Chapter 11

He didn’t remember checking into the Hartford hotel room the night he left her parent’s home in the suburbs. He woke up with a half-bottle of scotch by his bed feeling not only depressed but physically sick from what he drank the night before. It was way past check out time, and every ten minutes or so the Mexican maids knocked on the door hoping to clean the room, and every time they knocked he yelled for them to “get the fuck out of here, I’m sleeping,” but they knocked every ten minutes, enough for him to crawl out of bed with a toxic hangover and slip the Do-not-disturb placard over the door knob, but it still didn’t work. They would stop at nothing to clean the room, until Preston finally agreed that one more night up in Hartford wasn’t such a bad idea. He made a phone call to the downstairs clerk reserving the small, shabby room for another night. The maids and their vacuum cleaners and their choppy chatter mysteriously went away after that, and he slept for a few hours more in the daylight, hoping to detoxify naturally in his sleep and wondering whether or not his spotted liver could handle the task.

Day rolled into night. He slept soundly but woke up in the early evening with the comments Amanda made still stinging him. She was right: he really was a coward and a failure at everything he tried to accomplish, and there was really no way the situation could reverse itself. Every bottom he hit had a trap door that followed yet another egregious bottom, such that there was no end to it, his life in a constant free fall. He believed his life was now over. He should end it prematurely.

Any vision of the future was blocked by a dense, murky haze. And then the sweetness of a lasting self-pity found him, a useless emotion this self-pity, but one that allowed him to weep in his bed, a cleansing, cathartic effect as he mourned his life and how badly he had wrecked it, just for being himself, just for trying his best, just for having very bad luck, just for writing poetry. And maybe one day they would celebrate his death, as all of the poets from the four corners of the globe descend upon Newark for a week-long festival and tribute to his life and to his work. Wouldn’t that be nice. The prospects of death seemed much more benign and illuminating to him than the prospects of life. A premature death would not only free from his failures but also cement his reputation as a troubled poet who was so dedicated to his art that life in a sense lost its meaning. Yes, the other poets would flock to his grave, read his poetry, shake their heads, and ponder endlessly why such talent had to end prematurely, and then—only after his death—would they celebrate his talent, publish books about his life, and purchase his collected works.

‘How very romantic,’ he thought as he searched for his leather belt. He found it coiled on one of the chairs.

He could do nothing more. His life was a waste. He could do nothing right. His life was all wrong. In death we are finally comfortable with being alone. He wanted to be fully clothed when the hotel staff found him. How embarrassing it would be to have his stark, naked body hanging from the showerhead. He dressed slowly, and afterwards checked himself in the mirror. He scarcely believed what he saw: a man at one time on top of the world reduced to a sickly shape, his hair tangled, his face unshaven, his body flabby, his stomach hanging over his waistline. The sooner he died the better.

Preston stepped into the bathtub and swung his leather belt over the shower arm: a long, thin pipe that connected water to the showerhead. The question was, did he have the nerve to do such a thing? Did he have the guts to hang for a few minutes as death came gradually and not immediately? Only those with strong nerve could break through death’s door, and he made sure that he had this unique quality about him before making a noose out of the leather belt. He gathered up this nerve and slid his head into it. All he had to do now was curl his legs behind him and hang.

As he hung over the bathtub, the leather noose sealing his throat off from the bountiful air, he closed his eyes and prayed death would come quickly, only it didn’t come quickly enough. He dreamt that heaven was a large, clear lake that cleansed his soul and purified his body, the clean, crisp coldness of the water loosening the sweat and grime of his former, mismanaged life and replacing it with an entirely new existence. By accident his knee hit the oval shower handle on the wall sending a gush of cold water through the tub spout.

‘This must be it,’ he thought. ‘Finally, the great symphony. Oh, the water, take me away.’

He curled his legs tightly behind him. He dangled his legs over the running spout. He prayed and prepared for death, only that he heard a slow creaking sound from up above. Was it God, he asked, coming down from the heavens? No, unfortunately, because in one resounding snap the shower arm broke, sending cold water from the broken pipe all over him. He fell backwards into a tub filling with cold water. Gushing from everywhere, the water from above and below drenched him. Unfortunately for him too, the water wouldn’t shut off. The tub soon filled and flooded the bathroom, his body like a boat floating on top of the brand-new lake he created.

When the hotel clerk barged into his room, the water had already seeped through the carpeting, the floor, and into the room directly below his. Preston agreed to foot the bill after the clerk threatened to make a citizen’s arrest. The clerk also threw him out of the hotel that night as emergency plumbers barreled through the hotel lobby with their toolboxes. Preston didn’t argue. They would bill his new credit card for the catastrophe and send him on his way.

With his clothes sopping wet he slid into his rental car and headed back to Newark in the middle of the night mystified by what he considered to be a divine intervention.

On the swift car ride home, his awkward life unfurled before him. All the people he had known in his life became voices in his head, his mind one big radio tower communicating with his dead relatives, old school friends, and an assortment of failed poets who seemed to wander aimlessly into his consciousness. They said unequivocally that he should turn his life around, change its direction, and instead of relying on poetry so much, rely instead on rectifying his corrupt soul. How he would go about this he didn’t know, but he knew himself responsible for this heaping mess that was his life, and somehow he should change it for the better.

The first step in all of this involved confronting Claude Carolina directly and spilling his guts out to him. No, there wouldn’t be any television appearances, and no, there wouldn’t be a book contract either, and yes, it was all his fault, and yes, Claude could hit him square on the chin if he liked. Still, this was not enough. He should make a sacrifice as well. Call it a sacrifice to God for saving his life. Yes, he declared, he must tell Don Bluestein not to publish his collected works and instead publish Claude’s book of poems in its place. He was amazed how it took a suicide attempt to come to this simple, sacrificial, and elegant solution.

He reached Newark at dawn. The streets were empty. A soothing quietude blanketed the otherwise busy and noisy bodegas, barber shops, fast food restaurants, and dilapidated churches that were now home to upstart evangelical ministries. The palpable absence of police cars and buses allowed the city, for once in his life, to touch the realms of the supernal. In his damp clothes he stood in front of his apartment building and sucked in the cool, moist air, thankful to be alive and ready to put his new, faith-based plans into action. He agreed with himself that he had met God in the hotel bathtub, the cold rush of water providing him with a second baptism. He couldn’t recall the exact verses of the Bible, but certainly his attitude turned biblical on this rosy morning where not a thing stirred but a restless breeze. Even the trash on the sidewalks held a celestial significance. The graffitied walls contained messages from the prophets. Every kernel of urban blight became part of a neat and highly organized divine mechanism that competed against the darker impulses of man. He found it difficult to go inside, because for the first time he felt like he belonged in Newark, as though God placed him there like water finding its own level.

When he finally trod up the stairwell to his second floor apartment, he fiercely desired to take out the trash, straighten up his desk, and sanitize the bathroom. The place looked like a tornado hit it, and he immediately began the painstaking process of cleaning the place, hopefully without waking his neighbors.

First, he stripped down to his underwear and threw his wet clothes into the laundry basket. He then pulled out three heavy-duty garbage bags and loaded them with empty scotch bottles, half-scribbled notepads, the spoiled food in his fridge, rusted shaving cream containers, cigarette butts, and old magazines. He folded his clothes, changed his sheets, and vacuumed the floors. He returned stray poetry books to their proper places on the bookshelf as well as his CDs, some of which were still lodged in the CD player. He even paid a few overdue bills, some of them dating back a couple of years.

After the garbage bags were loaded with trash and bottles, he took a long, hot shower and readied himself for an impromptu meeting with Don Bluestein. He would visit Don at his office without warning and tell him plainly that Claude’s work ought to be published instead of his own. It seemed to him a perfect plan, and once he did this he could write poetry that actually meant something, none of this dark, depressing shit but positive, optimistic shit that gave his readers hope and inspiration, because that’s what they craved—not life’s sadness but life’s happiness. He couldn’t believe he didn’t think of it sooner. No wonder Don was so hesitant about publishing his work. He realized that, in the mad rush to be important, he had lost sight of who he actually was and why he wrote poetry in the first place. He wrote poetry to celebrate life, not to condemn it.

He donned a suit and tie for this occasion and took his rental car into Manhattan. He hit traffic along the Skyway, but otherwise it was smooth sailing through the Holland Tunnel. He parked his car at a garage off Union Square and skipped along the sun-drenched pavement to the publisher’s building on 17th Street. He was greeted at the office by a supermodel receptionist in whom he saw the slime and incestuous corruption that plagued the entire industry. She kind of looked like Amanda too, which submerged his happy attitude into the valley of a ravaged cynicism. Maybe Don was banging her, he couldn’t tell, but from the looks of things, she probably slid a manuscript or two underneath his pillow before giving him head. Funny how quickly things turned.

Preston suddenly hated being there and in the back of his mind lurked the seeds of his revenge. Spiffy junior editors and college interns, like polished coins, jingled passed him in the waiting area. They were young and cute and successful, nothing like him, and in the throes of his newfound resentment for all things beautiful and all things living, Don Bluestein appeared in a two- piece suit.

He just saw him the other day, so there was no smile-cum-handshake involved. Don looked a little perturbed actually. Preston followed him into his office where a pile of manuscripts sat on his desk. They were surrounded by books, most of them reference materials like encyclopedias, unabridged dictionaries, atlases, and a few literary periodicals.

“Preston, I really don’t appreciate this.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s important.”

“What is it?”

“It’s hard to explain,” he said, taking a seat.

“Try starting at the beginning.”

“Well, how do I put this? I’ve had what many people would call a spiritual awakening.”

“A spiritual awakening?”

“Yes. I almost ended my life last night.”

“You what?”

“I almost committed suicide last night.”

“Good God, Preston, are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine now.”

“Why would you do such a thing? Your book’s going to be published. You got what you asked for. You’re usually depressed, yes, but what on earth has gotten into you?”

“I had a spiritual awakening, Don. That’s all that matters right now.”

“You may have had a spiritual awakening, but you need a psychiatrist.”

Don picked up the phone and said:

“Hi, it’s Don. I need the number to Dr. Paul, right away.”

“No, no, Don, I don’t need a psychiatrist.”

“Like hell you don’t. You’ve been avoiding treatment for years.”

“Put down the phone, Don. I don’t need a psychiatrist.”

He looked straight into his eyes when he said this. Don put down the

phone and said:

“Okay, so you don’t need a psychiatrist. What is it that you do need?”

“I need you to publish Claude Carolina’s work in place of my own.”

“Claude Carolina? What are you, insane? I told you last week we’re not taking him on, and that’s final. We have no room to expand right now. I feel sorry for the kid, but we can’t take him on right now.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then I must do the right thing and not publish my collected works with Breakthrough. I’m sorry.”

“You really are insane,” said Don, “and now you’re making me insane. What do you mean ‘the right thing?’ You’re not Spike Lee for Chrissakes! If you’re uncomfortable telling the kid, then I’ll do it for you. I do this type of thing every day.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Preston firmly, “I just think it’s wrong, and I will do everything in my power to make things right.”

“Oh, I see. Now we’re the bad guys, and you suddenly found your conscience, is that it? Let me tell you something, and get this through your neurotic skull—your book of poems is the last chance you have. You pestered me for years to publish it. No one else will take on a has-been like you. You either submit the book as agreed upon, or you’re done in this business. You’ll be through as a poet, you’ll be dumped into obscurity, and you’re career will be over, caput, finito, nada.”

“You know what, Don? I’ve looked myself in the mirror, and do you know what I see? A corrupt, self-serving, amoral fool—a coward is what it boils down to. And I can’t stand looking at myself any more. It makes me sick.

Have you taken a good, honest look at yourself in the mirror lately? Because as far as I’m concerned this whole business stinks! The shit is piled up so high to heaven that we take a young, talented slam poet and sucker him into signing with us when there’s no deal to begin with. It stinks, and it makes me sick to my stomach. It should sicken you too, but of course the people in this business don’t give a shit about anything or anyone, just their goddamned profit margins. Who cares about honesty and doing the right thing anymore when Breakthrough makes a profit. And don’t think Amanda doesn’t know about our little charade either.”

“You playing hardball with me, Preston? Is that what you’re doing?”

“You’re damn right I’m playing hardball. Amanda’s not too happy with you either. She’ll walk because of this, and Breakthrough will lose its star poet.”

“She walks, and you’ll never publish again. I’ll personally see to that.”

“So be it.”

Don reclined in his chair, stared up at the ceiling, and sighed heavily.

Preston shook in his seat. He never thought he had it in him to stand up to Don, but it felt good. He swung the bat and hit a home run. After a much needed cooling off, Don said:

“There’s something I need to tell you, Preston, but I can’t tell you here. C’mon. These walls have ears.”

He followed Don out into the warm Manhattan sunshine, the buildings above them narrowing the sky into a short, bright segment of blue. It became clear to him that Don was taking him to the same restaurant they had always gone to, but this time the occasion was far from festive.

Don walked quickly ahead of him as Preston struggled to catch up. He huffed his way to the restaurant and took a seat across from him at their usual table. Don ordered a martini, and Preston ordered a scotch. The drink over ice soothed him, and he was glad his spiritual awakening didn’t include abstinence from alcohol.

“You really don’t know what’s going on with Breakthrough,” said Don quietly.

“What does it matter?”

“It matters. Believe me.”

“What’s happening then?”

“There’s a secrecy clause in my contract that Huffington forced me to sign, so you have to make sure you don’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Otherwise, I’ll lose my severance.”

“Severance?”

“First you give me your word that you won’t tell anyone.”

“Okay. You have my word.”

“Good. When Huffington first told me this, I couldn’t believe my ears, but what’s happening is very real. Breakthrough Books is being bought by a larger publishing house.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s no joke. Huffington is selling out.”

“To whom?”

“That’s not important. What is important is that he’s selling out fairly soon, which means that, once this takeover happens, I’ll be out of a job.”

“Huffington told you this?”

“No, but I know it’s going to happen. People are getting axed left and right. He’s asking me to terminate contracts. Only the A-list will remain, but as far as you and I are concerned, we’re both out on our asses.”

“And my collected works?”

“That was never going to happen, and I’m sorry. As a friend, I’m truly sorry, but Huffington thought that if we strung you along, Amanda wouldn’t leave, and she’s a high rank on the A-list right now. If she jumps ship, Huffington doesn’t have a deal.”

“And you knew this all along?”

“I was sworn to secrecy, and I can’t afford to lose my severance when they do get around to laying me off. I’m sorry, my old friend, but I had no other choice.”

“Jesus, Don. I didn’t know. You must feel awful.”

“I’ve given this company twenty years, and this is how I get treated? Who’s gonna hire me at my age? I give this company the best years of my life, make countless of dollars for Huffington, and who does he shit on? Me. So when you said everything in this business stinks, think about how I must feel.”

“I’m sorry, Don. Really I am.”

“And believe me, I wanted to edit you material. It would have been a privilege, but I’m losing my job, so who the hell knows where I’ll end up.”

“Wherever you go, you should take your poets with you.”

“That’s stating the obvious, but what may not be so obvious to you is that you can profit from what I just told you.”

“How?”

“Breakthrough is a publicly traded company right now—over-the- counter.”

“And?”

“If you know it’s being sold to a giant conglomerate, you can profit from it. That’s exactly what I intend to do.”

“But that’s illegal,” said Preston.

“I know.”

“I can profit from it too, I guess.”

“Yeah, but you need enough cash to make a dent.”

“We can pool our money.”

“Even that’s not enough.”

“Come to think of it, we can get a bunch of people together, pool our money, profit from the sale, and start our own publishing company with the money. What do you think of that?”

Don sipped his martini slowly and said:

“I like the idea.”

“Remember when poetry mattered?”

“Yeah, sure I do.”

“Remember when we believed it could change the world, believed it could make a difference in people’s lives? We didn’t care if it made money or not.”

“Those were good days,” said Don. “Easily the best years of my life.”

“Well, we can have it all over again. Don, seriously, if we were to set up a new publishing house, would you be its chief editor? Of course, all of your poets would make the move with you, and you’d have to edit Claude’s poetry too.”

“It depends how much money’s involved. It depends how we go about this, if it works, in other words. I mean, we could easily make our own money, and then I can fly to Rio the very next day.”

“You know you’d rather set up a new company,” said Preston.

“Yeah, you’re right, but in order to do that we need a lot more money than you and I have. We need a good five million to start the company. If we invest one million in this trading scheme, we could come out with five million no problem.”

“In order to do this, I need to tell a few more people.”

“Keep it very quiet, though. Don’t tell anyone who doesn’t have the cash, okay?”

“You got it. At least we’ll make some money before Huffington gets rid of us.”

“It’s risky, though,” said Don. “If Huffington finds out somehow, about what I told you, we’re both through.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be really discreet. I’ll tell only those who need to know—”

“—and have the cash to come in with us. We need to raise about a million dollars.”

“Right. Let’s see what we can do.”

“Keep me posted. Don’t call me at the office. Call me at home. Huffington may have tapped the phones he’s so fucking paranoid.”

“You wouldn’t be dicking me around about this, would you Don?”

“I dick people around about their poetry, but when it comes to money I never dick around. I wouldn’t lie to you about this. Granted, I’ve lied about everything else, but honest, I’m not lying about this. Raise a million dollars, and I promise I’ll leave Breakthrough. They’re throwing me out anyway.”

“And what about Amanda?”

“The deal won’t go through without Breakthrough’s top-list writers. If Amanda finds out about this, she’ll want to jump ship, and if she jumps, all the other stars will jump too. We can’t have that happen. Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t tell Amanda. After we’ve made our money, we’ll tell her, but not before.”

Preston left Don Bluestein in the middle of the afternoon wondering how the hell he was going to raise a million dollars in cash. Actually, he needed to raise a half million, since they agreed to contribute 250K each to the project, which was all of their life’s savings. He said goodbye to a new car and a new condo and instead banked his future on a very simple scheme to make tons of money by trading stock based on inside information, an idea that didn’t exactly thrill him due to his spiritual awakening and the liberation of his conscience. Nevertheless, he planned to ask everyone he knew for the money, only that he didn’t know anyone who had such funds. In fact, he didn’t know anybody at all except for Amanda, Claude, Don, and the college girl down the hall.

After his marriage collapsed, he burned all of his bridges. The people he used to know had probably forgotten about him. He remembered throwing away his old address book in the heat of an alcoholic fury. Ever since book sales for his last collection tanked, he vowed never to talk to those people again, as he felt at the time that they had betrayed him by judging the book poorly.

He wished he had that address book now, because they would have loved to hear from him. He disappeared from their lives. Sometimes bridges don’t burn but are torn down because no one crosses them anymore. Such was the case with Preston and his old friends, half of whom he didn’t remember and most of whom he’d rather forget.

He remembered them as patrons of the arts—a bunch of aristocrats who threw lavish parties and invited humble poets like himself to read their work. Salons, they called them—anything you could eat, drink, and snort—and it was wonderful for a time until Preston moved on to poetic success and then on to teaching poetics at NYU. Even at NYU the magnetic pull of the gargantuan city found him at art galleries, parties on hotel rooftops, expensive restaurants, and museum fundraisers where scantily-clad women wore the latest fashions and doled out blow jobs in bathrooms the size of decent studio apartments. Where these people got the money, he wasn’t sure, but everyone he met seemed to have loads of it or were at least so adept at bleeding starry-eyed out-of-towners dry that they had no use for money and instead relied on moving from out-of-towner to out-of-towner, taking them into the Meat Market district where the fashion models ate their salads or to swanky clubs to mingle with various artists of the day, and if you didn’t make an attempt to conform to whatever protocol prevailed, you were resoundingly dismissed.

Preston had been polite and cordial during this most important indoctrination, which is how his poetry fell into the hands of a young, attractive junior editor at Breakthrough Books, and then on to Don Bluestein once his first book of poems succeeded in the hyper-competitive marketplace of critics and other poets, some of whom liked him and others who became immediate enemies for their own silly reasons. Fairly soon, Preston navigated the insides of the marvelous urban machine as opposed to walking its perimeter. He slept with models, dined with painters, flirted with agents, and ass-kissed billionaires. When he met Amanda Larson, he never thought he’d fall in love with her innocence, but he did and eventually married her.

After the marriage ended, so did the good parts of his life. He drove through the Holland Tunnel on his return to New Jersey with the scents of the old life enticing him once more. He could taste them on his tongue. All he needed was a lousy half-million, and he’d be forever published by the new company they’d set up. But first, before anything else, he needed to meet with Claude and wipe his conscience clean. His thoughts leapt too far ahead as the steady drone of driving in the tunnel reminded him of how close he came to death the night before.

He called Claude from his apartment, and they agreed to meet for dinner in South Orange. He cringed at the idea of meeting with him, but he didn’t wiggle his way out of it. He kept his conscience clean and reconstructed his damaged existence. For once in a long time he felt like an adult. He had no idea what Claude’s reaction would be.

They met at an upscale Japanese restaurant not far from the town’s center just after rush hour. Preston and his ex-wife used to dine there. The restaurant always served large, meaty portions of fresh fish over sticky blocks of rice, the glistening portions melting in his mouth as soon as the tongue touched them. Why not expose Claude to this delicacy?

Preston arrived before Claude. He took a seat at the sushi bar and ordered warm Saki. On the wall behind the bar hung a long Samurai’s sword. Luckily the sword was out of reach or else Claude would have likely used it. Happy Japanese folk songs played faintly and lent to the festive, bright, and merry atmosphere.

The first thing he noticed about Claude when he walked in was his hair. He wore an afro an inch thick, perfectly cut and rounded. Next, his new horn- rimmed spectacles slanted over the bridge of his broken nose. Finally his brushed khakis and Seton Hall sweatshirt. He looked like a straight-A student. A stack of books cradled under his arm would have perfected the image of a young, smart black intellectual. Preston almost wept at the sight of this. The only item out of place, aside from his nose, was the long bandage on his arm.

They both ordered the sushi deluxe, and Claude marveled at how the chef hand-rolled the rice over the crabmeat, avocado, and celery by using a bamboo mat.

“First time eating sushi?”

“Yeah,” said Claude. “It’s another world.”

“I can see that, yeah.”

“Let me get right to the point, Claude. I know you’re pretty concerned about Amanda. Now that I know you two are involved, I can tell you that I don’t mind it one bit. She was a wonderful wife to me, while it lasted.”

“Have you heard from her? I keep calling but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t return my messages either.”

“She’s at her parents place. While you were in the hospital, she went up there. She doesn’t want to see anyone. Not you, not me, not anyone.”

“Damn.”

“I know. It must have been a horrific experience for you both.”

“If I see that guy again, I’m going to kill him.”

“No,” he sighed, “that’s not a good idea. Let the police handle it. This is a small town, so if he returns, they’ll nail him. He’s probably done this many times before. I bet they pick him up real soon.”

“I shouldn’t have left her at the bar like that.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s the fault of whack-jobs like that who ruin this world for us all.”

“I need to see her. You have to tell me where she is.”

“I know you need to see her, but you have to give it time. Wait until things smooth over.”

“Why do I get the feeling that I’m never going to see her again?”

“I get that feeling too,” said Preston, “but you’ve got to realize—some people in life just have to move on. It’s usually an experience like this one that gets them moving. We move on, we change, we grow, and we learn. That’s a simple fact of life.”

“I can’t accept that, because, well, because I think I’m in love with her, and I can’t stop thinking about her, and I want her back.”

“That’s a tough one. Amanda is one of those people who’s easy to fall in love with, that’s for sure. I know it’s tough, but I’d try to forget about her if I were you.”