How It Ended Part 18

Craven, genuflective begging ensues, heartfelt and genuine. Please, please, please. He will do anything, he tells her. He will bark like any species of dog she can name, even roll over if necessary. Finally, she peels off the teddy and lies back on the bed like Manet's Olympia, ripe and haughty, a bored odalisque. She is a woman whose image is expensively employed to arouse desire in conjunction with certain consumer goods.

"Fast," she commands, "and no sweating."

The narrator takes what he can get, a grateful consumer.

Location, Location, Location The narrator lives in the West Village, near the river, far enough west that he is spared the Visigoth invasions of provincial teens with boom boxes, just south and east of the Meatpacking District. A summer's-evening breeze is imbued with a perfume that wafts from the sc.r.a.p heaps of decaying flesh stacked outside the packing warehouses; after dark, the streets are taken over by transvest.i.tes and the cruising vehicles of their johns; many nights, the narrator is awakened by thick whispers and carnal grunts from the stairwell just outside the bedroom windows. "It's always a tradeoff with Manhattan real estate," the agent cheerfully informed him, and then demanded fifteen percent of the first year's rent.

Curriculum Vitae The narrator's name is Collin McNab. That's me, thirty-two years old and not really happy about it. Still waiting for my adult life to begin. Is this my fault? I could blame my parents. That That would be novel. would be novel.

I have a job, of sorts. It is called Paying the Rent Until I Write My Original Screenplay About Truth and Beauty. The job description: writing articles about celebrities for a young women's magazine. A branch of astrology. I'm planning to develop a computer program that will spit these things out with the touch of a few keys, a simple program indeed, since there are so very few variables. Already my word-processing program contains macro keystrokes that instantly call up such revelations as "shuns the Hollywood limelight in favor of spending quality time with his family at his sprawling ranch outside of Livingston, Montana." (Control, MONT.) And "There's nothing like being a parent to teach you what really matters in life. The fame, the money, the limos-you can keep it. I mean, being a father/mother is more important to me than any movie role could ever be." (Alt, BABY.) And the ever popular "Actually, I've always been really insecure about my looks. I definitely don't think of myself as a s.e.x symbol. When I look in a mirror I'm like-Oh G.o.d, what a mess." (s.h.i.+ft, WHAT, ME s.e.xY?) Right now I'm trying to write a piece about Chip Ralston, boy movie star, but cannot seem to track him down. Although Chip Ralston allegedly agreed to this piece, his agent, his business manager and his publicist are all somewhat evasive at the moment. Is it possible that Chip remembers a rather negative-all right, very negative-review in the Tokyo Business Journal Tokyo Business Journal that I wrote about his second movie, in which I said that the best acting was done by his car, a racing-green Jensen Healy with s.e.xy wire wheels and a deep, throaty voice? that I wrote about his second movie, in which I said that the best acting was done by his car, a racing-green Jensen Healy with s.e.xy wire wheels and a deep, throaty voice?

Metropolis After twenty-four hours, still no message from Philomena but one from the narrator's boss, Jillian Crowe, asking for an update on the Chip Ralston piece. There was a twinkling moment when Collin seemed to have the gift of pleasing Princess Jillian, a time when he detected an almost girlish interest in his person and his so-called work, culminating in the evening when he was her escort, a last-minute subst.i.tute but an escort nonetheless, to the Costume Gala at the Metropolitan Museum. This was the metropolis as it was meant to be seen, in the flattering aphrodisiac light of eminence, a brilliant republic compounded of wealth, power, accomplishment and beauty. The atmosphere of festive mutual regard extended even to tourists, like Collin, on the happy a.s.sumption that their applications for citizens.h.i.+p were pending. He was with Jillian Crowe, therefore he was. If he had first taken the whole thing more or less as a joke, secure in his self-knowledge as a flunky, toward the end of the night he started to feel remarkably comfortable in this new role. Infected by both a desire to please and half a dozen gla.s.ses of Krug, he regaled the table with colorful anecdotes about the s.e.xual practices of the j.a.panese and with the untold story behind a recent celebrity interview. He didn't think that Jillian appreciated these stories quite as much as he'd hoped. But then again, he doesn't exactly remember. He does recall her saying, "Darling, when I try to show you the ropes, do try to pick up more than just just enough to hang yourself." And then there was Philomena's reaction: furious at being left out, she was also irate at the datelike aspects of what Collin tried to present as a tedious professional obligation. enough to hang yourself." And then there was Philomena's reaction: furious at being left out, she was also irate at the datelike aspects of what Collin tried to present as a tedious professional obligation.

"Why don't you ask Jillian Crowe to f.u.c.k you?" became a late-night refrain in their bedroom for some time. It seemed to Collin that he paid dearly for this little outing. At work his novelty simply and immediately wore off, novelty being the cardinal virtue in the value system of the magazine; after that night, the frisson between Collin and Jillian Crowe fizzled.

Suspicious Information Collin calls his girlfriend's modeling agency to ask for her hotel in San Francisco.

"San Francisco?" says the booker. "What's in San Francisco? I show no booking for Philomena in San Francisco. In fact, I'm showing no bookings at all. She booked out. Told me she was taking the week off."

Collin feels a painful outward pressure on either side of his skull, above and behind the ears, as if he were growing horns.

Fall Yellow leaves fluttering down the face of the building across the street, like messages from a princess in a high tower. Another year going past.

Neutral Information, i.e., Raw Data Philomena Briggs, born Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 13, 1963. Height: 5 10. Hair: auburn. Dress size: 4. Shoe size: 8. Measurements: 34-24-34.

Interpretation The above data comes from Phil's composite, the business card with pictures distributed by her modeling agency, and is in fact not raw at all but cooked to a turn. The actual birth year is 1961. The place of birth was a town too small to show up on any map. The measurements are obviously suspect. And the last time I bought her a dress, I had to return the four to Barneys and get the six. "The salesclerk told me they ran small," I noted helpfully as she tried it on, knowing that if she got upset with the way she looked in it I might not get lucky for days.

How I Got My Job The joke around the office is that Jillian Crowe gave me my current job on the celeb beat after she heard that I was living with a model named Phil. Another point in my favor was what I wore to my interview, a vintage Brooks Brothers gray flannel hand-me-down from my father; Jillian thought that I was fas.h.i.+on-forward enough to have antic.i.p.ated the return of the three-b.u.t.ton sack suit. She has since discovered her mistakes.

My contract is up in two months, and no one has approached me about renewal. In fact, my office was recently converted to storage s.p.a.ce. I send in my copy via modem from my apartment: vanguard of the virtual office.

More on Phil I met Philomena in Tokyo, on the Ginza Line between Akasaka-mitsuke and s.h.i.+mbas.h.i.+. I couldn't help noticing her, of course, the only other gaijin gaijin in the subway car, a head taller than the indigenous population, clutching her big black modeling portfolio to her ribs, nervously tossing her coppery hair. I was trying very hard not to stare. "Do you know which stop is Ginza," she asked. I looked up from my copy in the subway car, a head taller than the indigenous population, clutching her big black modeling portfolio to her ribs, nervously tossing her coppery hair. I was trying very hard not to stare. "Do you know which stop is Ginza," she asked. I looked up from my copy of Heike Monogatari of Heike Monogatari, all innocence, my expression one that was meant to say, Whatever in the world leads you to a.s.sume that I speak English? At the same time I was thinking, Oh, Jesus, please don't get off the train and walk out of my life-you're the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen in it.

She was in j.a.pan building up her modeling portfolio and her savings account. Aside from her modelish appearance, I was charmed by what seemed to me-after five years in j.a.pan-her archetypal Middle Americanness, the curious alloy of wide-eyed curiosity and other-side-of-the-tracks street savvy. In that stranger-in-a-strange-land context, I, in turn, must have cut a rather striking figure, being able to order food right off the menu, count, ask directions and, when necessary, shout insults. Which is to say, I doubt she ever would've shacked up with me in the States. But in the context of adult males known to Philomena, I was practically a saint, just by virtue of nonviolently hanging around. Her father disappeared when she was three, and of her mother's several boyfriends the best that she could say of her favorite was that he was pa.s.sed out most of the time. She has never really told me the worst of it, and I'm sure I don't want to know. Whenever Philomena, standing in front of the full-length mirror at five minutes to eight, tells me that she hates going out anyway, not to mention all of our so-called friends who are really only my friends, and that she is absolutely not attending the opening/screening/premiere/party/dinner/wedding or whatever occasion has forced her to confront the imagined shortcomings of her wardrobe and her body, whenever she ignores my pleas for s.e.xual relief or says, "n.o.body really cares about anybody except themselves"-at these times I remind myself that she is still in a bad mood from her childhood. But this behavior did not manifest itself until we had been together for a year. And by then she was a relatively successful fas.h.i.+on model in New York, where such comportment was a professional prerequisite.

She moved into my tiny flat in Roppongi. We slept on a single futon that we laid out on the tatami floor each night and folded up each morning. Recently escaped from my official Ph.D. studies, I was keeping carca.s.s and spirit together by teaching English and writing movie reviews for the j.a.pan Times j.a.pan Times and the and the Tokyo Business Journal Tokyo Business Journal. Two evenings a week I took the train to s.h.i.+njuku and conjugated English verbs with j.a.panese businessmen: I dump.

You dump.

He dumps.

We dump.

You all dump manufactured goods below cost on the American market in order to gain market share.

On my free nights, I bought mordant pickled vegetables, anthropomorphic ginger root, fat, white, talcy sacks of short-grain rice, s.h.i.+ny fish and skinny chickens with feet. I turned on the automatic rice cooker when I heard Philomena's key in the door. We made love when she returned home, and sometimes again after we had rolled out the futon for the night. We were always s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in those days. Jesus, it was wonderful. Then we moved to New York, which is to monogamy what the channel changer is to linear narrative.

Celebrity Searches I call Celebrity Searches. "Can you give me a current location on Ralston, Chip?"

"Still checking," the voice says after a long wait. Finally: "We show him in his Malibu house up until Thursday last week, then we pick him up last Sat.u.r.day at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Checked out Sunday and we're not showing anything since."

"Can you work on that for me?"

"Sure. Meantime, how about Kiefer Sutherland? He's right here in town."

"Who I really need to find is my girlfriend."

"Actress?"

"Model."

"Supermodel?"

"Just model."

"Model, non super. Name?"

"Philomena Briggs."

After a search, he says she's not in their database.

Finally, a Message from Phil "Hi, it's me. You there? ... Guess you're out. I'm rus.h.i.+ng to get a plane. We're off to L.A. to finish up. I'm not sure about the schedule. It's nuts. Call you when I know where I am. Big kiss." This message on my machine when I return from dinner. It's the tone of voice which is so disturbing. A false, heightened breeziness. The words strung together on a thin wire of nervous gaiety.

Collin's Reaction The narrator has been able to suppress his anxiety until this moment. But hearing her voice, he knows that his suspicions were well founded.

Fruitlessly he dials the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Marquis, the Four Seasons, the Bel-Air, the Bel Age and the Peninsula. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if he can reach her in L.A., he can stop her from doing what he fears she has already done. Between calls he searches all the drawers for cigarettes-which he gave up a year ago-and finally finds a pack of horribly stale Newports that someone left in the apartment. He lights one from the stove and thinks, Wait a minute, who smokes Newports? No one he knows. And Phil has never smoked. Jesus, she's been entertaining black guys in the apartment? No-wait, it could be a girl who smokes New-ports. One of Phil's friends. What friends? Who are her friends? He realizes that Philomena has very few girlfriends. Suddenly it seems dangerous to have so few friends. Who is your boyfriend supposed to call when he can't find you? Collin remembers something his sister once said: "Beware the woman who doesn't like other women; she's probably generalizing from her own character."

Flashback "Why don't we ask Katrinka and her boyfriend for dinner?"

"You ask them. The three of you can go out. Or better yet, just the two of you. You and Katrinka." ask them. The three of you can go out. Or better yet, just the two of you. You and Katrinka."

"I thought you liked Katrinka."

"I used to. Till I found out she was a liar."

"What did she lie about?"

"Lots of things."

"Like what?"

"Like she said you were coming on to her, trying to get her to meet you and stuff."

"She said that?"

"Uh-huh."

At this point Collin was hard-pressed to speak up in Katrinka's defense. In fact, it had seemed to him that she was always flirtatious, and he had been aware at the time that he was not actively discouraging it. And so he did not really want to probe any deeper into the matter. And once again the two of them, Collin and Philomena, dined a deux a deux.

Panic The cigarette tastes so bad he immediately lights another one.

On a sudden inspiration, he rushes back to the bathroom and searches the cabinet beneath the sink, then the bedside table, then her lingerie drawer, scattering panties and bras to the winds. He looks under the bed, and in the soap dish in the shower, and finally admits that her diaphragm is not in the apartment.

Collin dials his sister, Brooke. Perhaps he hopes she will convince him that his fears are groundless.

She can only say she is sorry, though her concern is genuine enough to provide a momentary balm.

"I sit down," he says. "Then I stand up, and if I could I'd climb the G.o.dd.a.m.n walls and hang from the ceiling, but that wouldn't be any good, either. I don't want to be in the apartment another minute, but I don't want to leave in case she calls, and I don't want to be alone, but I can't think of anybody I could stand to be with, and I can't stand myself."

"Why don't you come over here?" Brooke proposes. Mercifully, she does not remind him that there are people far worse off than he is. Until recently she was doing postgraduate work in quantum physics at Rockefeller University, but she is on an extended hiatus, crippled by depression and an acute sensitivity to human suffering. She still has nightmares about Bosnia. Collin's sister is like one of those bubble children born with a defective immune system; she does not possess that protective membrane which filters out the noise and pain of other creatures. She is utterly porous. She told him recently that the average weight loss among adult residents of Sarajevo after seven hundred days of siege was twenty-five pounds, thereby giving her own dietary habits a symbolic dimension, but she's been starving herself on and off since the Vietnam War.

When Collin reaches his sister's apartment and sees her face, he comes apart like a three-dollar umbrella in a gale. Brooke scoops up the wrecked steel ribs and shredded black nylon and walks the whole mess inside.

When he has regained his composure, she is boiling water in the former coat closet that pa.s.ses as a kitchen.

"I didn't know you knew how to boil water," he says.

"You're thinking of Mom," she says. "I learned this in prep school. Actually, it's not as difficult as it looks."

"Just please don't say I'm better off without her."

"Only because it would arouse your chivalrous instincts. I have no desire to provoke you into defending her." She looks like the poster child for anorexia, in the oversized Middlebury sweats.h.i.+rt that Collin gave her about twelve years ago, with her hair swept back in a ponytail, her thin freckled hand resting on the handle of the kettle. If only he were allowed to fall in love with his sister, maybe they could save each other.

"She took her diaphragm, Brooke."

Brooke sighs, nodding gravely. "Could it be she was just antic.i.p.ating the possibility that her plane might go down, stranding her in a remote s...o...b..und region with five or six male survivors who might force her to have s.e.x? And, thoughtfully, she didn't want to be pregnant with some nameless homunculus when the snow finally melted and she was at last rescued and reunited with you, her only true love?"

"What about disease, for Christ's sake? If she was so concerned about me, she could have carried a gross of triple-strength condoms."

"It's possible she packed those, too. G.o.d, you smell like Lynchburg, Tennessee."

"I've been drinking."

"I'm shocked."

"It doesn't help."

"I wish you'd tell that to Dad."

She hands him a Beethoven mug full of steaming water floating a green herbal-tea bag. Collin slaps his hand against the wall. "I don't understand how she could be so eager to run off and f.u.c.k some other guy when I have to beg to get it once a week. It's not fair."

"I know."

A Parable Later, Brooke strokes her brother's hair. "Remember how we could never get Rogue to eat his dog food? Remember the only thing that would get Rogue to eat? Clio. As soon as she stuck her whiskers in his bowl, he went wild. He'd bark and growl and run in circles around the bowl till she'd had her nibble, then he'd rush in and devour every last bit of it."

Collin takes the point, but is too unhappy to acknowledge it.

"When I talked to you in August, you said you supposed that you should get married but that you you didn't really want to. Hardly the stuff of sonnets and didn't really want to. Hardly the stuff of sonnets and chansons chansons. But now that someone's got his nose in your bowl you're howling. I hate to say it, but this is a guy thing. You boys think you want virgins, but what you really want is to put your peepees where the other peepees have been."

"Why can't I just marry you," Collin asks.

A Call from Mom "Hi, honey. How's every little thing with you?" The annual parental Manhattan pilgrimage commences the day after tomorrow.

"Swell," I say. Mom has such a dreamy and ethereal disposition that I try not to puncture the bubble. The last, miraculous child of ancient parents, she grew up in an atmosphere of benign and privileged neglect in Charleston, then wafted through Bennington until my father brought her to ground, briefly, after a mixer at Williams. When he graduated, a few months later, they married and moved into my paternal grandfather's house in Florida, where Mom resumed the life she'd led as a child-painting landscapes, tending the garden and riding. One hates to worry her.

"What do you want for Christmas," she asks.

I can't think of anything I want from central Florida, except maybe a lemon to suck on. "Just your own sweet self," I say, pouring myself another drink.

A Typical Morning in the West Village 10 a.m.: Collin wakes. Headache. Remembers that Philomena has abandoned him and is waking with someone else. Heartache. Back to sleep.

11:15: Wakes again. Realizes that Philomena is still gone. Guilt at sleeping so late. Crawls out of bed. Surveys disorderly, depraved bed-roomscape. Vows to clean this up. Soon.

11:20: Showers. No shampoo. No soap. No toilet paper. Mental note to buy some. Files it next to yesterday's identical mental note.

11:45: Newsstand for the Times Times and the and the Post Post. The Times Times because Collin is a serious guy and the because Collin is a serious guy and the Post Post because he's not. because he's not.

11:48 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Bus Stop Coffee Shop, consuming coffee, bagel and newsprint. Peace talks in Dayton. Anna Nicole Smith redundantly in a coma. Whitney threatens to dump Bobby Brown unless he stays at the Betty Ford Clinic.

12:48: At his desk examining mail: Gay Men's Health Crisis, Amnesty International, second notice from the phone company, already ten days overdue, and-what's this?-a chain letter received about a week ago: Chain Letter WITH LOVE ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.

This paper has been sent to you for good luck. The original is in New England. It has been around the world nine times. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter provided you send it on. This is no joke. Do not send money, faith has no price.Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours. An R.A.F. Officer received $470,000. Jon Eliot received $40,000 and lost it because he broke the chain. While in the Philippines, George Hish lost his wife fifty-one days after receiving the letter. He had failed to circulate the letter. However, before her death he had received $7,775,000.00.Please send twenty copies. After a few days you will get a surprise. This is true even if you are not superst.i.tious. Do note the following: Constantine Dias received the chain in 1953. He asked his secretary to make twenty copies and send them. A few days later he won the lottery of two million dollars.Dolan Fairchild received the letter, and not believing, he threw the letter away. Nine days later he died.Do not ignore this. It works.

The letter is signed "St. Jude."

Is this the source of Collin's calamity? He broke the chain? What if he had made twenty copies and mailed them out last week? This shrill imperative improbably strikes home. In his bereaved, pathetic, tenderized state Collin is almost prepared to believe in the capricious and personalized fate a.s.signed to him by this otherwise innocent-looking piece of Xerox paper. "Collin McNab left the letter sitting on his desk. A week after he received it, his girlfriend packed up her diaphragm and disappeared. Two weeks later he was run over by a taxicab." Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if he sent it out now ...

1:43: Calls Chip Ralston's manager in L.A. Secretary puts him on hold. And then over the receiver come the unendurable strains of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm s.e.xy?" After Collin has listened to the song three times, a voice breaks in.

"Collin, how are you? Where are you, in New York? How's the weather? Snowing yet? Sleet? Seventy-eight degrees and sunny here. So how's it going with Mr. Chip? You guys. .h.i.tting it off okay?"

He explains that it's not going, that he can't locate the greatest thespian of his generation, that his deadline is less than a week away and he hasn't even talked to his alleged subject. Ralston's manager evinces surprise and dismay. He explains that Chip has been terribly busy researching his new role, but he, the manager, will absolutely have Chip call him today. Tomorrow at the latest.

2:45: Shuffles to the newsstand for a pack of Seven Star. He hasn't really started smoking again, just a temporary thing till he gets through this crisis. It comes back to him, though, no question. Inhale, exhale. Like riding a bike. Suddenly worried he might be missing a phone call from Philomena. Hurries back.

2:51 p.m.: No messages.

3:13 p.m.: In an interlude of self-disgust, Collin wallows in shame at the sheer worthlessness of his life. All around him the city hums with purposive activity and commerce while he sinks into a slough of sloth and despond. His life has no purpose and no direction. No wonder Philomena has left him.

Chain Letter, Cont.

Collin McNab left the letter sitting on his desk. A week after he received it, his girlfriend packed up her diaphragm and disappeared. Two weeks later Collin discovered the letter. He sent out twenty copies and his girlfriend returned and said she loved him. It seems she had been hit by a taxicab in a foreign city and suffered a case of amnesia. The day after her boyfriend mailed this letter, she regained her memory and came home. The next day, Collin found a paper bag on the street containing $2,830,520 in cash. They were married a week later and now divide their time between St. Barts and Aspen.

Miscegenation Speculation At last something Collin can use: the first high-profile marriage of a Hollywood s.e.x G.o.ddess to a j.a.panese billionaire. Thinking that this particular prospect nicely combines his underutilized background in j.a.panese studies with his beat as celebrity chronicler, he tries to interest Jillian Crowe in an essay on this subject. Shades on top of her head, she asks, "Collin, darling, honestly, do I look like the editor of The New York Review of Books The New York Review of Books to you?" to you?"

The Parents Come to Town, but First ...