Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

To make matters worse, Epman constantly called the mustache to the attention of anyone who happened to be in its vicinity. In the middle of a conversation his fingers would reach up suddenly and spasmodically to smooth a mustache that needed no smoothing whatever. Thumb would stroke one end of the short-bristled smear, forefinger frantically working on the other end. Sam Epman became a colonel of Indian cavalry, briskly stroking, smoothing, caressing a nonexistent handle-bar mustache. The hand would move fitfully in a downward motion as if desperately trying to control this wild hairy growth, as if anxious to merge mustache with mouth.

At four o’clock that afternoon, with the rain having dwindled to a slow, steady drizzle, with the Roman sun feebly attempting to poke its way through the persistent overhang, Sam Epman stood before the long window in his suite and briskly stroked his mustache as he introduced me to Peter Wainwright. A sunless glare limned Epman’s body so that his face remained a blur from which radiated only the blinking reflection of the pinky diamond on his left hand.

“I’m always surprised when two top writers don’t know each other,” he said, smiling, the stroking hand suddenly dropping to his vest where one thumb automatically hooked itself into a pocket. “Any other business, the top people in it usually know each other, if not intimately at least to say hello to. You manufacture cap pistols — don’t it stand to reason you should know the competition? Even Gimbels knows Macy’s. So what is it with writing and writers?”

Epman’s blue eyes twinkled as if he were about to reveal the secret of birth to a pair of atheistic obstetricians. The eyes were overhung with thick, unruly black eyebrows that seemed determined to compensate for the lack of hair on his head and the sparse look of his mustache. The brows would have been menacing were it not for the warmth of the blue eyes. It was, perhaps, the eyes that had first convinced me there might be some worth in a project which seemed patently ridiculous on the surface.

“With writers there’s no real competition,” Epman explained, pleased with his analysis. “Writing is the one business — profession, excuse me — where it don’t matter how many best sellers there are. Does it hurt David Cohen the people should also be buying a book by Peter Wainwright? This ain’t like a cap pistol where you got one you don’t need another. Books you always need. In fact, you read one good one, it makes you want to run out and buy another one. So there’s no real competition. Oh, yes, maybe it burns you up a little some other writer’s book is number three when your book is only number four, but there’s no real competition; you write the best book you know how and then you leave it to God. You don’t have to get out there and fight with your teeth and your nails to hang onto whatever little piece of the earth you finally managed to get.”

Epman’s hand leaped from the vest pocket, violently stroked the end of the mustache, and then fluttered down again.

“So with no competition, it ain’t necessary you should know other writers. In fact, it’s a little bit of a pain in the ass. What do writers want to talk about? Writing, what else? So it’s supposed to be fun to listen to another writer tell you all about his new plot? This is fun?” He shook his head. “Writers avoid other writers. Oh, they know a few, yes. This is only to keep up appearances, people shouldn’t say they’re anti-social. But how many dentists do you think have friends who ain’t in the dental profession? Maybe three or four, and they’re already old cockuhs who are ready to drop dead. Dentists stick with dentists, doctors stick with doctors, pimps even they stick with other pimps. Writers, their best friends are their typewriters.”

Sam Epman smiled. He had a wide mouth which, when possessed by a smile, seemed to claim his entire face. “So,” he said, “David Cohen, meet Peter Wainwright.” He smiled again. “You’re both so talented, when you shake hands short stories should come popping out of your ears.”

Wainwright and I, prompted by Epman’s cue, shook hands, but nothing popped out of our ears. Wainwright was wearing a black suit and a black tie, and he gave a tailored impression of a man honed to knife-edge perfection. Dark suit, dark hair, dark eyes, I thought, a cautious smile and a firm handclasp, first impressions of Peter Wainwright.

“Glad to meet you, Dave,” Wainwright said, and I added to the impression a deep, well-modulated voice and a person who immediately placed a total stranger on a first-name basis. “I read your book. It’s an excellent job.”

“Thank you,” I answered. I could not say I had read or enjoyed any of his books because I’d never been tempted to crack a single one of them. Nor could I bring myself to call this dark, lean stranger Peter or Pete or Petey or, in the face of his earlier familiarity, even Mr. Wainwright. Feeling completely inadequate, I settled for the two words “Thank you” and a manly handclasp and hoped I appeared neither foolish nor aloof.