Read Online Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler - Free Book Online Page B

nothing set aside against this year’s taxes. Chargex’s computer was unhappy, and American Express was disappointed in him. No wonder he couldn’t work. What’s the point? If, he argued with himself, he could take the rest of the day off, tomorrow was bound to be good. He would make a clean start on that column. With his pretty new typewriter ribbon already in place, the keys freshly scrubbed and twinkly.
    Yes yes.
    Which was when the phone rang again. Jane Trimble, he thought, breaking into a sweat.
Tell her we’re not to blame
. But it was long distance. Peabody at
Playboy
, outlining an assignment which appealed to him but meant going to London. “I can’t do it,” he said, and he told Peabody about Pauline. Not everything, but enough. “I can’t fly anywhere now. I can’t leave the kids.”
    Even as he said that, he sensed Peabody tuning out, scratching his name off a list on his pad. “Wait. Don’t hang up. How are you?”
    “Hanging in there. Nothing terminal yet.”
    “And Janet?”
    “She’s had her consciousness raised. We separated last month.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Bless you. I couldn’t be more pleased.” There were two kids. They had, Peabody assured him in his most astringent manner, adjusted marvelously. “I mean, I used to see them every night, but I’d come home whacked and all I’d want to do was booze or watch football on TV. Now I see them only on the weekends, but as darling Janet has explained, I spend quality time with them. Are you sure you can’t go, or is it just that you want more money?”
    “Think of something I can do from here.”
    “From Canada? Are you out of your mind? You never should have gone home, Josh.”
    “Neither of us should have come back,” Joshua said, startling himself.
    “Maybe. Just maybe.
À la prochaine fois, mon vieux
. Hey, wait.” There was a pause. And suddenly Peabody laughed a reckless laugh, full-hearted, and Joshua found himself suffused with warmth, responding to the old charm. “Say there, Josh,” he said, “why don’t we clean out the old
deux-chevaux
and drive to Arles tonight? Or maybe Amsterdam?”
    “If only we could.”
    “God damn it,” Peabody said, his voice cracking, “what happened to everybody?”
    “Come on now,” Joshua replied without conviction, “it’s not that bad.”
    “Markham passed through Chicago last week. He invited me to his suite in the Ambassador East. Took me to lunch and whenever I mentioned a writer, he jotted down his name in a thin little Gucci pad. He offered me an annual retainer, a fucking
pourboire
, to put things his way.”
    “Markham’s rotten to the core.”
    “Yeah. Sure. Only I’m no better. I’m screwing my secretary. She’stwenty-two years old and has read
Trout Fishing in America
three times. She’s never heard of Saroyan. Never mind Saroyan – she thinks Henry James is the guy who wrote the script for a Montgomery Clift film we saw on the late show. And I’m so scared of being unable to satisfy her I drown her in gifts. I’ve had my hair styled. We listen to Elton John records together. Elton John. I’m going to be forty-nine.”
    Peabody, Markham, and Joshua had met in Paris in the fifties. In those days Markham was going to be a novelist – as who wasn’t, Joshua thought, grieving.
    Oh I remember Markham. Yes sir. Joshua once found out where Samuel Beckett lived and used to wait across the street from his flat, shivering in the rain for hours in the hope of seeing him venture forth. He never spoke to Beckett, but he would watch him pass and smile. Hey, there goes big Sam Beckett, a man who used to shoot the breeze with Jimmy Joyce.
    “Why don’t you introduce yourself, ask for an interview?” Markham asked. “I’m sure you could sell it somewhere.”
    “Bill, your presence alone would have been sufficient to taint the Sermon on the Mount.”
    No more ambitious than the rest of them really, Markham made the mistake of letting it show. If there was a New