back over her head. “You’re very brave.” She had a throaty, challenging voice. “Most men can’t deal with their own impotence.”

  “Who says I can deal with it? I enjoyed your column in today’s paper on those ten sexy summer getaways — the elevator to the top of the World Trade Center, the Maurice Villency furniture showroom, air-conditioned cabs … ”

  “I always test them myself personally,” she assured me with a mischievous grin.

  “I expected nothing less.” I grinned back, getting the impression that Delilah Moscowitz, sex therapist, was something of a vampy, good-humored put-on.

  Someone began to sneeze like crazy at our feet — Lulu, back from trolling the buffet tables. I looked down at her, then back up at Delilah. Well, well.

  “Why is she doing that?” Delilah asked.

  “Your perfume Calvin Klein’s Obsession, isn’t it?”

  “Why, yes,” she replied.

  “She’s terribly allergic.”

  Delilah pouted. “What a shame if you and I ever have an affair, I’ll have to change scents.”

  “It would be easier than me changing dogs.”

  “It’d be worth it, you’d find.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

  Skitsy Held broke in on us, Cam and Charlie in tow.

  “You remember Cameron, don’t you, Delilah?” said Skitsy.

  “Of course,” Delilah said with cordial stiffness. “Nice to see you again.” Most discreet. No hint that the two of them enjoyed the odd matinee together.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Cam agreed, grinning at her with easy, inflamed familiarity. He was a little less discreet. He was a lot less discreet. Still, neither Skitsy nor Charlie seemed to notice. Often, people won’t see something right under their nose unless they’re expecting to.

  Boyd Samuels didn’t miss it though. He stood nearby, beaming like the proud breeder of thoroughbred stablemates. I went over to him.

  “Enough hi-profile celebs here to keep you busy ghosting for ten years, hey, amigo?” he said pleasantly, his laser eyes scanning the party for available talent. Agents, I noticed, inched closer to their clients when Boyd’s eyes lingered on them for more than a second.

  “Yes, assuming any of these people will still be celebs in ten years.”

  He threw back his scarf-clad head and laughed loudly. “Congrats — Cam said you two hit it off fantastically.” He took a gulp of his Wild Turkey.

  “Yes, and he’s told me a lot about your visionary scams,” I said. I caught him unprepared with that. I know this because he airmailed his mouthful of whiskey all over my pale-yellow silk tie.

  Boyd cleared his throat uneasily. “Scams?”

  “Scams. You know, paying kids to take SATs. Selling forged driver’s licenses. And of course, your stint as Deerfield campus pharmacist. … ”

  His eyes flickered briefly, registering what I could have sworn was relief. Why? Were there other scams Cam hadn’t told me about? “This book is supposed to be about him, not me,” Boyd pointed out sharply.

  “It is,” I assured him. “But you do appear in a featured role — The Friend. Ronald Reagan made a whole career out of it.”

  He nodded. “True, true, amigo. Only, you gotta protect your people. In case you haven’t noticed, drugs aren’t exactly a socially approved form of recreation anymore. Christ, you gotta pass a urine test before they’ll even let you run a fax machine at a lot of companies nowadays.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about what people thought of you,” I countered.

  “I don’t,” he assured me. “Only these days I deal with people like senators and Wall Street plutocrats. They think I’m a bad-ass liar, that’s chill. They think I’m a crook, that’s chill. They think I’m a druggie … ”

  “That’s not chill?”

  “Leave that part out, okay?”

  “You said you wanted a quality book. A quality book doesn’t tiptoe around unpleasant facts.”

  “Kind of a stubborn shithead, aren’t you?” he said sourly.

  “You noticed,” I said grinning. “Look, you asked me to come up with a concept. I did. Cam told me you were crazy about it.”

  “Thrilled,” he insisted. “I’m thrilled.”

  “Someone certainly isn’t.”

  He leaned closer to me. “Meaning?”

  “I’ve been threatened.”

  He let out a short, surprised laugh. “By who?”

  “Evidently someone who is afraid of what Cam will say.”

  He mulled that over. “Could just be someone who wants to see him fall on his ass.”

  “Who would want that?” He glanced over at Skitsy, who was still chatting with Cam and Charlie and Delilah. “I can think of one person right offhand.” Then he scratched at his beard thoughtfully. “Know what the best way to handle this is? Liz Smith is standing right over there. Let’s go tell her about it. She’ll put it in tomorrow’s paper, shove the slob right back under a rock. Great publicity, too.”

  “I’d rather keep a lid on it.”

  “Why?” he wondered.

  “I have my reasons, okay?”

  Boyd shrugged, obviously disappointed. I found myself eyeing him. He was a man who’d go to any extreme to promote a client. Had he done this? Had he left me that threat as a way of generating publicity?

  “Oh, hey,” he said, punching me playfully on the shoulder. “A good friend of yours is hanging out down below. Come say hello.”

  Most of the second deck was a glass-enclosed dining room, where a lot of the guests were busy finding a good home for the lasagna and flank steak and assorted salads on the buffet tables.

  A dozen or so senior editors sat together over the remains of their food and drink listening intently to Tanner Marsh hold forth on the subject of mysticism in modern Uruguayan literature, the master pausing only to punctuate each erudite thought with a puff on his brier pipe. You don’t run into many pipe smokers anymore, and those you do run into are seldom pleasant. Tanner Marsh wasn’t pleasant. He was a gross, fat little man in his late fifties, an alcoholic, and a mean one. Spy magazine had taken to calling him the “colorful Tanner Marsh” in snide reference to his nose, which was so red, and his teeth, which were so yellow. He wore a wrinkled, shiny tan poplin suit, a rather greasy blue knit tie, and a white shirt that he’d popped open at the belly button to give his gut some breathing room. It was cool in the dining room b
ut he was perspiring freely, a strand of his thinning gray hair plastered to his forehead.

  His piggy eyes turned to narrow slits when he saw me standing there with Boyd. “I remember you,” he exclaimed in his booming, condescending voice. “You were Stewart Hoag.”

  That got a few titters from the others seated before him.

  “It’s true, Tanner — I was,” I replied graciously, not wanting to get into a pissing contest with the man. I had matured beyond that. “And on my good days, I like to think I still am.”

  He drank from the gin and tonic at his elbow and puffed on his pipe. “Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, Stewart,” he suggested majestically, eyeing me with amusement. He was trying to provoke me. He enjoyed these little jousts.

  “Don’t concern yourself,” I assured him. “Everyone ought to be good at something. You’re good at being a vicious scumbag.”

  I heard a few gasps. Ah, me, I guess I haven’t matured totally.

  Tanner bristled. Off came his gloves. “This man,” he declared, “should no longer be allowed to own or operate a typewriting machine! His picture should be posted in every business-machine emporium on the island of Manhattan! His pencils and crayons should be confiscated! His —”

  “Hey, you can’t talk to my coach that way!”

  Heads swiveled, my own included. Cam Noyes stood there in the glass doorway, swaying unsteadily. He was quite blitzed now. Boyd hurried over to him and tried to maneuver him back out to the upper deck. Cam brushed him aside and staggered toward Tanner.

  “And why not, young Noyes?” Marsh asked his former pupil, obviously relishing this.

  “He,” Cam replied thickly, “is an artist. An artist. You are nothing. Nothing.”

  “Which is what you’ll be, amigo, if you don’t shut up,” Boyd muttered to Cam under his breath.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up!” Cam snapped belligerently, his eyes never leaving Marsh. “This man … ” he went on, referring to me, “this man exposes himself in public. That’s what he does. What do you do? Nothing. What right do you have to judge him? None. You sit there on your fucking throne, issuing your fucking edicts … And what do you know about writing? You don’t understand it. Or him. Or me. You don’t understand any of us!”

  The dining room was filled with guests now, drawn by Cam’s high-decibel harangue and by what promised to be a championship heavyweight bout — in one corner the enfant terrible of American literature, in the other the grand poohbah. The gossip columnists strained closer, pens poised. The photographers, Charlie included, crowded in front, cameras aimed.

  It was Tanner’s turn. Slowly and calmly, he lit a match and held it to his pipe. When he had it going to his satisfaction, he puffed on it until he was sitting in a cloud of blue smoke. “The critic,” he lectured Cam, “serves as a guide through the vast and treacherous literary wilderness. He blazes a trail. Without him, some of the great authors in history would have never been found. You, for instance.” Marsh glanced at Boyd and showed him his yellow teeth. “Young Noyes seems to have a poor memory.”

  “No, he doesn’t Tanner,” Boyd assured him effusively. “Really. Isn’t that right, Cam? Huh?”

  Was Samuels trying to save his prized client from making a powerful enemy or was he egging him on? I wondered, though not for long.

  “Why are you sucking up to him, Boyd?” Cam demanded angrily. “You always suck up to him! All of you people do! What for? Who cares what he thinks?” Cam now stood right over Marsh, who looked up at him with cool disdain. “You haven’t got the slightest fucking notion what it takes to create something, Tanner! What it feels like. You think you do, but you don’t. Know what? I’m going to do you a favor — I’m going to show you!”

  With that he grabbed the fat little man by the lapels and yanked him roughly to his feet. Marsh looked pale and frightened now, as if he’d just realized he’d gotten into something his stinging wit might not get him out of. He looked around for a rescuer but none stepped forward. Everyone on board the Gotham Princess was much more interested in seeing what Cam Noyes had in mind. I knew I was.

  He tore the jacket, shirt, and tie right off Tanner Marsh, exposing his billowing, hairy white flesh. A lot of people gasped. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Terrified now, Tanner tried to get away from him. Cam grabbed him by the belt so he couldn’t.

  “Don’t hurt me!” wailed Tanner, wide-eyed and trembling. “Please don’t hurt me! Please!”

  Smiling now, Cam yanked southward very hard, ripping the waistband of Tanner’s trousers and sending them plunging down to his shoes. Tanner stood there now clad only in his baggy, pee-stained boxer shorts. But not for long. Cam ripped those off him, too.

  The most important literary critic in America now stood stark naked in front of two hundred of New York’s biggest celebrities, most of whose jaws were down near the floor.

  No one moved or made a sound, especially Tanner, who was so debased and mortified he seemed frozen there. Flashbulbs went off as the photographers, Charlie included, recorded the moment for posterity.

  “There we are, Tanner,” declared Cam, standing back to admire his handiwork. “Now you know what it feels like to be an author. Congratulations.” With that Cam staggered over to the bar and ordered two more shots of tequila.

  Tanner pulled up his ruined trousers with one hand, gathered his torn jacket and shirt around him with the other, and made his way in awkward, mincing strides for the glass door. “You shall be very sorry,” he spat at Cam. To Boyd he added, “You shall both be.”

  Then he swept out of the dining room with what little was left of his dignity. Skitsy Held, his hostess and ex-wife, followed him out, horrified. The guests began to disperse, chattering excitedly.

  Boyd Samuels slumped down into a chair. “Christ, not one of my clients will ever get a good review from him again.” He started chewing on a thumbnail. Abruptly, he stopped. “Maybe I can get Delilah to sit on his face.”

  “Guess again,” she informed him.

  Boyd laughed. “Just a figure of speech, honeypot,” he called to her. To me he grumbled, “I was told you get results, amigo. I gotta tell you this sure isn’t my idea of a solid couple of days of work from you.”

  Cam was over by the windows now, pulling on a cigarette and gazing out at the Statue of Liberty, which was lit up for the night. Charlie stood next to him with her hand on his arm, speaking to him softly. He seemed not to be noticing her there.

  “He’s rather impressionable, isn’t he?” I said.

  “Yeah, he’s rather impressionable,” Boyd muttered.

  “Does he realize how much you manipulate him?”

  Boyd frowned at me. “I’m not tracking you.”

  “You could have stopped that from happening, but you didn’t. You wanted it to happen. It’ll be all over town by tomorrow. Part of the Cam Noyes legend.”

  Boyd grinned wolfishly. “You have to admit it was righteous theater.”

  “He could have strangled the fat bastard with his bare hands,” I pointed out. “That would have been righteous theater, too.”

  “He’d never do something like that,” Boyd scoffed. “He’s not violent.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Dangerous things can happen when a man starts believing his own clippings.”

  Boyd narrowed his laser eyes at me. “Sure you’re not manipulating him yourself?”

  “Me? Why would I want to do that?”

  “To get back at the people who made him and unmade you.”

  I tugged at my ear. “Interesting thought. Total bullshit, but interesting bullshit. You gave me the impression before that Skitsy would like to see him fall on his ass. Why, because he left her for another publisher?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the rest of it?”

  He laughed. “Maybe some night when I’m feeling good and loaded, I’ll tell you.”

  “And this thing with Delilah — how long has it been going on?”

  He shot me a surprised
look. “He told you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then how did — ?”

  “I have my methods.”

  Boyd glanced over at Cam, who was still at the window with Charlie, and then at Delilah, who was by the buffet table chatting with Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford. “They bumped into each other in my office a few weeks ago,” he said. “He was smitten on sight — like somebody hit the poor fucker over the head with a tuning fork. But it won’t last. Skitsy’s putting her on a national publicity tour in a couple of weeks. By the time she gets back, he’ll have forgotten all about her — if I know him. And believe me, I do.”

  Ah, but the evening was still young, and so were we.

  No literary night on the town could be complete without a stop at Elaine’s, longtime Second Avenue stronghold of bookdom’s heavy hitters, and the saloon where Lulu once had her very own water bowl. A few of us roared up there in the Loveboat after the Gotham Princess docked a little before midnight — Cam and Charlie, Boyd and Delilah, Todd and me.

  John John’s mommy, Jackie, was at Elaine’s that night with Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer. So were the usual gang — the Plimptons and Taleses and Vonneguts. Ed Doctorow, Joe Heller. It felt strange being back in Our Place. Elaine was a good sport about it. She made a real fuss over Lulu, who went looking for her bowl, only to come right back, confused, when she couldn’t find it.

  Elaine flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry, Hoagy. It’s been so long since you three … I’ll put another one down for her right away.”

  I asked her not to.

  We were seated at a big table toward the back. Lulu lay under my chair, sniffling from Delilah’s perfume. Delilah made sure she sat right next to Cam. She’d gotten a bit high from all the attention and champagne she’d been lapping up, and somewhat less discreet. She was chattering away gaily to Cam and Cam alone, touching him on the arm, her face aglow, her eyes dancing. He was nodding and smiling. His eyes never left hers. Both of them were oblivious of Charlie, who sat between Todd and me, not missing a thing. Dumb she wasn’t. Or inhuman. Maybe she believed she had no right to control her big blond genius. But she sure as hell didn’t feel it; She sat there stiffly, her eyes shining like wet stones.