“Listen, Fred, you’ve got to cross your heart and kiss your elbow—”
And Truman was lost in the words. Awash in sentence structure, agonizing over punctuation. Studying the picture on the page; rearranging paragraph breaks so that there was just enough white space. Going back and forth, in his mind, between the words approximation and facsimile until finally choosing approximation.
Perhaps contortionists can kiss their elbow; she had to accept an approximation.
Truman worked through the entire afternoon, then stopped. Some internal alarm inside him, as nascent as the primordial switch that turns winter to spring, simply said, “Enough. Enough for today. One more word and you will question everything you’ve written so far.” And he put the notebook and pencil away on his desk, scratched himself in those patient places that required scratching, having been ignored all day, and went into the kitchen, where Jack was flinging pots and pans about, preparing dinner. Gruffly. Which was how Jack approached life.
Gruffly.
“Good day’s work?” Jack grumbled, viciously grinding pepper over a flank steak.
“Hmm-mmm.” Truman reached for the cocktail shaker with one hand, the vodka with another. “I’ll read you some tonight, if you want.”
“Sure.”
“And you?”
“It’s rubbish. It always is.”
“It’s not. And you just want me to tell you that, so stop fishing. By the way, the Paleys invited us both to Kiluna this weekend.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Jack.”
“I don’t like those people.”
“Jack, you’ve not even met them.”
“Yes, I have. In various guises over the years. They’re all the same. Phonies.”
“No, they’re not, Holden Caulfield. The Paleys are different. Babe is, for sure. And Bill, well, I think he might be, too. There’s something about him.”
“They distract you,” Jack growled. “They’re not worthy of you. I have no idea why you’re so fascinated with the rich and famous and pretentious.”
“But they’re beautiful, Jack! Their lives are so quietly beautiful, devoted to graciousness, taste, decorum. I admire that—I think that’s the epitome of living, to be able to create art out of your life. It’s what we do, in a way, isn’t it? In writing?”
“Hardly.” Jack flung the pepper grinder down with a snort. Jack, tall and freckled and lean, reddish-blond hair balding, glared down at Truman, short and pale and lean, blond hair receding. “I can’t bear the thought of you comparing yourself, with your talent, to them. It’s ridiculous. And I thought you said you despised Paley, after that weekend with those parasites.”
“Well, I barely know him. I should be fair.”
“Men like that don’t deserve your charity, Truman. People in general don’t.”
“Oh, my misanthropic darling.” Truman sighed, putting his arms about Jack’s waist, allowing one hand to slide between the waistband of his pants and warm, yielding flesh. “What would you do without me to shine light on your dark and dreary world?”
“I did just fine without you, before,” Jack growled. But he did not throw off Truman’s embrace. The two leaned into each other for a moment, surrendering to blissful, ordinary domesticity—oil sizzling in a pan on the stove, fragrant rosemary in a pot on the windowsill, their two dogs warming their ankles with their heavy, stupid dog breathing. A quiet meal ahead, a martini or two, reading in bed before the lights were out. Familiar yearnings satisfied by familiar bodies; Jack had been a dancer, which never ceased to thrill Truman as he traced those muscles still retaining their disciplined sculpture, those battered feet with their astonishingly high arches. Truman’s body was much less disciplined but still wiry, with a surprising hardness of the abdomen and biceps, so slender that lanky, raw-boned Jack could almost put two hands about his lover’s waist—“like Scarlett O’Hara,” Truman liked to boast. Then sleep, in their ordinary basement apartment in ordinary Brooklyn Heights, Manhattan and all its tempting glitter safely across the bridge, for now.
It should have been enough, Truman knew. Enough to be with Jack, wrapped in his arms, satiated and sleepy, a good day’s work behind him, another ahead. He had projects galore on his plate, because he was Truman Capote, literary darling: a trip to the Soviet Union with a touring company of Porgy and Bess paid for and the resulting story to be published by The New Yorker, his old employer (and his first real publishing disappointment, long ago but never forgotten). House of Flowers, based on one of his short stories, was still running on Broadway, even though it was only a matter of time before it closed. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was simmering, percolating, proceeding one agonizing word at a time.