The Autograph Man (29 page)

“Not true. Not
close
to true.”

She pointed to some yellow rubber gloves on a shelf, which Alex passed to her.

“Thank you—and you will dry.
Dear Kitty, She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence. Yours, Alex-Li Tandem.
This one I memorize—it’s so lovely. And at the same time, Alex, if it is not too rude to say, it
worries
me that you write these.
Why
did you write? You are really too young even to remember my last film, no matter my first. I think,” she whispered playfully, “it suggests a lack of sexual intrigue in your life, to be interested in this ancient history. There is no girlfriend, or she is not effective. There is a lack somewhere. I think this must be true.”

“Why don’t you go away, if you want to?” asked Alex earnestly. “I mean, if Max has you all cooped up here? That’s no way for you to live.” He took a wet cup from her. “You’ve got European fans up to the eyeballs, really. I could help you organize—”

“Wanna keep these, or . . . ?” said Honey, appearing at the door with a saucer of milk-damaged cookies. Kitty beckoned her over and examined them.

“Lucia will have. Over there, do you see? This bowl. This bowl is English Wedgwood, but what can be done? She is a diva, my Lucia. She fills in for my inadequacies in that department. You know, my dear, you can take off your gloves in the house.”

“Why don’t you go away?” persisted Alex.

“You . . . you are so familiar-looking. One feels one knows you already—such a friendly, striking face. And almost terrifying what a tall girl you are. They say it is the additives. Americans—they are all so tall. Either this, or they grow the other way. Or both.”

“You could open film festivals. It’d be like a comeback tour. Paris, Venice, London . . .”

Alex’s voice was unexpectedly passionate, angry, and it silenced the tiny room. Honey gave him a look and an International Gesture (index finger drawn across throat) but defiant Alex looked away. He felt irritated by Kitty’s inability to stay on the subject of her own fame. It is an oddity of the Autograph Man that if he were a slave freed by his master, we would find him the next day back at work, self-flagellating.

Kitty had finished washing her cups. She held her gloves out to Alex. He removed them without a word, as if he had been in her service for twenty years.

“I have no money,” she said simply. “This apartment is rent-controlled. And with whom will I go? Max would never agree. He has never left this country in his life. And now we are finished with washing, yes? What to do now? I know a thing—you are young, maybe you can help with this computer before I go crazy completely?”

They walked through to the bedroom. Honey excused herself and used the bathroom, while Alex was told to sit at the desk. He experienced a mortifying rogue sexual thought as the warm bulge of Kitty’s chest descended and remained hovering by his face. She pointed to a key on the laptop. Pressed it and demonstrated its failure. Alex put his finger to the mouse pad. The toilet flushed. The doorbell rang.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Max!” gasped Kitty, backing away from the little window. “But
oh
. . . this is too ridiculous . . . and I can’t stop him, he has his own key.”

“Good,” said Alex resolutely. “I want to talk to him.”

“No, no, no . . . wait . . . yes, it is okay—he won’t know you. I will say you came to fix the computer. It is good, actually. Now you will meet Lucia! Now,
this
is the real honor.”

Short-lived. Alex saw only Lucia’s backside; she was barely in the room when Max rushed her from the floor as if she were in danger and, with the dog struggling gracelessly in his embrace, started yelling and raised his comic little fists.

“You heard me, make like a tree. I’m not joking. How long you
been
in here, anyways? Did you break in? How’d you find it?”

“Oh, Max, you are being ridiculous—please, don’t shout like this,
Max,
one moment, you don’t even know who is this—he is here to fix the computer—I am not in any danger, Max—I really apologize, I don’t know why he is behaving so—”

Honey emerged from the bathroom, twisting her hem.

“What’s all the—
oh.
”

“And here she is,” said Krauser, triumphant. “Bonnie. Clyde. I know these two grifters, believe me. And they’re hitting the bricks.”

An operatic argument followed, performed in four voices and three movements (the hallway, one lap of the lounge and then down the stairs, Italian style), in which no useful information was exchanged and a handful of lines were repeated over and over. With a finale on the doorstep.

CHAPTER FIVE

Taming the Bull

1.

“That’s very disappointing, Tandem,” said Lovelear solemnly. “That’s anticlimactic. I’m glad I didn’t get out of
this
to listen to
that.
”

He slipped deeper into the churning water and assumed an expression of supreme tranquillity. Alex pulled his feet up onto his deck chair and hugged himself against the chill. The sun was not going down. It was simply leaving, evaporating, one of those days that fades to white before the night comes. In this dying light, he could see the damage the city had done to the snow. Everywhere it had been squelched and gritted and dirtied. Even on the roofs the hot-air vents were creating islands where earlier there had been continents. And down there in the streets they persisted on stamping all over it. Millions of colleagues, tiny pointillist people, one blob for the head and one for the body. Jumping in taxis, doing the sidewalk race. Everyone was going home except Alex.

“You should really try this, mate, do yourself a favor,” remarked Dove, looking like a half-cooked lobster, red, with a blue tinge. “ ’Sbit like the best bath you ever had.”

“It’s nothing like a goddamn bath,” said Lovelear. He clutched the curved sides and lay flat. “This is godly. This is terrific. This is enlightenment right here. This is the tub in which cold and hot do not exist. This is always the right temperature. This is like being
born.
”

“I checked the letter she gave me,” said Alex, dragging his fingers through his hair. “It matches Krauser’s handwriting. I mean, it’s obvious to anybody—you wouldn’t have to be an expert. She must
know.
”

“Christ, Tandem, they’re probably in it together—some scam to make you feel sorry for her and give her some money or something.
I
don’t know, I don’t really
care.
And that’s another thing that smells to high heaven: how
can
she be broke, Tandem? How? Answer me that. She’s sitting on a goddamn gold mine. She just has to sign her name and she makes six thousand dollars. That’s money from air.”

And if I leapt, thought Alex, from this roof to that, from that to the next, and shed my body in Brooklyn and my mind in New Jersey, and reached England as my true self, my Buddha-nature, would you know me, my darling? Would you be the same, with your new heart? Would you take me to bed? In the office block opposite, a black girl with Esther’s neatly bald head, but dressed quite differently, in an office suit. She put on a coat and pulled the blind. Everybody was going home except Alex.

“Okay, here’s another one,” said Lovelear, reaching for an absurd cocktail. “What kind of an Autograph Man goes to the house of Kitty Alexander and fails to get her autograph? Is that normal? Doesn’t ask her anything about anything, doesn’t come back with a single interesting story about the films, doesn’t even steal an item from the house—I’m not saying it had to be anything
big
—”

“Small, like,” explained Ian. “From the bathroom. Something that wouldn’t be missed.”

“Exactly—although the bathroom would not be my room of choice—and doesn’t come back with anything—
anything
—that would help God-fearing people like me and the Doveman here believe you were ever there in the first place. And on top of this, to just totally ice the cake, you
fail
to sleep with Honey Smith which is like, excuse me? If you can’t sleep with Honey Smith, you have a dick malfunction. I’m sorry—you do. I mean, that’s her
job.
She is actually
famous
for sucking dick. And you didn’t manage it? Now what
precisely,
” pronounced Lovelear grandly, crossing his arms over his breasts, “are we to make of an Autograph Man like that?”

“Answer me this,” said Alex, standing. “What did my face look like before my parents were born?”

“Er, I’m gonna have to pass on that one, Al,” said Lovelear, blinking. “Ask me another one.”

“Okay. Can I go now?”

“Free bloody world,” said Dove, sniffily.

“For once,” said Lovelear, heaving himself out of the tub, “our friend Dove is right. It is a free world. Free up here, anyhow,” he said, slapping his forehead. “You can always go, Alex. You always
could.
”

He was massive, near hairless and completely naked, at once vulnerable and obscene. Alex felt compelled to hand him his towel.

Lovelear tucked his tongue into his cheek. “You just have to make up your mind to leave, is all.”

BACK IN HIS ROOM
, Alex found a note from Honey suggesting that they eat together, and a hotel questionnaire. The questionnaire, conscious of its own monstrous nature, was offering as its bribe a European vacation, the lucky winner to be chosen at random. Simply hand me in, said the questionnaire, at the front desk when you check out. Three times the questionnaire referred to itself as ‘me.’ Alex took it and a pen to the bathroom, removed his clothes and ran a bath that was too hot for human life. He returned to the bedroom for a bottle of wine and a glass. Sitting on the toilet lid, sweating from the steam, he briskly drank a huge glass of white and filled in his name, sex, racial profile and address. He had no problem giving out personal information. It was the thing he had in abundance. Once in the bath (a slow, stoic lowering), he found a perfectly placed phone just by his head, and a wooden rack by his left hand designed, it would seem, for his wineglass, his questionnaire and his pen. He washed his penis with one hand, soaping gently under his balls, and finished the questionnaire with the other. At home, when in the bath, one always hoped for the entrance of Esther, rushing through half-naked to grab a deodorant, or standing, for a moment, at the mirror, to put a lens in. And then, if you had pleased her, she might turn round and kiss you on the forehead, or run her finger down the seam of your wet belly, or find the soapy penis and kiss the tip of that. She loved you in the morning because the day was new. Argument was left on last night’s pillows along with the wept mascara. Alex drank another glass of wine and found himself, at the end of it, moving his finger around the rim, over and over, waiting for it to sing. The drink, the hot water—these had relaxed him sufficiently. He phoned Adam. It was a crossed line. Two people somewhere were talking faint Japanese.

“No, you can’t,” said Adam.

“Hi, it’s me. I was just—”

“I know it’s you—it’s late, man. And no, you can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“Have her number. The ward closed at seven.”

“Please, Ads. I need to speak to her.”

“I know—but I’m telling you, she’s fine. It went fine. I’ll give you the number tomorrow.”

“She’s all right? It all went all right?”

The relief came in a terrific swoop, as it will. His chin could not keep its shape, it stumbled and fell. Graceless tears carried on down his neck, ran down one arm.

“You saw her?”

“I went in this afternoon. She was groggy, but she was making jokes. I told her you couldn’t get out of New York—”

“I
couldn’t,
Ads. It was all paid for.”

“Right.”

“And . . . I don’t know . . . she didn’t seem to want me to be there much.”

“I think the point was that you were meant to
want
to be there.”

The line went quiet. Alex started gulping, loudly.

“Look,” said Adam with a sigh, “her heart works. It always did. Better than most. Come on, Alex—you’re fine, she’s fine. Calm down. Have you been drinking?”

“Bit.”

“All the more reason to leave it, then. Call her tomorrow. Okay? How’s New York. Any better?”

“Again? I can’t hear you.”

“Said:
any better?
”

“Oh. Hard to tell.”

“Well, you’re home soon,” shouted Adam, over the increasingly crossed line. “Tomorrow you leave, right? So. You’ll live. Worse things happen at sea. Oh—and it’s on Thursday, okay? So you best be learning it.”

“Oh, Ads, man . . . come on, I already told you—”

“You can buy it in any bookshop over there. Remember, it’s the
Mourner’s;
one. Kaddish Yatom. There’re like four different ones. Okay?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“WHAT?”

“I’M NOT DOING IT. I TOLD YOU.”

“Look, I’ve got to go to bed, mate. This line’s awful, and I’m knackered. I can barely hear you. Talk tomorrow, yeah?”

“Wait,
wait
—”

“And Esther’s fine, I promise you. Groggy, that’s all. Oh, and Grace is doing all right, too. Shalom, Alex.”

“Adam?”

“Shalom aleichem, Alex.”

“Shalom, yeah.”

Alex slid down the bath, submerged and watched the ceiling swim. When he surfaced, he had wet his questionnaire and had to hang it over a radiator to dry.

Were the range of television channels sufficient for your needs?

Television is always sufficient.

How did you find your sleeping arrangements?

Lonely.

What changes would you make to the menu?

Less food.

What single thing would have most improved the standard of service you received during your stay?

Monkey butlers.

Would you appreciate group activities scheduled for you and your fellow guests during your stay?

I’d need more details before venturing an opinion.

Here at the Burns Baldwin Hotel Group we have a simple, homespun philosophy, which we’ve taken as our promise to our guests:
Every day is a new beginning.

We think each and every hotel room should be returned to a state of perfection day after day, night after night, and we work hard to keep that promise. We also like to know as much as possible about our guests and their opinions and desires—that way we can give you more of what you want! By taking the time to fill me out, you’re helping the good people of Burns Baldwin to help you. Please feel free to write your own philosophy of life in the space below.

Regret everything and always live in the past.

By seven, Alex had finished with the wine and moved on to a bottle of bourbon, sipping it like a girl. He started to watch an advert. Half an hour later he was still watching it. He had been misled; now he was late. He put on his approximation of evening wear (white T-shirt, black jeans) and left the room. The lift had moved. It was not to the left and round the corner, its last known location. Nor was it to the right. All arrows led to exit signs and bleak fire escapes. Alex resented even the
idea
of stairs in a hotel context. The point was ease. Always ease. Even if it had to be the kind of ease that makes things more difficult.

He found the lift, finally, to the left and around three corners, in a spot from which he could clearly see the door of his own room. An arrow lit up.

“Room for one more?” chirruped Alex, thinking himself suitably amiable, American. He clapped his hands. There was a documentary team in there, four men in earphones and equipment, and a girl with a clipboard. Unsmilingly, they took a collective step backwards.

“Going down?”

“Nope,” said a man with a camera. “Goin’ up.”

Alex looked to his right and saw the number thirty-seven burning amber. He pressed L. “You know,” he said to a man with a sound boom, “when people are asked to choose a number between one and one hundred, most people choose thirty-seven.”

The boom mike slipped and bounced off Alex’s shoulder. The man apologized. In the silence, Alex wondered which part of him wanted to be in their documentary. How big was that part? Floor twelve elided into floor fourteen.

“Who’s it about?”

“Excuse me?” said a man. Like the others he had the word
TEAM
written on the front of his T-shirt. Alex looked closer and spotted his laminate, the face of a famous adolescent.

“Shylar,” said Alex, nodding. “She’s
very
good. Amazing what she does with her . . .” Alex pointed to his own potbelly. He moved it to the right and then the left. “Almost improbable.”

They reached floor 25. From this point onwards, thought Alex, a fall would be one hundred percent unsurvivable. Just a splat, while a ring or a necklace kept its noble metal shape, because we are not as strong as things. Things win. The lift shuddered and stopped and opened. A woman and her young daughter squeezed in. Alex was now pressed close to the man with the boom, facing him, with the boom itself hanging overhead as if it wanted to record Alex’s words. Now he became aware of a strong smell of alcohol coming from his own mouth.

“The three most—I read this somewhere, it’s true—the three most typed words—typed, as in
entered
into computers when they’re . . . you know, the three most thingied words are:
God,
” said Alex, showing an erect thumb, “
Shylar,
and—” Here Alex swore obscenely, and the American mother, in a proud display of Puritan gestural technique, waited two beats into the following silence, made a noise of disgust and put her big pink hands over the child’s ears.

SHE LOOKED AMAZING
. A plum-colored sleeveless satin dress this time, as once worn by the popular actress Rita Hayworth. The gloves were black satin and elbow length. Her hair seemed to be completely different hair from the day before. About five inches longer, with a chestnut streak in it.