in hock up to his ears and spent money at an enormous rate supporting his five ex-wives and eight or nine children. I was awestricken by the amount of work he published, flawed though it was. He always appeared in one of the monthlies, sometimes in two or three; every year he published a nonfiction book on some subject the publishers thought was “hot.” He edited the review and did a long essay for it every week. He did some movie work. He earned enormous sums, but he was always broke. And I knew he owed a fortune. Not only from borrowing money but drawing advances on future books. I mentioned this to him, that he was digging a hole he’d never get out of, but he just waved the idea away impatiently.
“I’ve got my ace in the hole,” he said. “I got the big novel nearly finished. Another year maybe. And then I’ll be rich again. And then on to Scandinavia for the Nobel Prize. Think of all those big blond broads we can fuck.” He always included me on the trip to the Nobel.
The biggest fights we had were when he’d ask me about what I thought of one of his essays on literature in general. And I would infuriate him with my by now familiar line that I was just a storyteller. “You’re an artist with divine inspiration,” I’d tell him. “You’re the intellectual, you’ve got a fucking brain that could squirt out enough bullshit for a hundred courses on modem literature. I’m just a safecracker. I put my ear to the wall and wait to hear the tumblers fall in place.”
“You and your safecracker bullshit,” Osano said. “You’re just reacting away from me. You have ideas. You’re a real artist. But you like the idea of being a magician, a trickster, that you can control everything, what you write, your life in general, that you can beat all the traps. That’s how you operate.”
“You have the wrong idea of a magician,” I told him. “A magician does magic. That’s all.”
“And you think that’s enough?” Osano asked. He had a slightly sad smile on his face.
“It’s enough for me,” I said.
Osano nodded his head. “You know, I was a great magician once, you read my first book. All magic, right?”
I was glad that I could agree. I had an affection for that book. “Pure magic,” I said.
“But it wasn’t enough,” Osano said. “Not for me.”
Then too bad for you, I thought. And he seemed to read my mind. “No, not how you think,” he said. “I just couldn’t do it again because I don’t want to do it or I can’t do it maybe. I wasn’t a magician any more after that book. I became a writer.”
I shrugged a little unsympathetically, I guess. Osano saw it and said, “And my life went to shit, but you can see that. I envy you your life. Everything is under control. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t chase broads. You just write and gamble and play the good father and husband. You’re a very unflashy magician, Merlyn. You’re a very safe magician. A safe life, safe books; you’ve made despair disappear.”
He was pissed off at me. He thought he was driving into the bone. He didn't know he was full of shit. And I didn’t mind, that meant my magic was working. That was all he could see, and that was fine with me. He thought I had my life under control, that I didn’t stiffer or permit myself to, that I didn’t feel the bouts of loneliness that drove him on to different women, to booze, to his snorts of cocaine. Two things he didn’t realize. That he was suffering because he was actually going crazy, not suffering. The other was that everybody else in the world suffered and was lonely and made the best of it. That it was no big deal. In fact, you could say that life itself wasn’t a big deal, never mind his fucking literature.
And then suddenly I had troubles from an unexpected quarter. One day at the review I got a call from Artie’s wife, Pam. She said she wanted to see me about something important, and she wanted to see me without Artie. Could I come over right away? I felt a real panic. In the back of my mind I was always worried about Artie. He was really frail and always looked tired. His fine-boned handsomeness showed stress more clearly than most. I was so panicky I begged her to tell me what it was over the phone, but she wouldn’t. She did tell me that there was nothing physically wrong, no medical reports of doom. It was a personal problem she and Artie were having, and she needed my help.
Immediately, selfishly, I was relieved. Obviously she had a problem, not Artie. But still I took off early from work and drove out to Long Island to see her. Artie lived on the North Shore of Long Island and I lived on the South Shore. So it really wasn’t much out of my way. I figured I could listen to her and be home for dinner, just a little late. I didn’t bother to call Valerie.
I always liked going to Artie’s house. He had five kids, but they were nice kids who had a lot of friends who were always around and Pam never seemed to mind. She had big jars of cookies to feed them and gallon jugs of milk. There were kids watching television and other kids playing on the lawn. I said hi to the kids, and they gave me a brief hi back. Pam took me into the kitchen with its huge hay window. She had coffee ready and poured some. She kept her head down and then suddenly looked up at me and said, “Artie has a girlfriend.”
Despite her having had five kids, Pam was still very young-looking with a fine figure, tall, slender, lanky before the kids, and one of those sensual faces that had a Madonna kind of look. She came from a Midwest town. Artie had met her in college and her father was president of a small bank. Nobody in the last three generations of her family had ever had more than two kids, and she was a hero-martyr to her parents because of the five births. They couldn’t understand it, but I did. I had once asked Artie about it and he said, “Behind that Madonna face is one of the horniest wives on Long Island. And that suits me fine.” If any other husband had said that about his wife, I would have been offended.
“Lucky you,” I had said.
“Yeah,” Artie said. “But I think she feels sorry for me, you know, the asylum business. And she wants to make sure I never feel lonely again. Something like that.”
“Lucky, lucky you,” I had said.
And so now, when Pam made her accusation, I was a little angry. I knew Artie. I knew it wasn’t possible for him to cheat on his wife. That he would never endanger the family he had built up or the happiness it gave him.
Pam’s tall form was drooping; tears were in her eyes. But she was watching my face. If Artie were having an affair, the only one he would ever tell was me. And she was hoping I would give away the secret by some expression on my face.
“It’s not true,” I said. “Artie always had women running after him and he hated it. He’s the straightest guy in the world. You know I wouldn’t try to cover for him. I wouldn’t rat on him, but I wouldn’t cover for him.”
“I know that,” Pam said. “But he comes home late at least three times a week. And last night he had lipstick on his shirt. And he makes phone calls after I go up to bed, late at night. Does he call you?”
“No,” I said. And now I felt shitty. It might be true. I still didn’t believe it, but I had to find out.
“Will he be home for dinner tonight?” I asked. Pam nodded. I picked up the kitchen phone and called Valerie and told her I was eating at Artie’s house. I did that once in a while on the spur of the moment when I had an urge to see him, so she didn’t ask any questions. When I hung up the phone, I said to Pam, “You got enough to feed me?”
She smiled and nodded her head. “Of course,” she said.
“I’ll go down and pick him up at the station,” I said. “And we’ll have this all straightened out before we eat dinner.” I burlesqued it a bit and said, “My brother is innocent.”
“Oh, sure,” Pam said. But she smiled.
Down at the station, as I waited for the train to come in, I felt sorry for Pam and Artie. There was a little smugness in my pity. I was the guy Artie always had to bail out and finally I was going to bail him out. Despite all the evidence, the lipstick on the shirt, the late hours and phone calls, the extra money, I knew that Artie was basically innocent. The worst it could be was some young girl being so persistent that he finally weakened a little, maybe. Even now I couldn’t believe it. Mixed with the pity was the envy I always felt about Artie’s being so attractive to women in a way I could never be. With just a touch of satisfaction I felt it was not all that bad being ugly.
When Artie got off the train, he wasn’t too surprised to see me. I had done this before, visiting him unexpectedly and meeting his train. I always felt good doing it, and he was always glad to see me. And it always made me feel good to see that he was glad to see me waiting for him. This time, watching him carefully, I noticed
