The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [111]
“This isn’t where you should be,” Petra said. “There’s nothing more here. We’re done.”
It’s a storytelling puzzle, really. What breakup has ever occurred that is dramatic to anyone other than the participants? In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it makes for a passably entertaining show because the lovers are driven literally insane by fairies, and their breakup talk is unhinged and vicious. In my case, I just went into a state where I didn’t hear her, and hoped if I didn’t acknowledge it, she’d stop saying it.
“Are you going to tell Dana?” I asked again.
“Of course not. Why would I want to hurt her?”
“Because you—She thinks you’re seeing someone else. Are you going to stay with her?”
“I don’t know. No. I don’t know. Please go.”
“You’re going to change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“This is just nerves. Jitters. This is just before the ending. We decide the ending.”
“It’s not nerves.”
“This will pass. We just have to get to—we have to decide, or it won’t—the ending is ours to decide.”
“No.”
“I love you. Petra, I love you.”
“That will pass.”
“No. It won’t. It won’t pass.”
“But it will. Of course it will. It always does. And then something else can be the ending instead.”
“I’m going to prove to you that we work. Just wait. Just promise me you’ll wait.”
40
THE NEWS OF THE FIRST scholarly authentication came by voicemail. My editor called, jubilant. She whooped, “It’s happening! It’s really happening! You knew it and they’re proving it! Congratulations!” and some other people cheered in the background, an office full of pigeons celebrating because they’d stumbled onto a bag of poisoned corn. I pitied them for how they would feel when they learned the truth. I knew this had to be stopped; I’d put it off long enough. Although, yes, true, the temptation was to keep my mouth shut. I won’t deny it. Especially upon learning that we had at least one professor on our side, which moved me around the board game’s path to another payment. “A check will go to Marly’s office this week. I’ll make sure of it,” Jennifer said, signing off. I confess: I wanted the money. I like money. There.
I didn’t really expect there would be any more assenting professors after this; I assumed we’d only brought aboard some junior adjunct monkey from Podunk Polytech, probably an anti-Stratfordian anyhow and thus easily deluded, or some tenure-famished conniver ready to authenticate just to make a name. The payment for first authentication wasn’t all the money in the world, and I figured there wasn’t going to be any more money since we would never achieve the next benchmark. And so I decided to—shall we say—think a bit longer. Guilty.
But other impulses were stronger: pride in my own career, for example. I did not aspire to be famous only by dint of my father’s crimes, even if we were never caught. And I was plenty afraid we would get caught, which would be worse for my career and pride: I’d be unmasked and unread. Nobody reads Clifford Irving’s novels anymore. (Look him up.) Even if we weren’t caught, and my millions typhooned in, I’d be earning criminal revenue, just as my father would have done. This was my shoulder angel’s conclusive, pitchfork-bending argument: I refused to resemble my father in any way. Also, let’s not forget vindictiveness: I was not going to let him get away with it, even if that cost me $10 million. A display of virtue might also impress Petra, whose faith in me could be restored and who occupied those thoughts of mine that were not wrestling the play.
41
DANA TURNED UP at the apartment, now a dull bachelor pad, an hour after I’d left her a voicemail saying I was going to call off the publication. “Oh, how could you?” she asked at the door, and I feared she was talking about Petra.
“He played me. He played both of us,” I moaned, hoping we would land in comfortable old patterns of emotional discharge, hoping she wouldn’t say Petra was taking her back. “He thought he could put this past me? He didn’t know me.” I showed her the index card, which didn’t interest her for