Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

An unnerving clatter issues from Dodd, and the table shakes lightly. He focuses on Guy.

“Now. Your proposal. The most exciting thing to cross my desk in three or four months. A very exciting-sounding project. Oh yes yes yes. But I’m assuming you’re looking for top price. And Dearstyne, Harbottle has never let anything like money stand in the way of its reputation as the most prestigious literary publisher on the block. That is, we don’t pay out much of it.”

Dodd laughs into his handkerchief.

“And even if we were to do so in this case — saying so, mind you, merely for the sake of argument. Well. As captivated as I am by the story you propose to tell, I am beholden to superiors, sales staff, and shareholders; to Mr. Dearstyne, who, though he lies abed in a state of enfeebled senility, still ratifies each acquisition so that this clubby little world we all live in knows that the list under the imprimatur of his name is still decisively reflective of his singular vision; and to CBS, which is looking to acquire us for tax purposes, though it’s safe to assume that they are interested in losing only so much money if you get my drift.”

“Do you think you’re going to lose money on this book?”

Here they pause for a moment as Dodd laughs.

“But of course! It would be — oh, too tedious to explain the arithmetic, the accounting involved, but I think I can state categorically that we lose money on every book Dearstyne, Harbottle and Company publishes.”

“How do you stay in business?”

“Well, it’s a matter of prestige. We have it; the other fellows don’t. Nordic used to, but their list’s far too big now. Oh, yes yes yes. Rommel, Mays and Croix likes to pretend. But in reality, there’s only us. And so they settle for vulgar profitability. Though, truth to tell, the others all are losing money as well. Schlock or not, it is a tough market out there. Tough, tough market. Yes yes yes. I know, I know: it seems healthy, robust. Every time you turn around someone has sold a million copies of this book or that. But it’s tough, believe me. Just keeping abreast of the trends must be difficult. If you’re the sort of publisher who feels he has to do that. Last year it was dolphins. This year it’s sharks.”

Dodd hacks his mirth into his handkerchief.

“So, really, I don’t think I can make an offer. Or, rather, any offer I’d make would be insultingly small.”

“Try me,” says Guy.

“Oh, no. No no no. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. You deserve a publisher who can get behind this project both emotionally and finan — cially.”

Guy leaves him laughing into his handkerchief, unfolded and spread to cover the lower part of his face, as if he were afraid of infecting the world with his rueful self — deprecation.

THE PRESS WAITED EXPECTANTLY under its canopy. The strange lingering season of waiting was about to expire, and there was nothing to do except continue to wait until the end. Tomorrow each’d turn up at work and be assigned to the Hall of Justice or to a supervisors’ meeting or to hang around plaguing tourists at the turnaround on Powell and Market.

Two long moving vans (“One just for the paintings and sculpture,” went the rumor) came up the driveway. It was hard for the press to believe that this was that very last thing they’d been waiting for: two trucks slowly filling with cartons and furniture. It messed with their sense of narrative. It was supposed to be hugs, kisses, John Wayne framed in the narrowing space of a closing door, isolated and cast off as Natalie Wood returns home from her prolonged sojourn among the savages.

Instead, Hank and Lydia had put their spread up for sale and were moving to a deluxe apartment on Nob Hill. Their public statements concerning the move were elliptical — irritatingly so. Clearly the couple was attempting to say goodbye, to break things off.

But the press had its questions. The public had its needs. How big was the new place? Did it have superb views? Did they look forward to having all the amenities of the world’s greatest city right outside their front door? Would the family keep the same staff? Would some of those faithful retainers have to go? Would the couple miss the home in which they’d raised a family? How did the children feel about the move? Were they supportive, or had they raised objections? (And) did this move suggest that they had given up on Alice? That was the big question, the one they wanted to shoehorn in. There was no one to ask it of, however. No sign of Lydia or Hank (They were staying “in a six-room luxury suite at the Fairmont,” went the rumor).

Turned out one of the trucks was taking extra furnishings directly to a storage facility in San Mateo. The new apartment on Nob Hill couldn’t hold what the house had.

The canopy was faded and weather-beaten, torn and repaired in places. The grass beneath it had died. Some had been there under it almost every day. Theirs was the subtle side of the story. A family in shock. A family coming to terms. A family moving on. They stood, they ate sandwiches. After Lydia had complained about the driveway’s being full each day, they’d parked their cars and vans at the side of the road below, at the slight risk of bodily injury, not to mention parking tickets. Their ranks thinned over time, but some stayed. When the daily buffet stopped appearing, they formed groups and began breaking for lunch. After Inge and Maria stopped setting out the urn, they took turns riding down the hill to Burlingame for cof — fee each afternoon. Under the canopy an etiquette evolved. A pecking order. They dropped their cigarette butts into a standing ashtray Hernando provided that looked as if it had been looted from an of — fice building in Mesopotamia (“Probably priceless,” went the rumor). Someone began remembering to save the brown paper bags the delicatessen packed their sandwiches and coleslaw in, and they used them to collect trash. They were scrupulous about such practices. They wanted to be good guests. They wanted so much to be the one gleaming, exemplary facet of the whole sad story.

By late afternoon it was clear that the trucks would not be loaded by the end of the workday, that despite having spent more than a year under the canopy, the press was to be deprived of the privilege of closing the door on the story. The last truck would leave, and there’d be no witness to write, “The last truckload of furniture and the accumulation of decades of privilege rolled slowly down the driveway leading from Galton Mansion today, leaving behind an empty house with more than its share of ghosts.” The day took on a elegiac cast. People said their goodbyes. Tomorrow the assignment would be over, and the greater world would once again take its measure of them.

TANIA AWAKENS ON THE sofa in the middle of the night. Light enters the apartment through the big windows overlooking the street. She gets up, feels around on the table with her fingers, finds cigarettes, though her throat is raw and the first drag tastes like yarn.

The place is on Geneva Avenue, charitably described as the ass end of town, an apartment over a dry cleaner’s with dropped ceilings, guttering fluorescent lights, and Armstrong tile covering the floors. When they moved in, they sat around groping for comparisons. Like a Lion’s Club in an ebbing industrial city? Like an abortionist’s office? It was a perfect spot for them, transient, impersonal, a place to sit in a folding chair and eat out of a Styrofoam tray, your mind somewhere else.