Fridays at Enrico's: A Novel by Don Carpenter

Author:Don Carpenter [Carpenter, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 1619023016
Google: sZIiAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00GL9T6NG
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2014-04-20T12:00:00+00:00

45.

She hadn’t meant to say it, but the words just tumbled right out. Charlie’s reaction last time she had finished a book was to take it well at first. The rest she didn’t want to think about. She’d expected that by now he’d have finished his own novel. She’d dreamed of them both riding high on the New York Times’ best-seller list, money pouring in, their pictures in the papers every day, articles in all the magazines about the fabulous literary couple. Invitations to Hollywood, what the heck, invitations to meet the Queen of England, who was, Jaime knew from listening to her mother, the queen of American high society as well. It was too late for an invitation to the White House, though. The only president she’d ever wanted to meet had been killed in Dallas. But Charlie couldn’t finish his novel.

They made love in their little Telegraph Hill apartment and Charlie seemed fine, passionate as always, tender and kind. She herself was too exhausted to be much good, and had to pretend a little bit, so he wouldn’t feel let down. When they finished they lay side by side quietly for a long time. She knew he hadn’t fallen asleep because as soon as he did his mouth would come open and he’d begin to make a slight whistling sound. This lasted all night, unless he had his nightmares. Then he would begin to moan and sometimes even cry. But when he woke up he would tell her he didn’t remember. “As far as I know,” he told her once with his big bland smile, “I sleep like a log.”

Now he’d be doing the same as she, lying there thinking about her book. How would he react? Her first book had been easy to write. She hadn’t known what she was doing, of course, which made it easier somehow, and she’d been writing about people she’d known all her life. The only really creative thing she’d done was make up new names. The stuff had just come out of her. All she had to do was polish it up. This new book was different. Maybe she’d bitten off too much. This time she’d made the whole thing up, instead of writing what everybody told her to write, e.g., the first book all over again only with all new people. She’d written a very internal story about a teenage girl raised in poverty in the thirties. She knew nothing about poverty except from her parents’ conversations at the dinner table. And she knew nothing about the Great Depression. She was half-sure that when she sent it in to Bob Mills he’d telephone and say, “Jaime, this just won’t do.” Deep in her heart she knew the book was good, for all the trouble it had caused her in coming out, the terrible hours of doubt, the passages that had to be rewritten dozens of times, while the cold sweat ran down her body telling her she was a fraud,

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