Christopher Hacker - The Morels

“It’s Spanish,” Nelson explained.

“Well, it’s not English, that’s for damn sure!”

Not my best work, I’ll admit, but we were just getting warmed up. Will got a phone book. Dave got a notepad and jotted down a list of colorful names for us to audition. We came down off the dizzy high of our first two calls and began anew, approaching the task before us with discipled professionalism. We made stern faces at the one who was calling, to keep them from laughing, and cued them with hastily scrawled notes. We put the calls on speakerphone so that all three of us could enjoy them. Will did a wonderful doddering grandmother — his goal with this character was to frustrate the person on the other end into swearing so that the grandmother could shout, Language! which, for some reason, Will thought was the funniest thing. Dave developed a hapless Ukrainian cabdriver named Wassily who insisted to his poor victim that she had left her vibrating penile toy in his taxi. Another favorite was an exceedingly polite British salesman calling to offer a fabulous deal on a magazine subscription. Then, following the inevitable rejection, an ear-splitting primal scream. We all enjoyed doing this one — there was something tremendously satisfying about it. But mostly I stuck to what I was good at — customer complaints.

When Penelope and Arthur came through the door, we emerged from our collective prank-call fugue state to discover we’d been at it for three and a half hours. I felt an adolescent’s exhaustion — stomach bruised from laughing, throat sore from the contortions of caricature voices. Penelope tried paying Dave, but Dave scruffed Will’s head and said, “Lady, friendship can’t be bought. It’s got to be earned.” Will asked if we could have a sleepover, but Penelope diplomatically declined on our behalf. At which point Will stormed off to his room without saying good-bye. At the door, Arthur greeted me with red-rimmed eyes and boozy breath. He shook my hand and clutched my shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “This was — this was good. You’re good to us.”

On our way down the hall, Dave said, “What’s going on with those two?”

I stopped by the bakery before work the following day. Penelope came out to sit with me on the bench. She brought a puffy orange coat, taking from its front pocket a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

“So it’s official then?” I said.

She shook out one for me. “This is the least of my worries, at this point.”

We smoked for a while side by side, watching customers stuff themselves into Balthazar’s small bakery annex, hot air from inside fogging the windows. “How did it go last night?”

Penelope sighed through a long exhale of smoke. “He admitted that handing me his manuscript was a free turndown. Not exactly I’m sorry , but we’re getting there. He spent the evening with his hands on me — rubbing my back, caressing my hand — like he was literally trying to smooth things over. But now when he touches me, all I can think about is the ending of that book, and my skin crawls. What’s wrong with him?”

I shook my head. “Has he ever seen a therapist?”

“Are you kidding? He has a theory about them like he has a theory about everything else. I realize that I don’t pay much attention when he talks anymore. I used to be so in awe of him. But these days I listen as he goes on and on and think, Huh? I mean, how was writing that book supposed to change anything? It’s a small press, they’ve printed five thousand copies. Art. I used to think of him as my mad genius. So romantic — now I’m not so sure about the genius part.” She was quiet for a while, and I thought she was just thinking things over, but I looked over and saw that she was crying. “What’s wrong with him? God! I don’t know what to do.”

“I want to help,” I said.

“I know you do.” She took my hand, laced her fingers through mine. “You’re good. Will loves you. He couldn’t stop talking about how much fun he had with you two.”

I wasn’t good. I was feeling the damp warmth of Penelope’s palm and feeling my heart race. Wondering what would happen if I kissed her. If I just turned, leaned in. To touch her smooth round cheeks, her broad freckled face, her full red lips.

Seeming to know my mind, she said, “I was very young. And stupid. I wanted to piss off my parents. You’ve seen my tattoo. But if I had to do it over again, I’d be smarter. I’d let myself consider all the possibilities.” She bumped my shoulder with hers, then let go of my hand, patted it. “I’ve got to get back.”

After she left, I continued to sit there, dazed. I brought my hand, the one she’d been holding, up to my face, to my nose, to my lips. I got up and walked, not really aware of my surroundings, and when I finally looked up, I was at the base of the Manhattan Bridge, twenty minutes late to work and a mile from the theater.

“I’m going to teach you how to offer a mea culpa to your lady American style,” I said, leading Arthur into the tented crafts market at Union Square. “It involves the simple application of cash and a roll of wrapping paper.” It was another whiplash day, weatherwise — the morning’s balmy springlike breeze turning icy by noon, carrying with it a gust of silver flakes that accumulated on car hoods and awnings.

Arthur loped beside me through the densely crowded aisles. “I don’t see why we couldn’t just go to Macy’s,” he said. “It’s two blocks from the apartment.”

“Prepackaged isn’t going to cut it, sir. What you need is something unique, something special for your special woman.” Most of the stands had their lights and heat lamps going inside their enclosures, the white noise of a hundred individual generators shutting out even the sounds of traffic. We threaded our way through the stands, browsed the jewelry and handcrafted finery, and, to his credit, Arthur seemed a willing student. He’d turn over a necklace I’d chosen for Penelope, and, rather than offering a long tract on the problem with Christmas in the modern age — which is where I worried this venture would take us — he instead would inquire quite practically about its price. He’d hold it up to the light, compare it with similar necklaces in the velvet display cases, ask if perhaps I liked this one better than that one. I browsed as well, picking up any number of semiprecious objects — a bracelet, a pendant, a ring — and imagined fastening each around a corresponding part on Penelope.

Arthur was being sued. The night of the Thanksgiving blowout, Penelope’s father had said he needed to think . What he meant was decide —because he had already done enough thinking. He had spent the weeks following the publication of The Morels thinking — about what his son-in-law was up to, what it was all about — and at the end of this period of thinking concluded that it was not about art. It had nothing to do with art. It was about shock. Arthur making a name for himself. He was no better than those loudmouthed radio jocks who said anything about their mothers for a bump in the ratings. Making a name for himself, yes, on the backs of the good names of his daughter and his grandson. And Frank was damned if he would sit by and do nothing about it. A longtime friend, an attorney, was more than happy to draw up the papers. The friend said that it really was his daughter’s case to make, that likely nothing would come of the suit were he to file it himself. But this wasn’t important. He had to do something. He came to New York undecided about what to do, willing to give his son-in-law a chance to explain himself, but instead his worst fears had been confirmed. He stepped out into the chill November evening and walked and walked until he found an all-night copy shop and printed out the e-mail attachment his attorney friend had sent and returned to his daughter’s apartment to serve the papers on his son-in-law himself.