Potboiler

High atop a shelf in his closet was a box containing old snapshots he had never found the time to organize. Desperate for evidence of an independent self, he hauled it down and dumped it out on the floor. He knelt and grabbed the topmost photo: a black-and-white image of a much younger him hunched over a desk at the university literary magazine. A plaque read

 

ARTHUR S. PFEFFERKORN, DICTATOR-IN-CHIEF

 

—a gag presented to him by Bill in honor of his managerial style. Where, Pfefferkorn wondered, had he gotten the idea that he had an artistic birthright? His mother had never finished high school. His father never read anything more sophisticated than the racing form. He himself had not been a studious child, preferring to listen to baseball games on the radio or to sneak cigarettes from his father’s coat pocket. When had the transformation occurred? How had he become who he had become? He used to think he knew, but now everything seemed up for grabs. He picked up another photo and was startled to see himself mouth-kissing his daughter. But it was not his daughter. It was his dead ex-wife. The resemblance that so often annoyed him here verged on pornographic. He hurriedly turned the snapshot over. His ex-wife would be in lots of these photos, if not most. It gave him pause. How much of those years did he want to revisit? He remembered the day she called to tell him she was dying. I want to see her. It was an extraordinary demand to make of a seven-year-old girl who hadn’t seen her mother in three years. To bring her into that room, with its tubes and its smells . . . But he couldn’t rightly say no. A mother was a mother. His daughter had refused to come, though, and Pfefferkorn’s ex-wife had called to scream at him. You’re poisoning her against me. He tried to reason with her but it was no use. A month later, she was gone.

He picked up another photo.

There they were: he and Bill, Piazza Navona, their shadows humpbacked by large canvas rucksacks. The summer after graduation they had wandered across Europe. In those days a rail pass cost eighty-five dollars. Bill paid for those as well as for their airfare, using money he’d gotten from his grandparents as a graduation gift. Pfefferkorn had always intended to reimburse him. He never had. He wondered about the real origins of Bill’s “graduation gift.” Grandparents? Or the Boys? Was Bill working for them as early as then? Pfefferkorn could never know. He felt doubt beginning to hollow out his memories. He remembered a night in a Berlin hostel (it was West Berlin back then), opening his eyes to catch a glimpse of Bill leaving the room at two in the morning. The next day Bill pled insomnia. I went for a walk. Pfefferkorn remembered it and doubted. Berlin, of all places—and like that, his happy memories of the city caved in on themselves. He doubled over as though gutshot. It hurt to breathe. Eventually he rose to his hands and knees and reached for another photo. Their high school prom. He saw the ruffled cuffs and the powder-blue tuxedos and their shining red faces. But he doubted. He doubted all of it. The memory imploded. He reached for another and the same thing happened. And another and again. Piece by piece his history disappeared. The cursing parakeet they kept in the apartment. Bill’s green Camaro. The canoe trip with their young wives. The first time Bill held Pfefferkorn’s daughter. He knew he should stop. He was destroying himself. He could not stop, not until the sun came up. He had gone through the whole box and his life lay in shambles. He had thought himself done with grief, yet here he was, sobbing again. Not for the death of a friend but for the death of a friendship. He wept for the friend he never had.

50.

The book tour for Blood Night was bigger and fancier than that for Blood Eyes. He went to more cities. He flew first class. He stayed in swanky hotels, one of which celebrated his arrival with flowers, fruit, and a quarter-scale replica of the novel rendered in chocolate and icing. He used his cell phone to take a picture.