Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

Someone uncorks and passes around a bottle of green wine. First glass I drank too fast. Doesn’t taste much different than the cheap American chablis I buy for myself by the jug. Room’s crowding up quickly. Coughing, smoking, phone and intercom ringing, somewhere a glass breaking, most people seem to know one another and a few exchange big hellos and hugs. “Yes, top floor, you just had to follow the noise,” Diana says on the phone, forefinger in her other ear. “Excuse me,” I say to Phil and Jane, “but I’ve done something wrong.” I go into the kitchen, unwrap the flowers and bring them in their glass to the cheese table. “You brought them for Diana?” Jane says. “How nice. Not even three months since summer and you really begin to miss them,” and she puts her nose into one of the corollas, closes her eyes and breathes. “Smell them, hon. Remind you of something?” Man at the table says to me “And what school do you teach at?” and I say “Me? No place. Would if I could but not much room for what I do. Except if you count junior high school here on a per diem basis, and in some subjects I know as much of as my kids,” and he says “For some reason I thought you said you taught in New York,” and he puts some cheese on a cucumber slice and leaves and I look around the table for a vegetable tray, don’t see any and say to Jane “I could really go for a carrot or celery stick,” and she looks at the table and says “I don’t think she’d mind much if you raided the icebox.” “Alan,” Diana shouts to a man walking in. I recognize him from his book jacket I’ve home. I think he’s wearing the same book jacket jacket and the same or similarly designed striped tie. Does very well. Front-page reviews, interviews on TV and in magazines and the news. Recently in the photocopy shop down my block I saw him on the cover of the free TV Shopper and read the article about him inside and learned what neighborhood restaurants and stores this “famous Westsider” likes to go to. Diana quickly introduces him to a few people and he says hello and waves to several others he knows and she leads him over to us. “I want you to meet two very dear old friends of mine, Jane and Philip Bender. They’re both incredible sculptors.” “I know their work, you don’t have to tell me,” Alan says. “Fact is I almost owned one of them.”

“Which one of us did you almost own?” Jane says, shaking his hand.

“I’m sorry. I just came from another party and my communication processes got bottled up. Which one of you works in plastic?”

“Didn’t he just say he knew our work well?” Phill says to me and I shrug and look to the side. Someone’s cigarette smoke’s coming my way. I hold my breath and look back. It’s broken by my head, a little of it goes in Jane’s face.

“…didn’t say ‘well.’ And if your wife or you hadn’t adopted the other’s surname, I’d know which one of you works in what much better.”

“Excuse me, sir, I didn’t — I hope you don’t think I was saying it aggressively. Just my sick sense of whatever you call humor again, which likes to work against me.”

“Same here — unaggressive, though no one could ever accuse me of humor. And whichever of those two media you do work in, let me say I admire it tremendously.”

“Thanks. And I think I can say the same for us for your work too — in all your literary forms.”

“Even the porno novels?”

“You don’t write those that I know of.”

“See? Told you I had no sense of humor.” They all laugh. I smile.

“And this is Daniel Krin, Alan,” Diana says, “before you get into an endless trialogue about art buying and inflated reputations and phalli and pornography. But if you are thinking of buying someone, you’d be wise to scoop up these two soon. Value of some of their older work has quadrupled.”

“She’ll say anything for a friend,” Jane says, “and because she knows we’re dying to go to Machu-Picchu.”

“Will she? — Hello, Mr. Krin.”

“How are you?” We shake hands.

“I’m fine thanks I guess, and you?” and laughs.

“Just an expression. ‘How goes, adios, I’m well, thank the Lord, by jove and gum.’”

“Of course. My bottled-up processes — this time the incoming. Seriously now,” to Phil and Jane, Diana nipping my elbow and slipping away, “and all pornography and priapic testimonials to the rear for the time being unless you’re lusting to discuss them, which one of you works in rubber?”