Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

I’m sure the look on my face was awful, and Zelmo said, “You don’t have to answer that. Abraham’s a tough bastard. That’s the only way anything gets done in this world. Too few people understand what toughness is. Nobody back at that hotel has any idea.” He laughed. “Leslie here doesn’t know why I bother running the convention year after year. She wouldn’t set foot in a place like that. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t like science fiction,” she obliged.

“Well, I grew up loving it, honey. I didn’t discriminate. Star Wars , Star Trek , I loved it all. Abraham wouldn’t want to hear it, but it’s true. Later, I developed taste. That’s how it happens, Les-it develops , like film. And in the great men of the field I saw the same toughness that got me where I am. Only nobody pays your father six hundred thou a year-do they?”

“No,” I agreed, just to kick him loose again.

“I wanted to give something back. So I created ForbiddenCon. It’s my puppy. Seven years. You think I need this, dealing with the committee, those types? They hate me but they need me. A night like this is what makes it worthwhile.” He was still making certain I knew he mostly despised his puppy.

“Why ForbiddenCon?” I asked.

“You’ll find this hard to believe, but ours is the classiest of the conventions. Real talent goes begging at a majority of these things. Your father, he’d be pearls before swine.”

“I mean why the name? What’s forbidden?”

“It stands for things hidden, occult, revealed. The rare, the taboo, the seldom seen. Elusive or neglected wisdom. Acquired tastes, like caviar, or single-malt scotch.”

“I see.”

“Also it’s a reference to Forbidden Planet , the greatest science-fiction film bar none. Many people would catch that implication.”

“Ah.”

“I go all out. You think Fred Vundane has been to a convention in the last twenty years? He couldn’t afford the badge to get in, let alone the plane ticket. I had him flown out here, just for the privilege of Abe saying he never read the book.”

“A painful moment,” I suggested.

Zelmo waved his hand. “A man like your father should have whatever he wants.”

I couldn’t disagree, but I wasn’t sure Vundane’s public shaming had been high on the list.

“What do you do?” asked Leslie, leaping into the breach.

Zelmo took charge of this, too. “Dylan’s a writer,” he said proudly. “A journalist.”

“I write about music,” I said. “Lately I package collections for Remnant Records.”

I gazed into Leslie’s blue, stupefied eyes. I wished to have met her in a singles bar on my last night on earth, not in this moronic conversation.

“Remnant’s a reissue label. I put together collections on various themes, write the liner notes, stuff like that.”

“Give us an example,” said Zelmo, gesturing with his wineglass munificently, as though if I said the right words he’d whip out his checkbook and bankroll something. Again I was pitching.

“Well, The Falsetto Box is one you might have seen. It got some press. Four CDs of, you know, the history of falsetto soul-Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, Eddie Holman. And some unexpected stuff. Van Morrison. Prince.”

“We missed that,” said Zelmo, speaking for Leslie. “What’s another one?”

“Some of it’s pretty gimmicky,” I admitted. “Remnant has sort of a novelty slant. So, uh, one example is we did a disc called Your So-Called Friends -all the songs that have that phrase.”

“I don’t understand,” said Leslie flatly.

“It’s just a vernacular phrase that shows up in different lyrics- so-called friends . Like, you and your so-called friends . Elvis sings it in ‘High Heel Sneakers,’ Gladys Knight in ‘Come See About Me,’ Albert King in ‘Don’t Burn Down the Bridge,’ and so on. It’s like a meme, a word virus that carries a certain idea or emotion…” I trailed off, humiliated.

Our entrées were set in front of us. “I’ll want to hear more about this,” Zelmo warned, wagging a finger at me.

But the lawyer was too busy presiding over the women’s meals, and I slipped his bonds for the time being. Instead I turned to my father, and over our twin plates of spaghetti and meatballs-had Abraham and I had the same instinct, to deflate the pomposity of Bongiorno’s list of specials with the downscale entrée?-we at last shared a moment of privacy.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Sure. You?”

He only raised his eyebrows. “Before I forget, this is something I wanted you to read.” He palmed me a triple-folded sheet from his inner jacket pocket and passed it to me covertly, at the level of the table. I unfolded it in my lap. It was a photocopy of a clipping from Artforum . “Epic Crawl: The Hidden Journey of an American Titan,” by Willard Amato. It began:

What chance that the most dedicated abstract painter in the United States abandoned canvas in 1972? Or last showed in 1967, in a two-man show of figurative work which was barely reviewed? As likely that the most profound avant-garde filmmaker of our time would never receive a single screening in his native burg of New York, or that the last monumental modernist artifact should be eked out secretly, in an unnameable medium, through the long heyday of modernism’s toppling. Each of these improbabilities leads to the same place, an attic studio in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, where-

“Read it later,” he begged. “Keep the copy, I’ve got others.”

So the forgotten man, the nobody, wasn’t quite content to be. It wasn’t news that Abraham’s aspirations still burned, but the clipping was a surprise. I stuffed it into my pocket.

“Tell me, how is Abby?”

“She’s okay.”

“Too bad she couldn’t be along.” I suddenly saw our table in another light: two couples and a broken third. I had no idea where Abby was tonight.

“She’s got school,” I said, hearing my own defensiveness, unable to stop it.

Francesca overheard and announced, “I wish we could have seen her, Dylan. She’s such a sweet girl!” This drew Zelmo and Leslie’s attention. “She’s a black American,” Francesca explained, wide-eyed in sincerity. Francesca and Abby had met just once, when Abby and I passed through New York on our way to a music conference in Montreal. “You should meet her,” she gasped to Leslie. “Such lovely skin .” Francesca’s good intentions vaporized conversation. We were left seated at our pasta and veal like obedient soldiers.

“Still in school?” said Zelmo at last, with pious sympathy: yes, my absent black girlfriend was underage too. Count a grown-up, employable blonde in the same category as bow ties, contact lenses, and wing tips: appurtenances Dylan Ebdus was not yet mature enough to brandish.

“Graduate school,” I said. “She’s completing her dissertation.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Zelmo, turning it into a congratulation to Abby’s race that she should be in such a position. I understood it was impossible to squirm from beneath Zelmo’s patronage. Artists were his broken, defective flock, and he’d herd as many as he could into the safety of his care-a plate of meatballs and a ticket to ForbiddenCon. And black people were pretty much artists by definition.

“Darling,” said Francesca to Abraham. “Tell him about his friend’s father.”

“Eh?”

“That poor man down the street, Abe. You said he’d want to know.”

Abraham nodded. “Your old friend Mingus-you remember his father, Barry? Our neighbor?”

Barrett Rude Junior , I corrected silently. Francesca’s logic was endearingly bare: Dylan has a liking for black Americans lead directly to That poor man down the street . I promised myself I’d be patient, though hearing Abraham begin so ploddingly made me want to scream. Our neighbor! Mr. Rogers has neighbors-we had a block . I merely grew up in that house, I wanted to say. I merely wrote the man’s biography in my liner note to the Distinctions’ box set. But the first I wouldn’t mention because Abraham would feel it as a rebuke. And the latter he didn’t know of, because I hadn’t mentioned it or sent him a copy.