Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

Just Here

Noah and I are heading out the door for a few weeks of vacation in Cambridge, Mass. I call my friend Robert, whose lymphoma has recently gone into remission, to check in, see how he’s doing. He sounds great. His voice is a cross between Truman Capote’s and Charles Nelson Reilly’s. He is one of the first editors in publishing who called me when I was a young agent and asked me to lunch. He’s in his forties, clearly gay, very smart, and wickedly funny. After that lunch we spoke a few times a week about work, authors we had in common, publishing gossip. Robert’s references — professional and literary — often went over my head and I would pretend to understand. If he knew, which I’m sure he did, he never let on.

Robert tells me on the phone that he has to head back into the hospital for something having to do with his lungs. No big deal, he says, not to worry. I startle for a moment and when I ask him again, he reassures me that it’s nothing, that it’s routine.

We go up to Cambridge. Noah and I read, go to movies at the Brattle, drink lots of coffee, and walk around and look at Harvard and the great houses spread out on all sides of the campus. What we always do. And then one morning one of Robert’s colleagues calls to say that he is dead, that he went into the hospital and it turned out he had pneumonia.

I’ve known Robert for four or five years, see him every two or three months, and we speak on the phone regularly, but I can’t say we are close. He is a part of my work life, and a consistently bright part. His battle with lymphoma has gone on, as far as I know, for a few years. He has been, with me anyway, always vague about the details. His treatment had gotten rough for a while, he left work for several months, but the remission seemed strong. He flew to Europe to go to the opera and dove back into publishing. He was back to normal.

I hang up the phone and after a few stunned, still moments, I start sobbing. I cry for days and can’t stop. At dinner, during walks around Cambridge, in the shower, at the gym. I cry uncontrollably. The last time I can remember crying was at the hospital with my mother three or four months before. Eventually the tears stop, but the hard fact of never seeing or hearing Robert again plunks down somewhere in my chest and does not leave.

We come back to New York over Labor Day weekend. There is a memorial service for Robert scheduled on September 10 at the University Club. A writer I represent flies to New York from Chicago on the ninth. Robert edited and adored his novel, which is just about to be published. We go to the memorial service and listen to the writers Robert edited tell stories of how brilliantly he edited their work. How well he took care of them. How much fun he was. Their words make me feel alone, lonely. We go to L’acajou and I start drinking right away. Glass after glass, I drink it like water, and my face prickles with the heat of too much alcohol in my blood. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and call Julio and tell him to call his dealer, that I’m coming over, with cash. Later, after paying the bill, I say my good-byes, get in a cab, run into Julio’s building, and pace the elevator as it crawls to his floor.

That night will go by in a flash. I make it home sometime before eight, but after Noah has left for the day. There is no note on the bar. I have a vague memory of a foreign publisher — German? Dutch? I don’t remember — who is scheduled to come into the office. I shower and dress and walk up Fifth Avenue to the office, and my head pounds from all the vodka the night before, and the sky is the most extraordinary cloudless blue I have ever seen. North of 14th Street, I see a young editor I know run across Fifth Avenue in a bright white shirt. I wonder why he’s running so fast.

When I walk into the agency, everyone is there. A friend calls just then and says that the Twin Towers have been attacked. Almost immediately the office, the people from the other offices on our floor, people calling, are hysterical, and there is an image on CNN.com of one of the towers billowing with smoke. Rumors escalate and the atmosphere is chaotic and frightened. Noah calls. He is crying. He asks if I am okay, does not mention the night before, and says that he is watching the towers from his office window in SoHo. We arrange to meet at the apartment later.

I suddenly remember that the appointment I have is to get my hair cut by Seth. I call to see if he is open. He says to come over. My hair is shaggy, and with my bloodshot eyes and pasty skin, I think it’s more obvious than usual that I’ve been out all night. Getting my hair shampooed and cut can’t hurt, I think, as I grab my wallet and head out the door. My assistant asks me where I am going, and when I tell her, To get my hair cut, she stares at me, speechless.

As I walk west across 25th Street, a jet flies low enough that the buildings all around me rumble and I crouch on the sidewalk and cover my head with my arms. It will be the only moment of that day that won’t feel numb. The rest will be surreal and far away, as if I am watching them on a screen or through a thick lens.

Both towers are still standing when I reach Sixth Avenue. I linger there for a second or two before heading across 22nd Street to Seth’s. Everywhere people are quiet. Everywhere people move gently, slowly. They are careful with one another.

Seth’s place is empty and we listen to the radio as he washes my hair and slowly cuts it. I wonder if he can tell how polluted I am, how strung out from the night before. Unlike when we engage in our usual chatter of gossip, we barely talk and are silent as the report of the first tower falling comes over the radio. Seth’s phone rings but he lets it go on and on until the machine picks up. It takes over an hour for him to cut my hair, and I think it is because he doesn’t want to be alone. I am grateful to be here, in this seat, safe.

I leave Seth’s and walk back to Sixth Avenue, where a throng of people on the corner are all looking south. Something feels off balance and I have a brief flash of vertigo as I follow their gazes downtown to the now bland tumble of buildings there. The towers have fallen. An hour ago they stood there, on fire, billowing with smoke, and now they are gone. They were just here, someone says as I try to locate where exactly in the skyline they used to rise from. But in the cloud of soot and smoke that hangs above the blur of buildings that could be any city now, I can’t remember where they once were, what it all looked like. I have already forgotten.