Chapter 16
A bright splash of morning light illuminates the blank, lined page of the legal pad Paul bought with high hopes and determination.
He sits staring at it, wondering where to begin his introduction.
With Judith’s first after-class approach?
Or earlier, with what little he’s learned of her childhood?
He stares out his window at his neighbor’s brick wall, feeling truly walled in, as his pulse hammers in his ear.
He reaches for a cigarette. Thousands of people will read what I write, he tells himself, in an endless, aggravating loop.
By noon, he’s reaching for the whiskey bottle, too.
Taking sips helps him quiet the voice in his head that says failure is looming, and by one thirty he’s able to just let it flow: badly chosen words, lazy phrasing, and all.
He doesn’t stop until he has an awful first draft, and when he does, he celebrates by stretching out on the couch, yawning luxuriously, and rubbing his eyes.
Lying there, he thinks of Charlie, fleetingly at first, then intently, vengefully: what would she and her little cohort think of him now, writing for Harper’s?
Maybe she’d think twice before speaking to him the way she did in class the other night.
Or would she? He stews over the question until he’s furious and then his mind slips to her full tits in a white sweater, her round ass subtly swaying as she climbs the stairs.
He unbuckles his pants, works himself to a full erection, and masturbates to the thought of her insulting him with that pouty mouth as he fucks her right to breathlessness, silence, and unwilling pleasure.
And then he’s done. Alone on his couch with his spent dick in hand. He lets it flop to his belly and drifts off. When he wakes several hours later, confused and shivering in the dark, he gets up and stumbles to the bathroom for a hot shower.
—
Paul dresses quickly the next morning and leaves the building with his rough draft and red pencils in a shoulder bag.
Better to stay out today, he thinks, as if last night’s lurid fantasizing soiled his apartment for serious work.
It isn’t true, but he can’t risk falling into another erotically charged haze; he doesn’t have time.
He heads for the nearby Hunger Pains Café to stay focused and fueled for as long as it takes.
After two raisin scones, five cups of coffee, and several more drafts, he thinks he’s done it: polished the introduction until it shines bright enough for Marty, for Harper’s and the Harper’s reading public.
He was right to come to the crowded café, to sit surrounded by the buzz of other conversations.
Now he readies himself to head home and type it all up before sending it in.
Stepping outside, blinking in the cold winter light, he feels haggard and stunned and in need of a long walk.
Two hours later, after dropping his introduction, sealed in a stamped envelope with a brisk and confident cover note, in the nearest mailbox, he strides through the neighborhood for over an hour.
Soaking up the familiar sights and sounds, Paul says hello to a few shopkeepers and neighbors and begins to revive.
He returns to his apartment, refreshed and also certain he’ll hear good news from Marty soon.
Glancing at the couch, he considers indulging in the somewhat tormented pleasure of jerking off to Charlie again, but it seems risky somehow.
Dangerous and threatening to the work he’s just done, and to Marty’s reaction.
I’ll wait to do it again until after Marty calls, he promises himself, though he knows he’s being oddly superstitious.
—
Marty doesn’t call the next day, or the day after that.
Paul finds himself sitting too often by the phone, anxious and a bit crazed.
He stares at the telephone, the way he did when he was waiting to hear from TJ, startling whenever it rings.
It’s never Marty, though. He knows Marty must have received his introduction by now.
Does he hate it? Is he rethinking Paul’s connection to the feature?
Will he find someone else instead, a famous photographer perhaps, to write the introduction?
He could call the Harper’s office, of course, confront Marty head-on, but he doesn’t want to seem desperate.
Instead, he drinks himself to sleep but sleeps poorly, plagued by bad dreams that feature Charlie somehow holding his introduction and laughing over it, wide-mouthed, her head thrown back.
He wakes thinking of the soft white expanse of her throat, with his stomach crimped in anger and fear.
When the telephone rings at 10 a.m. on the fourth morning, it’s finally Marty.
He’s effusive in his praise, says the piece is “almost perfect,” and gives Paul a list of minor tweaks he wants him to make.
When they hang up, Paul sits in the silence of his living room, his stomach and mind fully eased.
He smiles stupidly around at his familiar belongings: wooden chairs, crammed bookshelves, shoes lined up in the small apartment vestibule.
Of course Marty loved the introduction. Paul has known all along that he did a great job.
Marty said something to him about “beautifully shaping Judith Stanley for the public,” and Paul puffed up at that.
He likes to think of it that way—of his having created her.
His mind flashes, then, to his dream of Charlie’s exposed throat.
The image sends him quickly to the couch, where he pulls and grunts until he’s satisfied.