Miami was the perfect place to kick off the tour. The signing at Barnes & Noble drew a surprisingly large crowd, many of them from the city’s Cuban-American community. Speaking to readers in Spanish relaxed Jav while the sheer number of them boosted his confidence.
He knew he had an audience, but they’d been faceless until now. Fan letters. Emails. Comments when his fiction was posted on magazine websites. Replies when he thought to put something on Twitter.
Now they were lined up in front of his table. There to see him.
Me?
“I’ve been following you since you wrote ‘Bald,’” a woman said.
“Gloria was the best book I ever read.”
“Client Privilege broke my heart.”
He signed new copies of his books as well as old, beat up, tattered ones. They thanked him and he tried to thank them back.
Thank you.
Gracias.
I’m thrilled you enjoyed it.
No, thank you.
Muchas gracias.
The more the grateful words slid out of his mouth, the more they slid out of meaning. He shook hands, hugged, leaned in and out for the innumerable camera clicks. He thanked them more profusely than they thanked him. He fell into bed exhausted, still unable to get his arms around it all. Worried about the venue in Atlanta, where he’d be speaking as well as signing.
His publicist, Donna, was a PR wonder. Brisk, efficient, connected, organized to the most minute detail. She was also supernaturally introverted and, frankly, not too personable. One of those socially cautious people who preferred to be backstage, not centerstage. It made Jav realize it would be nice to have a friend along on this kind of thing. A friend to rehearse with before an event, drink and unwind with afterward. A buddy to stand in the back of the room. One familiar pair of eyes in a sea of strangers. To indicate with a little nod you were doing fine. You had this.
Good luck, Stef texted right before Jav took the floor in Atlanta. Make sure the barn door’s closed.
Thanks, Jav texted back. He checked his fly, took a last breath and went out smiling.
He’d agonized over this presentation, wanting to come across both prepared and spontaneous.
“They’re there to see you,” Gloria told him. “They know your writing, now they want to know you. Tell them a story. It’s what you do.”
He couldn’t think how to start. Not until he dreamed about Flip Trueblood one night and remembered.
Write it. Write me. Tell the story and don’t let it be forgotten.
He started from the beginning in Queens, sharing a bit of the short story he’d submitted to Cricket magazine in 1979, winning the $500 grand prize. He left out the part about his uncle beating the shit out of him until he signed the check over.
Save it for date three, Jav imagined Stef saying. He glanced over the heads of his audience to the back of the room. His mind placed Stef there, slouched with a shoulder against the wall, arms and ankles crossed. Chin nodding slightly. Eyes encouraging.
You got this.
The room condensed and drew in close when he told them how he met Philip Trueblood in the summer of 2001. How his face had evoked the image of a mariner. The captain of a mythical ship. Inspired, Jav began working on book, only to abandon it when Flip died on September 11, going down on the ship of Flight 93.
“I stopped writing the story,” Jav said, his eyes flicking to Stef’s invisible presence. “But in a lot of ways, the story kept writing me. This imaginary ship became a metaphor for my life, with people I met or friends I made becoming crew members. For example, I met my friend Roger Lark last year…”
A murmured buzz went through the audience and Jav looked up, smiling. “Yeah, that Roger Lark. The Treehouse Guy.”
“Can I get his number?” a woman called out to appreciative laughter.
“You kidding, even I don’t get his number,” Jav said. “But when I… Oh God, now everyone’s leaving. He doesn’t have Roger Lark’s phone number, we’re out of here. Thanks. Goodnight.”
More laughter and a smatter of applause.
“When I met Roger, I was immediately struck by how simple, unaffected and content he is. He’s got this tattoo on his arm, it’s a compass rose. So I’m sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table when along comes The Thing. Anyone here who writes, or draws, paints, composes or creates, you know what I’m talking about. The great, almighty, mysterious creative Thing sits in my lap. The fork is hanging in mid-air and I’m adding Roger to my cast of crew members.”
He opened his notebook to the marked page where he’d scribbled his thoughts.
“His tastes and emotions were simple,” he read. “The Compass never worried. He patted problems on the head and told them to run along. If he was cold, he put on a sweater. If he broke something, he swept it up. If fear struck, it was a sign he was doing something wrong and he changed direction.”
He talked a little more about his ideas for Trueblood, how they’d been accidentally waylaid by his vision of a book of Latin American folk tales. A woman raised her hand and asked how else 9/11 affected his writing. He took a deep breath and shared how he couldn’t get out of bed, let alone write.
It was like taking his clothes off. Then peeling his skin off. He stood up there, bare to the bones, and told them of grief’s crippling depression. The audience drew closer. The energy in the room turned heady and exhilarating, full of connection.
Then it was over. He put his skin back on and went to his hotel room. Just another struggling artist on the road. Waiting for Stef to call. Or waiting for the time Stef said he’d be free so Jav could call.
“How’s it going?” Stef said.
“It’s going amazing.”
And still the best part of the day is hearing your voice. How the hell does that happen?
“How was your day?” Jav asked.
“All right,” Stef said, and didn’t elaborate. Whenever Jav asked questions about his job, the answers were always generalized. Jav wasn’t sure if Stef was bound by strict confidentiality rules or if the work itself was so grueling, it was the last thing he wanted to talk about.
Or maybe he thought it wasn’t that interesting.
“How do you not come home with your job?” Jav asked, trying a different approach.
“Well, I do,” Stef said. “The trick is to leave it outside the door.”
“How successful are you?”
“Mmm… I’d say it’s a seventy-five-percent success rate. I have my little rituals to decompress.”
“Like what?”
“Weather permitting, I’ll go for a run. I’m excited about this High Line project. It’s going to be fantastic to have that kind of rec path right outside my door.”
“What about in bad weather?”
“I started meditating a few years ago and taking some yoga classes. I always need some kind of physical movement to settle me down. Putting it with the breathing techniques and the mindful behavior really helps with getting the day off me. I have a little shrine in a corner of my bedroom. I come home and put it there.”
“What about the other twenty-five percent of days?”
“I drink.”
Jav laughed.
“I’m kidding,” Stef said, laughing too. “Sort of. I mean it has to be a really bad day for me to have to tap out with booze or take a pill. If I can’t meditate it away, I’ll call some friends. If I’m not in the mood to be social, I’ll go see my mother.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve always been close with her. It’s not like she fusses over me or babies me or even says a whole hell of a lot. I like to take some art supplies and go up there and draw while she reads or does whatever. Together alone.”
“How often do you see your dad?”
“Not often. He lives in Germany.”
“What does he do?”
“He builds pianos,” Stef said.
“Get out. Really?”
“He comes from a long line of Steinway men, who come from a long line of cabinetmakers.”
“That,” Jav said, “is fucking cool.”
“It’s an extremely cool, extremely skilled profession.”
“This is the second cool profession I’ve stumbled across recently.”
“What was the first?”
“Wall dogs,” Jav said. “They paint advertising on brick buildings.”
“I didn’t know they had a name.”
“Neither did I. I was on the subway and I overheard this guy talking about his grandfather being a wall dog. I went past my stop to keep listening.”
“Did you record it?”
“You know,” Jav said, laughing. “I almost did, but it seemed like such a dick move.”
“And sort of illegal, no?”
“I wrote really fast in my notebook.”
“Ah-ha,” Stef said. “I wondered if you carried one around.”
“Never without it,” Jav said, thinking, What else do you wonder about me?
Lying in bed that night, he prayed again. Not on his knees but on his side, arms wrapped around a pillow. Holding an imaginary body. Then he put the pillow behind him and leaned on it. Wondering what it would be like to be held. To relax inside a circle of strong arms and drift off.
It feels easy, he thought. Almost too easy.
If I’m being set up for a sucker punch, I accept it.
If this is going to be a disastrous maiden voyage, I accept it.
Thy will be done.
Just let me come home.
Jav sat up, clicked on the lamp and reached for his notebook, the place marked with his favorite pen. Cap held tight in his teeth, he pinned the thought down before it could find another storyteller.
“Whatever course my voyage may take,” Trueblood whispered to receding shoreline, “let me come home again.”