A DIFFICULT GESTATION - PART 2

This American wasn't by any means stupid.
When he sensed condescension from butler, doorman, or head waiter he cowed them by
simply raising an eyebrow that said, I know you. That was all it took. But mostly he let her shield
him in public with her native lady-likeness. It was tiresome to deal with cabbies or cops. He'd
experienced the English, as he called them, in the War and, with some exceptions for enlisted men,
didn't trust them to be competent, generous, or honest. He saved his own precious energy for serious
situations.

Which she appreciated.

And he was as widely read as she was. If not more so, which was humbling. He knew the
fashionable Russians, but also the less fashionable ones. Similarly with the French. His French was
very good. And also his 'Stateside' compatriots, whereas she had barely sampled anything beyond
Melville or Henry James. For whom he had little time since they were 'limp, britannised and
irrelevant'. She got him to concede ground re Melville, and not just as an erotic preamble. On the
other hand he rightly suspected she thought Mark Twain vulgar.
Still she was bemused to find something inside her twitched when he said that his Don't
mess with me… glare didn't actually use the M word, but another. It might have repulsed her in
broad daylight, but whispered by his lips over a starched white pillow… It could churn.

So, writers both, they started writing together.
“We're very different,” he said. “So it might just work. But no quarter begged or given?”
And his fist bumped hers in a ritual she neither understood, nor refused.
She took another of his cigarettes.
I want him to stay longer than a packet of cigarettes, she thought.
But was disappointed.

He showed her a magazine with a story of his own.
Again she felt that frisson of doing something very wrong: the Cover, the Contents, the
Artwork. And the even more delicious thrill should one of her acquaintance chance to see them
together.
Then…
I can't work with this Man. But how do I tell him?

She flipped with judicious speed through the heavy pages. Then turned it face down. Even
though they were alone.
“So you're a crime writer?”
He didn't duck. She didn't think he would. He said, “Is your Dickens a Crime Writer? Is
Dostoyevsky a crime writer?”
“Perhaps not…” she said. “But Conan Doyle? Agatha Christie?” Then hated to see the scorn
in his eyes turn into pity.
“I don't call that writing,” he said. “Human crossword puzzles for the pampered classes. No
Blood, no Bone, no Truth.”
“And this?”
She drummed her fingernails on his magazine.
“How do you know if you don't read it? Confucious said There are many paths through the
forest of Delusion to the green fields of Truth. Never give up too easily. Never over-commit too
soon.”
“How very gnomic,” she said. “Where did he write that?”
“He didn't. I made it up,” he said casually.

This kind of cleverness was the icing on her private cake of petty bourgeois shame.
She replied by fumbling the top button of her blouse. An unmistakable gesture of their
private code. But in her haste it came loose. They both searched for it on the stiff hotel carpet since
it was Mother of Pearl. Then soon forgot about the button to enjoy the texture of the carpet.
The button literally tapped one of them on the shoulder – and was brought home.

They agreed a list of characters for their story.
His were far too many, she thought. Hers far too few. His she thought of as the Villainous
Crew. Hers he called the Dinner Party.
Each wrote a chapter. Each read the other's. Without comment, it was understood. Quite
soon their characters began to cross barriers, as their inventors had on the museum steps.
Wildly different at first, the narratives converged. Then the style, the dialogue, and the mood.
As if two of the many paths through Confucius' forest had become one.

And after two weeks their book was some 300 pages long.