Dear Money (7 page)

"The Hovs aren't dead yet," I remarked.

"Details," he answered, and I thought of my agent, the Fox. "I'm simply telling the story." I was at first touched that he cared enough about Emma's dream to figure it out for her, but realized it was the game that engaged him here, the sheer sport of picking off what you wanted from life. How could someone be so smug about other people's fortunes?

Emma appeared through the screen door to offer us champagne. Her hair was wet and flat, severe and beautiful; she had Cleopatra's hair. She smiled at us as she pushed the flutes into our hands. (She'd brought the flutes from New York because she could not bear to drink champagne from anything else.) "I'm going to help Theo put the girls down. He's so wonderful, India, so delightful with the girls. But I fear they'll do more giggling than sleeping if I don't oversee a bit."

Theodor never went by Theo, only with Emma. In the beginning I had tried correcting her, but she'd persisted, out of fondness, and so we indulged her. She turned to head back inside, glanced over her shoulder at us and said to Win, "Watch out for all of India's questions. She's a thief. Anything you say could end up in one of her novels." Her expression held a knowing smirk, one that possessed me entirely for the benefit of Win. "She's already working on one about me. What is it again?
Pond Point: The Emma Chapman Story?
" She threw back her head and laughed.

"Just keep talking, Emma," I said.

"See, Win? I'm warning you." The screen door slammed. She and Will were always teasing me for taking notes, doing research. They were certain that in one form or another they'd appear in my next book. I thought perhaps she'd make a good character, maybe not as a lead but in a lesser role, the supportive wife of a man who gives up everything to write a novel. "Will you still love her if you appear in a book?" Theodor had asked Emma once. She had looked at him incredulously and said, "How could I ever stop loving India?"

Win watched Emma go with a look of admiration—her determination to sip champagne only from flutes, to desire this house, to possess me. "She'll get this house if she wants," he said. I felt unaccountably annoyed. Not because I wanted the house too, but because Win would guide her toward the winning of it and thus the completion of her dreams. And she had that ability always to have just what she wanted. She never languished too long between want and have. And I felt, as if by cosmic design or simply by my choice of profession, I would always want.

"Would you buy this house?" I asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Win said.

"Why, no," I said. That was the truth, but I hadn't meant to say it. I had meant to agree with him. He was a man who could buy himself any view, anywhere. I had not expected him to respond positively.

"You don't like the fleas?" he asked with a teasing smile.

"Is that what they are?"

"Emma even loves the fleas. Bless her," Win said.

"Is she immune to their bite?"

"You will want this house," he said. "If you stay here for more than a few days, you'll want it just as Emma does."

"Is this the seer speaking?" I asked. "Emma says you're a seer." His silver cuff links caught the flame.

"Well, I did happen to bring my crystal ball," he said, pulling an imaginary orb from his pocket and polishing it with his shirtsleeve. "I see you fighting for the house, a bidding war between you and Emma."

"She'd win," I said. "No competition there. Remember, I'm a writer." I didn't often announce my lack of money, but there was something about Win that made me feel I had to say whatever was on my mind. I wouldn't be able to hide. I had to be honest, and for a moment that was refreshing, not at all scary. I assumed that quality served him as a trader—he had the effect of making people honest, and thus they were easy to read.

"Tell me about you. Are you really a thief?" he asked.

"My brain is a tape recorder," I said.

"So is mine."

"But you're not a writer."

"I can use what you say all the same."

"Mysterious."

"I've heard quite a lot from Emma today about you. I'd like to see how her version compares to your own," Win said.

I wondered how Emma had the time to tell us each so much about the other, imagined her busy as a bee pollinating so many flowers. This was another trait of hers that I admired: she loved people, loved their quirks and idiosyncrasies, wanted her friends to all get on, find in each other that which she treasured in them.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"That you're the winner of such-and-such fellowship and several other impressive prizes. The Monogram. The Washington—good Lord, girl, you've been busy." He paused and looked at me with a twinkle. "And Emma no doubt has been saying all sorts of rubbish about me, I'm sure."

I nodded. "Good reviews."

He laughed, and the conversation turned to
Generation of Fire,
the promise of which still hung out in the ether. I told him the story in a nutshell—two sisters marry the same man. The novel had been my attempt to write a book that might appeal to a larger audience, though I didn't generally share that ambition. Rather, I always felt I had to qualify the story line by saying that what I was really looking at was the depth of love and loyalty in the face of excruciating betrayal. How far will a sister go (or not) for another? And I did so now with Win so that he didn't think the book trite.

"How far does she go?" he asked, holding my eyes. They were bright, intelligent eyes, and I understood just then that they alone lent him his magnetism. I did not want to look away, though it was hard to hold his eyes.

"You'll have to read the book," I said. I wanted him to read my novel and wanted him to love it and admire me the way I admired him, for doing and saying anything he liked.

"With your royalties you'll buy the house," he said.

I laughed and rolled my eyes. "I'll be lucky if I earn out my advance. If I don't manage that, I'll be finished as a novelist." The moment I completed the sentence, I regretted having uttered the words, like a drunk,
in vino veritas.
I took a sip of champagne and noticed the moon, big and full and red, rising just as Emma had declared, just as big. "The moon," I said, hoping its arrival would change the subject. I could hear a window being shut upstairs and imagined my girls curled around Theodor as he read them to sleep. A perfect image that still somehow was imperfect to me because we could not quite afford it—the two children, the nanny, the private school, the relaxed father putting them to bed. From the kitchen came sounds of Will clanking away with the cumbersome pots. I imagined the lobsters plunging into the steam. The foghorn on one of the islands sounded regularly and rhythmically even though there was no fog. I took another sip of champagne and Win stood up to get the bottle and poured us both a little more.

"Is that how it works?" he said. "The writer is held accountable for bad sales?"

"Yes," I said, but I did not want to be talking about this. "Should we offer our help in the kitchen?"

"Our help is not wanted," he reminded me, but of course I didn't need reminding. "We've been asked to stay outside." I wished Theodor would come save me so that we could stop addressing a topic we seemed to be rapidly approaching, the
roman a clef
I was writing daily:
The Shambles of My Life.
I knew Win didn't mean any harm, but he persisted with his interrogation.

"How many copies does a book, does
Generation of Fire,
need to sell to be a success?" He was studying me with those eyes, scrutinizing me, reading me. He'd spent so much time around people who made so much, he had no idea what struggle was, no idea what it might be like to have forces larger than oneself driving one's ability to become successful. He was in charge of a large Wall Street firm's mortgage department. There were outside forces, sure, but they were all part of an equation that he could manipulate to positive effect. For the most part, a writer could not do that. The only thing a writer had control over was the work, the writing. After that, it was up to forces so mysterious not even the publishers understood.

"Thirty, forty thousand would be excellent." I had no idea how to take back control of the conversation. "I'll come to Wall Street if it fails," I blurted, in another attempt to change the subject. He didn't laugh. I tried moving on, to Scotland, the trip we might be making there, the castle my brother was renting with his wife and her sisters on the sea in Kintyre, the three sisters always fighting, then loving, then fighting again—dramatic crescendos from which return to cordiality seemed impossible, so very un-English, but every single time they got back to it with laughter. I rambled nervously. "The Weird Sisters, Theodor calls them," I said, but Win didn't seem to be listening. He had a ponderous gaze that seemed to look through me, something remote swirling through his head.

'What fun," he said. He scratched his nose contemplatively. I had never known that brown eyes could be so light and jewel-like.

"The Weird Sisters?" I said, picturing the pretty sisters all in a rage and then in fits of laughter. Oddly, I was fascinated by their passion; they made me want to be one of many sisters—more even than Will's group of five. It seemed that they, their concerns, mattered most to one another. I didn't have that sort of clan relationship, and the bond with my brother was a more formal one.

"Would you do something like that?"

"Have sisters?"

"Wall Street," he said. Now his eyes were fully engaged, like stars. "Would you come to Wall Street?"

"Is this an invitation?" I asked.

"Perhaps."

"Well then, perhaps."

"I like the notion," he said. "It would be fun."

"Absolutely," I teased. I didn't let go of his eyes.

"You'll work for me, then," he said. He wasn't smiling. In fact, there was something serious in the way he said that. "You'll be my protégée. I hope your book fails."

"Thanks," I said.

"Did you take calculus in college?"

"I didn't go to college."

He looked puzzled. I felt relieved. The conversation was mine again. In that one instant of throwing him off I was able to retake control. I liked Win. I liked him very, very much.

"You're a tease," he said.

"And so are you," I said. "I was excellent at math. It was the only subject in which I received straight A's. But my book will not fail, and I would never go to Wall Street. I couldn't imagine having to ride a subway every day." Instead I imagined myself with my own car and driver, and a parallel life rose before me like an expensive helicopter, clear up and into the night sky. That life, filled with splendid luxuries and great abundance, so vivid, settled around me, gratifying my craving for the beauty of life's external finish.

"Give me eighteen months and I'll turn you into a trader. And no ordinary trader."

The door to the kitchen banged shut, and Will's smiling face appeared over a pot of steamers. "What?" he said, looking at both of us. "You're both a pair of possums."

"Win's just propositioned me," I said.

"Oh, here we go," Will said, snagging a clam and shouting upstairs, "The weekend is getting weird. Theodor! Win's seducing your wife!"

"Tell him to stop doing that, please," Theodor's muffled voice shouted down from an upstairs bedroom.

Emma emerged, declaring that we had to eat the steamers immediately or they'd be no good. Then Theodor arrived, sitting down next to me, cleaned up with a nice shirt, his shock of thick black curls so very handsome. "Now, then," he said, lifting my hand and kissing it, staking his claim, "what in God's name are you wild swingers up to, anyway?"

Then we were all digging into the clams, slipping off the skins covering their long black necks, dipping them in butter. They tasted like butter, just as silky, just as soft. The Atlantic air wafted over us, carrying a mist.

"How are things with Europe?" Will asked Win.

"Not happening," he said. "All the different laws get in the way. Too many countries."

"The European securities market," Will offered to Theodor and me as an explanation. I had no idea what a security was. "Win's company wants to export our securities structure, but the Europeans have stringent, antiquated laws protecting inhabitants and that are different in each country."

"People don't take out mortgages in Europe in the same volume as in the U.S.," Emma said. This was all over my head.

"Better to let them buy ours," Will said. "We're rich with them anyway."

"Actually, I have a new sort of business plan," Win said and looked at me conspiratorially. Emma and Will were all ears. "I'm going to hire India."

"Oh,
that
kind of proposition.
Whew!
" Theodor said with an exaggerated swipe of his forehead.

"He's going to turn me into a trader," I said with a coy smile. I liked knowing something they didn't know.

"A Pygmalion story," Will said.

"That's right," I said. Make me new, make me rich like you, I thought. Leave it to Perfect Boy to give a literary flourish to a ridiculous business proposition.

"I'm having problems negotiating with her, though," Win said.

"Do tell," Will said.

"She doesn't want to take the subway," Win said.

"She wants a car," Will said knowingly.

"
And
a jet," Theodor added helpfully.

"Don't forget to backdate the stock option package, India," Will said.

"That'll be touchy," Win said.

"A jet would be nice," I mused.

"We'd never let it happen," Emma said protectively. "Wayne Johns, you are not going to corrupt our artist."

"Oh, yes, he most certainly is," Theodor said and looked at me as though I were crazy, seeing into that side of me that he knew was corruptible, and wondering, I imagined, if I was taking this at all seriously, wondering if I'd gotten myself into a mess. I raised my eyebrows suggestively, popped a clam into my mouth and lifted my glass to Maine and the house and to its someday belonging to Emma, though I was beginning to fall in love with the house myself—or, I should say, the spot. The moon, now a bit higher, cut a path across the water from it to us, so bright it seemed you could walk upon it.