The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [24]
Twelve years later Anita flew to El Paso and walked across the border for a Mexican divorce. She came back to the Bucks County farmhouse long enough to collect Karen and to tell Hugh that he ought to read his own books if he wanted to know why the marriage failed. She spent a week in New York before flying to Arizona. There was an architect she’d met in Juárez. He wanted to marry her. She knew he was good in bed but wanted to check what kind of houses he built before making up her mind. Evidently she liked his houses better than she liked Hugh’s books since One If by Land.
He still lived in the stone farmhouse. On three occasions he had listed the property for sale, and each time he had withdrawn it at the first sign of a serious offer. One local realtor had not spoken to him since. He realized now that he would never leave, that something kept him there, that no matter how far he traveled he would always come back. He lived there and wrote a book every year. Every winter he turned in a manuscript to his publisher, and every fall a new novel by Hugh Markarian appeared in the bookstores. Only a couple had made the best-seller lists and none had lingered there long, but neither had any of them ever lost money. The paperback editions were constantly in print. Reviewers generally noted his smooth professionalism, his ability to tell a story and keep it moving, his facility with realistic dialogue and swift delineation of character. And nine times out of ten they mentioned One If by Land.
Every now and then he would pick up a copy of One If by Land and try to read it. There was a song from On a Clear Day, the Broadway musical, and it ran through his head during those occasional forays at the book.
What did I have that I don’t have
What have I lost the warm sweet knack of…
Each time he found the book unreadable. The writing was awkward, uneven. The construction of the book, after all that careful revision, was impossibly clumsy. He would read sentences and wince at the thought of ever having written so badly.
The paradox infuriated him. Every book since One If by Land was better written, and none was as good a book.
What had he had that he didn’t have now?
He closed his eyes for a moment. He had turned in his latest novel two months ago and it was time for him to start a new one. Hence it was not a time for negative thoughts. Hence he would stop thinking negatively.
He picked up his drink and crossed the room.
FOUR
Peter was drinking screwdrivers and making them last. He didn’t understand alcohol and never knew what to order on the rare occasions when he had to order something. This time he had tried to order a brandy Alexander. He had had one once and seemed to remember enjoying the taste. But Warren refused to let him order it. “That’s a faggot drink,” he insisted. “Order a man’s drink, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, a screwdriver, then.”
Warren put his head in his hands, muttering that a whole generation of American youth had failed to learn how to drink and the country was going to hell in a hearse. The screwdriver wasn’t too bad. It tasted like orange juice that was beginning to go bad in the carton. He was on the point of telling the waitress that the orange juice was turning when he realized that the sort of varnishy taste was the vodka.
Warren was drinking Cognac and drinking quite a lot of it. The more he drank, the more he seemed to become himself, with all of his mannerisms more pronounced than ever. As he studied him, Peter saw that alcohol was definitely a high for some people. For him it had never been other than a down, and he was incapable of understanding what people liked about drinking. It tasted terrible and it dulled your mind and eventually it made you throw up and pass out. He could see no stage of the game where it was even marginally pleasurable.
He had tried most drugs in the course of his twenty-two years. He had done