“I wouldn’t have met you without an introduction from Kermit,” she said. “Unlike many people who come to your agency, I made only a partial submission. I’m flattered by your comments about my work, but I think I’m getting special treatment. I think I’ll feel more comfortable about my submission if you can look at the finished manuscript and then tell me if you think it’s publishable.”
Fremont leaned back in his chair, a bead of light in one eye. He massaged his temple with two fingers. “Not too many writers tell me that,” he said.
“It seems like a reasonable point of view,” she said.
“Not in my world.”
Weingart had been snapping his fingers at the waitress for more tartar sauce. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Telling the in-house secrets, are we?”
“You’re a special kind of fellow, Robert,” Oliver Fremont said.
“Care to elaborate on that?”
“Not really. Some writers become the stuff of legends for different reasons. Harold Robbins’s agent used to lock him in a cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel and not feed him until he shoved four pages of finished manuscript under the door. Supposedly Louis Mayer had Hemingway kicked off the MGM lot. Hart Crane threw his typewriter through a glass window into Dorothy Parker’s yard. But I think you might become one of those guys for whom the rest of us are only a footnote.”
“One of which guys?”
“Special guys. Legends. Guys people talk about at cocktail parties for many years. Their legends take on a life of their own and grow over the years. Eventually the legends become far more interesting than their work. Finally nobody remembers anything except the legend. The writer becomes something like a scarecrow in an empty field.”
Weingart had stopped eating. “Let me explain what ‘special’ is and why I’m not ‘special.’ Special people need special handling. I’m not an aberration or a curiosity. I’ve read more books than most university Ph.D.’ s. I’m more intelligent than they are, more knowledgeable of the real world, more erudite in front of their students than they are. In short, I’m a civilized man and not ‘special,’ my friend. See, ‘special’ is for the guys who stay in twenty- three-hour lockdown and get two showers a week if they’re lucky. ‘Special’ is for the guys who have to brush their teeth with their finger because they melt the handles of their toothbrushes over a Bic lighter and mold them into shanks. I’m on a first-name basis with a few cell-house acquaintances that are in the ‘special’ category. If you like, I can introduce you to them. Then you’ll be in possession of some hands-on knowledge about ‘special’ guys, and you can impress your friends with it. Want me to arrange a meeting or two before you leave for New York? These guys will love your accent.”
Alafair got up from the table and used the telephone at the bar to call a cab. Then she went outside and waited by the curb without returning to the table. It was dark now, and the lights on the iron drawbridge over the Teche were iridescent with humidity. She looked back over her shoulder. She had thought Kermit Abelard might follow her out of the restaurant. Instead, he was arguing with Weingart at the table. No, “arguing” was the wrong term, she thought. When people argued, they spoke in heat, leaning forward with wrinkled brows, their throats corded, the flesh around their mouths bloodless. But Kermit kept pausing to allow Weingart to speak, lowering his long eyelashes, his face colored by embarrassment rather than passion. Oliver Fremont rose from his chair, his gaze fixed on Alafair, and walked between the tables and out the French doors, speaking to neither Kermit nor Weingart.
“Just a thought or two for you to keep in mind, Ms. Robicheaux,” he said. “When I said I loved your work in progress, I meant it. I think your talent is enormous. Do whatever you wish about submission. Finish the manuscript or send it along in chunks. But send it to me, understand? No one else. I want to be your agent, and it’s not because you’re friends with Kermit. I think you’re going to be hugely successful.”
“Thank you.”
“What I’ve told you is not a compliment, it’s a fact. Second, that guy Weingart is a world-class jerk nobody in the industry takes seriously. He’s an embarrassment to his publisher and a self-important moron who will probably crash and burn on a live TV show when he’s drunk or insulting a woman or making racist remarks. But it’s going to happen, and when it does, his phone calls won’t be answered and his publishing contracts will disappear. Because he’s a megalomaniac, he’ll never figure out what brought about his downfall, and he’ll spend the rest of his life blaming everyone else. You got all that?”
“I think so,” she replied.
“You want me to escort you home?”
“No, I’m fine. You’re a nice man.”
“That looks like your cab,” he said. After the cab pulled to the curb, he opened the back door for her and closed it after she was inside. The window was open. He leaned down toward it. “You’re going to have a great career. Weingart couldn’t shine your shoes, and frankly, neither could Kermit.”
But it wasn’t over. Kermit Abelard virtually plunged out onto the sidewalk, both hands held up to stop the cabdriver. He grabbed the back door, leaning inside. “Don’t leave like this,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Mad, hurt, upset, whatever you want to call it.”
“I’m none of those things, Kermit. I made a mistake. It’s on me, not you. It’s not even on Robert in there. So now I’m going home.”
“What mistake?”
“About who you are. You’re somebody else. Or maybe you have two or three people living inside you.”
“If I’m not the person you thought I was, then I’d appreciate your telling me who I am.”
“I’m not sure. But I won’t be there to find out, either. You were the only one, and I want you to remember that as long as you live.”
“Only one what? I don’t know what you mean. You mean sexually? What are you talking about?”
“You’ll figure it out. But when you do, remember I just spoke of you in the past tense. That will never change. Good-bye, Kermit,” she said.
As she sat back in the seat and the cab pulled away, she could see the wind riffling the leaves on the trees along the bayou. The reflection of the lights from the drawbridge on the leaves and the electric glitter they created made her think of thousands of green butterflies fluttering inside a dark bowl.
ON SUNDAY MORNING I woke before dawn. I’d had a peculiar dream, one that was actually about a dream. Many years ago on a Christmas Eve, in a Southeast Asian country, I had been asleep on top of a poncho liner, under a parked six-by. Somewhere out there beyond the elephant grass and the rice paddies and the hills that had been chemically defoliated or burned by napalm, Bedcheck Charlie was prowling through the darkness in black pajamas and a conical straw hat and sandals fashioned from the rubber strips he had sawed out of a truck tire. In his hands was the blooker he had taken off the body of a dead United States soldier who had been in my platoon. The launch tube was painted with gold and black tiger stripes. Every hour or so during the night, Bedcheck Charlie lobbed a round in our direction. Often it exploded in the paddy, sending up a geyser of water and mud and metal fragments that rained back down harmlessly. Or if it landed in the elephant grass, it blew a mixed smell of burned explosive and torn sod and root systems into the breeze, a combination that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Once, Bedcheck Charlie got lucky and nailed the shit barrels in a latrine. But Bedcheck Charlie was a tactician, not a strategist. When he was on the job, you crosshatched your molars and slept with a frown, as though a fly were walking across your brow, waiting for the next plunking sound of a grenade leaving the launch tube. At dawn, you started the new day as though you had spent the night humping a sixty-pound pack.
Except on this particular Christmas Eve, for whatever reason, Bedcheck Charlie gave it a rest. I fell into a deep sleep and dreamed it was Christmas in New Iberia. I dreamed I was a child and in my bed, and through the window I could see the pecan and oak trees in the yard and the frost on our grass and, through the branches of the trees, the Star of Bethlehem burning brightly against an ink-black sky. It was a wonderful dream, and I wanted to hold on to it and wake to a Christmas morning that was shining with dew and filled with all the joy of the season.
Except when I awoke under the six-by, I was not looking at the Star of Bethlehem. On the far side of the rice paddy, a pistol or trip flare had popped high in the air and was floating down to the earth, trailing strings of smoke, its phosphorescent glow swinging back and forth, illuminating the landscape with the trembling white- and-black severity of a filmstrip that has gone off track inside the projector. Then three other flares popped in
