Boston
Embarrassingly late. He would have to come up with some kind of story.
Train delay, perhaps, except half the room was full of New Yorkers who hoofed it up for the night and none of them had any problems. Something with a client, you understand, couldn’t be avoided, I hope the service was lovely.
Had to be something big, family emergency?
Well, that was partially true, if getting your girlfriend off to the Hamptons without the wife finding out is a sort of emergency.
Maybe he could just go with an old standby, I forgot what time the funeral was.
I’m getting old, I really need to keep my own calendar, not rely on the old noggin anymore.
Oh, where is my secretary? She’s in the Hamptons.
Peter Sanford, it turned out, didn’t have to deploy any of these excuses, because Jean-Danton’s widow could barely speak, she was crying so much.
Wendy Souard sat in the middle of the large den right past the foyer, a group of old friends and extended cousins circled around her, rubbing her shoulders and handing her tissues.
Peter laid a consoling hand on her arm and told her how sorry he was, how much he was going to miss Jean-Danton.
She smiled, the pained sad smile people manage to express when they aren’t actually happy, and told her friends, “This is Paul Sanderson, John’s attorney. ”
In any other situation, Peter would have assumed malicious intent on the misremembering of his name, and maybe the bereaved woman really was digging into him for missing the funeral, but Peter let it go.
He was more taken aback by her calling Jean-Danton “John,” but then again she was from Wisconsin. She didn’t even speak French.
Peter walked into the adjoining dining room, where the mourners with less of a personal stake in the deceased’s passing were gathered.
It was a wide room lit by a chandelier constructed out of blown glass, hanging over a table of golden mahogany.
Peter was wondering how much of his firm’s labor went into offering services which directly or indirectly paid for that table and chandelier when he recognized Chet Bauman and Benjamin Long, Jean-Danton’s agent and accountant, standing in the corner over a plate of shrimp.
“I was wondering if you were coming,” Chet said to Peter as he walked over. “You missed a nice ceremony.”
“Well, a ceremony anyway,” Benjamin said. “They held a full mass and had four eulogies. It went on forever.”
“I didn’t know Jean-Danton to ever set foot in a church,” Peter said.
“Well, you know, at the end sometimes you hedge your bets a little.”
“Did you speak, Chet?”
“Oh God no. Nobody wants to hear from me. What am I going to do? Brag about foreign translation rights?”
“Say something about Hollywood, people like that.”
“You think his wife’s going to let you chase those deals now?” Benjamin asked. “I mean, once she has time to consider it?”
“His son’s the literary executor,” Chet said.
“I haven’t gotten a good read on him. But maybe, I hope so.
Dying has certainly increased interest and demand.
I’ve been getting calls from this producer Rex Donaldson, have you heard from him?
He was behind a big push to option the series a few years ago, now he’s trying to tell me to watch Jurassic Park, says the technology is right to adapt. ”
“The price is right, that’s what it is.”
They began chatting about Benjamin’s boat and the Knicks, the inherent business of attending a client’s funeral well understood among all three of them.
Peter had known them both for almost two decades, when the firm Jean-Danton hired to manage his legal affairs plucked Peter, then a young associate, out to handle “that writer’s shit.
” Peter never made partner but then he didn’t need to, since he ran his own firm now handling the affairs of dozens of writers, and even a few actors too.
He was excited to see what dividends Chet’s Hollywood connections would yield.
Peter eventually needed to piss, but didn’t pay enough attention to the twist and turns toward the bathroom so on his way back he ended up in a dark shelf-lined room of books.
There was a single desk next to a fireplace, and one chair under a window.
The desk was bare save a few blank pages and a pencil.
He was in Jean-Danton’s office. Jean-Danton never did like writing with a typewriter.
In the chair sat Daniel Souard, nursing a scotch.
Peter had never met Jean-Danton’s son, though he had certainly heard the writer complain about him enough.
Complaints about him dropping out of one college then another, complaints about his inability to find a job or move out.
Complaints about his general lack of goals or ambitions or even interests.
Daniel Souard was thirty-one years old and still lived, last Peter heard, in a spare bedroom on the top floor of the house.
“Oh, sorry, got turned around,” Peter said when Daniel noticed him. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You’re not one of my mother’s friends?” It was less a question than a hopeful inquiry.
“No. You must be Daniel? I was your father’s business associate. His lawyer. He talked about you a lot.”
“Ah, you’re Peter. Yeah, I have all that paperwork about the estate somewhere. I haven’t really looked over any of it yet.”
“There’ll be time enough for that. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. You know, the thing is, I’m not very sad.
Not like my mom. She’s distraught. She really didn’t think the cancer was going to kill him.
But he smoked two, three packs a day, long as I can remember.
I mean, you can smell it in the walls down here.
Everything here is probably encrusted with smoke.
” He ran a hand over the spines of the books and records on the nearest shelf.
Peter leaned against the writing desk. “I knew your father a long time but I’ve never been to his home before. Never seen where he worked.”
“Well, he didn’t have a lot of friends. Those are all my mother’s friends out there.”
“I see.”
“He always seemed like an old man to me. Always had a decade or more on all of my friends’ dads. And I think the war had made him older still. There really wasn’t anybody else around here like him. You liked my father, though, right? You liked his books.”
Peter didn’t want to lie to him, but he had never found Jean-Danton particularly pleasant.
He was an anxious, morose person, paranoid about the status of his literary estate and cold to anyone he thought did not share a similar care or concern.
But he had made Peter a great deal of money over the years.
“Yes, your father may have been a client but he was also a dear friend. And he was very talented.”
“Which book was your favorite?”
That was another problem: Peter had never read any of Jean-Danton’s novels.
Peter did not read much for pleasure. After spending a full working day looking over wills and trusts and briefs, he preferred to spend his evenings watching basketball, often at his secretary’s apartment.
If he did read, he preferred nonfiction, usually a book of history about Churchill or Gettysburg or something he could start and not feel bad about when he didn’t finish. He didn’t much care for novels.
“The first one, definitely,” said Peter. “You can’t beat the original.”
“You know,” Daniel said, “I wanted to be a writer once. My dad was never very encouraging, I don’t know why. It was hard to live in his shadow. Not a lot of writers have kids who are writers too.”
Peter had no idea if that was true. “Well, you’re going to get to carry his legacy forward now. That’s quite an honor.”
Daniel laughed. “Chet’s already talked to me about selling rights for movies.
Dad hated that. He didn’t want to disturb the ‘integrity’ of the series.
But he never finished it, you know? Supposed to be seven books, but he only wrote five.
He outlined the next one, but he was already on oxygen and could barely get out of bed. Now they’ll never be finished.”
Peter did not have Chet’s salesman-like ingenuity, or Benjamin’s analytical gift for financials, but he did have the lawyer’s sense of opportunity. He could smell where there was a gap in the documentation for an attorney to plow right through.
“You know, Daniel, your father was always very proud of you. Maybe he couldn’t always show you that, or you couldn’t see it, but he was.
I’m not a literary person myself, I’m just here to advise.
And I’m not your father, either, so take this for what it is, a suggestion.
But it seems to me your father left you a gift.
Who better to finish his series than his own son? ”
Daniel had lifted the scotch glass to his mouth, but stopped when Peter said this.
Despite how much time he must have spent sitting in this room, in the dark, in the days since his father’s death, this idea had never occurred to him.
The literary estate was going to be his burden, his cross to bear for the rest of his life.
Now, and Daniel had never even remotely seen it this way before, it was also going to be his salvation.
“You know, Peter, I think that would actually be a really special way to honor him. Right? His fans would appreciate it. I wouldn’t act like this is my thing, really.
It’s his outline, his ideas. I’m just finishing what he started.
A son seeing to the end his father’s legacy.
” Daniel set down the glass of scotch, sat up straight in his chair, and smiled.
“Wow,” Peter said, “that’s beautiful.”
It really was. Peter was going to make so much money.