Arthur Less did not publish until he was in his thirties. By then, he had lived with the famous poet Robert Brownburn for years in a small house—a shack, they always called it—halfway up a steep residential stairway in San Francisco. The Vulcan Steps, they’re called, curving from Levant Street at the top, down between Monterey pines, ferns, ivy, and bottlebrush trees, to a brick landing with a view east to downtown. Bougainvillea bloomed on their porch like a discarded prom dress. The “shack” was only four rooms, one of them expressly Robert’s, but they painted the walls white and hung up paintings Robert had gotten from friends (one of them of an almost-identifiable Less, nude, on a rock), and planted a seedling trumpet vine below the bedroom window. It took five years for Less to take Robert’s advice and write. Just labored short stories at first. And then, almost at the end of their lives together, a novel. Kalipso: a retelling of the Calypso myth from The Odyssey, with a World War II soldier washed ashore in the South Pacific and brought back to life by a local man who falls in love with him and must help him find a way back to his world, and to his wife back home. “Arthur, this book,” Robert said, taking off his glasses for effect. “It’s an honor to be in love with you.”
It was a moderate success; none other than Richard Champion deigned to review it in the pages of the New York Times. Robert read it first and then passed it to Less, smiling, his glasses on his forehead for his poet’s second pair of eyes; he said it was a good review. But every author can taste the poison another has slipped into the punch, and Champion ended by calling the author himself “a magniloquent spoony.” Less stared at those words like a child taking a test. Magniloquent sounded like praise (but was not). But a spoony? What the hell was a spoony?
“It’s like a code,” Less said. “Is he sending messages to the enemy?”
He was. “Arthur,” Robert said, holding his hand, “he’s just calling you a faggot.”
Yet, like those impossible beetles that survive years in the dunes, living only on desert rains, his novel somehow, over the years, kept selling. It sold in England, and France, and Italy. Less wrote a second novel, The Counterglow, which got less attention, and a third, Dark Matter, which the head of Cormorant Publishing pushed hard, giving it an enormous publicity budget, sending him to over a dozen cities. At the launch, in Chicago, he stood offstage and listened to his introduction (“Please welcome the magniloquent author of the critically acclaimed Kalipso…”) and heard the whimpering applause of perhaps fifteen, twenty people in the auditorium—that dreadful harbinger, like the dark rain spots one notices on a sidewalk before the storm—and he was brought back to his high school reunion. The organizers had convinced him to do a reading billed, on the mailed invitation, as “An Evening with Arthur Less.” No one in high school had ever wanted an evening with Arthur Less, but he took them at their word. He showed up at low squat Delmarva High School (even squatter than in memory), thinking of how far he had come. And I will let you guess how many alumni came to “An Evening with Arthur Less.”
By the publication of Dark Matter, he and Robert had parted, and since then, Less has had to live on desert rains alone. He did get the “shack” when Robert decamped to Sonoma (mortgage paid off after Robert’s Pulitzer); the rest he has patched together, that crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes.
But this next book! This is the one! It is called Swift (to whom the race does not go): a peripatetic novel. A man on a walking tour of San Francisco, and of his past, returning home after a series of blows and disappointments (“All you do is write gay Ulysses,” said Freddy); a wistful, poignant novel of a man’s hard life. Of broke, gay middle age. And today, at dinner, surely over champagne, Less will get the good news.
In his hotel room, he puts on the blue suit (freshly dry-cleaned) and smiles before the mirror.
Nobody came to “An Evening with Arthur Less.”
Freddy once joked that Less’s agent was his “great romance.” Yes, Peter Hunt knows Less intimately. He handles the struggles and fits and joys that no one else witnesses. And yet, about Peter Hunt, Less knows almost nothing at all. He cannot even recall where he is from. Minnesota? Is he married? How many clients does he have? Less has no idea, and yet, like a schoolgirl, he lives on Peter’s phone calls and messages. Or, more precisely, like a mistress waiting for word from her man.
And here he is, coming into the restaurant: Peter Hunt. A basketball star in his college days, and his height still commands a room when he enters it, though now instead of a crew cut, he has white hair as long as a cartoon conductor’s. As he crosses the restaurant, Peter telepathically shakes hands with friends on all sides of the room, then locks his gaze with poor smitten Less. Peter is wearing a beige corduroy suit, and it purrs as he sits. Behind him, a Broadway actress makes an entrance in black lace while on either side of her, two lobsters thermidor are revealed in clouds of steam. Like any diplomat at a tense negotiation, Peter never discusses business until the eleventh hour, so for the whole meal it is literary talk about authors Less feels obliged to pretend he has read. Only as they are having their coffee does Peter say: “I hear you’ll be traveling.” Less says yes, he’s on a trip around the world. “Good,” Peter says, signaling for the bill. “It will take your mind off things. I hope you’re not too attached to Cormorant.” Less stutters, then falls silent. Peter: “Because they passed on Swift. I think you should fiddle with it while you’re traveling. Let new sights bring new ideas.”
“What did they offer? They want changes?”
“No changes. No offer.”
“Peter, am I being dumped?”
“Arthur, it is not to be. Let’s think beyond Cormorant.”
It is as if a trapdoor has opened beneath his dining chair. “Is it too…spoony?”
“Too wistful. Too poignant. These walk-around-town books, these day-in-the-life stories, I know writers love them. But I think it’s hard to feel bad for this Swift fellow of yours. I mean, he has the best life of anyone I know.”
“Too gay?”
“Use this trip, Arthur. You’re so good at capturing a place. Tell me when you’re back in town,” Peter says, giving him a hug, and Less realizes that he is leaving; it is over; the bill was delivered and paid for all while Less was grappling in the dark, bottomless, slick-walled pit of this bad news. “And good luck tomorrow with Mandern. I hope his agent’s not there. She’s a monster.”
His white hair whips around like a horse’s tail, and he strides across the room. Less watches the actress accept Peter’s kiss on her hand. Then he is gone, Less’s great romance, off to charm another smitten writer.