chapter 3

Abraham and Francesca stood together in the lobby of the Anaheim Marriott, still as sculpture. All around them the lobby boiled with arrivals, misshapen travelers clad in black and purple, peering nervously side to side as though concerned with the impression they made as they wheeled suitcases in agitated confusion to the check-in desk. Others lurched or darted through the vast open space of the lobby, gathering briefly in groups of four or five to hug and talk, to crinkle brochures with circled program items, or present one another with buttons or ribbons to affix to suspenders or knapsack straps. Some wolfed sandwiches, licking gummy fingers unselfconsciously. Many wore plastic-frame eyeglasses or floppy hats or molded jewelry, others T-shirts with proud enigmas emblazoned: MORE THAN HUMAN, DONATE YOUR BODY TO SCIENCE FICTION, I USED TO BE A MILLIONAIRE THEN MY MOTHER THREW OUT MY COMIC BOOK COLLECTION. Photocopied signs, taped inelegantly to corridors and glass doors, offered suite numbers for hotel parties, advertised special events, and directed attendees to the registration table or the art show or the first aid station. Certain laminated name badges were labeled PRO or VOLUNTEER. Voices rose and were lost in a babble of others-monotonous harangues, kooky laughter, anxious questions, hysterical reunions. ForbiddenCon 7 was under way in all its glory. I only had to figure out what it was, or else not bother. I didn’t sense it needed me to know.

Francesca saw me first. “There you are!” she cried out. Abraham nodded and they surged toward me as I came through the revolving door. I hurried forward, trying to save them the trouble. “You’re late!” said Francesca. “We’re practically going to miss Abe’s panel.”

I’d promised to meet them in the lobby at three-it was almost four. Nicholas Brawley had laughed and shaken his head when I gave him the destination. “You should have rented a car,” he said, and by the time we’d crossed the ocean of suburb between Hollywood and Anaheim I saw his point. The fare was $114.00. Now, however, stepping into the lobby of the convention hotel, I considered the even greater conceptual distance I’d covered, moving from Jared Orthman’s office to ForbiddenCon. Brawley’s fare was a bargain.

“Dylan,” said my father. We embraced, and I felt him sigh against my body. Then I turned and dipped to Francesca, just in time to be enveloped in her swarming attack, not soon enough to plan where on my exposed surface the lipstick would be delivered. It landed north-northwest of my mouth, a misaligned mustache in beet purple. I swabbed it with my thumb and said, “Sorry I’m late.”

Francesca’s badge was unadorned, while Abraham’s bore a special purple ribbon, reading GUEST OF HONOR.

“They need Abraham in the greenroom,” she said gravely.

“Lead the way,” I said.

“That’s all you have?” said Abraham, looking at my bag. He seemed disappointed. “You’re staying the night?”

“Of course.”

“You’re registered already,” said Francesca. “Zelmo took care of everything.” She scrabbled in her purse as we moved through the lobby. “Here’s for your room. It works like a credit card-you swipe. The key’s for the minibar.”

“I’ll be hitting it hard,” I joked, taking the keys.

“Oh, you won’t have time,” said Francesca. “Zelmo Swift, the committee chair, is taking us to dinner.” She goggled her eyes at the honor.

“He knows you’re coming,” added Abraham. “I asked and was told it’s fine.”

“You’re being foolish, darling,” said Francesca. “You’re the guest of honor, why wouldn’t your family be invited?”

“It’s an extra body at dinner. I asked.” He turned to me. “We’ll talk there if Zelmo lets us get in a word. Now I have to do this thing. I hope you won’t mind sitting.”

“Mind?” said Francesca, taking my arm. “He’ll be proud!”

My father had lived alone for fourteen years after I left Dean Street for college in Vermont. Little changed in those years-he’d gone on painting paperback-book art to cover his mortgage and shopping, and gone on pouring every spare hour on the clock and spare ounce of energy in his frame into his epic, endless, unseen film. In 1989, at last granting the absurdity of having three floors to himself, he’d converted the brownstone to two duplexes, adding a small kitchen to the second floor and renting out the parlor level, with the basement, to a young family. What remained untouched was the upstairs studio, the monk’s quarters where he daubed out days in black paint on celluloid. The neighborhood, in fits and starts, gentrified around him, Isabel Vendle’s curse or blessing realized in lag time. For Abraham it was primarily a matter of raised property taxes. He’d never asked what the rental market would bear-the duplex was always leased at a bargain.

There were never women, that I heard of. If Abraham knew how to seek for that part of his life, after Rachel, he didn’t know how to mention it. Then he’d come to the attention of Francesca Cassini, a fifty-eight-year-old receptionist working in the offices of Ballantine Books. This man slumping into the offices with his latest jacket art tucked into a pebbly black pressed-board portfolio tied together with black laces, this man slumping from the elevator dressed humbly, in his Art Students League proletarian garb, fingertips slightly stained with paint, his demeanor mordant, as ever-this man had caught the eye of the fresh widow from Bay Ridge. A woman who, despite her immigrant’s name, had lived all her life among the postwar generation of New York Jews, Francesca spoke in their manner and recognized them as one recognizes oneself. She’d lost a Jewish husband six months earlier, a career accountant, a man bent, I imagined, over a lifelong column of figures likely as dear to him as the world’s longest abstract film in progress was to my father. Abraham, jacket-art celebrity, butt of corridor jokes for his Bartelbyesque mien, didn’t stand a chance. If ever a man cried for Francesca’s salvaging, here he was. She’d announced herself. She’d attached herself. One winter I visited Brooklyn and there she was, moved into the Dean Street house. I couldn’t complain. Francesca organized my father, and she seemed, in a peculiar way, to make him happy. She made him visible to himself, by her contrast.

The greenroom had been set up in a small conference room off the lobby, guarded from the ordinary public by a volunteer at the door. In breathless tones Francesca explained we were a guest of honor’s entourage, and we were allowed into the sanctum. It held two urns containing coffee and water for tea, and a sectioned plastic dish full of cubed cheddar and Triscuits. A pair of volunteers sat behind a tray of blank badges and their plastic holders. From them Francesca demanded a pass “for Abraham Ebdus’s son,” then clipped the result to my shirt pocket.

It wasn’t clear what we were waiting for. My father stood, stalled in consternation, in the center of the room, while Francesca dithered around the edges.

“Mr. Ebdus?” ventured a volunteer.

“Yes?”

“The other program participants went upstairs. For your panel. I think it’s beginning now.”

“Without him?” said Francesca.

“The Nebraska Room, I think. Nebraska West.”

We hurried out. “I told you we could go direct,” said Abraham to Francesca as we went up the wide central stair to the mezzanine.

“Zelmo said meet at the greenroom.”

Abraham just shook his head.

Everyone moved awkwardly in this space, drifting as though rudderless, then abruptly accelerating, in explosions of tiny steps. Crossing paths they’d glare, mutter, wait for apologies. Through this fitful human sea we made our way to Nebraska Ballroom West. A sign taped to the door announced the program as “The Career of Abraham Ebdus,” as though this were self-explanatory. I supposed it was, or would be by the time the panel accomplished its work.