Potboiler

“I have a very distinct memory,” she said. “This was about five or six years ago, I think. A book of his had recently come out and was sitting atop the best-seller list. Bill was out on tour. You know he still liked to tour, after all this time. He didn’t have to, but he liked to greet his public. . . . Anyway, one night, he called me from his hotel in New York. It must have been around midnight, three in the morning over there. I could tell right away he was drunk as a skunk. ‘Carlotta,’ he said, ‘do you love me?’ ‘Of course I do, Bill. I’ve always loved you.’ ‘That’s good to hear. I love you, too.’ ‘Thank you, dear. Why don’t you go to bed?’ ‘I can’t sleep.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I’m thinking about Arthur.’ ‘What about him.’ ‘I have a copy of his book with me.’ ‘His book? Does he have a new book out?’ ‘Not a new book, his first book. I have it with me. I was rereading it. It’s a marvelous book.’ ‘I know, it’s very good.’ ‘Not very good. Marvelous.’ ‘All right, marvelous.’ ‘Do you want to know something, Carlotta?’ ‘Yes, dear, tell me.’ ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.’ ‘Tell me, dear.’ ‘It’s very hard for me to tell you this.’ ‘It’s all right, Bill. I love you no matter what.’ ‘Okay, then, here goes. Are you ready?’ ‘I’m ready.’ ‘Here goes. Here it is. Do you know how much money I have?’ ‘I have a fair idea.’ ‘More money than God. That’s how much money I have. And I swear to you, I swear on my life: I’d give it all, I’d give every single cent, to be able to write like him for one day.’”

There was a silence.

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said.

“Please don’t be angry. I only want you to know how important you were to him.”

“I’m not angry.”

Light moved across the wall. It was later than he’d realized.

“I should be going,” he said.

They walked back to the house. Carlotta ordered the rental car brought around. Pfefferkorn thanked her, kissed her on the cheek, and bent to get behind the wheel.

“Arthur.”

Pfefferkorn paused, folded in half. The dog was watching them from the threshold.

“You can’t, I don’t know, extend your ticket?” She smiled. “The red-eye is always so beastly. You’ll be much more productive if you stay the night and work on the plane tomorrow. And how often are you in California? We’ve barely gotten to talking.”

“I have to teach,” he said.

“Call in sick.”

“Carlotta—”

“What’ll they do, put you in detention?”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I have my students to consider.”

She looked at him.

“Let me make a couple of calls,” he said.

15.

That evening they dined at an Italian restaurant whose waitstaff knew Carlotta by name. The food was excellent, and Pfefferkorn, normally not a heavy drinker, consumed the other half of a bottle of Chianti.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Why did you change your name?”

“You mean when I got married?”

“I mean when Bill changed it.”

“I wasn’t about to have him be one thing and me another. And which would you rather be: de Vallée or Kowalczyk?”

“Fair enough.”

“Bill agonized over that, you know. It was his agent who made him do it.”

“Savory.”

“He said Kowalczyk was too hard to pronounce.”

“Too ethnic.”

“Mm. I don’t think Bill fully grasped the implications of consenting to be called something else. Remember, he never expected that book to become a series, and he certainly never expected that series to become a hit. When he agreed I think he still had the idea he could still go back to being Bill Kowalczyk afterward, but of course it was too late.”

“What I remember about the stories he used to show me,” Pfefferkorn said, “is that they weren’t any of this cat-and-mouse stuff. They were almost avant-garde.”

She nodded.

“I was surprised when the first book came out,” he said.

“As was I. Frankly, I didn’t care for it. Don’t look at me like that. I like them fine now. But at the time I’d never read a thriller in my life. I still don’t, except for Bill’s.”

“What do you read, then?”

“Oh, you know. Those paperbacks with the beefcake in the kilt, and the women are pale and faint three times an hour, and loins drip and members throb and all that.”

Pfefferkorn laughed.

“Anything that ends with them galloping across the misty moors is fine by me.”

“Now I know what to get you for your birthday.”

“A beefcake or a paperback?”

“I can’t afford a beefcake.”

“I hear they’re quite reasonable by the hour, actually.”

“I’ll look into it,” he said.

“Please do.” She took a sip of wine, ran her tongue over her teeth. “Bill was always very adamant that what he did shouldn’t be considered art.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true. He used to tell people he made chairs. He’d say, ‘Every day I get up, I go out to my shop, I sit at my workbench, and I glue and carve and sand. And when I’m done, I’ll give you a nice, solid, dependable chair, just right for sitting on. You’ll feel very comfortable, sitting on my chair. And by the time you’re through sitting on it, I’ll be ready with another one, just like the first, and that’ll be just right, too.’ I think it was important for him to differentiate.”

“Between.”