“You look happy,” Portia says.
“Just chemical reactions—my tongue and stomach sending thank-you messages to my mind. Just the hardwiring of any man who ever lived.”
“Breakfast in bed is nice.”
“It’s something.”
“I’m glad to be here with you, Mr. Vernon.”
“Don’t get too attached,” I say, and then attack my potatoes.
We gaze out the window at a beautiful winter’s day in Central Park as I finish eating and drink my coffee.
“I wish Albert Camus were here,” I say.
“Oh, fuck Albert Camus,” Portia answers.
“Not the writer you wish to sodomize with a stale baguette,” I say. “My dog, Albert Camus.”
“Why did you name your dog Albert Camus?” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Maybe because I am a former teacher of literature—a man who forever monitored the great conversation and yet never added a line himself.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” she says.
“Nothing,” I say, thinking I really do miss Albert Camus, wondering about what my mother’s letters might say if I ever bother to retrieve them from my PO box, and sipping the best coffee ever to pass through my lips.
“Goddamn it, money is a wonderful thing,” I say.
“I thought so too, for a while,” she answers. “But the sad part is that you adjust quickly to it. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but like what happens to the protagonist in A Happy Death.”
“So you’ve read it? Ms. Sodomize Camus with a Baguette has actually read his books?”
“I read everything by Camus in my early twenties—not just his novels, but his essays and plays too.”
“You were assigned Camus in college?”
“I actually dropped out of college before I read much of anything. The pressure of maintaining the grade-point average my academic scholarship required led to a breakdown. There it is. The truth. No higher-education diploma for me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because she’s obviously embarrassed and I don’t know what else I can offer here.
“Anyway, I read Camus while I was waitressing. Mostly because the French Nobel laureate was greatly revered by my high school English teacher, who I admired even more. He gave us these cards on the last day of school that—”
“Okay, okay, enough with the sycophantic banter. I’m not even dressed yet, for Christ’s sake. Can I not digest my breakfast first?”
“I will make you whole again, Mr. Vernon,” she says, staring into my eyes with a dangerous intensity. “I swear to you. I will not fail.”
I blow a lungful of air up toward my forehead, turn my eyes toward the barren trees in the park, and resume sipping my coffee.
This is not going to end well for either of us.
CHAPTER 15
Allowing her smart phone to lead us around, Portia walks the soles off my shoes—although there are a few cab rides thrown in here and there—to several buildings, telling me to take a good look up each time we stop.
“Why?” I keep asking.
“I’ll tell you once we’ve seen all six!” she keeps replying.
I don’t know the layout of New York City, having only visited once or twice, and many years ago, and so I have no idea what connects the various buildings at which we gaze.
The city buzz induces a high level of anxiety—everyone is marching quickly with blank faces, cars and yellow cabs slice through streets like so many angry sharks eating up free inches of asphalt—and while Portia seems to benefit from the New York state of mind, being here makes me feel like one of many insignificant ants that will crawl through the city for a time before being replaced by other ants that will also be forgotten, on and on ad nauseam.
As we gaze up at the sixth building, Ms. Kane says, “So, did you figure it out yet?”
“Figure what out?”
“Why I showed you six buildings in New York City.”
“Does this have something to do with architecture?”
“No.”
“Some form of birds that are flourishing in nests built high above?” I guess, shading my eyes with my hand as I look up, trying to see the tops, and whether there are any nests. “I read something about falcons thriving in cities.”
“Not even close. Do you give up?”
“Does it mean we can stop running all over the city if I do?”
“The six buildings we saw house the six major publishing houses in New York—Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, FSG, Penguin, and Random House.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Which one do you think it will be?”
“Which one will what be?”
Portia smiles mischievously. “Which one do you think will publish my novel?”
“You’ve written a novel?” I say.
“Well, not yet, but I’m going to.”
“Perhaps you better concentrate on writing the actual words before you start predicting who will publish,” I say. “Selling a novel to a major house is extremely difficult.”
“Have you tried?” she asks.
“Well, no—but—”
“Then how do you know?”
“I guess I don’t.” I can tell this is important to her, and even though I am beginning to sense a pattern of delusional hope, I really don’t want to be the one who urinates on Portia’s parade. I’m beginning to feel sorry for her in a way that I didn’t think was possible. I admire her moxie and determination, even as I watch her jump off an emotional cliff without a parachute.