Potboiler Read online

  “The wonderful thing about the desserts here,” Pfefferkorn’s daughter said, “is that they’re not sweet.”

  “Isn’t dessert supposed to be sweet?”

  “Uch. Daddy. You know what I mean.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “I mean not too sweet.”

  “Oh.”

  Pfefferkorn’s daughter put down the dessert menu. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “About Bill, you mean? No, I’m all right.”

  She took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Pfefferkorn shrugged. “It’s different when you’re my age.”

  “You’re not that old.”

  “All I’m saying is, at a certain point you realize that most of your life is behind you.”

  “Do we have to talk about this?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s depressing,” she said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating my engagement.”

  Why had she chosen to bring up the subject of death, then? “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Pfefferkorn’s daughter sat back and crossed her arms.

  “Sweetheart. Don’t cry, please.”

  “I’m not,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know,” she said. She took his hand again. “So, you like Paul.”

  “I love him,” Pfefferkorn lied.

  She smiled.

  “I don’t know what you’ve discussed between the two of you,” he said, “but I’d like to contribute in some way to the wedding.”

  “Oh, Daddy. That’s very nice of you, but it’s not necessary. We’re all taken care of.”

  “Please. You’re my daughter. I can’t pitch in?”

  “Paul’s family has already offered to help out.”

  “Well, I’m offering to help out, too.”

  Pfefferkorn’s daughter looked pained. “But—it’s all taken care of, really.”

  Pfefferkorn understood that he was being turned down out of pity. They both knew he had no money to spend on a wedding. He had no notion of what he’d meant by “pitch in.” What could he do? Park cars? He felt humiliated, both by her rejection and by his own impotence. He stared at his knotted fingers as silence settled across the table.

  His daughter was correct: the desserts were not remotely sweet. The donuts Pfefferkorn ordered had the taste and texture of compressed sand. At conclusion of the meal, he tried to pay, but Paul had already given the waiter a credit card on his way back from the men’s room.

  6.

  The airport newsstands and bookstores all featured prominent displays of William de Vallée novels. Every ten yards or so Pfefferkorn passed another towering cardboard bin, its top crowned by an enlargement of Bill’s jacket photo, which had the famous author posing in a trench coat against a background of dark, bare trees. Pfefferkorn, an hour early for his flight, stopped to stare. William de Vallée indeed, he thought.

  “Excuse me,” a man said.

  Pfefferkorn stepped aside to allow him to take a book.

  For thirty years, Bill had, unprompted and without fail, sent Pfefferkorn inscribed copies of his novels. Back in the early days, Pfefferkorn had been happy for his friend, gratified that Bill should single him out to celebrate his good fortune. Over time, however, as that fortune continued to grow, and Pfefferkorn’s stagnancy became more and more apparent, the gift began to feel like a cruel joke. Pfefferkorn had stopped reading the books long ago—thrillers were not his cup of tea—but in recent years he’d begun throwing the packages straight into the trash. By and by he had gotten rid of the old books as well. Today, first editions of the earliest novels, printed in small batches before William de Vallée became a household name, fetched substantial sums. Pfefferkorn refused to profiteer, donating the books to his local library or slipping them into strangers’ bags on the bus.

  Standing before the gaudy display, Pfefferkorn decided he owed it to Bill to catch up a bit. He bought the hardcover, walked to his departure gate, and sat down to read.

  7.

  The thirty-third installment in a series, the novel featured special agent Richard “Dick” Stapp, a brilliant, physically invincible figure formerly in the employ of a shadowy but never-named government arm whose apparent sole purpose was to furnish story lines for thrillers. Pfefferkorn recognized the formula easily enough. Stapp, supposedly in retirement, finds himself drawn into an elaborate conspiracy involving one or more of the following: an assassination, a terrorist strike, a missing child, or the theft of highly sensitive documents that, if made public, could lead to full-blown nuclear engagement. His involvement in the case often begins against his will. I’ve had it with this rotten business he is fond of avowing. Who in real life, Pfefferkorn wondered, avowed anything? For that matter, who declared, exclaimed, interjected, chirped, chimed in, put in, cut in, piped up, or squawked? People said things, and that was all. Who sighed heavily? Or groaned lustily? Who fought to hold back the tears, which came without fail? Several times Pfefferkorn had to close the book, he was getting so exasperated. Once sucked (or dragged, or pulled, or thrust) back into the maelstrom (net, vortex, spiderweb) of deception (treachery, lies, intrigue), Stapp learns that the mystery he was initially trying to solve is in fact just the tip of the iceberg. A far greater conspiracy simmers beneath, one that raises the specter of ugly events from Stapp’s past and that has implications for his personal life. With dismaying frequency he is accused of a crime he did not commit. Stapp’s son, a drug addict with whom he has no contact due to Stapp’s having been a crummy father, too busy saving the free world to play ball or attend school plays and so forth, tends to fall into jeopardy. Long conversations consisting mainly of leading questions supply a complicated backstory. Trains and flights run on schedule, to exactly the right destinations, allowing Stapp to cover enormous distances in improbably short amounts of time. Despite the fact that his ordeal affords him little food and no sleep, he remains unimpaired when called upon to make passionate love to a beautiful woman. Captured, he must rely on his ingenuity to escape. A friend is revealed to be an enemy and vice versa. An event or detail that earlier appeared irrelevant comes to play a critical role. Finally, the hero is forced to make a seemingly impossible choice, often having to do with the beautiful woman. Make it he does, though at great cost. For although Stapp is physically invincible, he bears deep emotional scars. Either the woman betrays him or he leaves her, afraid to endanger her. You’re like a moth he might murmur. Drawn to what will destroy you. Then swiftly follow the delivery of vigilante justice and the tying of loose ends in complete defiance of logic or normal rules of criminal procedure. By story’s end Stapp is on the run again, his name blackened, his heroism never to be acknowledged, his demons in hot pursuit.

  It was a terrible book, even by its own standards: crass and inelegant and sodden with cliché. The plot was overwrought and reliant on coincidence. The characters were flimsy. The language was enough to make Pfefferkorn’s throat pucker in distaste. Yet millions of people had rushed to buy it, and millions more would follow suit, especially now that Bill’s death was the latest scoop. Were they truly blind to the book’s faults, or did they willingly ignore those faults in exchange for a few hours of mindless diversion? Pfefferkorn tried to decide which was worse: having no taste or having taste and setting it aside. Either way, this was not the purpose of literature. He finished reading during his second leg, from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. Rather than leave the book on the airplane for someone else to find, he discarded it while walking to the rental car shuttle bus.

  8.

  Pfefferkorn checked into his motel with several hours to spare. He decided to take a walk. He put on his tennis shoes and a pair of shorts and ventured out into the glare.
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  The motel was located along a seedy stretch of Hollywood Boulevard. Pfefferkorn passed cut-rate electronics dealers, sex shops, emporia of movie-related trinkets. A young man handed him a flyer redeemable for two tickets to the taping of a game show Pfefferkorn had never heard of. An unshaven transvestite with foul body odor brushed against him. A woman in hot pants smiled toothlessly as she hawked aromatherapy kits. The streets swarmed with tourists under the impression that movies still got made here. Pfefferkorn knew better. None of the four movies made from Bill’s books had been shot in California. Canada, North Carolina, and New Mexico all provided filmmakers with tax breaks that made Los Angeles, however storied its streets, financially unworkable. That didn’t stop people from coming to have their picture taken in front of the Chinese Theatre.

  A few blocks on, he ran a gauntlet of people brandishing clipboards in support of various causes. Pfefferkorn was asked to lend his voice to the fight against fur, the death penalty, and atrocities allegedly committed by the West Zlabian government. He dodged them all, pausing as he came to a woman kneeling on the sidewalk to light a candle inside a hurricane glass. Bunches of flowers were strewn all around the concrete square wherein William de Vallée’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star was set. The woman noticed him staring and offered a smile of shared misery.

  “Care to sign?” she asked. She pointed to a card table, atop which sat a red leather–bound book and several pens.

  Pfefferkorn bent to the book and leafed through it. There were dozens of inscriptions, many of them quite heartfelt, all made out to Bill or William or Mr. de Vallée.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” the kneeling woman said.

  She began to cry.

  Pfefferkorn said nothing. He flipped to the back of the book and found a blank page. He thought for a moment. Dear Bill he wrote. You were a lousy hack.

  9.

  Pfefferkorn pulled the pins from his shirt. It had been years since he had purchased new clothes, and he had been shocked by how expensive everything was. Once dressed, however, he decided the money had been well spent. The suit was dark gray rather than black, a more practical choice if he wanted to get further use out of it. He wore a silver tie. He grimaced to see that he had forgotten to shine his shoes. But it was too late for that. He had less than an hour and he didn’t know his way around town.

  The desk clerk gave him directions. They were wrong, and Pfefferkorn got stuck in traffic. He arrived at the cemetery chapel as the ceremony was ending, slipping in to stand at the back. The room was packed, the air close with flowers and perfume. He picked Carlotta out with ease. She sat in the front row, her gigantic black hat bobbing and wagging as she wept. No clergy were present. On the dais was a lustrous black casket with brilliant silver fixtures. A life-size version of the pop-up of Bill in his captain’s hat stood off to the left. Rock and roll played over the stereo, a song that Pfefferkorn recognized as an old favorite of Bill’s. In college, Bill would play the same record over and over until Pfefferkorn couldn’t stand it any longer and threatened to break the hi-fi. Bill had always been a creature of habit. He’d kept an immaculate desk, bare save a typewriter, a jar of pens, and a neatly stacked manuscript. By contrast, Pfefferkorn’s desks tended to look like a child had been opening presents nearby. A similar distinction held in other parts of their lives. Pfefferkorn wrote irregularly, when the mood took him. Bill wrote the same number of words every day, rain or shine, in sickness and in health. Pfefferkorn had careered through a series of messy love affairs before ending up alone. Bill had been married to the same woman for three decades. Pfefferkorn had no nest egg, no vision for his retirement, no idea of what he ought to do except continue to live. Bill always had a plan.

  But what, Pfefferkorn wondered, did those plans amount to in the end? Here, in lustrous black, lay the refutation.

  The song concluded. The mourners rose. People were referring to an ivory-colored piece of paper. Picking up a spare, Pfefferkorn saw a map of the cemetery, with arrows indicating walking directions from the chapel to the grave site. On the back was the program for the just-concluded ceremony. Pfefferkorn read that he had been scheduled to speak third.

  10.

  Last in, first out, he stood at the base of the chapel steps, waiting for Carlotta so he could apologize for his tardiness. Two by two, the mourners poured out. Sunglasses were unfolded or brought down from foreheads. Handkerchiefs were returned to pockets. Frighteningly thin women clung to much older men. Pfefferkorn, who did not own a television and who rarely went to the movies, knew he ought to recognize some of these people. As a group they were exceedingly well dressed, and he felt his new suit put to shame. A woman encrusted in jewels approached him to ask where the bathroom was, reacting with perplexity when he said he did not know. As she tottered away, Pfefferkorn realized she had taken him for a cemetery employee.

  “Thank God you’ve come.”

  Carlotta de Vallée broke free of the man escorting her and gripped Pfefferkorn fiercely, her woolen jacket bunching itchily against his sweaty neck.

  “Arthur,” she said. She held him back for inspection. “Dear Arthur.”

  She was just as he remembered, exceptionally striking, if not quite conventionally beautiful, with a high, unlined forehead and a Roman nose. The latter had limited her acting career to a few pilots and the odd commercial. She hadn’t worked since her thirties. Then again, she hadn’t needed to. She was married to one of the world’s most popular novelists. Four-inch heels and the hat added to her already imposing stature: she stood five-foot-ten in bare feet, taller than Pfefferkorn but in proportion to her late husband. Pfefferkorn tried not to ogle the hat. It was an impressive thing, adorned with buttons, bows, and lace, its shape that of an inverted frustum, narrow around the head and widening as it went up, like Nefertiti’s headdress.

  She frowned. “I’d hoped you would say a few words.”

  “I had no idea,” Pfefferkorn said.

  “You didn’t get my message? I left it this morning.”

  “I was on the plane.”

  “Yes but I thought you’d get it when you got off the plane.”

  “That’s my answering machine you spoke to.”

  “Arthur, my God. You mean to say you don’t have a cell phone?”

  “No.”

  Carlotta appeared genuinely awed. “Well. It’s all for the best. The ceremony went on much too long as it was.”

  Her escort shifted noisily to signal that he was waiting to be introduced, a gesture Pfefferkorn found imperious given the context.

  “Arthur, this is Lucian Savory, Bill’s agent. Arthur Pfefferkorn, our oldest and dearest friend.”

  “Obliged,” Savory said. He was extremely old, with an extremely large head. It looked freakish atop his withered body. Thinning black hair was plastered back across his scalp.

  “Arthur is a writer as well.”

  “That so.”

  Pfefferkorn waved noncommittally.

  “Mrs. de Vallée,” a young man with a walkie-talkie said. “We’ll be ready shortly.”

  “Yes, of course.” Carlotta offered Pfefferkorn her arm and they walked to the grave.

  11.

  Pfefferkorn stood at Carlotta’s side throughout the interment. He was aware of people staring at him, wondering who he was. To block them out, he cast his mind into the past. He and Bill had been in the same class from the seventh grade on, but it was while working on the high school newspaper that they had become friends, each discovering in the other a counterweight. Soon enough they were inseparable, the big, easygoing Polack and the lean, volatile Jew. Pfefferkorn nicknamed Bill “the Cossack.” Bill called Pfefferkorn by his Hebrew name, Yankel. Pfefferkorn recommended books for Bill to read. Bill endorsed Pfefferkorn’s grandiose dreams. Pfefferkorn edited Bill’s essays. Bill gave Pfefferkorn a lift home whenever they stayed late to fini
sh the layout. Senior year, Pfefferkorn was appointed editor-in-chief. Bill became business manager.

  Bill’s parents could have afforded to send him to a private college, but he and Pfefferkorn made a pact to go to the state university together. They ran in the same circles, the artistic ones that Pfefferkorn gravitated toward. Those were tumultuous times, and the campus literary magazine was an epicenter of the counterculture. Pfefferkorn rose to become editor-in-chief. Bill served as his ad manager.

  At a be-in Pfefferkorn met a tall girl with a Roman nose. She was majoring in dance. She had read some of his stories and was impressed with his vocabulary. He lied and said that he was interested in dance. He fell in love with her instantly but had the good sense to keep his feelings to himself, a choice that revealed itself as farsighted when he introduced her to Bill and she proceeded to fall in love with him instead.

  After graduation, the three of them got a basement apartment together. To make ends meet, Pfefferkorn worked at the post office. At night he and Bill played gin rummy or Scrabble while Carlotta cooked up crêpes or a stir-fry. They would listen to records and perhaps smoke a little dope. Then Pfefferkorn would sit at his desk, typing as loudly as he could to drown out the noise of Bill and Carlotta’s lovemaking.

  He remembered the first time Bill revealed any literary aspirations of his own. Prior to then, Pfefferkorn had thought he understood the roles each of them played in their friendship, and it was with some unease that he sat down to read the story Bill had written “for the heck of it.” Pfefferkorn was worried it would be either superb and cause for envy or rubbish and cause for an argument. In fact, it fell somewhere in between, and Pfefferkorn felt relief at being able to express honest enthusiasm for the story’s strengths while yet retaining his position of dominance. He even offered to mark up the text, a suggestion Bill pounced on. Pfefferkorn interpreted his enthusiasm as an admission that Bill still held Pfefferkorn to be the superior writer and would gladly accept any pearls of wisdom Pfefferkorn cared to drop.