Sebastian Stuart - The Mentor

“But doesn’t he always do that? Clam up? He’s superstitious, afraid the energy will dissipate if he discusses a project.”

“That’s true. But he usually can’t resist teasing me, giving me small samples, at least calling me now and then to rant and rave. Lately-nothing.”

Anne wishes she wasn’t having a dinner party, wishes she didn’t have to be charming, didn’t have to oversee the food, could just sit down with Nina and talk. She needs to talk. She drains her glass of wine and immediately wants a second but doesn’t have it. “You know, there’s this secretary, this temp I hired to help him get his office shaped up. I think I made a real error in judgment about her. She’s strange, almost creepy, and I think untrustworthy. Of course Charles claims she’s good for him.”

Nina narrows her eyes and gives Anne a probing look.

“Believe me, I’ve considered that possibility. But it’s hard to imagine Charles being attracted to her. She’s all elbows and flusters-she can hardly complete her sentences.” Anne hopes she sounds more convinced than she is.

Nina takes one of Anne’s hands in both of her own. “Charles adores you, Anne, has from the moment he laid eyes on you. But right now I think he feels he’s let you down, what with the disappointment of Capitol Offense. The old dog is as proud as a lion, you know. And he’s at that age when men panic, that whole male menopause thing. I think what both you and I should do is give him some room for a little while. This new book is brilliant. I predict that a year from now we’ll be laughing about this conversation.”

Anne smiles and gives Nina’s hand a squeeze. “What would we do without you?”

“You two are very important to me.”

Anne glances over to see the caterers ladling out the soup. “Will you excuse me? I’ll be out in two minutes.”

Anne, determined to make the dinner a success, walks into the living room, her eyes doing a quick sweep of the sparkling room and its seven sparkling inhabitants. The president of a home shopping network sits on one end of the maroon Chesterfield-he’s offered Anne the sun, the moon, and two hours of prime time to sell whatever she wants; that witty young screenwriter-she was an Oscar nominee this year-sits at the other end. Nina is lounging elegantly in an armchair; the husband-and-wife team of cultural arbiters who seem to turn out a book every year elucidating the state of America’s collective psyche are sitting, tellingly, at opposite ends of the room; and standing by the window is the restless young heiress and socialite, according to Fortune the twelfth richest woman in the country, who is Anne’s newest groupie and, she suspects, closet crush-holder.

Charles is holding forth by the fireplace, in high spirits, thank God. She knows he needs this social contact, this chance to shine. Dinner parties are one of the linchpins of their marriage and, in spite of Charles’s recent railings against them, she knows how good they are for his ego-not to mention hers. At these parties they’re a team again, an unbeatable team, two talented, generous people who are madly in love.

“The end absolutely justifies the means. What matters is the final work of art, not what it took to create it,” Charles says, his hair falling boyishly over his forehead, his voice passionate.

Nina sits up and leans forward. “Oh, come on, Charles, that’s absurd. Are you saying it would be all right to commit a murder so someone could write a great book about it?”

“If one sad, starving old peasant woman had to be murdered so that Dostoyevsky could write Crime and Punishment, so be it,” Charles answers, raising a murmur around the room. Anne loves seeing him like this, in his element, the center of attention, tossing off ideas like shiny pebbles.

The female half of the cultural-critic team stiffens and says, “You’re placing the artist on a different moral and ethical plane than the rest of humanity.”

Charles is not deterred. “What would life be like without Mozart, Michelangelo, Shakespeare? What separates man from beasts? Art. It elevates us, illuminates our souls. Whatever the artist has to do to create is allowable.”

Anne sees her opening and leaps in. “One thing we can all agree on: you can’t create on an empty stomach.”

The soup is a smash, of the earth, earthy, yet “somehow Parisian,” the socialite announces. Charles and Anne sit at opposite ends of the table. The screenwriter, who is at Anne’s left, has twinkly eyes that make Anne wonder if on her last trip to the loo she powdered her nose with something that packed a little more kick than talc. “What do you think, Anne?” she asks with a mischievous grin. “How would you feel if Charles were having an affair and justifying it by saying he was working on a book about adultery?”

“That would depend on whether or not I thought it was a great book.”

“Let’s assume it is,” says the home shopping honcho.

“In that case, I’d expect him to be discreet enough to let me pretend I didn’t know what was going on.” Anne and Charles lock eyes as she speaks, both of them smiling tightly.

“But according to Charles’s theory, he’d have every right to flaunt his affair,” the honcho presses.

“Announce it over dessert,” the annoying screenwriter adds.

“Well, this is only the soup course. But don’t keep us in suspense, darling. Do you have any announcements?”

All heads turn to Charles. He slowly takes a sip of wine.

“I have two announcements,” he says in a measured tone. The table grows silent. “First, I believe I am working on a great book… And, second, it isn’t about adultery.”

Amid the general laughter, Anne is sure no one notices how forced hers is.

After the guests have left, Anne supervises the cleanup and then runs herself a hot bath and soaks for ten minutes. She assumes Charles is in his office, working. She puts on her nightgown and goes to say good night. She walks down the hallway and through the living room and dining room, turning off lights as she goes. The large apartment seems to grow cavernous in the dark. She crosses the kitchen and walks down the long hall that leads to his offices. They’re dark.

“Charles?” she says tentatively, standing in the doorway of the outer office. There’s no answer. She turns on the light and looks around the room, the room where Emma works. She goes over to her desk. It’s neat and ordered, with a pile of letters, a list of things to do, a glass filled with pens and pencils. There’s no idiosyncratic trinket, no picture, no struggling plant, not even a coffee mug. Anne slides open the top drawer. There’s a box of Marlboros, a worn paperback copy of Heart of Darkness, a pack of chewing gum, paper clips, rubber bands. Anne sees the corner of a newspaper clipping that has been pushed to the back of the drawer. She reaches in and lifts it out. It’s a photo of her and Charles, taken at the library’s Literary Lions dinner. There’s an X scrawled across Anne’s face.

Her heart pounding, Anne quickly replaces the clipping, closes the drawer, and leaves the room.

“Charles?” she calls from the foyer. There’s no answer, yet she feels his presence in the apartment. She walks down the hall and checks the guest bedroom. Empty. Then she looks into the study. All the lights are off, but as her eyes grow accustomed to the dark, she makes out a figure lying on the couch. “Charles?”

“Don’t,” he answers.

“Don’t what?”

“Turn on the light.”

Anne suddenly wishes she’d put on her slippers; her feet are cold on the wood floor. She takes a cautious step onto the edge of the carpet. It’s a moonless night.

“I just wanted to say good night,” she says.

There is a long silence before Charles says, “It was a nice dinner. Thank you.”