The Plant 3 Page 4

  “Roger, this is not the same thing.” I sipped my new drink, which tasted just like my old drink. It occurred to me that I was getting fried. It also occurred to me that I didn’t care in the slightest.

  “But it is,” He said, leaning solemnly toward me. “In a queer way Ruth is dead to you now. You may see her from time to time over the years, but if the break is as final and complete as that letter sounds, the Ruth we could call your Lover-Ruth is dead to you. And you are grieving.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him he was full of shit, and then I closed it again because he was at least partly right. That’s what carrying a torch really means, isn’t it? You’re grieving for the lover who died — the lover who is dead to you, anyway.

  “People tend to think of ‘grief’ and ‘depression’ as interchangeable terms,” Roger said. His tone was a good deal more pedantic than usual, and his eyes were rimmed with red. It occurred to me that Roger was getting fried, too. “They’re really not. There’s an element of depression in grief, of course, but there are a whole slew of other feelings as well, ranging from guilt and sadness to anger and relief. A person who runs from the scene of those feelings is a person in retreat from the inevitable. He arrives in a new place and discovers he feels exactly the same mixture of emotions we call grief — except now he feels homesickness as well, and a feeling of having lost the essential linkage which eventually turn grief into remembrance.”

  “You remember all of that from an eight-week psychology block course you took eighteen years ago?” Roger sipped modestly at his drink. “Sure,” he said. “I got an A.”

  “Bullshit you do.”

  “I also banged the grad student who taught the course. What a piece of ass she was.”

  “It’s not my apartment I was planning to leave,” I said, although I had no idea if I intended to leave it or not…and I know that wasn’t his point anyway.

  “It wouldn’t matter whether you left that two-room cockroach condo or not,” he said. “You know what I’m talking about here. Your job is your house.”

  “Yeah? Well the roof is sure leaking,” I said, and even that seemed sort of witty to me. I was getting fried, all right.

  “I want you to help me fix the leak, John,” he said, leaning forward earnestly. “That’s what I’m saying. That’s why I asked you out tonight. And your agreement is the only thing capable of mitigating what is undoubtedly going to be one of the most beastly hangovers of my life. Help us both. Stay on.”

  “You’ll pardon me if all of this sounds just a little bit self-serving and fortuitous.”

  He sat back. “I respect you,” he said a trifle coldly, “but I also like you, John. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be breaking my ass to keep you on.” He hesitated, seemed on the point of saying something more, then didn’t. His eyes said it for him: And humiliating myself by damn’ near begging.

  “I just don’t understand why you’re trying so hard,” I said. “I mean, I’m flattered, but—“

  “Because if anyone can bring in a book or create an idea that will keep Zenith from going belly-up, it’s you,” he said. There was an intensity in his eyes I found almost frightening. “I know how fucking embarrassed you were by the whole Detweiller business, but—“

  “Please,” I said. “Let’s not add insult to injury.”

  “I had no intention of even bringing it up,” he said. “It’s just that your very openness to such an off-the-wall proposition—“

  “It was off the wall, all right—“

  “Will you shut up and listen? Your response to the Detweiller query showed you’re still alive to a potentially commercial idea. Herb or Bill would simply have dropped his letter in the circular file.”

  “And we all would have been a lot better off,” I said, but I saw where he was going and would be lying if I didn’t say I was flattered…and that I felt a little better about the Detweiller affair for the first time since my humiliation at the police station.

  “This time,” he agreed. “But those guys also would have turned down V. C. Andrews with her Toys in the Attic series, or some brand new idea. Boom, into the circular file and then back to contemplating their navels.” He paused. “I need you, Johnny, and I think it would be good if you stayed — for you, for me, for Zenith. There’s no other way I can put it. Think it over and give me your answer. I’ll accept it either way.”

  “You’d be paying me for the equivalent of cutting out paper dolls, Roger.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  I thought about it. I’d started to clean out my desk that day and hadn’t gotten very far — to paraphrase Poe, who would have thought the old desk could have had so much crap in it? Or maybe it was just me, and that crack about not even being able to tie my own shoelaces wasn’t so wrong, after all. I’d gotten two empty cardboard cartons from Riddley’s room (which smells oddly green lately, like fresh marijuana — and no, I didn’t see any) and did nothing but stare from one to the other. Maybe with a little more time I could at least complete the elementary job of cleaning up my old life before starting some unimaginable new one. It’s just that I’ve felt so fucking dreary. “Suppose we table the resignation until the end of the month,” I said. “would that ease your mind?”

  He smiled. “It’s not the best I’d hoped for,” he said, “but it’s not the worst I was afraid of, either. I’ll take it. And now I think we better order while we can still sit up straight.”

  We ordered steaks, and ate them, but by then my mouth was too numb to taste much. I suppose I just ought to be grateful that no one had to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on either of us.

  As we were leaving — holding onto each other, assisted by the anxious maitre d’ (who no doubt only wanted to get us the fuck out of there before we broke something), Roger told me: “Something else I learned in that psychology course—“

  “What did you say they called it? The Psychology of Damaged Souls?”

  We were outside by then, and his cackles drifted away in little frosty plumes of vapor. “It was the Psychology of Human Stress, but I actually like yours better.” Roger energetically flagged down a cab, whose driver would shortly be very sorry he picked us up. “It also said that it helps to keep a diary.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I haven’t kept a diary since I was eleven.”

  “Well what the hell,” he said. “look for it, John. Maybe it’s still around somewhere.” And he went off into another wild run of cackles which only ended when he leaned over and puked nonchalantly on his own shoes.

  He did it twice more on the way to his apartment building at 20th and Park Avenue South, leaning as far out the window as he could (which wasn’t too far since it was one of those Plymouths where the rear windows will only roll down about halfway and there’s a grim little yellow and black sign that says DO NOT FORCE THE WINDOW!) and just sort of blowing it into the slipstream and then settling back with that same nonchalant expression on his face. Our driver, a Nigerian or Somalian by his accent, was horrified. He pulled over to the curb and ordered us out. I was willing, but Roger sat tight.

  “My friend,” he said, “I would get out if I could walk. Since I cannot, you must convey us hence.”

  “I want you out my caib, good sah.”

  “So far I have done you the courtesy of vomiting out the window,” Roger said with that same nonchalant and rather pleasant expression on his face. “It hasn’t been easy because of the angle, but I have done it. I think in another few seconds I am going to vomit again. If you don’t convey us hence, I am going to do it in your ashtray.”

  At Roger’s building I assisted him into the lobby and saw him into the elevator with his apartment key in his hand. Then I wove my way back to the cab.

  “You git annoder cab, mon,” the driver said. “You just pay me and git annoder. I don’t want to no mo convey you hence.”

  “It’s just down to Soho,” I said, “and I’ll give you a hell of a tip. Also, I don’t feel like puking.” This was a b
it of a lie, I’m afraid.

  He took me, and from the look of my wallet the next day I did indeed give him a hell of a tip. And I actually managed to make it upstairs before throwing up. Although once I started I didn’t stop for quite awhile.

  I didn’t go in the next day — it was all I could do to get out of bed. My head felt monstrous, bloated. I called in around three and got Bill Gelb, who told me Roger hadn’t shown, either.

  Since then I have done a lot of crying and have had mostly sleepless nights, but perhaps Roger wasn’t so wrong — the only hours that I feel even halfway myself are the ones spent on the 9th floor at 490 Park. Riddley has just about had to sweep me out the door along with his red sawdust the last two nights. Maybe there is something to that old “he threw himself into his work” crap after all. Even this diary idea feels right…although it may only be the relief of finally being done with my dreadful pastoral novel.

  Maybe I’ll stay on after all. Onward and upward…if there is any upward left for me. Man, I still can’t believe she’s gone. And I still haven’t lost hope that she may change her mind.

  March 21, 1981

  Mr. John “Poop-Shit” Kenton

  Zenith House Publishers, Home of the Pus-Bags

  490 Kaka Avenue South

  New York, New York 10017

  Dear Poop-Shit,

  Did you think I had forgotten you? My plans for revenge will go forward no matter WHAT! happens to me! You and all your fellow “Pus-Bags” will soon feel the WRATH! of CARLOS!!

  I have covened the powers of Hell,

  Carlos Detweiller

  In Transit, U.S.A.

  PS — Smell anything “green” yet, Mr. Poop-Shit Kenton?

  From John Kenton’s diary.

  March 22, 1981

  Had a letter from Carlos today. I laughed until I shrieked. Herb Porter came on the run, wanted to know if I was dying or what. I showed it to him. He read it and only frowned. He wanted to know what I was laughing about — didn’t I take this Detweiller fellow seriously?

  “Oh, I take him seriously…sort of,” I said.

  “Then why in hell are you laughing?”

  “I guess I just must be a warped plank in the great floor of the universe,” I said, and then went off into even madder gales of laughter.

  Frowning so deeply now that the lines in his face had become crevasses, Herb laid the letter on the corner of my desk and then backed into the doorway, as if whatever I had might be catching. “I don’t know why you’re so weird lately,” he said, “but I’ll give you some good advice anyway. Get yourself some personal protection. And if you need psychiatric help, John—“ I just kept laughing — by then I’d worked myself into a semi-hysterical frenzy. Herb stared at me a moment longer, then slammed the door and walked away. Just as well, really, as I finished by crying.

  I expect to speak to Ruth tonight. By exercising all of my willpower I have managed to hold off on calling her, expecting each day that she must call me. Maddening images of her and the odious Toby Anderson cavorting together — the locale which keeps recurring is a hot-tub. So I’ll call her. So much for willpower.

  If I had a return address for Carlos Detweiller I think I’d drop him a postcard: “Dear Carlos — I know all about covening the powers of Hell. Your Ob’d Servant, Poop-Shit Kenton.”

  Why I bother to write all this crud down, or why I keep plowing through the stacks of old unreturned manuscripts in the mailroom next to Riddley’s janitorial closet, are both mysteries to me.

  March 23, 1981

  My call to Ruth was an utter disaster. Why I should be sitting here and writing about it when I don’t even want to think about it defies reason. Perversity upon perversity. Actually, I do know — I have some dim idea that if I write it down it will lose some of its power over me…so let me by all means confess, but the less said, the better.

  Have I written here that I cry very easily? I think so, but I haven’t the heart to actually look back and see. Well, I cried. Maybe that says it all. Or maybe it doesn’t. I guess it doesn’t. I had spent the day — the last two or three days, actually — telling myself that I would not a.) cry, or b.) beg her to come back. I ended up doing c.) both. I’ve had a lot of gruff locker room chats with myself over the last couple of days (and mostly sleepless nights) on the subject of Pride. As in, “Even after everything else is gone, a man’s got his Pride.” I would draw some lonely comfort from this thought and fantasize myself as Paul Newman — that scene in Cool Hand Luke where he sits in his cell after his mother’s death, playing his banjo and crying soundlessly. Heart-rending, but cool, definitely cool.

  Well, my cool lasted just about four minutes after hearing her voice and having a sudden total remembrance of Ruth — something like an imagistic tattoo. What I’m saying is that I didn’t know how gone she was until I heard her say “Hello? John?”—just those two words — and had this searing 360 degree memory of Ruth — God, how here she was when she was here!

  Even after everything else is gone, a man’s got his Pride?

  Samson might have had similar sentiments about his hair.

  Anyway, I cried and I begged and after a little while she cried and in the end she had to hang up to get rid of me. Or maybe the odious Toby — I never heard him but am somehow sure he was in the room with her; I could almost smell his Brut cologne — picked the phone out of her hand and did her hanging up for her. So they could discuss his love-ring, or their June wedding, or perhaps so he could mingle his tears with hers. Bitter — bitter — I know. But I’ve discovered that even after Pride has gone, a man’s got his Bitterness.

  Did I discover anything else this evening? Yes, I think so. That it is over — genuinely and completely over. Will this stop me from calling her again and debasing myself even further (if that is possible)? I don’t know. I hope so — God, I do. And there’s always the possibility that she’ll change her phone number. In fact, I think that’s even a probability, given tonight’s festivities.

  So what is there for me now? Work, I guess — work, work, and more work. I’m tunneling my way steadily into the logjam of manuscripts in the mailroom — unsolicited scripts which were never returned, for one reason or another (after all, it says right in the boiler-plate that we accept no responsibility for such orphan children). I don’t really expect to find the next Flowers in the Attic in there, or a budding John Saul or Rosemary Rogers, but if Roger was wrong about that, he was sublimely right about something much more important — the work is keeping me sane.

  Pride…then Bitterness…then Work.

  Oh, fuck it. I’m going to go out, buy myself a bottle of bourbon, and get shitty-ass drunk. This is John Kenton, signing off and going for the long bomb.

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