The Mentor Read online

  “You wear such beautiful clothes.”

  “I’m sure there’ll be some things you’ll like.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anne takes an apple from the bowl, looks at it, and then puts it back. “Well, I hope you and Charles have a productive day.”

  “Likewise.”

  Emma walks down to her office and pours herself a cup of coffee. The fact is, she had just arrived for work. She was stopped by Anne’s voice coming from the study. She crept close to the door and listened. Except for “heartless monster,” she couldn’t make out the words-just the tone. Sounded like a fight with a lover. When she heard Anne hang up, she rushed into the kitchen, tossed her bag in the broom closet, and quickly grabbed the apple.

  Emma sips her coffee with satisfaction. So rich bitch is having a little fling of her own. That changes everything. What’s right for the goose is right for Emma.

  Emma turns to the stack of papers on her desk, her previous day’s output, gone over and carefully edited by Charles. He seems to understand Zack, the boy, and Sally, his mother, almost better than Emma herself does. He knows just how to change a word here, a description there, to make a scene come alive.

  “Good morning.”

  Emma looks up. Charles is leaning against the old oak filing cabinet, wearing his faded work shirt open at the collar. He looks forlorn, and especially handsome.

  “Good morning, Charles. You don’t look like you got much sleep.”

  “I was working on your pages.”

  “Thank you. You know, Charles, I’m worried…” she says, and then lets her voice trail off.

  “Worried?”

  She nods. “I’m worried you’ve been neglecting your writing, paying too much attention to mine.”

  “I’m a big boy, Emma. You let me worry about my work.”

  “So you have been working on a new book?”

  “No, it’s an epic poem.”

  “Please don’t be sarcastic, Charles. I’m just-”

  He slams his fist on the filing cabinet and a stack of books on its edge crashes to the floor. He doesn’t look sad anymore, but angry, a strange miserable anger that contorts his features. “Goddammit, Emma! Don’t you think I know how to pace myself? Don’t you think I’ve been doing this long enough to know when to sprint and when to hang back for a lap? Do I look like a rank amateur to you?”

  “I only meant-”

  “You only meant what? What? Spit it out, girl, you’ll be a bigger man for it!”

  “Please…” she gets out.

  “Please what?” he hisses in a voice dripping with condescension and contempt.

  “Please don’t treat me like this.” She stands and takes a step backward.

  “Why not, Emma?”

  “I can’t-I can’t take it. I’m sorry. I was just worried about you. Your work.”

  “You’re not worried, Emma.” He starts to come toward her, those bitter eyes staring her down.

  “I’m afraid of you, Charles.” She turns away from him, away from his rage. “I’m afraid of you.”

  “That’s not really it, Emma, is it? Is it?”

  And he takes her by the arms and spins her around. His hands are squeezing her hard, and she can smell his breath, clean and bitter, and his pine soap, and then she doesn’t care anymore, doesn’t care if he knows.

  “No,” she says. “No, no.”

  “Tell me!” he whispers.

  And then the words pour out, acrid and defiant. “I love you,” she says. “I love you.”

  Charles pulls her hair back and looks into her eyes. All the rage drains from his face and his eyes fill with longing. He leans down and kisses her, presses his body against hers.

  Emma holds on to Charles, holds on as tight as she can, pulling him down with her, or lifting herself up, she isn’t sure which. Does it matter anymore?

  Later, at the end of the day, Charles goes out for a walk and Emma is alone in the office. She lies down on the floor and smokes a cigarette, feeling both exhausted and exhilarated. It’s been a good day. She gets up, puts her coat on, and gathers up her day’s work. She walks into Charles’s office and puts the pages on his desk. Where is his work? She looks through the haphazard collection of papers on his desk: pages and pages of notes about her book, a phone bill, a take-out menu from a nearby Thai restaurant. That’s it. She starts to open his desk drawers, searching for the spiral notebooks he uses for his early drafts. In the bottom left drawer she finds a pile of them and she lifts the top one out. She flips through it. The pages are blank. She takes out another and then another and then the last one. They’re all blank.

  27

  “Sprinkle on the cilantro at the absolute last second before you bring it out to the table,” Anne says, standing over the pot of potato soup. The caterers are two young women with scrubbed faces. They come recommended, but she’s never used them before. She dictated the menu, but didn’t get home until the absolute last second herself, barely had time to change and greet her guests, and she has to take it on faith that they’ve followed her instructions. Anne hates to take things on faith. Especially lately.

  “Where are the limes?”

  The two young women look at her with blank expressions.

  “The limes? To squeeze on the sorbet?” Anne says.

  “You never mentioned limes,” one says.

  Anne sighs in exasperation. Of course she mentioned limes. She curses that idiotic photographer who took three hours to set up the afternoon’s breakfast-in-bed shoot, throwing her whole schedule out of whack. She could have sworn she smelled pot on him. Anne reaches into the cabinet and breaks off half a peanut butter cookie.

  “I didn’t mention fresh limes to squeeze on the lime sorbet?” Anne remembers reading that Martha Graham swept the stage herself before every performance. Smart woman.

  One of the caterers hands her a piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” Anne asks in a tight voice.

  “Your fax.”

  Anne scans down the page to dessert: lime sorbet with ginger wafers. No mention of fresh limes. “You’re absolutely right. Apologies.” She runs her tongue over her back teeth; she’s been grinding them again, in her sleep. “There’s a deli on the corner. You’ll have plenty of time to run down and buy limes after the soup is served.”

  Anne turns suddenly, sensing something behind her. The doorway leading to Charles’s offices is open.

  “Was that door open before?” she asks.

  The caterers look at each other and shrug. “I didn’t notice,” one says.

  “You haven’t seen anyone go in or out?”

  “No.”

  Anne steps into the hallway-down at the end the offices are dark.

  “Is anyone down there?” she calls.

  No answer. She closes the door.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Anne turns to see Nina standing in the kitchen doorway, cradling a glass of wine.

  “I think everything’s under control,” Anne says, reaching for her own glass of wine and taking a sip. “How are you?”

  “ Plus ca change…” Nina says. “And you?”

  “Hanging in.”

  “That’s quite a tony crowd you’ve got out there. They’re all new to me.”

  It’s true, everyone at the party except Nina is a friend of Anne’s. In the early years of their marriage, Charles was the draw. Anne puts a hand on Nina’s arm and discreetly leads her over to the far corner of the kitchen. Lowering her voice, she says, “I’m worried about Charles.”

  Nina is silent for a moment. She takes another sip of wine.

  “He’s taking the paperback sale very hard,” Nina says finally.

  “Kill the messenger?”

  Nina nods ruefully. “It’s difficult. We all know how much is riding on his next book.” Anne feels a tingle of foreboding at the back of her neck. Nina sets her wineglass on the counter and leans in to Anne. “He gave me a chapter and it’s sensational. But
I can’t get him to send any more or even to discuss it with me.”

  “But doesn’t he always do that? Clam up? He’s superstitious, afraid the energy will dissipate if he discusses a project.”

  “That’s true. But he usually can’t resist teasing me, giving me small samples, at least calling me now and then to rant and rave. Lately-nothing.”

  Anne wishes she wasn’t having a dinner party, wishes she didn’t have to be charming, didn’t have to oversee the food, could just sit down with Nina and talk. She needs to talk. She drains her glass of wine and immediately wants a second but doesn’t have it. “You know, there’s this secretary, this temp I hired to help him get his office shaped up. I think I made a real error in judgment about her. She’s strange, almost creepy, and I think untrustworthy. Of course Charles claims she’s good for him.”

  Nina narrows her eyes and gives Anne a probing look.

  “Believe me, I’ve considered that possibility. But it’s hard to imagine Charles being attracted to her. She’s all elbows and flusters-she can hardly complete her sentences.” Anne hopes she sounds more convinced than she is.

  Nina takes one of Anne’s hands in both of her own. “Charles adores you, Anne, has from the moment he laid eyes on you. But right now I think he feels he’s let you down, what with the disappointment of Capitol Offense. The old dog is as proud as a lion, you know. And he’s at that age when men panic, that whole male menopause thing. I think what both you and I should do is give him some room for a little while. This new book is brilliant. I predict that a year from now we’ll be laughing about this conversation.”

  Anne smiles and gives Nina’s hand a squeeze. “What would we do without you?”

  “You two are very important to me.”

  Anne glances over to see the caterers ladling out the soup. “Will you excuse me? I’ll be out in two minutes.”

  Anne, determined to make the dinner a success, walks into the living room, her eyes doing a quick sweep of the sparkling room and its seven sparkling inhabitants. The president of a home shopping network sits on one end of the maroon Chesterfield-he’s offered Anne the sun, the moon, and two hours of prime time to sell whatever she wants; that witty young screenwriter-she was an Oscar nominee this year-sits at the other end. Nina is lounging elegantly in an armchair; the husband-and-wife team of cultural arbiters who seem to turn out a book every year elucidating the state of America’s collective psyche are sitting, tellingly, at opposite ends of the room; and standing by the window is the restless young heiress and socialite, according to Fortune the twelfth richest woman in the country, who is Anne’s newest groupie and, she suspects, closet crush-holder.

  Charles is holding forth by the fireplace, in high spirits, thank God. She knows he needs this social contact, this chance to shine. Dinner parties are one of the linchpins of their marriage and, in spite of Charles’s recent railings against them, she knows how good they are for his ego-not to mention hers. At these parties they’re a team again, an unbeatable team, two talented, generous people who are madly in love.

  “The end absolutely justifies the means. What matters is the final work of art, not what it took to create it,” Charles says, his hair falling boyishly over his forehead, his voice passionate.

  Nina sits up and leans forward. “Oh, come on, Charles, that’s absurd. Are you saying it would be all right to commit a murder so someone could write a great book about it?”

  “If one sad, starving old peasant woman had to be murdered so that Dostoyevsky could write Crime and Punishment, so be it,” Charles answers, raising a murmur around the room. Anne loves seeing him like this, in his element, the center of attention, tossing off ideas like shiny pebbles.

  The female half of the cultural-critic team stiffens and says, “You’re placing the artist on a different moral and ethical plane than the rest of humanity.”

  Charles is not deterred. “What would life be like without Mozart, Michelangelo, Shakespeare? What separates man from beasts? Art. It elevates us, illuminates our souls. Whatever the artist has to do to create is allowable.”

  Anne sees her opening and leaps in. “One thing we can all agree on: you can’t create on an empty stomach.”

  The soup is a smash, of the earth, earthy, yet “somehow Parisian,” the socialite announces. Charles and Anne sit at opposite ends of the table. The screenwriter, who is at Anne’s left, has twinkly eyes that make Anne wonder if on her last trip to the loo she powdered her nose with something that packed a little more kick than talc. “What do you think, Anne?” she asks with a mischievous grin. “How would you feel if Charles were having an affair and justifying it by saying he was working on a book about adultery?”

  “That would depend on whether or not I thought it was a great book.”

  “Let’s assume it is,” says the home shopping honcho.

  “In that case, I’d expect him to be discreet enough to let me pretend I didn’t know what was going on.” Anne and Charles lock eyes as she speaks, both of them smiling tightly.

  “But according to Charles’s theory, he’d have every right to flaunt his affair,” the honcho presses.

  “Announce it over dessert,” the annoying screenwriter adds.

  “Well, this is only the soup course. But don’t keep us in suspense, darling. Do you have any announcements?”

  All heads turn to Charles. He slowly takes a sip of wine.

  “I have two announcements,” he says in a measured tone. The table grows silent. “First, I believe I am working on a great book… And, second, it isn’t about adultery.”

  Amid the general laughter, Anne is sure no one notices how forced hers is.

  After the guests have left, Anne supervises the cleanup and then runs herself a hot bath and soaks for ten minutes. She assumes Charles is in his office, working. She puts on her nightgown and goes to say good night. She walks down the hallway and through the living room and dining room, turning off lights as she goes. The large apartment seems to grow cavernous in the dark. She crosses the kitchen and walks down the long hall that leads to his offices. They’re dark.

  “Charles?” she says tentatively, standing in the doorway of the outer office. There’s no answer. She turns on the light and looks around the room, the room where Emma works. She goes over to her desk. It’s neat and ordered, with a pile of letters, a list of things to do, a glass filled with pens and pencils. There’s no idiosyncratic trinket, no picture, no struggling plant, not even a coffee mug. Anne slides open the top drawer. There’s a box of Marlboros, a worn paperback copy of Heart of Darkness, a pack of chewing gum, paper clips, rubber bands. Anne sees the corner of a newspaper clipping that has been pushed to the back of the drawer. She reaches in and lifts it out. It’s a photo of her and Charles, taken at the library’s Literary Lions dinner. There’s an X scrawled across Anne’s face.

  Her heart pounding, Anne quickly replaces the clipping, closes the drawer, and leaves the room.

  “Charles?” she calls from the foyer. There’s no answer, yet she feels his presence in the apartment. She walks down the hall and checks the guest bedroom. Empty. Then she looks into the study. All the lights are off, but as her eyes grow accustomed to the dark, she makes out a figure lying on the couch. “Charles?”

  “Don’t,” he answers.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Turn on the light.”

  Anne suddenly wishes she’d put on her slippers; her feet are cold on the wood floor. She takes a cautious step onto the edge of the carpet. It’s a moonless night.

  “I just wanted to say good night,” she says.

  There is a long silence before Charles says, “It was a nice dinner. Thank you.”

  “Did you like everyone?”

  “Sure. Swell crowd.”

  “You’re mad at Nina, aren’t you?” Anne waits for an answer, and when she doesn’t get one, she adds, “You barely said three words to her all evening.”

  “Anne, she should have seen the paperback sale coming. She shou
ld have had a strategy.”

  “I agree it was disappointing, darling, but-”

  “It wasn’t disappointing, it was a disaster.”

  “Charles, I’m sure Nina-”

  “It’s always a mistake to mix business with friendship.”

  “Well, isn’t that what you’re doing with that secretary?”

  Charles sits up, turns on a lamp, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “For Christ’s sake, Anne, don’t bring that up.”

  “I have a right to know what’s going on between the two of you.”

  “What’s going on is that I find, for some strange reason, that having her around is good for my work right now. When that ceases to be the case, she’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t like having her in the house. I think she’s dishonest.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  Charles gets up and crosses to Anne, puts his hands on her shoulders. “You’re kidding, of course.” When she doesn’t answer but just keeps looking at him, he adds, “No, I’m not sleeping with her.”

  Anne almost believes him. She suddenly feels terribly sad.

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Charles drops his hands. “You’re not sure?”

  “No, Charles, I’m not sure.”

  “Well, then. When will you find out?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “I will be. Of course. The timing is… it’s fine. When will you know for sure?”

  “I’ve been putting off finding out. Maybe the timing is wrong.”

  “I don’t have to tell you how preoccupied I am.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Let me close the window.”

  After he does, he comes back and kisses Anne on the forehead. “We’ve wanted a baby for so long, haven’t we? It’s wonderful news.”

  “I suppose I should find out.”

  “Yes, Anne, do that. Find out.”

  “We’ll have to think of a name. Do you like Eliza? Or Luke?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Charles walks Anne back to the bedroom, and she climbs into bed.