Stephen Dixon - Friends - More Will and Magna Stories

“You got them down as too scrupulous. Anyway, it’s over, past — illness makes it over if anything — so call him now, because if you don’t, you never will. What do you say?”

“I hate that he’s so sick, but calling him still isn’t easy.”

“Come on.”

“Okay.”

He goes to the back and dials Gabe’s number. Gabe answers weakly. “It’s Will, Gabe — long time no talk and all that — but how’s it going?”

“How’s it going? Will who? Not Taub.”

“The same. Haven’t changed my name.”

“Well I’ll be. I thought you were dead.”

“You mean you wished I was dead.”

“Actually, I knew you weren’t and of course I’d never wish it. Floyd says he keeps running into you — I bet it was he who told you to call.”

“Truth is, that’s true. You know me — could never tell a lie. He said you weren’t feeling too good, which I’m very sorry about — I hate to see anybody I know sick — so I’m calling. Look, he also said something I’m not supposed to say to you—”

“That I was angry you never wrote me about my first book. That it hurt me.”

“Right. Listen, I’m sorry. If you can keep this a secret between us two — meaning, not tell Floyd I said this, because he’ll only think I was trying to hurt you again, which I’m not, believe me, I’m not — I didn’t write you then because I was mad as hell at you for lifting certain scenes and dialogue and even two characters from my own novel Flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“Come on, you know the one. The novel I asked you to bring to White Nights because you lived around the corner from them then. And you called up that night — early in the morning, really—”

“Oh yeah. But you thought I stole from that piece of crap? You’ve got to be mistaken. If I’m going to steal from something—”

“‘Crap’? You called me at two or three in the morning — it’s what I’m talking about — and said you loved it — loved the first hundred pages of it, at least — as much as anything you’ve read of anyone’s in the last ten years — and could I give you another half day to finish it.”

“I said that? Bull. It’s true I started to read it — on the subway home that night. I was with Pearl — remember Pearl?”

“Floyd said she got married and had a kid.”

“Sure she got married. To a rich man — the kind she always wanted, the whore. I hope she’s unhappy. Not the baby, but just she. She’s a bitch — was, is, always will be.”

“I thought she was kind of nice. Almost too good for you, if you want to know what I felt then. Too good for me too, if I can be—”

“Too good for anyone. A goddamn snob. Good riddance to her forever. I’ve known ten better women since. Prettier, better, smarter — everything. But about your piece of trash Flowers , if that was its title. So that’s what you must tell people why you cut me off flat. Well let me tell you, baby, I read twenty pages of that manuscript on the subway home — if you ever see that bitch Pearl again, ask her. She’ll corroborate, if she hasn’t also become a liar, that I thought it trash then and wanted to toss it out the train window — even made believe I was going to and she had to grab my arm to stop me — not that I’d go that far. You would have killed me. But I read about twenty pages and told her that anyone who could write this badly will never be able to write well in his entire life. And I still think it. Your work since — what I’ve seen of it in small magazines — stinks. God only knows why they print it. Just tells me what I’ve thought all along about them — the little magazines have no taste, it’s all in and who you know and the rest of that crap.”

“You’re just saying this because you’re too damn ashamed — did I say ashamed? I mean you’re too damn gutless to admit that you lifted from my manuscript. You read the whole thing all right. You had to to steal one of the characters who doesn’t appear till my novel’s last scene. You even stole that idea.”

“What idea?”

“That a character — an important one to the denouement of the novel—”

“Oh, ‘denouement’ now. Big words from a small mind.”

“—doesn’t appear till the very last scene in your novel. But whole sections lifted. Dialogue — almost word for word sometimes. The way your main character made love to his wife — every Saturday, exactly at midnight, while my main character did it every day but Sunday and exactly at eleven. And that both our couples always used the same position when they made love — yours not much different from mine — and that the girlfriend in my novel would never take off her earrings in bed while the wife in your novel wouldn’t take off her stockings or socks.”

“What, you invented all the sex in the world — you invented the clock? The clock’s been invented and so have all the positions and sexual peculiarities and hang-ups.”

“Listen, this phone conversation is a bust. You know what I’m saying but you’re intentionally distorting it to protect yourself. I’m sorry you’re ill and I hope — and this is the truth — you get well again and sooner the better, but somehow your lousy situation right now isn’t enough to make me forgive you for what you did.”

“Bull and more bull. You’re just angry, and are also trying to do some double number on me when you couldn’t get me to admit to the first, because your own novel wasn’t good enough to get published, just as none of your longer works have been. While at least one of my fat novels, which was equal in size to about three of your midgets, not only got published but by a major house. For you know damn well I never lifted anything from you. If I did take a line or word or two from the first twenty pages, then it was subconscious. But I doubt even that happened because I think everything in those first twenty pages wasn’t good enough to take.”

“Again, I hope you get better, Gabe, and I’m sorry for the tough time you’ve had recently, but I also think you’re a liar and a thief. Goodbye,” and he hangs up.

“So, how’d it go?” Floyd says, handing Will a drink. “I knew you’d need one after your call, so I ordered a brandy for you — French and straight up.”

“Thanks. I do need it. How’d it go? Okay. He sounded weak in the very beginning but then his voice got really robust. I told him I reread his book and liked it and he said thanks. But everything overall, he doesn’t seem well.”

“Did he give you the business about his living another ten years but not later than that?”

“Something like it, I think.”

“He’s imagining it. I’ve had a couple of discussions about him with his last live-in, Cecily.”

“I don’t think I knew that one.”

“You wouldn’t have. She dropped him about half a year ago — moved out, they were battling all the time — but still comes over with food and things and clean laundry sometimes. She said the doctors definitely think — but I mentioned this before, didn’t I? — oh damn,” and he starts crying. He wipes his eyes with his bar napkin, then his face with his handkerchief.

“Yeah, you told me. I’m sorry. I can’t say the world of letters is losing a great writer — I shouldn’t even talk about it that way. He’s a good writer and once was very good, but the world in general is just, well, losing a very nice guy, mostly. Whatever, it’s just awful when someone so young—”

“It’s disgraceful. A cure will be found for his disease-you’ll see-two to three years after he goes. It happened with my sister and it’ll happen to him. To Gabe, right?” holding up his glass. “To Gabe Peabody, a hell of a good writer— still , I think; even with the crap he has to produce, it’s still better written than most anybody’s — and let’s face it, one of the most decent courageous guys around.”