Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [104]
It hadn’t really sunk in until now that someone had actually been reading my book. It was a painful and exhilarating thought.
“I guess so,” I said. “Sure.”
Hannah poked a finger between my belly and my belt buckle and tugged until I nearly fell against her.
“Can I take it down into my room and be alone with it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking a step backward. I was always, I thought, taking a step away from Hannah Green. “How are you liking it?”
“I think I’m loving it.”
“Really?” I said. Hannah’s praise, though lightly given, struck me with unexpected force, and I felt my throat constrict. I saw how lonely a pursuit the writing of Wonder Boys had become, how sequestered and directionless and blind. I’d shown some early chapters to Emily, and her only memorable comment at the time had been “It seems awfully male.” I’d laughed this off, but ever since then I’d been the book’s only reader, the prophet, founder, and sole inhabitant of my own failed little Pennsylvanian utopia. “All right, then. Sure you can.”
She brought her face very close to mine. Her lips were chapped and she’d daubed them with balm that smelled of vanilla.
“I kind of think I’m loving you,” she said. “Too.”
Oh, what the hell, I thought. Maybe I’d better just stay.
“Tripp’s here?” said Crabtree from somewhere out in the hall. His voice sounded plaintive and so relieved that I felt a pang of guilt at the sound of it. “Where is he? Tripp?”
I started, and pulled away from her.
“Don’t let him see that thing, okay?” I said. “Hide it till we leave.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and stepped out into the hall. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Be careful,” she said, brushing at a strand of hair that had gotten caught in the lip balm at the corner of her mouth.
“I will,” I said.
As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn’t intend to keep.
I FOUND CRABTREE OUT in the hallway, all by himself, watching the people in the living room attempt to re-create the Horse. He had one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around a bottle of sparkling water. It seemed that in my absence he was willing to surrender the pretense that he was still Crabtree the Tricksy Spirit, the artist as mischief maker, and to stand slouched against the wall, alone in the middle of his own party, looking sober, lonely, and bored. He was wearing another of his double-breasted metallic suits, of a soft, almost imperceptible blue like the light given off by a black-and-white television. His eyes behind his round glasses were lusterless, his cheeks puffy and splotched. As he watched the dancers he reminded me of James Leer, lingering last night in the Gaskells’ backyard, a friendless and envious boy in the dark, gazing up at a radiant window.
When he saw me his face resumed its usual calm smirk, however, and he nodded, once, and looked back into the living room.
“There he is,” he said, as if all unaffected by my abrupt reappearance, as if he hadn’t been wandering the house seconds before like a revenant, crying out my name. “Where’d you get to?”
“I went up to Kinship.”
“I heard.”
“How are you?”
“I’m dying.” He rolled his eyes. “This WordFest gig is without question the most tedious exercise you have ever put me through, Tripp.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Look at those people.” He shook his head.
“They’re writers,” I said. “Poets are not bad dancers as a rule. But we’re a little light on poets this year.”
“Those are fiction people.”
“Most of them.” I shrugged my shoulders a few times quick. “We like to do that Snoopy kind of thing with our shoulders.”
“And everyone’s straight at this thing. Don’t you have any queers in Pittsburgh?”
“Sure we do,” I said. “I’ll call them.”
“And then you fucking drive off this morning with the rest of my little medicines in your car.”
“I did? They are?”
“Uh huh. At least I hope so. I think they’re in your trunk. You must have knocked them loose last night when you were ransacking my bags.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Really. Listen, buddy, come outside with me.”
He folded his arms