Well, it might have been true! And it just made the whole thing more interesting—really, nobody cared any longer that the woman had gotten away with murder—and served Ann right; he’d never forgiven her for calling him a “garden-variety fag” all those years ago.
Gloria and Loel still did enjoy their Truman, when he wasn’t drunk or stoned or carting around some dock boy. Which meant—they really didn’t enjoy him at all, but then, neither did he enjoy them. God, they were becoming tedious, Loel looked like he’d been pickled in brine, and Gloria was so obsessed with her fading looks that she wouldn’t even come out of her bedroom before three in the afternoon, when the light was best.
C.Z. was as ever: irreverent, yet surprisingly prissy at times unless Truman called her on it—“Oh, dear, it’s Miss Boston Brahmin again. Or has she forgotten she has a nude Diego Rivera of herself hanging over the basement bar?” She—like Babe—professed to worry about him, but then she’d forget about him as soon as he left; she’d go off and write another gardening book or smell a horse, and put him completely out of her mind. But she always welcomed him with her sunny smile the next time they met.
Lady Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward was now Mrs. Averell Harriman—Christ on a cracker, Harriman was old, older than Methuselah, but he had so much money!—and had reinvented herself once more. Now she was a Washington hostess, the queen Democrat with Republican tastes. She claimed she did not own a “television machine,” and so she regretfully missed a lot of Truman’s more delightful appearances. Although she was still happy to include Truman in her fund-raising dinners and parties, if he promised to behave himself. Sometimes he did.
Old habits die hard. Particularly among the wealthy.
And the storytellers, gossips, and snakes.
After “Mojave” was published, Esquire begged Truman for more. And more was what they got.
“What do you think of this? Isn’t it just delicious? Brilliant in every way?” And Truman handed the piece to Jack. Dear, unsuccessful, bitter Jack; he still loved him, always would, even if Jack could barely stand to look at him these days when he was foggy and bloated with drink from ten in the morning on. But still, the two of them could never really sever the tie. And they still trusted each other’s opinion.
“Truman,” Jack had said, aghast, after he’d read the story. “Are you sure about this?”
“What do you mean? Isn’t it good?” Truman, reclining on a rubber raft in a pool, dabbled a pudgy red hand in the cool water. He was on his fifth “glass of sunshine”—a tumbler of vodka with a splash of orange juice.
“To be frank, no, it’s not. Not your best work, my boy.”
“I know someone who’s j-e-a-l-o-u-s,” Truman sang, splashing the water after each letter.
“You know that’s not true. No, it is. It is true. I’ve always been jealous.” Jack met Truman’s triumphant gaze head-on, not flinching. “And you know that. You also know that I’ve never let my jealousy cloud my professional admiration of your work.”
Truman pursed his mouth, took another sip of vodka. “I know,” was all he said.
“But this isn’t very good. And that’s not even the most disturbing thing. Truman, don’t you think they’ll all be upset? All your goddamned swans? The Paleys, especially? Won’t they be furious?”
“Nah.” Truman closed his eyes again and tilted his face toward the sky, not caring if he got sunburned. “They’re all too stupid. They’ll never recognize themselves. Besides, I’m very clever; I did use a few specific names, just to throw the others off the scent.”
“If you say so,” Jack replied. “But I’d think twice.”
“I don’t have to. Anyway, even if they do recognize themselves, what do they expect? They’re the ones who told me everything in the first place. Even after In Cold Blood. Even after I told them, the dumb bunnies, that I was writing a book about society.”
“What about Babe?”
Truman put his sunglasses on and splashed away on his raft.
“Just think twice, Truman, okay? Promise me you’ll do that?”
What he couldn’t tell Jack was that he couldn’t afford to think twice. He’d promised Esquire a second story, and this was all he had, because he couldn’t write, not really, the pages paralyzed him, his thoughts couldn’t be corralled, and he couldn’t let Jack, of all people, see. Jack, who had fallen in love with him because he was a writer; that was how they met, two serious artists who, on those first cozy mornings in bed together when they were intoxicated by discovery, like conquistadors conquering Mexico, planting flags and staking claim, jokingly argued about who was the Virginia and who the Leonard Woolf of their relationship.
No, he couldn’t let Jack see. And so he sent the story off, the first installment (only?), he told the editor, of his new book, Answered Prayers.
“La C?te Basque 1965,” the story was called.
CHAPTER 18
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