The question was so unexpected that at first Rothstein had no idea what Morrie was talking about, even though Jimmy Gold was his most famous character, the one he would be remembered for (assuming he was remembered for anything). The same Time cover story that had referred to Rothstein as a genius had called Jimmy Gold ‘an American icon of despair in a land of plenty.’ Pretty much horseshit, but it had sold books.
‘If you mean I should have stopped with The Runner, you’re not alone.’ But almost, he could have added. The Runner Sees Action had solidified his reputation as an important American writer, and The Runner Slows Down had been the capstone of his career: critical bouquets up the wazoo, on the New York Times bestseller list for sixty-two weeks. National Book Award, too – not that he had appeared in person to accept it. ‘The Iliad of postwar America,’ the citation had called it, meaning not just the last one but the trilogy as a whole.
‘I’m not saying you should have stopped with The Runner,’ Morrie said. ‘The Runner Sees Action was just as good, maybe even better. They were true. It was the last one. Man, what a crap carnival. Advertising? I mean, advertising?’
Mr Yellow then did something that tightened Rothstein’s throat and turned his belly to lead. Slowly, almost reflectively, he stripped off his yellow balaclava, revealing a young man of classic Boston Irish countenance: red hair, greenish eyes, pasty-white skin that would always burn and never tan. Plus those weird red lips.
‘House in the suburbs? Ford sedan in the driveway? Wife and two little kiddies? Everybody sells out, is that what you were trying to say? Everybody eats the poison?’
‘In the notebooks …’
There were two more Jimmy Gold novels in the notebooks, that was what he wanted to say, ones that completed the circle. In the first of them, Jimmy comes to see the hollowness of his suburban life and leaves his family, his job, and his comfy Connecticut home. He leaves on foot, with nothing but a knapsack and the clothes on his back. He becomes an older version of the kid who dropped out of school, rejected his materialistic family, and decided to join the army after a booze-filled weekend spent wandering in New York City.
‘In the notebooks what?’ Morrie asked. ‘Come on, genius, speak. Tell me why you had to knock him down and step on the back of his head.’
In The Runner Goes West he becomes himself again, Rothstein wanted to say. His essential self. Only now Mr Yellow had shown his face, and he was removing a pistol from the right front pocket of his plaid jacket. He looked sorrowful.
‘You created one of the greatest characters in American literature, then shit on him,’ Morrie said. ‘A man who could do that doesn’t deserve to live.’
The anger roared back like a sweet surprise. ‘If you think that,’ John Rothstein said, ‘you never understood a word I wrote.’
Morrie pointed the pistol. The muzzle was a black eye.
Rothstein pointed an arthritis-gnarled finger back, as if it were his own gun, and felt satisfaction when he saw Morrie blink and flinch a little. ‘Don’t give me your dumbass literary criticism. I got a bellyful of that long before you were born. What are you, anyway, twenty-two? Twenty-three? What do you know about life, let alone literature?’
‘Enough to know not everyone sells out.’ Rothstein was astounded to see tears swimming in those Irish eyes. ‘Don’t lecture me about life, not after spending the last twenty years hiding away from the world like a rat in a hole.’
This old criticism – how dare you leave the Fame Table? – sparked Rothstein’s anger into full-blown rage – the sort of glass-throwing, furniture-smashing rage both Peggy and Yolande would have recognized – and he was glad. Better to die raging than to do so cringing and begging.
‘How will you turn my work into cash? Have you thought of that? I assume you have. I assume you know that you might as well try to sell a stolen Hemingway notebook, or a Picasso painting. But your friends aren’t as educated as you are, are they? I can tell by the way they speak. Do they know what you know? I’m sure they don’t. But you sold them a bill of goods. You showed them a large pie in the sky and told them they could each have a slice. I think you’re capable of that. I think you have a lake of words at your disposal. But I believe it’s a shallow lake.’
‘Shut up. You sound like my mother.’
‘You’re a common thief, my friend. And how stupid to steal what you can never sell.’
‘Shut up, genius, I’m warning you.’