They hugged out front, Charlie thanking him over and over for purchasing the coach ticket.
“Stop it,” Tenpenny said, “you sound like a low-class bum. I know you’d do the same for me.”
When Charlie entered the terminal, Tenpenny emitted a short, involuntary gasp and welled up, for he knew that now he could finally go home.
*
Writing success has a way of shining a rosy light on life’s failures. If you run for public office and lose, or get drunk on national TV and make an ass of yourself, or stab your wife with a penknife, you’re considered a failure. But if you do all those things and you write well, you’re Norman Mailer.
The Newport establishment welcomed Tenpenny home with open arms at a publishing fete high atop the Clarke Cooke House. Oysters, little necks, and lobster rolls were washed down with buckets of champagne, and though Tenpenny’s name and likeness were noticeably absent from the oversized book jackets hanging everywhere, the Knopf people made it very clear who the star of the evening was. He was the shiny-jawed fellow whose arrival was preceded by the sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers singing over the clippety-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones. A nineteenth-century carriage pulled up to the entrance and out piled Tenpenny and several long-lost friends, an invisible pot mist swirling about them. Photographers from the Boston and Providence papers captured the happy moment when Five-Oh, the Cooke House’s iconic bartender, greeted Tenpenny at the door with his first of the evening’s many Dark ’n’ Stormies.
Roger bowed to Five-Oh, then paid his respects to barkeeps Dennis and Kenny, before making his way up top to the blue blazer–dotted Sky Bar. All the regulars were waiting with cheek-taps and handshakes, as well as some of the New York society crowd who had come north for the event. They laughed and drank and talked and shared one-hitters on the back deck. Late in the evening, a pack of local writers Tenpenny had never heard of arrived and made themselves quickly known. When introduced to the most obvious of the group, a poet, Roger had a difficult time concealing his disdain. Tenpenny viewed poets as overly-doted-upon children who’d never gotten the dressing down they deserved. There was a reason no poet had ever died rich—because nobody gave a shit! The guy who invented the toilet plunger, he died rich. “Melancholy ruled the trees” and “a bouquet of swan necks”—how was that going to make the world a better place?
As if being a poet and drinking sherry wasn’t disgusting enough, the fucker was actually wearing a beret. Tenpenny noticed the man’s poor wife standing off to the side, drinking a Perrier and looking unsure of herself. The woman had long legs, but not the good kind. They were too long and she was slightly off-kilter and ass-less, like Gumby. His heart immediately took pity and he decided he would fuck her. This was the kind of self-destructive behavior that defined Tenpenny. Though any number of attractive and available women would have happily serviced him that evening, he wanted the morose, crooked one whose husband stood eight feet away.
“Would you like some champagne?” Tenpenny asked.
Her perfume was sweet and childish, something like Pez candies. “I wasn’t going to drink tonight, but now I’m thinking maybe I should,” she said.
“Go for it! It’s the first few brain cells you kill that feel the best.”
She smiled and he popped open a bottle of Cristal and they passed it back and forth. Like he, she was a novelist and was just beginning a new book.
“Sometimes the toughest part for me is deciding on a good name for my protagonist,” she said. “I like Lily, but . . . it’s kind of common now.”
“How about Governor?” said Tenpenny.
“Governor Jones,” she said, giggling. Then: “I love the name Mabel.”
“Very old-fashioned.”
The poet’s wife was surprised that the man of the hour would waste his precious time talking to the lanky married woman, and she liked him for this, despite what she’d heard. “What do you think of Summer?” she asked.
“Cute.”
“I think so, but my husband says it’s a stripper name. He should talk—he likes Lu-Lu.”
Tenpenny tapped his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
“What?”
“Cocksucker name,” he said.
She started to laugh, but caught herself. “What do you mean?”
“Lu-Lus—they like to suck the cock.”
The line had been crossed and she was still smiling. “That’s his sister’s name,” she said.
“Well, am I right?” He held the woman’s gaze until her face flushed.
“Sort of.”
“Wanna get out of here?” he said.
“Out of where?”
“Here. You and me. Let’s boogaloo. Now.”
“But you’re the man of the hour.”
“So?” He had a good buzz going and his smile didn’t break.
“And go where?”
“Wherever. We can go to my room at the Viking. I have a horse and carriage waiting outside.”
She looked around. “I don’t think so.”