After the Workshop (23 page)

“He’s meeting her at noon,” S. S. said.

“Where’s that flask?” Lauren asked.

S. S. unhesitatingly surrendered the flask. When she was done, she handed it to me. I took my share and gave it back to S. S. Lauren’s eyes widened. She was staring at S. S.

“Hey. I know who you are,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” S. S. said. “I’ve been here all along.”

“No,” she said. “You’re S. S. Pitzer.”

S. S. cut his eyes toward me and said, “
Les jeux sont fait
.” He placed his two fists together and stretched out his arms, as if he were expecting to be cuffed. “Well played, my dear,” he said. “Well played.”

In a gesture of unexpected tenderness, Lauren took hold of his wrists. I imagined her telling him how much his books had meant to her, how they had seen her through dark times, how they had saved her life. She said, “Are you working on a new novel? Because we’d love to publish it.”

“Actually,” he said, “I’m two hundred and fifty-three pages into a new work.”

“Two hundred and fifty-three?” she said, smiling. “Could you be more precise?” She let go of his wrists and laughed. “What’s its title? You can tell me
that
much, can’t you?”

“It’s called
After the Fall
.”

Son of a bitch
, I thought.

“One condition,” S. S. said, and he put his arm around my shoulders. “You must send us on the road together. We’ll promote both our books at the same time.”

“I love it!” Lauren said.

“And you’ll be our publicist,” S. S. said.

“Of course I would,” Lauren said.

By the time breakfast was served, S. S. and Lauren were giddy with their plan. Whenever the old woman left the room, they passed the flask back and forth until they’d polished it off.

“Are we close to a liquor store, Jack?” S. S. asked.

“Not far,” I said, pushing food around my plate.

S. S., eating breakfast for the second time that morning, said, “Why so glum?”

“Writers!” Lauren said before I could answer. “Always so damned glum!” She was drunk. Her eyes were losing focus. “Gloomy Gus,” she said and pointed a fork at me. “Maybe that can be your pen name.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Did the French invent French toast?” she asked. “If they did, we should call those little bastards and thank them. I mean, this is great fucking food. You know?”

“Oh yes,” S. S. said. “I
do
know. I
do
.”

Lauren took stock of her surroundings. “Iz not so bad here,” she slurred. “Iowa,” she said by way of clarification.

“Iz not, indeed,” S. S. said. He winked at me.

In the end, S. S. and I had to carry Lauren back to the car, all the while thanking our host.

“Wonderful food!” S. S. continued calling out from the sidewalk, holding Lauren’s ankles. “Did you pick the oranges yourself?” Lauren was muttering something, but the booze she’d consumed, combined with lack of sleep, had finally caught up with her, and all I could make out were the words “press kit” and “asshole.”

“She reminds me of an old girlfriend,” S. S. said. The back door of the rental was now open, and we were trying to figure out which way to shove her in—head or feet first.

“How so?” I asked.

S. S. said, “In that she was awfully unpleasant until she got lit. Let’s put your end in first and then push. What do you say?”

“Sounds good.” I gently set her head down, and then S. S. and I shoved her hard across the seat, until we heard a thump. It was the sound of Lauren’s skull slamming against the other door.

“Is she all right?” S. S. asked.

“She’s fine,” I said. “I’m sure her skull is twice as thick as yours or mine.”

“I heard that,” Lauren said, followed by, “Ouch. My head.”

“We
meant
for you to hear that,” I said. “In point of fact, it’s a compliment.”

“I lied,” Lauren said.

“Really?” S. S. asked. “How so?”

“I haven’t read a word Tate Rinehart’s published. Not a goddamned word.” She started to say something else, but I shut the door.

“Good-bye, good-bye!” S. S. yelled toward the B&B before he climbed into the passenger seat, waving one last time and smiling as though seeing off a lover on a Europe-bound ship, even though the old woman had already gone back inside and all the curtains were shut.

W
ITH AN ARM draped around each of our necks, Lauren Castle played the clichéd role of the drunken sailor to perfection as we lugged her up the stairs.

“Jesus,” I said, “she weighs more than she looks.”

“We’re coming in,” S. S. announced loudly after knocking on M. Cat’s door. Without waiting for a proper invitation, S. S. turned the knob and entered.

M. Cat stood naked in front of his bay window, his bandaged hands on his hips. I had to look away. Even in gym locker rooms I looked away from naked men, because if I didn’t force myself, my eyes would, of their own accord, sneak a peek. It was not unlike driving by a bad car accident in that the mind tells you not to rubberneck while the eyes remain glued to the horrors along the highway’s shoulder.

“Is she dead?” M. Cat asked.

“No,” I said. “Just passed out.”

“I lent my flask to her,” S. S. said. “Poor woman.”

“You got her
drunk
?” M. Cat asked. “She takes Lexapro. And then I gave her some antihistamines. You don’t want to mix that shit with alcohol. I took the MCATs, dude. I know.”

“You
failed
the MCATs,” I said. “Remember?”

“Why do you always have to be so harsh, man?” M. Cat asked.

I shrugged.

“Why won’t you look at me?” M. Cat asked. “You can’t, can you? Not after what you did to me back at the hospital. That wasn’t cool.”

“You’re
naked
,” I said. “That’s why I can’t look at you.”

“But this is how I came into the world,
amigo
,” M. Cat said.

S. S. said, “A wee bit smaller, I would imagine.”

“But naked,” M. Cat said. “And you know what? This is how I’m going to stay, I’ve decided. If society can’t deal with that, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“Good for you!” S. S. said.

“We’re all just primates, anyway, right?”

“Monkeys in pants,” S. S. concurred.

“Exactly!” M. Cat said. “Hey, can someone help me out with this one-hitter over here? It’s way past time for me to get blazed.”

“Only if you share,” S. S. said.

“Now,
that’s
what I’m talking about,” M. Cat said.

S. S. packed the one-hitter, lit it, took the first hit, and held it up to M. Cat’s lips. I wasn’t looking at them, but I saw their funhouse reflections everywhere—in the toaster, in the microwave’s plastic window, in the blown-glass double-bubble bong. They appeared as either elongated or blob-like, a quivering North Star moving between them. In one reflection, M. Cat’s penis appeared to be as long as his torso; in another, his head was so large, he looked like a hydrocephalic man-child.

“Lexapro,” I said. “That’s for depression, right?”

Holding smoke in his lungs, M. Cat said in a high-pitched voice, “She’s under a lot of stress, dude.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “who isn’t?”

M. Cat exhaled, and the entire room filled up with smoke. He said, “And now she’s got a situation on her hands.”

I nodded. I picked up the bong, examined it, and set it down. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“That chick I was looking for?” he said. “What’s her name?”

“Vanessa?”

“Yeah.
That
chick. Well, she made up just about everything in her book. She doesn’t even have a brother. There’s no aunt or uncle. There’s not even an
outhouse
! Is that fucked up or what?”

I turned to face M. Cat now. I stared into his eyes, trying to read if he was screwing with me, but he looked as innocent as a child.

“
New York Times
is gonna break the story on Sunday,” M. Cat said. “A feature in their magazine.”

“I think you’re confused,” I said. “They already did a profile on her. It ran last month.”

“No, no,” M. Cat said. “This profile—the one they’re running
this
Sunday—it’s all about the lies. Vanessa got wind of it and split.” S. S. held the one-hitter up to M. Cat’s lips. After M. Cat inhaled, he said in his squeaky voice, “Vanessa.” He let go of the smoke and said, “She totally James Frey’ed everyone’s ass.”

The three of us regarded Lauren, who was curled up in a ball and sleeping soundly.

After S. S. and I left M. Cat with Lauren, I asked S. S. if he could give me a little time alone.

“Just a few minutes,” I said.

“I’ll be downstairs,” S. S. said, “admiring the snow.”

Inside my apartment, I pulled the most recent phone book off the stack and looked up Alice. It had been years since I’d looked up her number, and I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised to find her listed, but there she was. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to call her. To apologize for the night before? To apologize for the sex in my car? To apologize for the cheese grater that sliced her toe?

I dialed. On the third ring, the answering machine picked up, but it wasn’t Alice’s voice I heard. It was a man’s.

“You know what to do,” the man said, and then the answering machine beeped.

I hung up. I studied the number and dialed again.

Three rings. Then: “You know what to—”

Before the man could say “do,” the phone rattled, a squeal filled my ear, and Alice said, “Hello?”

I hung up. I was about to leave the apartment when my phone rang. I let the answering machine pick it up.

“Jack?” Alice said. “Did you just call me?” A pause. Then: “Jack? I’ve got caller I.D. Are you there?”

I left my apartment.

Outside, S. S. and I stood in the bitter cold and admired the snow together. For the moment, the only sounds were our breathing, S. S.’s louder than mine. Puffs of air rose above us like thought balloons in a comic strip. Then came a blast of wind, roaring off the plains. We squinted and tipped our heads to avoid the direct, icy onslaught.

When you live in the Midwest long enough, you become expert at predicting when it’s going to snow. Today, the clouds were low-slung, bunched together, the slate-gray of old cats. My face had a thin sheen of precipitation on it. My ear, the one that had suffered all those years ago when I had foolishly continued my journey downtown instead of returning home, began to throb. All of these signs spelled
snow
. It hadn’t started falling yet, but it would . . . and soon.

“Let’s go for a ride,” I said.

S. S. said, “You realize, of course, that this is what some people hear before they’re taken somewhere and murdered.” When I didn’t answer, S. S. said, “Of course, sometimes it means nothing. Sometimes a ride is just that—a ride.”

“It’s just a ride,” I said. “I promise.”

The Corolla sounded worse than it had only a day earlier, as if another important piece of the exhaust system had fallen off. I suspected people could hear me several blocks away, the way you hear the groan of a fighter jet before you see it blazing across the sky. Every time I turned a corner, people stopped what they were doing to see what sort of monstrosity was rumbling toward them. I was clearly committing a faux pas, the automotive equivalent of farting in a crowded elevator.

“It’s like we’re at the head of an unpopular parade,” S. S. said, waving to a family that had stopped walking to glare at us as we drove by.

I took us to the student union, which sat next to the river, and I parked at a meter reserved for guests of the hotel inside the union, a placed called the Iowa House. The Iowa House was part of Workshop lore, since many of the visiting faculty, who came to town for only a semester, took up residence there; but like some kind of haunted hotel, the Iowa House often had its way with the guests. It had been a glorified motel, a grim one at that, with small blue-carpeted rooms, green bedding, and walls that were either beige or dirty. TVs were bolted to dressers. Raymond Carver and John Cheever lived in the Iowa House when they were teaching in the Workshop in the spring of 1973. It was later reported that neither took the covers off their typewriters the entire time they were there. Instead, they drank—and heavily. Cheever, afraid someone was going to mug him, didn’t like leaving his room. He and Carver made twice-weekly trips to the liquor store together, meeting in the Iowa House lobby and then driving to the store. A few years later, Frederick Exley checked into the Iowa House during his semester-long stint teaching in the Workshop. In
Pages from a Cold Island
—his sad, nearly unreadable follow-up to his glorious memoir
A Fan’s Notes
—he wrote, “Before going to Iowa I’d promised myself never,
but never
drink
in my room; that no matter the circumstances I’d force myself, for every single drink I had, to walk to one of the campus saloons and pay for it over the bar.” The next scene in the book is one of drunken debauchery inside the Iowa House between Exley and a twenty-one-year-old groupie.

At the front desk, I asked if a Vanessa Roberts had checked in, but I was told no. S. S. profusely thanked the young woman, who was probably an undergraduate. She had cropped hair and, I noticed when turned around, a tiny tattoo of a blue star on the back of her neck.

Outside, I said, “You’re drunk.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

I led S. S. down to the lip of the Iowa River. From where we stood, we could see the English Philosophy Building, where the Workshop had been housed for many years, including when I was a student. It was a dark-brick building with cave-like hallways and dim, flickering bulbs that made me think I was in an underground bunker, even when I was on the fourth floor, where the Workshop’s main offices could be found. Before coming to EPB, as the building was more commonly known, the Workshop was housed in a series of Army barracks. From what I had read and been told, the barracks were broiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. In a word: miserable. And yet there were times, in the temperature-controlled rooms of EPB, that I longed for the primitive days of sheet metal and bad acoustics. It seemed a more appropriate place for writers to congregate. We were drunks and crazies, pissers and moaners. But my longing was both deeper and darker than a yearning for barracks. It was a desire to live in a time I couldn’t possibly live in, a wish to meet people at a time in their lives that had already come and gone, a need to be a part of history in a way that I could no longer be. I suffered from what C. S. Lewis called
sehnsucht
, an inconsolable longing in my heart for
I knew not what. Sometimes, the
sehnsucht
’s grip was too strong, and it was all I could do not to curl up in bed and remain there for weeks on end.