Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

The face was familiar, though I’d never met this man.

The face was Roscoe Kane’s.

Or at least it was Roscoe Kane’s face before time and booze and gravity had got to it and basset-houndized it. The china-blue eyes were exactly Roscoe’s.

A tapered hand extended itself and I took it, shook it; a firm handshake.

“Sorry we have to meet under such tragic circumstances, Mr. Mallory,” he said, in a manner that seemed to me to be feigning more sorrow than he really felt. “I’m-”

“I know who you are,” I said. “Troy’s friend.”

We sat one table away from the table I’d shared with his father in the bar the night before. A few familiar faces were around-Tom Sardini and Peter Christian were nearby, part of a large party of writers, a few of whom I knew, but I didn’t have to know each of ’em to tell they were writers-lots of beards and longish hair and glasses and slightly off-kilter clothing; we were a recognizable breed. I lacked the beard and mustache, but there’d been a time, back when Woodstock wasn’t just a character in Peanuts , when I’d had facial fur, too. The vaguely unconventional look of the mystery writers my age echoed, however faintly, the left wing stand so many of us took in those Kent State days. Some of us voted straight Republican now (not me, but some of us did), yet the generation we were part of lingered in our appearance. We tended to look like assistant professors on small college campuses-the sort who never get elected department chairman, and only grudgingly, via tenure, achieve full professorship.

Anyway, Tom and Pete waved at me to join them, and I waved and smiled no, as nicely as possible, and turned my attention to Jerome Kane.

Jerome wasn’t Woodstock generation; he was of that vague, Eisenhower/Howdy Doody generation that was just young enough to miss out on Korea and just old enough to avoid Vietnam. A conservative era; a safe era. But an era that produced its share of misfits-misfits, at least, by the standards of that day. Today, in the hip ’80s, we don’t consider homosexuals misfits-do we, Mr. Falwell?

I wasn’t a born-again Christian, but I didn’t like Jerome Kane, anyway. He’d been soft-spokenly polite in the elevator; his manners were impeccable, his manner graceful, not exactly effeminate. Any residue of bigotry against gays I might feel was not-I didn’t think-a part of my instinctive dislike for him. Dislike? Too strong a word. Resentment. I resented this man.

Why?

“I envy you,” he said. Suddenly.

We’d ordered drinks-he ordered Scotch and tonic, like his father, and I opted for a Coke, avoiding liquor to keep my head clear, seeking caffeine to keep me revved up. But we’d sat silently, waiting for the drinks to arrive; I had questions for him, but he’d called this meeting, so to speak, so I wanted him to speak first. I’d let him have the lead till it struck my fancy to take it from him.

Now, suddenly, he envied me.

“Why?” I said.

“You knew my father in a way I never could. Never will.”

“Your father and I weren’t really all that close.”

The drinks came. A pretty barmaid even bustier than the one the night before gave me a generous view as she deposited the drinks on the table. I smiled at the barmaid and she smiled politely, and then I realized I was overcompensating, and felt foolish. I was sitting at a table with a homosexual and I felt compelled to assert my heterosexuality.

The china-blue eyes smiled. “Attractive young lady.”

“You noticed, did you?”

“I’m gay, not blind. And how do you know I don’t appreciate the fairer sex, from time to time? Haven’t you heard of bisexuals, in Iowa?”

“No, but I’ve heard of them in California.”

“ Touche . As I was saying.”

“What were you saying?”

“You don’t like me, do you, Mr. Mallory?”

“That isn’t what you were saying.”

“It’s what you’ve been saying.”

“I don’t remember saying much of anything.”

“That’s precisely how you said it.”

“Spare me the California mellow-speak, would you?”

“Is that what you call it in Iowa?”

“Actually, we call it bullshit. I’m just being polite.”

“Ah, yes. Contempt is so often expressed by mock-civility.”

I sipped my Coke. “Go to hell, Jerome.”

Lids half hid the china-blue eyes. “I’m interested. What is it about me you dislike so? My sexual preferences wouldn’t matter much to you, I’m guessing.”

“That’s right.”

“What is it, then?”

I looked for a fast answer; any smart-ass remark to lob the ball back to him. But I couldn’t find one.

And he just sat there staring at me with his father’s eyes coming out of that tan face, the subdued lights in the place catching his droopy gold chain and tossing it at me.

Finally I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I don’t like you. You seem decent enough. I think I maybe… resent your lack of appreciation of your father, for who he is… was.”

“Is that all?”

“Well. I think you pose, a little…”

“Don’t you ? Don’t you confuse yourself a bit with that sensitive latterday Philip Marlowe you portray in your books?”

“No. I know where fiction ends and reality begins.”

“Oh, really? And where is that?”

“Somewhere east of San Francisco.”

A smile crinkled one corner of his mouth and both his eyes. “Now you sound like a latter-day Gat Garson.”

That made me smile. I’d have to be careful or I’d start liking this guy.

“You’ve read your father’s books?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, I have. I most certainly have. Very witty. Of their kind, the very best there is. My father was an underrated, underappreciated artist. One day he’ll be rediscovered. Perhaps his death will spark a revival. That would be the only fortunate consequence of his passing.”

Damnit. I was starting to like this guy.

“I’ve even read one of your books,” he said. “I liked it, rather. I can see why my father might be proud of his student.”

“You said you envied me,” I said, a little embarrassed by his flattery, “for being close to your father. I wasn’t. He had a wall up he never quite let me get behind.”

Jerome nodded. “I think that was true even of his wives-with the possible exception of Evelyn the Grotesque.”

When he spoke her name he might have been sucking a lemon. I must’ve shown in my face my surprise at the depth of his bitterness, because he went on to answer a question I never asked.

“Evelyn stole my father from my mother. It’s that simple. To me, she’s a thief, and, in a roundabout way, a murderess. But she understood Roscoe Kane. She could relate to him on his own level-trade off-color, wise-guy cracks with him like a drag queen Gat Garson. And, of course, she drank with him. They were boozers together. That can create an enormous bond, you know. It’s a club you can’t resign from.”

“He eventually left her.”

Jerome shrugged. “They both went on the wagon. They both periodically fell off, in years to come; but for a while there, they were sober. It’s a terrible thing to sober up and look at the person you’ve been married to when that person has simultaneously sobered up and is looking at the person she is married to, too. Neither one recognizes the sober version, and, well, the rest is history.”

“And history is Mae Kane.”

His smile turned up at both corners now. “Bless her greedy little heart. She was my mother’s unintentional avenger. She was Evelyn’s karma come home to roost. Those years of drinking turned pleasantly plump Evelyn into a barrel with legs, remember. And Mae was-and is-an attractive woman, to say the least. You’ve noticed?”