Potboiler

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 finish 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.