It was all brand new.
I soaked up the music and wrote my novel, which was turning out to be a darkly funny valentine about two gifted young New York artists who are in love with each other, with their work, with life – and the price they’d paid to make their dreams come true. Certainly the price that I’d paid.
Every day, the hours flew by as I heard the sounds, smelled the smells, experienced the joy and the agony all over again. My skin tingled as the words flowed through me. I had no idea what was coming out next. Just that they were words that demanded to be read. For a writer it’s the greatest feeling in the world.
The only missing element was Merilee, who was in Budapest playing Lady Brett Ashley in a lavish remake of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises opposite Mel Gibson. But, in the immortal words of Meat Loaf – or Mr Loaf as the unfailingly hip New York Times insisted upon calling him – two out of three ain’t bad. Besides, we’d made amazing progress over that past summer, my celebrated ex-wife and I. When I’d told her I might have an idea for a novel she’d generously offered me the guest cottage on her eighteen-acre farm in Lyme, Connecticut. I’d written my first three chapters there while she was busy directing a revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives at the historic summer playhouse in nearby Sherbourne. A couple of people got murdered. Maybe you heard about it. I’d returned to the city Labor Day weekend. She’d followed me soon thereafter because Paramount had agreed to finance The Sun Also Rises and, after our first night of atomic passion in more years than I can remember, she’d invited Lulu and me to stay in her apartment while she was away. Since the calendar said it was still summer and the temperature averaged a muggy triple digits in my crappy fifth-floor walk-up on West 93rd, I’d leapt at the chance. So had Lulu, who enjoys her creature comforts almost as much as she enjoys anchovies, preferably chilled because the oil clings better. Did I mention she has unusual eating habits?
As much as I was missing Merilee, maybe it was better this way. I was zoned in seven days a week, morning, noon and night. Spoke to no one. Saw no one. I’d shown those first three chapters I’d written over the summer to the Silver Fox, my literary agent, who’d not only pronounced them ‘thrilling’ but had landed me a hefty advance from a top-flight publisher. I’d produced more than a hundred new pages since Merilee had left. I would write from dawn until noon, take Lulu for a brisk walk in the park, then mark up that morning’s work and rewrite it until I was satisfied. Evenings we’d stroll down to Tony’s on West 79th and Amsterdam where I would scribble notes in my notepad while I devoured linguini with homemade sausages and drank Chianti. Lulu would put away a small plate of calamari. After dinner I’d fire up my nightly Chesterfield, dragging contentedly on it as we strolled home. I’d climb into bed, review my notes for tomorrow, savor a few pages of Mrs Parker, who is someone I like to re-read every few years just to remind myself what good writing is, and then drop off, raring to get back to work in the morning.
I was so zoned in I was barely aware of what was happening in the world around me. I knew that the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies were playing in the World Series. I knew from my weekly trek up to West 93rd to collect my mail that the hottest movie packing them in at the Loews on Broadway and West 84th was a riotously funny feature film remake of The Beverly Hillbillies staring the riotously funny Jim Varney as Jed Clampett. I knew from standing in line at the grocery store that Vanna White, the remarkably gifted letter turner on TV’s Wheel of Fortune, was pregnant. So was Marla Maples, mistress of that puddle of ooze the tabloids called The Donald, as in Trump, who was considering marrying her but wasn’t entirely sure she was worthy of his greatness. I also knew that the New York I was writing about, my New York, was so much more vivid and meaningful than the one I was living in now, which was why it was so vital for me to get it down on paper. And get it right. And I was. I felt sure of it. I also felt sure that the end of Nancy Spungen’s life under that bathroom sink in the Chelsea Hotel would signify the end of ‘My Sweet Season of Madness,’ although I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get there. I didn’t know. That’s part of the adventure. Or, as a very drunk John Gregory Dunne told me one night at a cocktail party: ‘I sit down to write the book to figure out why the fuck I’m writing the book.’
After sticking to my Spartan work routine for those six glorious weeks I’d reached a major crossroads in my plot and had no strong instinct telling me which road to take. Just a vague itch that something was missing. So I decided to treat myself to a change of scenery. Merilee had not only given me the keys to the apartment but to the 1958 red XK150 roadster that she was awarded in the divorce settlement, and had urged me to make use of
