Heavy Water and Other Stories

old office boy, Alistair soon saw, was curled up in a sleeping bag under a worktable in the outer room.

On the street he unseamed his package in a ferment of gray fluff. It contained two of his screenplays, Valley of the Stratocasters and, confusingly, Decimator. There was also a note:

I have been called away, as they say. Personal ups and downs. I shall ring you this week and we’ll have— what? Lunch?

Enclosed, too, was Alistair’s aggrieved letter—unopened. He moved on. The traffic, human and mechanical, lurched past his quickened face. He felt his eyes widen to an obvious and solving truth: Hugh Sixsmith was a screenplay writer. He understood.

After an inconclusive day spent discussing the caesura of “Sonnet”’s opening line, Luke and his colleagues went for cocktails at Strabismus. They were given the big round table near the piano.

Jane said, “TCT is doing a sequel to ‘’Tis.’”

Joan said, “Actually it’s a prequel.”

“Title?” said Joe.

“Undecided. At TCT they’re calling it ‘’Twas.’”

“My son,” said Joe thoughtfully, after the waiter had delivered their drinks, “called me an asshole this morning. For the first time.”

“That’s incredible,” said Bo. “My son called me an asshole this morning. For the first time.”

“So?” said Mo.

Joe said, “He’s six years old, for Christ’s sake.”

Phil said, “My son called me an asshole when he was five.”

“My son hasn’t called me an asshole yet,” said Jim. “And he’s nine.”

Luke sipped his Bloody Mary. Its hue and texture made him wonder whether he could risk blowing his nose without making yet another visit to the bathroom. He hadn’t called Suki for three days. Things were getting compellingly out of hand with Henna Mickiewicz. He hadn’t actually promised her a part in the poem, not on paper. Henna was great, except you kept thinking she was going to suddenly sue you anyway.

Mo was saying that each child progresses at his own rate, and that later lulls regularly offset the apparent advances of the early years.

Jim said, “Still, it’s a cause of concern.”

Mo said, “My son’s three. And he calls me an asshole all the time.”

Everybody looked suitably impressed.

The trees were in leaf, and the rumps of the tourist buses were thick and fat in the traffic, and all the farmers wanted fertilizer admixes rather than storehouse insulation when Sixsmith finally made his call. In the interim, Alistair had convinced himself of the following: before returning his aggrieved letter, Sixsmith had steamed it open and then resealed it. During this period, also, Alistair had grimly got engaged to Hazel. But the call came.

He was pretty sure he had come to the right restaurant. Except that it wasn’t a restaurant, not quite. The place took no bookings, and knew of no Mr. Sixsmith, and was serving many midday breakfasts to swearing persons whose eyes bulged over mugs of flesh-colored tea. On the other hand, there was alcohol. All kinds of people were drinking it. Fine, thought Alistair. Fine. What better place, really, for a couple of screenplay writers to…

“Alistair?”

Confidently Sixsmith bent his long body into the booth. As he settled, he looked well pleased with the maneuver. He contemplated Alistair with peculiar neutrality, but there was then something boyish, something consciously remiss, in the face he turned to the waiter. As Sixsmith ordered a gin and tonic, and as he amusingly expatiated on his weakness for prawn cocktails, Alistair found himself wryly but powerfully drawn to this man, to this rumpled screenplay writer with his dreamy gaze, the curious elisions of his somewhat slurred voice, and the great dents and bone shadows of his face, all the faulty fontanels of vocational care. He knew how old Sixsmith was. But maybe time moved strangely for screenplay writers, whose flames burnt so bright…

“And as for my fellow artisan in the scrivener’s trade: Alistair. What will you have?”

At once Sixsmith showed himself to be a person of some candor. Or it might have been that he saw in the younger screenplay writer someone before whom all false reticence could be cast aside. Sixsmith’s estranged second wife, it emerged, herself the daughter of two alcoholics, was an alcoholic. Her current lover (ah, how these lovers came and went!) was an alcoholic. To complicate matters, Sixsmith explained as he rattled his glass at the waiter, his daughter, the product of his first marriage, was an alcoholic. How did Sixsmith keep going? Despite his years, he had, thank God, found love, in the arms of a woman young enough (and, by the sound of it, alcoholic enough) to be his daughter. Their prawn cocktails arrived, together with a carafe of hearty red wine. Sixsmith lit a cigarette and held up his palm toward Alistair for the duration of a coughing fit that turned every head in the room. Then, for a moment, understandably disoriented, he stared at Alistair as if uncertain of his intentions, or even his identity. But their bond quickly re-established itself. Soon they were talking away like hardened equals—of Trumbo, of Chayevsky, of Towne, of Eszterhas.

Around two thirty, when, after several attempts, the waiter succeeded in removing Sixsmith’s untouched prawn cocktail, and now prepared to serve them their braised chops with a third carafe, the two men were arguing loudly about early Puzo.

Joe yawned and shrugged and said languidly, “You know something? I was never that crazy about the Petrarchan rhyme scheme anyway.”

Jan said, “‘Composed at—Castle’ is ABBA ABBA.”

Jen said, “So was ‘’Tis.’ Right up until the final polish.”

Jon said, “Here’s some news. They say ‘Composed at—Castle’ is in turnaround.”

“You’re not serious,” said Bo. “It’s released this month. I heard they were getting great preview reaction.”

Joe looked doubtful. “‘’Tis’ has made the suits kind of antsy about sonnets. They figure lightning can’t strike twice.”

“ABBA ABBA,” said Bo with distaste.

“Or,” said Joe. “Or… or we go unrhymed.”

“Unrhymed?” said Phil.

“We go blank,” said Joe.

There was a silence. Bill looked at Gil, who looked at Will.

“What do you think, Luke?” said Jim. “You’re the poet.”

Luke had never felt very protective about “Sonnet.” Even its original version he had regarded as little more than a bargaining chip. Nowadays he rewrote “Sonnet” every night at the Pinnacle Trumont before Henna arrived and they started torturing room service. “Blank,” said Luke. “Blank. I don’t know, Joe. I could go ABAB ABAB or even ABAB CDCD. Christ, I’d go AABB if I didn’t think it’d tank the final couplet. But blank. I never thought I’d go blank.”

“Well, it needs something,” said Joe.

“Maybe it’s the pentameter,” said Luke. “Maybe it’s the iamb. Hey, here’s one from left field. How about syllabics?”

* * *

At five forty-five Hugh Sixsmith ordered a gin and tonic and said, “We’ve talked. We’ve broken bread. Wine. Truth. Screenplay-writing. I want to talk about your work, Alistair. Yes, I do. I want to talk about Offensive from Quasar 13.”

Alistair blushed.

“It’s not often that… But one always knows. That sense of pregnant arrest. Of felt life in its full… Thank you, Alistair. Thank you, I have to say that it rather reminded me of my own early work.”

Alistair nodded.

Having talked for quite some time about his own maturation as a screenplay writer, Sixsmith said, “Now. Just