“Do you worry,” he asked Tara now, “that you might share your father’s legacy?”
“What an offensive question,” she said. “How would you feel if I asked you the same thing?”
“There’s a genetic factor to alcoholism,” he said. “Surely you know that.”
“There is not,” Tara said. “You’re full of shit.”
Luke laughed.
“I’m sorry, Tara, but that’s just a fact. I’m not trying to be provocative or cruel.”
“Oh no, Gerry is never provocative. Or cruel.” She threw her arms out, her drink sloshing. Tara had taken to drinking vodka martinis. It was a calculated choice. Everything Tara did was calculated, a conscious decision to create an image. She was wearing a teeny-tiny hat with a veil tonight and a 1950s vintage dress. She would look so much better in those ski pants and oversize shirts other women were wearing now.
“Tara, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Gerry never wants to fight,” Luke said, his eyes searching the club for tonight’s entertainment.
Gerry got up to go to the bathroom. In this particular club, the bathrooms were designated as “devils” and “she-devils.” There was a long line of she-devils waiting. He noticed one woman in particular when he went in. She was still waiting when he came out. She looked out of place, a preppy girl, in pearls and a sweater. He was charmed by her, although her calves were quite thick.
“If you want to use the men’s room,” he said, “I’ll spot you.”
The gym nomenclature meant nothing to her and she stared at him as if he had said something rude.
“I’ll guard the door, I mean. There’s a stall. And it’s, um, relatively hygienic.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll wait my turn.”
“I’m Gerry,” he said.
“I’m Gretchen.”
“Okay if I wait with you?”
“It’s a free country.”
Charmed by the cliché, which she did not appear to know was a cliché, he waited with her. And he waited when she went in and used the bathroom. Then he proposed they go to a diner. She ordered french fries, nothing more, and ate them daintily, dipping them in mayonnaise instead of ketchup. She was the most earnest person he had ever met. He walked her home, to her apartment in Gramercy Park, the first sign that this apple-cheeked girl had a real life, a real job, at a brokerage. He kissed her on one of her apple cheeks, but that was all. “May I have your number?” he asked. She wrote it on his wrist, with an ink pen.
He called her the moment he got home.
February 20
THE PHYSICAL THERAPIST, a man named Claude, comes twice a week. By all appearances, he is constantly, chronically high, but it’s a low-grade buzz that doesn’t interfere with his job or, Gerry has to hope, his driving. He is a quiet man, which normally would be a relief, but Gerry is desperate for masculine company, cooped up with only Victoria and Aileen. Funny, he never thought of himself as much of a man’s man. He rather dislikes men. Of course this goes back to his father; Gerry has never bothered to pay an analyst to delve into that matter. Writing is better than therapy—same results, but he gets paid for it. His wastrel father, then the Gilman jocks, who were nice to him yet still kind of awful, directing so much energy into destruction. He noticed, even then, that they were especially dangerous when they had too much time to spare, given to cow-tipping and other stupid pranks. And, although he never thought about it before, probably date rape and trains and other horrible things.
“What’s going on with you, Claude?”
“Not much.”
As an adult, Gerry has had basically two male friends: Thiru and his college roommate Luke, who didn’t survive his thirties. The other men he knows are acquaintances, peers, rivals. Gerry likes to think himself above the fray, a true novitiate, dedicated only to the higher cause of literature, but who is he kidding? He keeps score like all the writers of his generation. Like every writer of every generation. Who got there first, who has had the most staying power, who’s going up, who’s going down, who has a Pulitzer, who has a National Book Award, who’s on the long list for the Nobel. Over the past few years, many of these men have taken to grumbling privately about political correctness, or what they prefer to call the “overcorrection” of the literary world. “If I weren’t a white man,” Gerry has heard more than one white man say. In their view, every prize given to a non–white man is an act of tokenism. Gerry’s not one of those judgy begrudgers.