forward. Noting the woman’s distress, Faith seriously doubted that Emma was the only one to know that Fox had been back in town; the only Morris to have seen him in all these years.
Two more pundits spoke, and Faith did not even attempt to concentrate after hearing the beginning of the phrase “This is the end of . . .” It was all so impersonal.
What was she going to tell Emma? There was no wail-ing, no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments. Not that Emma herself would have behaved with such primitive lack of control, but Fox’s daughter was bereft. She’d want to hear that others were also. That her father would be missed. That her father had been cherished.
Faith turned around, as much to stretch her neck as to see how many people were behind her. A middle-aged woman stood against the wall, her eyes locked on the speaker, hanging upon every word. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Faith would have liked to stare longer. Not only was someone besides Poppy exhibit-ing signs of loss, but the woman was hard to catego-81
rize. She was wearing a drab mustard-colored parka, which she’d unzipped, revealing a white cotton turtleneck. Her hair, light brown with as much again of gray, was parted in the middle and worn in a long braid, snaking down across her shoulder toward the waistband of whatever was completing her uninspired outfit. There was some sort of button pinned to the jacket. Faith could not read the slogan from this distance, but she was sure it expressed solidarity with someone—or something like whales or redwoods. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in the sixties, fist raised, hair blowing in the wind, finding answers in Fox’s di-atribes—and maybe more. Emma, and Richard Morgan, had spoken of Fox’s women. Faith had a hunch that the lady in brown was one.
The man who had read the lines from Ecclesiastes at the start of the service stood up again and addressed the group.
“Aside from his cousins Marsha and Irwin”—he nodded toward two elderly people sitting close together in the front row—“Nathan Fox leaves no survivors but his words. As his agent and friend, I watched his words transform a generation. Nathan was cruelly, barbarically struck down in an act we cannot compre-hend, but he is not dead. Not while his words live.” This looked to be the finale and Faith tuned back in.
“No survivors.” Well, she knew that wasn’t true. She looked at the back of Poppy’s head. Besides the two of them, who else in the room knew that Arthur Quinn’s words were false? Knew the whole story, knew enough to blackmail Emma?
“He was a skinny kid when he came to me with the first book. How could I not take him on, even when he called me a parasite?” He paused for the laugh, which
came. “Yeah, I told him, I’m a parasite, but an honor-able one.” More laughter. “He liked that.” Quinn stopped again, seeing that Nate Fox in his mind’s eye, or assuming that was what people would think. A sensitive parasite.
His voice grew louder as he continued his speech.
“How could I not do everything to spread those words?
He wrote with passion, conviction, and a monumental sense of injustice. There’s been a great deal of talk these last days about Nathan Fox’s life underground—
a wasted life. But Nate loved being on the run. He was on the run all his life—from the establishment, and maybe from himself. Certainly”—he smiled with studied ruefulness and a twinkle in his eye—“from every woman who tried to keep up with him.” During the laugh that followed, Faith darted a glance at the woman in the rear. Her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was closed in a tight line.
“How shall we mourn Nathan Fox? Not at all. He wrote to me once that he had no regrets, and how many men can say that?”
And how many should? Faith said to herself. No regrets. They’d entered the chapel to Mozart; was “My Way” going to see them out?
“How shall we honor Nathan Fox’s memory? By reading his books and making his thoughts a part of us—living his words and by our acts, he will be with us always. He has left us this gift—and there is another yet to come. The last letters I had from him spoke of
‘the big one.’ A book that was to be published only after his death ‘far in the future, Artie,’ he wrote, advising me not to count on the ‘shekels’ for a ‘long, long time.’ Inutterably sad words now. So, I watch the mail.
It may come tomorrow, next week, next year. It will be
his monument, one, to quote him again, ‘That will blow the fuckin’ lid off.’ This, ladies and gentlemen, was Nathan Fox’s purpose in life. May he rest in peace, but not too much. He’ll get bored.” The music, Mozart again after all, started immediately, and everybody rose at once, cramped or moved by Arthur Quinn’s startling eulogy. It had been a performance and people immediately surrounded him, waiting to pump his hand. Faith wanted to see him, too.
When Emma had first asked her to go to the service, Faith had already realized that Arthur Quinn was someone she needed to see. The relationship between author and agent is complex—a business agreement, but of a personal nature. An agent holds an author’s ego, as well as an author’s advance, in his or her hands.
Agents find themselves functioning as critics, confi-dants, shrinks, and sometimes friends. What was the bond between Quinn and Fox? Faith guessed from the interviews she read that it was strong. Quinn’s words at the service confirmed the impression. Did he know about Emma? Forget about the “no survivors” rhetoric.
Quinn had better hope that Fox’s words survived—and stayed in print. She almost laughed out loud. Clever, clever man—essentially putting Fox’s posthumous book out for bid at the man’s funeral. She imagined what Richard would have to say about Fox’s speech, then realized she couldn’t tell him she’d been at the service.
Quinn was still mobbed by well-wishers. Faith had worked out her approach. She would pose as a graduate student contemplating a book on the radical movement as typified by Fox. Quinn, she hoped, would be interested in the book as well as the subject matter. But
she wanted to talk to him alone and could make an appointment by phone. She’d hoped to at least introduce herself today. She’d picked a nom de plume, Karen Brown—something easy for someone like Quinn to forget and far removed from Faith Sibley. It was unlikely their paths would cross, except perhaps at an event she was catering, but she was usually out of sight in the kitchen. She looked at the number of people between Quinn and her. It would take too long to wait.
No, what “Karen Brown” needed to do now was find out who the woman in the rear was—and how much she knew about Nathan Fox’s life above and under ground.
It wasn’t hard at all. Following at a discreet distance, Faith wormed her way out of the chapel behind the woman, who stopped only when Quinn reached out for her hand over the shoulder of someone who looked like or was Norman Mailer. “I’ll call you,” he promised, and gave a sad smile. Faith couldn’t see the woman’s face or note her response, but her shoulders relaxed visibly and perhaps her lips, which had tight-ened at Quinn’s throwaway reference to Fox’s love life, did as well.
Passing into the front room, Faith saw the two Fox cousins standing to one side with an air of patient waiting. There must be a gathering somewhere, she realized, and someone must be taking them. A postmortem on the service. She could hear the voices, congratulatory, self-congratulatory, and the whispered asides, the sotto voce digs. She envisioned drinks gulped, some spilled, and the platters of shrimp, finger sandwiches rapidly depleted. Poppy and her crowd would be there—but it wouldn’t be at the Morrises’.
“Well, of course we haven’t actually seen Nathan for
many years,” his cousin Irwin was explaining to someone. “Marsha might know better than I. I’m in the dry- cleaning business and don’t have much time for reading.”
What was the question?
“No,” Marsha said firmly, “Nathan Fox never wrote a novel.” She looked at Irwin. Can we get out of here?
was written all over her face. Her questioner persisted and she replied edgily, “Yes, I would know. We’re family.”
Faith couldn’t hear the rest, but presumably Fox’s cousin was continuing to reiterate her statement. And what need did cousin Nate have for made-up lives when he was so busy working on his own?
