Cabot Wright Begins: A Novel Read online

  “Well, sweetheart, sincerity is not quite so simple or convertible as everybody always makes out. As a matter of fact I think Bernie could write a book. Don’t ask me to explain. Curt and I have argued over it. It’s a feeling I have.”

  “But you feel I’ve been a horse’s ass in sending him to Brooklyn.”

  “That’s a risk we all run when we decide to do almost anything.”Zoe had regained some of her more ordinary composure. “I mean you did right!”she now went on in a loud voice to Carrie. “But you can’t expect me, poor lamb, to be quite so devout about your husband’s prospects as you are. I’m not devout about Curt’s, as you must sometime have observed!”

  “I’m not going to blame you, and I didn’t call you here to do so!”Carrie paced up and down.

  “Well, it was a fateful utterance—mine, that evening,”Zoe laughed.

  “I had followed the case so long—the Cabot Wright one,”Carrie began again.

  Mrs. Bickle nodded for her to go on.

  “And you see, I knew I was losing Bernie after all!”

  Zoe Bickle could not suppress her look of surprise.

  “Something fairly desperate had to be done,”Carrie told her.

  “I believe I’ll have that beer now,”Zoe loosened her feet from her high-heels and lay back in the chair now.

  Carrie gazed at her for a moment as if inquiring about her health, then went out into the kitchen.

  She came back with a stein of beer and a paper napkin, almost pushing them into Zoe’s face.

  Zoe drank eagerly from the stein, made a grimace of displeasure, then drank some more.

  “You send a husband away to Brooklyn on a wild goose chase of writing a novel about a certain criminal I’m frankly taken with,”Zoe began now in earnest. “Then it would be nice, you decide, if it was me who had thought the whole thing up in the first place because, I suppose, I happen to have kept a writer all my married life who won’t write a line…

  “I’ll tell you everything I think then, Carrie.”Zoe went on. “Curt, my husband, is a writer, and he’ll never write again. That’s our funeral, as they say down south. Now in your case, my pet, you’re married to a phenomenon of our own special epoch, a man who couldn’t in a thousand years be a writer in the only meaning of the term, but who can and probably will write a book. Put that down to a feeling I also have. And then tell yourself this before bedtime: I, Zoe Bickle, did give you that sentence the night you were at my place and the fact I’d had a lot to drink is not to the point. Furthermore, I think you were right to act on it, whether you’re losing Bernie or not—that’s beside the point too. You took a gamble, but you know that. Why should you expect everything to work out successful? You’re old enough to know better. Furthermore, it may be nearly time for a new husband. If we look back on your old marriage charts, you’re ready, sweety, you are.”

  “Since you say you sent Bernie to Brooklyn,”Carrie took her turn now to laugh, “let me ask you another: will he write the book?”

  “It might have been easier if somebody had hit me over the head tonight in the street.”Zoe put down her stein of beer. “As a matter of fact,”she went on to Carrie, “I’m going to New York on some publishing business of my own, next week.”

  Carrie let Zoe have all the time she needed.

  “I do know people who count in publishing,”Mrs. Bickle let Carrie in on something Carrie already knew. Looking at her friend gravely, she added: “You’ve heard of Princeton Keith.”

  “Afraid not, Zoe, dear.”

  “It’s a big name for nobody, which is all big names in our period are,”Zoe smiled.

  A deep depression had settled over Carrie. Mrs. Bickle held out her glass. “You know, darling Carrie, I can’t drink this beer. When a drink’s flatter than cistern water—”

  Carrie made a motion to take it and get another, but Zoe vetoed her offer by continuing to drink.

  “Who is Princeton Keith?”Carrie wanted to know.

  “Mr. Big in New York publishing. He’s given me a job of sorts in his New York office for a month or so. While I’m there, of course, I can introduce Bernie.”

  Zoe put down her beer for the last time, after trying to drink a bit more of it, and showed she was going home by walking over to the door.

  “We don’t know what will happen in New York, sweety,”Zoe said, “but almost anything could. And I did say that sentence to you. Whether truth comes out in drink or not is up to somebody else to say, but I said what I said, and I’ll stick to it.”

  When she heard this, Carrie became almost voluble: “Now you’ve come over here at this hour of the night, through a street that scares you, you can stay a bit longer. We’ve broken a good deal of ice tonight. I don’t expect to throw my arms around you or go down on my knees and pour myself out, but I’d like to tell you a good deal more than I’ve been able to before.”

  Zoe sat down.

  “You think, for example,”Carrie walked about like somebody reciting from distant memory, “you think Curt, your husband, is a real writer, and that Bernie isn’t.”

  “All right, Carrie! You said that. I didn’t,”Zoe countered.

  “Well, I wish you had said what you thought. I can even read the blank spaces on your face. But then that’s you. You work at never saying or showing what you feel or think or are.”

  “No wonder I’m so tired then,”Zoe thanked her.

  After a lengthy silence in which Carrie paced and Zoe smoothed her hat, Zoe spoke again: “I don’t know the answer to your questions, dear girl. Who do you think I am?”

  “You don’t know that you don’t think Bernie can write?”

  “I don’t know what writing is.”

  “Oh now, Zoe, stop it.”

  Zoe showed by a gesture the little interest she had in it all.

  “You’re too frail a girl to have held up a grown man like Curt so long all by your lonesome,”Carrie muttered. “That’s all that’s wrong.”

  Yawning, Zoe waited for her to continue.

  “You’ve decided to intervene on behalf of Bernie. You’re in publishing. Good. But you don’t believe Bernie is or could be a writer, though you think he can write a book. On the other hand you believe Curt is a—probably a great writer, and will never write a line.”

  Zoe’s eyes closed, then opened without expression, her jaw set, then slowly gave. “Well, I’m surprised,”she could only say. “You make the truth so simple… And I don’t believe Curt’s a writer, either, for your information.”

  “But you think Curt might have been a writer, whereas Bernie never.”

  “Look, angel, why should you want me to say something you fear you might believe. You want to believe Bernie is a writer. All right, dear. What’s your proof? For yourself, that is.”

  Her back to Zoe, Carrie fidgeted with the hour hand of a broken ugly ormolu clock whose ancient gold flaked at the touch.

  “I did bring you some stories Bernie wrote, a couple of years ago. You and Curt returned the manuscript without so much as a word. What did that mean?”

  “It meant they meant nothing to us.”

  “You meant he wasn’t a writer then.”

  “We didn’t think that far, Curt and I.”

  “Oh, Zoe!”

  “You’re new to writing, Carrie. You’d be much harder on a jazz musician or a painter…”

  “But Bernie needn’t be a great writer.”

  “No, he needn’t,”Zoe agreed.

  “He’s got to write this book,”Carrie told her.

  “New York publishers,”Zoe began with studied reluctance, “can make anybody write a book.”She examined her teeth in a handmirror because one of her fillings had come loose and her jaw ached. “Queens with crowns, scrub-ladies, Coney Island pickpockets, dope addicts, corset salesmen—publishers have done all of them. Got almost interesting books from some of them. What’s that got to do with what you call writing?”

  “All right,”Carrie merely continued. “Do you think then a New York pu
blisher could get a book out of Bernie?”

  “If he’s got a paragraph of information in him they like, they can. If the book’s bad enough, they’ll publish it, and if it’s bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it’ll sell. Now, dearest,”Zoe stood up. “I’ve told you all I know.”

  Zoe was thinking hard about New York when she inquired: “Does Bernie really know anything about prison?”

  “He was in long enough to know everything, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Then what in hell do you want him to write a book about a rapist for?”

  “The books he wrote about himself never came out right, Zoe. The Cabot Wright story is just perfect for him. He’ll understand the main character but he won’t be made nervous by him.”

  Zoe laughed, and took Carrie’s hand in hers. “Listen,”she began. “I want you to know who I’ll be turning your husband over to, now you’ve gone and bought him a ticket to New York on the strength of a sentence I spoke when drunk… Princeton Keith is Mr. Jesus Christ Jehovah in New York publishing at the moment. How long he’ll last is of course not in my field of knowledge, but he should last, considering the times. He’s an ugly-pretty skinny man of 45, he’s crooked and he hates writing. He loathes and fears writers and would write the Pope a phony contract. As I say, he’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and can open all doors. If, you see, he decides Bernie can be used, and if he thinks Bernie has a book inside of him—not a real book, you understand now, you’ve got to settle on something they can print—then he’ll help. Princeton can smell a real book and a real writer from the first strike of a match in conference, and then he goes into action to prevent that book or writer ever being heard from. He’s America in action—opposed to quality.”

  “Oh, Zoe, cut it out.”

  “Do you want me to make that kind of bargain for you or don’t you?”

  “If he can help Bernie, I’m willing to overlook all those dirty digs you’ve just given both of us,”Carrie said.

  Zoe kissed her.

  “Bernie’s got a book in him,”Carrie said in an attitude of prayerful menace, “and I don’t care what you or anybody else thinks of him, and I don’t care how he comes to write it.”

  “Fine and dandy,”Zoe sealed the agreement. “Then Princeton’s our man. For your private information, I went to school with him. We’re from the same little Illinois town. Of course he wouldn’t admit now that he was ever further west than Philadelphia, or that his dad was a dirt-farmer. But he’s a bit scared of me, respectful at least, and I do hard little writing and editing jobs for him occasionally, like the one I’m doing next week. And he’ll see Bernie… Better give me his Brooklyn address while we’re about it.”

  “I feel you saved a lot here tonight,”Carrie mumbled, as she wrote out Bernie’s address for Zoe.

  Pulling her jacket down and tight around her, Zoe said, “Why don’t you fill up this barn of a house with some roomers again, like you used to? You’d feel less spooky,”she touched Carrie again with her lips. “By the way how do you treat beer like that to make it taste like poison?”

  Suddenly Zoe added: “You wouldn’t have let Bernie go if you weren’t crazy with hope.”

  “You ought to know it was more than hope. I thought his going off would be the only way to keep our marriage, frankly.”

  “That’s kind of a dangerous risk, now I hear this part of it.”

  Carrie exchanged a look of defiance and menace.

  “You admitted yourself, Zoe, so many untrained, uneducated men have written books that sold.”

  “Well, thank God then I thought up Princeton Keith for us,”Zoe exhaled a great breath of relief.

  She still didn’t seem quite able to leave, though she faced the door again. She turned back to Carrie: “I see myself or a little of me all over again right here. You’re not as young as I was when I made my big step down, but you’re not old yet. But don’t think you’re ever going to get fat on soap bubbles now. I spoiled my life and I certainly spoiled Curt’s.”Mrs. Bickle seemed to be reviewing everything that had happened to her. “Babied him all the time, and he’s never written a book that can stand on its own two feet, though he’s completed a dozen novels. I gave my life to somebody who wrote and wrote and never finished even one train of thought to the very end. And yet Curt’s a real writer too. His machinery is stuck, that’s all.

  “Why would I paint you a rosy picture about writing?”she went on. “There’s not the slightest mathematical or human probability that Bernie can write a book that will make a cat take notice, even with a master quack like Princeton around, and even if his book’s published—probable in an age of poop like ours—it will bring neither of you a thing. Most books don’t even come into the world with the noise of the still-born.”

  “You could be mistaken, too, Zoe, smart as you are.”Carrie had turned deathly pale.

  Mrs. Bickle smiled her hard broken smile, showing upper teeth too perfect to be real.

  “Whether Bernie succeeds or fails, at least we’ll find out what he could do, and he can come home to me. That’s what I’ll have to hold on to now,”Carrie said. “He’ll try there, and come back to me here.”

  You’re a goddam big optimist as well as a half-assed reckless gambler,”Zoe looked at her sharply.

  Carrie stared at her friend with a questioning grin, just this side of terror.

  “You can’t stop short of what’s the truth now,”Zoe said. “It’ll hurt too hard later unless you tell yourself what can happen, right now. You must acknowledge there’s a strong chance Bernie won’t come back at all. Why should you fail to realize what you’ve gambled? If he writes the moneymaking book you both seem to think he will, he might not need to come back to you. He’s never, after all, seen money. But there’s the other chance that he won’t come back if he doesn’t write it, if he doesn’t write anything.”

  Everything in Carrie Moore’s expression went so blank that Zoe had the impression she was looking at a frame that had lost the picture.

  “You’re telling me in plain English I’ve lost my husband.”

  “Well you must have known there was some suspicion of risk or you wouldn’t have sent him on his errand because of one poor drunk sentence from me!”

  Carrie went as far to the other side of the room as she could, and there began to cry in earnest.

  “I know in my case, in my marriage,”Zoe ignored her friend’s distress, for she saw no reason to spare her now even in the name of kindness, “so far as Curt was concerned, I knew he would leave me if he succeeded, and if he failed, I knew, Curt being what he was, would stay. I suppose I wanted him to fail, deep down. Some potty little analyst said as much to me once, though I never could afford the treatments. But failure has kept Curt at home like a nice warm dachshund. If he’d made money in the beginning, he’d have left me on my behind. I could be wrong. But our marriage has bloomed in failure. We’re happy, we’ve been happy since we accepted the bed we made for one another… But you’re ambitious and you’re nervous, and you’re neither young nor old. You’re special gamblers, you and Bernie… That’s where I can come in, with Princeton Keith.”She seemed to be studying Carrie without actually looking at her. “Next week in New York, I’ll know more. Meanwhile, Carrie you should fill your house up with roomers. Keep yourself occupied. And paint some more pictures. You’re getting lazy.”

  She paid no attention at all to Carrie’s convulsive weeping. Going up to her as if she were completely calm, she said, “We’re both wives who support our husbands in a way some women would never comprehend, let alone undertake. We’re not so unusual in an age like the present.”

  She patted Carrie’s behind goodnight.

  “You’ll see how much I will do, Carrie dear girl,”she told her, opening the door to leave.

  3

  IN THE COCKROACH PALACE

  The doors to the rooms at the See-River Manor did not close properly. Anyone looking at the flimsy lock on Bernie’s door, for example, could
be certain of entering his room merely by pushing a nail file through the aperture between jamb and lock. But what burglar, to use a word that always made Bernie smile, would want to break and enter his room, or anybody else’s in the Manor? There was one thing Bernie had, of course, that was beyond price and that the sirens of fire-engines and police cars made him clutch in the night—the notes and manuscript of his novel. If a burglar took that, he took everything. But who in the See-River Manor or in all the world would want what he had written? Even the many scavengers who roamed the streets of Brooklyn at all hours—odd men and queer ladies propelled not by their need for treasures but by some obscure and consuming impulse to bear away unknown person’s discarded things—even scavengers were known not to break or enter.

  What now made Bernie nervous in the night was not the knowledge that his lock was easy to pick or that anybody could enter his room, but the secret he now kept to himself and had not shared with Carrie on the long-distance telephone.

  One evening, as he walked up the stairs to his room, his skin broke out in goosepimples when he saw that his door, which he had locked before leaving, was ajar. Inside a gentleman wearing a straw hat was seated at his desk reading the last pages of his novel.

  “Bernie?”the unknown visitor extended his hand without rising, thereby indicating his importance. He smiled, amused to see that Bernie did not recognize him. “Princeton Keith,”he introduced himself. “From the Goliath Publishing House. You’re familiar with our books, I’m sure.”

  Bernie stammered a phrase.

  “As to this story about Cabot Wright you’re doing… But of course you’ll have to change his name to a fictional one! Can’t use real names, you know.”The intruder pounded on the stack of typescript with his fist. “But whatever you’ll call him, so far so good!”

  Bernie gulped, wanting to say Who told you? How did you find me? and Keith, an amateur hypnotist and ventriloquist since early youth (he had performed magic acts on a mid-west vaudeville circuit at the age of 24), read those questions on Bernie’s lips.

  Bernie, who was still standing in the doorway, was afraid to close the door behind him.