Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [5]
“Okay, sure, Crabtree,” I said. “I’ll let you read, I don’t know, a dozen pages or so.”
“Any dozen pages I want?”
“Sure. You name ’em.” I laughed, but I was afraid I knew which twelve pages he would choose: the last twelve. This was going to be a problem, because over the past month, knowing that Crabtree was coming to town, I had actually written five different “final chapters,” subjecting my poor half-grown characters to a variety of biblical disasters and Shakespearean bloodbaths and happy little accidents of life, in a desperate attempt to bring in for a premature landing the immense careering zeppelin of which I was the mad commander. There were no “last twelve pages”; or rather, there were sixty of them, all absurdly sudden and random and violent, the literary equivalents of that windblown, flaming airfield in Lakehurst, New Jersey. I aimed a cheesy smile at Crabtree and held it, for just a minute too long. Crabtree took pity on me and looked away.
“Check this out,” he said.
I looked. Wrapped, like the two suitcases, in heavy, clear sheeting that was held in place by strips of duct tape, a strange, black leather case was coming toward us, big as a trash can, molded according to a fanciful geometry, as though it had been designed to transport intact the heart, valves, and ventricles of an elephant.
“That would be a tuba,” I said. I sucked my cheek in and looked at him through a half-closed eye. “Do you suppose—?”
“I think it has to be,” said Crabtree. “It’s wrapped in plastic.”
I hoisted it from the carousel—it was even heavier than it looked—and set it beside the other two, and then we turned toward the ladies’ room and waited for Miss Sloviak to rejoin us. When, after a few more minutes, Miss Sloviak didn’t come back, we decided that I ought to rent a cart. I borrowed a dollar from Crabtree and after a brief struggle with the cart dispenser we managed to get the cart loaded, and wheeled it across the carpet to the bathroom.
“Miss Sloviak?” called Crabtree, knocking like a gentleman on the ladies’ room door.
“I’ll be right out,” said Miss Sloviak.
“Probably putting the plastic wrapper back onto her johnson,” I said.
“Tripp,” said Crabtree. He looked straight at me now and held my eyes with his for as long as he could manage, given the agitated state of his pleasure receptors. “Is it really almost done?”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course it is. Crabtree, are you still going to be my editor?”
“Sure,” he said. He broke eye contact with me and turned back to watch the dwindling parade of suitcases drifting along the baggage carousel. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Then Miss Sloviak emerged from the ladies’ room, hair reestablished, cheeks rouged, eyelids freshly painted a soft viridian, smelling of what I recognized as Cristalle, the fragrance worn both by my wife, Emily, and also by my lover, Sara Gaskell. It smelled a little bitter to me, as you might imagine. Miss Sloviak looked down at the luggage on the cart, and then at Crabtree, and broke out into a broad, toothy, almost intolerably flirtatious lipsticked grin.
“Why, Mr. Crabtree,” said Miss Sloviak, in a creditable Mae West, “is that a tuba on your luggage cart, or are you just glad to see me?”
When I looked at Crabtree I saw, to my amazement, that he had turned bright red in the face. It had been a long time since I’d seen him do that.
CRABTREE AND