Читаем Potboiler полностью

“Don’t be such a writer. I said it was very good.”

He wasn’t looking for praise, though. He was looking for exoneration. He studied her closely as she debated out loud whether to order dessert. He sought a clue. Some preoccupation around the eyes. Some tightness in the lips. Some backward-canted posture of concealed revulsion. He waited and waited, yet all she seemed to care about was whether the strawberry zabaglione was worth the calories. At first he wouldn’t allow himself to accept what was happening. But it kept on happening, and by “it” he meant “nothing.” Nothing was happening, because she had no idea what he had done. It was the stuff of bad novels, but it was true. It struck him then that the stuff of bad novels was far more likely to occur in real life than the stuff of good novels, because good novels enlarged on reality while bad novels leaned on it. In a good novel, Carlotta’s motivations were far more complicated than they appeared. In a good novel, she was withholding her accusations so she could spring them on him later to achieve an unexpected end. In the bad novel of life, she simply didn’t know. His troubles ended here. That she did not seem to care for Blood Eyes was beside the point. It mostly wasn’t his book. He wanted to jump up and sing. He was safe. He was free.

“Signora?”

Carlotta relinquished the menu and ordered a cappuccino.

“And the signore?”

“Same,” Pfefferkorn said.

The waiter departed.

“If you knew I was in town, why didn’t you come to the reading?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“That’s the same excuse I used,” he said.

“Well, I thought you were angry at me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“It was a reasonable assumption based on our last conversation.”

“Why is it,” he said, “that when I misjudge you I’m wrong, but when you make the same misjudgment of me it’s reasonable?”

“Because,” she said.

“Right,” he said.

30.

He extended his ticket and they spent a blissful ten days eating, laughing, and making love. There was a refreshing abruptness to their romance, a welcome dispensing of preliminaries, as they enjoyed each other for their own sakes. Bill’s name seldom came up, and when it did it was spoken with a kind of abstract fondness, as though he were a memorable character in a novel they had both enjoyed. The triangle had collapsed into a line, one that ran directly from Pfefferkorn’s heart to hers.

She drove him to the airport herself.

“Let’s not wait another year, please,” she said.

“I don’t plan on it.”

“I can come there.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said.

It wasn’t necessary, because he could now afford to fly across the country every few weeks. He soon became a regular in coach—this a concession to a lifetime of frugality—growing friendly with the stewardesses who worked the route, enough so that they would slip him freebies or sneak him into business class if the flight was empty. Exiting the airport, he would find the Bentley idling curbside, Jameson at the wheel, a cold bottle of seltzer waiting in back.

Los Angeles was growing on him. Like every city, it was a lot more enjoyable when you had money. Carlotta took him to quality restaurants. They browsed boutiques. They lounged at the beach club where the de Vallées were members. These were activities he could not have tolerated before, because he would have been too embarrassed to let Carlotta pay. In most instances, she still did pay—she had a way of effortlessly dispensing with the bill when he wasn’t looking—but it bothered him less, for he knew that, were she to forget her credit cards, he had the ability to step in and save the day. Pfefferkorn had heard it said that money was freedom, and this was true in the usual sense: having money enabled him to go places previously closed to him and acquire items previously out of reach. However, there was another, less obvious sense in which money was freedom. Money bred self-acceptance, liberating him from a sense of inadequacy. At times he felt ashamed that he had come to evaluate himself in such crude, stark terms. But the feeling swiftly passed, and he was once again able to enjoy himself.

31.

“You’re not offended, are you, Arthur?”

“Not in the slightest.”

It was a Saturday morning, three weeks before Pfefferkorn’s daughter’s wedding, which Carlotta had just said she would not be attending. The remains of breakfast in bed were on the nightstand. The smell of strong coffee lingered. Pfefferkorn shifted, rustling the sheets and slopping the disordered newspaper to the floor. He moved to retrieve it but she tugged him back.

“Leave it,” she said.

He relaxed again and she relaxed against him.

“It was thoughtful of you to invite me,” Carlotta said.

“Her suggestion.”

“Now you really are making me feel guilty.”

“I’m sure she won’t even notice. She’s trapped in a bubble of self-absorption.”

“Well, she is the bride.”

“I didn’t say I blame her,” he said, “only that she won’t care.”

“I can go,” she said unconvincingly.

“Not if you don’t want to.”

There was a silence.