David Gates: A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“I’m not exactly beset,” I said.

“Let me not believe that.” The bartender set two more glasses down in front of him, and he pushed one over to me. “But. It’s a principle of mine not to interfere with happy marriages.”

“If that’s a question,” I said, “yes. Very. Your wife’s a musician?”

“Well,” he said, “you’ve got the musician part right.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeats didn’t say anything about keeping your mate. Ah well, tales from the crypt.”

“You have children?”

“A daughter. She’s all grown up. Well, obviously. She fancies herself a cellist—electric cello. What they call noise music. She takes after her mother.”

“ And you,” I said. “Do you see her?”

“That sounds like an accusation,” he said. “She lives out in Oregon, in Portland, with her young lady. Whom I like. Actually, I try not to approve too much. I’m afraid she’ll take up with some young man just to spite me. And what does your young man do?”

“He’s got a book he’s working on.” At this point, it was still the line I was taking.

“Ah.” He picked up his glass. “I can see it all. Well, here’s to his book.”

—

My husband was out playing hoops when I got home, so I opened a bottle of Dos Equis to account for the liquor on my breath and started transcribing. On the tape, the architect was talking about Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life , about playing with a jazz trio at a restaurant in Poughkeepsie, about the music he put on while he painted: first “The Washington Post March”—“to nerve me up”—then something like the Schubert quartets, then maybe some Verdi highlights, building up to the big boys, Mahler or Wagner, before winding down with Miles Davis. “You must think I’m inventing all this to make myself sound interesting,” he said. I typed that in, then remembered that my editor hated pieces that broke the fourth wall. I would have gone to see him play for a colorful on-scene lede, but since the piece was due the next day, I went with his how-it-all-began story.

“I was, I don’t know, ten, eleven, something like that, my parents took me down to the city and we saw The Palm Beach Story —you’ve seen it, yes? I fell in love with that apartment where Claudette Colbert lived—that duplex with the balcony? Of course I also fell in love with Claudette Colbert. At any rate. After the movie I begged them to take me to 968 Park Avenue—never forgotten that address—so we could see the place and of course they had to tell me it was just a stage set—it didn’t really exist anywhere. So I just began drawing pictures of it from memory, figuring out where the different rooms would be, so forth and so on.”

Ever since , I wrote, translating visionary spaces into the realm of the concrete and the practical has been —but I’ll spare you, and me, the rest. At least I’d never have to see this man again.

—

“He didn’t give you much,” my husband said when I showed him the first draft.

“It’s a puff piece,” I said. “Isn’t that what we do? Should I have asked about his divorce?”

“He’s divorced?”

“Stop the presses,” I said.

“Okay, so you can’t put that in, but I’m not seeing the human side.”

“Like does he shop at Kmart?”

“ Something like that, yeah. A little texture.”

“This isn’t The New Yorker .”

“You do your best wherever you are,” he said. “That’s how you get out of wherever you are.”

“I’m okay with where I am.”

“You?” he said. “You’re twice as unhappy as I am. You just didn’t like the guy, so you’re making him sound like a pompous ass. All this shit about Washington Irving—and what’s the Hudson River School?”

“I’m quoting what he said. They’re going to cut it anyway. Fine. I didn’t like him much.”

“Well, it comes through.”

“What if I wanted it to?” I said.

“Then I guess it’s a win-win. Except for anybody who has to read it. He’ll probably like it—he seems like he’s into hearing himself talk.”

“It’s not that bad, is it?”

“It’s okay. It’s not your best.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not up there with Neil Diamond at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center. I can’t believe this is my life.”

“Then you need to do something about it,” he said.

“So you don’t think that if I whine loud enough, God will hear me?”

“It hasn’t worked so far.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said.

—

The architect called the day the piece came out, to say he thought it had turned out well—not to thank me, mind you, one didn’t thank a professional for doing her job. But if I and my young man would care to—

“My husband?”

“How many young men do you have ?” he said. “Listen, may I take you both to dinner? I’d have you come to the house, but I thought I should spare you the bachelor cookery. And whatever ghostly presences. Mexican suit you? There’s a place up in this neck of the woods where they make their own tamales. If you’re willing to come that far.”

“My husband will be thrilled—he misses the food in Albuquerque. And he’s spent a lot of time in Latin America.”

“And you? Less than thrilled, I’m assuming.”

“I’m happy to get out,” I said.

“I know the feeling,” he said. “Two of us happy, one of us thrilled—a couple of margaritas and they’ll have to strap us into our chairs.”

—

We met him at a place in Tivoli, with a southwestern-looking lizard on its hanging sign, where we drank margaritas out on the terrace. “Your wife tells me,” he said, “that you’re at work on a book.”

“You need to stop telling everybody that,” my husband said, then turned back to the man. “Not a real happy story.”

“Well, but you’ll go on to something else. Hell, I got fired off my first project—some car dealer wanted to put a beach house on this little narrow lot in Amagansett, and I came up with a design that looked like Oldenburg’s clothespin. I suppose it was my little way of showing contempt. Anyhow. What sorts of things do you write about?”

“I don’t know, just whatever interests me.”

“And what interests you?”

“I can’t really put it in a nutshell—stories about people, I guess.”

“Well, then you’ll never run short of material. So I take it you’re in favor.”

“Of?”

“People. Or do you think the jury’s still out?”

“Are you asking me seriously?”

“Should we order?” I said.

“Now, see?” he said. “Our young lady has the right priorities. ‘Grub first, then ethics.’ I forget who said that—you don’t happen to remember? It has sort of a thirties ring to it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No, why should you? Grub first, then obscure quotations. Anything on here appeal to you? I’m afraid this is more Tex than Mex. Not quite what you’re used to.”

“Actually, I haven’t spent much time in Mexico,” my husband said.

“Then maybe we’ll squeak by. Why don’t we just pick out a bunch of this and that and share? Do you both eat meat? One has to ask these days. We should have another round, too.”

“He’s even a worse asshole than you made him out to be,” my husband said on the drive home. “He’s into you , though. At first I thought he was gay.”

“Why would you think he’s into me ? He talked to you the whole time.”

“Yeah, exactly. Come on, I’m not stupid. Don’t you be. And like how he kept talking about how old he was? It was so obvious.”