The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [103]
When I returned from the FedEx on Hennepin, irreparably tethered to my publisher and Shakespeare, Dana hadn’t moved, though the coffee cup had been replaced by her phone, which she clutched and watched in its stubborn, haughty silence. My father was still asleep. “I need you to go get some stuff until she calls back and says I can go home.”
“It’s your apartment.”
“I’m not going there until she says I can.”
“I’m sure she just needs a little time to think.”
“I’m such a stupid bitch.”
“Stop, please.”
I collected her things for her; Petra was not there. For fifteen days in October Dana slept at Dad’s, Mom’s, or on the couch in her dressing room at the theater. Professors came and went from my living room, and my father snored away more of each day, living on Diet Coke, which he said was growing on him, even when I called a Coke bottling plant and was given the name of a supermarket in Arden Hills that still carried Tab. Petra refused to talk to Dana, and I, semi-honorably, tried to stay away from the woman I loved until they settled their relationship, although honesty demands I admit it was really just good sportsmanship on my part, that I was merely waiting for new arrangements to be put in place to match my hopes, and twice I slipped away from the family squat. Once, Petra accepted me and my pansies; once, she told me to go home.
The Two Noble Kinsmen opened on October 22, and I sat between my mother and Petra and for a few minutes was allowed to hold Petra’s hand in the dark. Petra came with us when Mom and I went to meet Dana at the stage door, and they said their awkward hellos. I took my mother home, left them to talk.
I came back to my own apartment, where my father was exhaustedly overseeing a tireless Brooklyn-born Ivy League Bardman, and when I walked in, Dad croaked, “Finally.” I thanked him for standing guard and promised him a ticket to Dana’s show the next night, told him to get some rest. “At your service,” he muttered. “Gentlemen, good night.” He stood unsteadily and shuffled down the dark hall to bed.
Dana called a little after two in the morning. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, again and again. “I don’t know how to apologize so she believes me. Something’s broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.” I listened and consoled, worried for her, sympathetic, honestly loving and sorry. Truly. I did also hear in this the first difficult but necessary steps to a new and better arrangement. Better for everyone, it seemed apparent to me. I began planning to find a new apartment for me and Petra, as I didn’t feel I’d be able to live in their old place. Maria would go with Dana, obviously, whom I loved and pitied, I promise, and for whom I felt burning guilt. There. Okay, yes: and I also felt a little annoyance that she wouldn’t face up to what was obviously best for everyone and let us all just get on with it. There. “What do you think I should do?” she asked.
“All you can do is tell her you love her and you want to start over, if that’s what you want. You deserve to be happy with the person who’s right for you.”
“You’re so smart.”
The next morning, October 23, I clutched the quarto in its case all the way to a chemistry lab at the University of Minnesota, where I was met by my editor and a Random House lawyer in from New York, as well as two experts in dating and validating antique documents: a Russian ink specialist up from Chicago and the paper consultant, flown in all the way from London. Both men had been commissioned by Professor Verre, who, though absent, had himself been appointed by Random House to oversee and collate all the investigations into authenticity. The nondisclosure agreements were signed and rebrief-cased.
The Englishman, Peter Bryce, had a white beard, a white ponytail, seemed in every way a retired 1970s rock bassist, the one Jethro Tull fired just before they made it big. He had an attitude of someone having wonderful good fun.