Read Online A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley - Free Book Online Page B

feel pale by comparison. It was a discomfort he was aware of arousing. Even before he said anything to me, he spent many moments looking me up and down, over and around, and all the time he smiled, as though I were striking in him some humorous chord and it was all he could do to restrain himself from laughter. It was a smile that had me trying to hide my scuffed-up shoes beneath my chair, brushing my bangs from my forehead, and staring uneasily at the deep, Chianti-colored carpeting. Then he handed me the letter and asked me about it. I read it over and over again, even in a groping and moronic way mouthing the words, as if I were actually having trouble appraising it as my handiwork. I was of course stalling, as I could not imagine—save for the worst: postal inspectors waiting in the wings to spirit me off for conveying obscene material through the mails—why in the world he had written me.
    “ Know why I sent for you? ” he said finally, obviously cognizant of my bewilderment.
    I smiled blankly. “ No. ”
    “ Because you remind me of myself twenty years ago. Arrogant. Snotty. Got a hard-on for the world. ”
    I smiled blankly. “ Oh. ”
    He paused, obviously determining the best way to proceed. He smiled that unnerving smile: he had obviously hit on the best way. He told me that if I were Hemingway I should go to Paris, live on fried potatoes and ketchup, write The Great American Novel and have done with it; but that if I wanted to go into advertising—which I think even he conceded to be a rather absurd business—I should meet that world on its own terms. He, of course, didn ’ t care a good damn whether I went into the business or not. The truth of his words was having its
    effect on me. The blood was hot, constant, and throbbing in my face; the room had begun to drift away beneath me: I was stony with shame. There was an agonizingly lengthy pause now. From the comments that followed, I determined t that he must have been judging how much of my appearance was attributable to indigence and how much to affectation, and that he settled the balance on the latter. “ For Christ ’ s sake, ” he said. “ Look at those shoes. They haven ’ t been polished since you bought ‘ em. And that goddam suit. Ever hear of a dry cleaner? ” I didn ’ t do or say anything until he got to my hair, which, he said, might go just “ swell down in the Village, ” but would hardly inspire confidence in the Wild-root people. “ It ’ s all part of the game, kid . Either play it by the: rules or forget about it. ” —
    I attempted to be master of the situation: “ Look—lookhere— ” but my words came out in stammers. “ I came up here —to—in good faith— ”
    “ Oh, cut the whining! ” he said. “ You write me a letter like this ” —and here he rattled the air violently with my letter— ” and you expect me to treat you like a goddam prima donna! Brother! ”
    I was on my feet then, trembling. When I looked at him, I meant to ask, very evenly, “ Just how fucking tough are you? ” Bringing my eyes up to his with great and dramatic deliberation, I was right on the verge of speaking when he laughed; and I did, too, laughed easily and without self-consciousness. I laughed because in his laughter there was now neither cold detachment nor condescension, but the sense that we were sharing some grand joke: his laughter seemed as much directed at himself as at me. Together we roared, as people do who have carried a confrontation with each other to its distressingly uncomfortable limits and suddenly have safely passed those limits. For a moment I thought of resuming my seat. He was the first man I had met in New York who seemed neither diffident nor, quite frankly, dishonest. I liked him. But I was in those days much given to self-dramatization and believed that, once on my feet, I should leave lest he take my staying as a kind of submission and invitation to continue his abuse.
    Later I was to recall that he