Kissing the Wind Read online

  A. E. Hotchner

  kissing the wind

  A. E. Hotchner is the author of the international bestsellers Papa Hemingway, Doris Day: Her Own Story, Sophia: Living and Loving, and his own memoir, King of the Hill. He adapted many of Hemingway’s works for the screen, and he was the founder, with Paul Newman, of Newman’s Own. He died in 2020 at age 102.

  Also by A. E. Hotchner

  fiction

  The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom

  Louisiana Purchase

  The Man Who Lived at the Ritz

  Treasure

  The Dangerous American

  nonfiction

  Hemingway in Love

  O.J. in the Morning, G&T at Night

  Paul and Me

  The Good Life According to Hemingway

  Everyone Comes to Elaine’s

  Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good (with Paul Newman)

  The Day I Fired Alan Ladd and Other World War II Adventures

  Blown Away

  Hemingway and His World

  Choice People

  Sophia: Living and Loving

  Doris Day: Her Own Story

  Looking for Miracles

  King of the Hill

  Papa Hemingway

  AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, SEPTEMBER 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Aaron E. Hotchner Estate

  Introduction copyright © 2021 by Nan A. Talese

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hotchner, A. E., author.

  Title: Kissing the wind / A. E. Hotchner.

  Description: New York : Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021010261 (print) | LCCN 2021010262 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593313763 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593313770 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3558.O8 K57 2021 (print) | LCC PS3558.O8 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021010261

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021010262

  Anchor Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780593313763

  Ebook ISBN 9780593313770

  Cover design by Michael J. Windsor

  Cover photographs: sky © Haitong Yu/Moment/Getty; woman and car © KIDSADA PHOTO/Shutterstock; man © Norman Y/Shutterstock

  www.anchorbooks.com

  ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by A. E. Hotchner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Three

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  To my dearest daughters, Tracie and Holly; my beloved son, Timothy; and for the love of my life, my wife, Virginia

  Love seeketh not itself to please,

  Nor for itself hath any care,

  But for another gives its ease,

  And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

  —William Blake

  Introduction

  A. E. Hotchner and I met fifty-six years ago when Bennett Cerf, the founder of Random House, asked me to meet Mr. Hotchner and read his manuscript. That manuscript became Papa Hemingway. It was a bestseller in the United States and was published throughout the world. He went on to write nineteen more books. What follows is his last book, which he said he wrote to show couples how they could help each other, no matter what illness they had.

  He had Charles Bonnet syndrome, which is explained in this book, and he died at the age of 102 in his beloved house in Westport with his wife, Virginia, and his loved ones at his side.

  He was a bon vivant and a good friend and also a wicked tennis player. He will be sorely missed.

  —Nan A. Talese

  Part One

  chapter one

  It came upon me imperceptibly, teasing me with its implications, giving me masked notice of its pervasive intentions. I had no way of perceiving that the life that I lived, nicely fashioned to my liking, was at risk.

  I was a successful attorney in specialized practice. I occasionally wrote legal thrillers in my spare time, and I was blessed with a rewarding group of friends. All of it, now, in serious jeopardy because I had been unexpectedly invaded by a baffling, mystifying force that defied expulsion. That invasion was sudden, and I was not forewarned. It was so subtle I am hard put to identify when I first became aware of its presence. I’d say it was about a year ago, on a sparkling sunny morning.

  I was on my way in an Uber to Charlie Epps’s office in the Carriggon Building, where he was a member of the prestigious law firm of Whittiker & Sheen, which filled three floors of the building. Charlie’s family and mine had occupied the same apartment complex all our lives, and our mothers were fast friends who’d shared our early days. Charlie and I went to the same schools: Robin’s Nest preschool, Oak Street Elementary, Chester Arthur high school, Haverford College, and Columbia Law. But when we graduated sixteen years ago and were offered positions with Whittiker & Sheen, Charlie chose the security of the big law firm and prosperous clients. I chose to wallow in student debt, representing authors, artists, and other creatives who often paid me in galleys, tickets, and screeners. But it worked out: Whittiker & Sheen was a white-shoe corporate transactional law firm, but on the rare occasion their clients were sued they preferred not to farm out the work to another firm. I had plenty of trials under my belt, so Charlie would bring me in as “of counsel.” It was a flexible affiliation that allowed my friend to toss me the occasional high-paying client to subsidize my solo First Amendment–focused practice.

  I was headed on that bright spring morning to confer with Charlie on an unusual case that was right up my alley. Penelope
Tee, a brilliant Singaporean novelist who specialized in magical realism, had been involved in a high-profile romance and bitter breakup that had spilled into the tabloids. Tee had maintained total silence about her private life but later published a book about an acclaimed poet who cheats on his lover with an anthropomorphized garden hedge. Many saw parallels between the main character and her ex-husband Danny Norgaard, an acclaimed poet who had been photographed getting cozy with the avant-garde horticulturalist Victoria Celluci at the Los Angeles hotspot Chi Spacca prior to the breakup. Complicating matters, the homewrecker character, Valeria Cespuglio, reads a poem in chapter 4 that is identical to Norgaard’s acclaimed poem “Cacio e Pepe” save for a few scatological puns. Norgaard filed an action for libel and copyright infringement, citing damages in excess of thirty million dollars.

  Tee’s previous work had been well received critically, if not commercially. This book, Topiary, had had trouble attracting a major publisher. She wound up at Dodecahedron, a small publisher/vanity project owned by Rowena Flakfizer, CEO of Osgood Industries. Osgood was a purveyor of useful doodads, knickknacks, widgets, and what-have-yous, and Charlie’s biggest client. The firm was happy to offer my reduced “of counsel” rate to defend Tee.

  There was an open elevator in the busy lobby that I commandeered, and I pushed the button for Charlie’s high floor. As we started upward, I became aware of an unusual sight—in the right rear corner of the elevator was a large, glossy rubber plant. Peculiar, I thought, a big rubber plant taking up the usually crowded space of an elevator. I mentioned it to Charlie when we settled down to work.

  “You sure? I don’t remember any rubber plants in the elevator but I’ll check it out,” he said.

  When we left his office for lunch, Charlie preceded me into the elevator.

  “Well, no rubber plant in this one, is there?”

  He was right. The rubber plant was not there.

  “Rubber plants are for the lobbies of cheap motels,” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess they took it out.”

  I let it go at that. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the first sign of it, the scourge that would invade my life.

  * * *

  —

  That evening, to my monthly regret, was an obligation to have a formal dinner and several hands of bridge at the twelve-room apartment of Lance R. A. Dixon, whom I had met when Charlie had brought me in to defend his company in a rather heated trademark dispute. Dixon was a supercharged tycoon who had decided that I was a possible mate for his daughter Violet, who was recovering from a tempestuous divorce. She was a handsome, engaging woman in her thirties, but despite Dixon’s forceful machinations I was disinclined to cooperate. I had recently retreated from a rather lengthy relationship and was not eager to involve myself in tuxedo-clad bridge (which I played miserably) and country clubs. Of course Dixon was a whiz at bridge as well as golf, tennis, and playing the piano. He insisted I join his country club foursome despite my obvious shortcomings, saying, “I’ll get the pro to get you up to par after the wedding.”

  I had tried to evade all talk of marriage, but Dixon’s mind was made up. His eagerness on my behalf induced one awful result. He had maneuvered me into a doubles game at his club in the Hamptons, paired me up with one of the pros to compensate for the superior skill of him and his partner. I was playing at the net when he rose up to his full height to hit an overhead and smashed the ball right at me, smack into my right eye. I had a black eye for a week or so, but many visits to my ophthalmologist had a terrible final pronouncement: the force of Dixon’s smash had irrevocably shattered my optic nerve and I would be forever blind in that eye.

  Dixon’s comment when I told him was, “Too bad, but listen, you have to take care of yourself. It’s much worse playing football. I played every football game at Dartmouth, left tackle, and had not so much as a scratch. You learned a good tennis lesson. You see me go up for an overhead, turn your head away and cover it with your racket. I’ll be your partner next time. I’m really better at doubles than the pro and I’ll give you pointers during the game.”

  Somehow, even after all this, Dixon had still bullied me into committing myself to a dinner-and-bridge night with his wife and Violet at their apartment on the first Tuesday of every month. I had consented to please Violet, even though I am worse at bridge than at tennis. To make the evening even more objectionable, Violet let me know that her father always dined in black tie and asked me to please do likewise.

  So in a grim mood, I presented my tuxedoed self for the impending bridge ordeal, but it was the dinner that got to me first. My salad was thickly covered with what looked like little clusters of pine needles. I glanced over at Violet and saw her eating her salad, which had none of these little sprigs of needles.

  “Did you have the pine needles?” I whispered.

  “What pine needles?”

  “Like mine.”

  She looked at my salad.

  “What pine needles? That’s just arugula and slices of lobster.”

  I looked at my salad and saw that underneath the clusters were the arugula and lobster. I tried pushing the clusters away to get at the underneath, but the clusters wouldn’t move.

  “Something the matter, dear?” her mother asked Violet.

  “No, Mom. It’s a lovely salad.”

  The dinner of lamb chops, diced potatoes, and spinach had no abnormalities. But I brooded about my salad all through my bridge playing, which drew even more fire from Dixon than usual. On my way home, I was still thinking about why I couldn’t move those little pine clumps with my fork. I couldn’t lift them or push them aside.

  When I arrived at my apartment, a lofty two-bedroom with a study and a balcony on the thirty-seventh floor, I found more to brood about.

  To begin with, there were black dots on the hall carpet outside my door and on the carpet in the bedroom and bathroom. The dots were all the same small size and certainly had not been there when I was last in the apartment. But even more disconcerting was my toilet. When I lifted the lid, the surface of the water was covered with a grid that looked metallic. I flushed the toilet but the grid remained in place.

  I went to the wall phone in the living room and requested that the concierge send the handyman on duty. Salvatore showed up a few minutes later carrying a wire cutter. Sal was my favorite handyman. He was a philosopher who could recite several of Shakespeare’s sonnets—in Italian, of course.

  I led him to the toilet and showed him the grid. He gave a look and said, “What grid?”

  “That grid—the one that covers the water.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence while he took his eyeglasses from his pocket and kneeled down to give the toilet bowl a closer inspection. As before, the grid did not move. Salvatore stood up, took off his glasses, and put them back in his pocket. He seemed embarrassed.

  “Can you remove it?”

  “You can use it the way it is. Perfectly okay.”

  The sprigs of pine needles began to creep up on me, along with a gnawing sense in my stomach that something eerie and incomprehensible was overwhelming me. Instinctively, I knew that I shouldn’t pursue the subject of the grid with Salvatore.

  “Thanks, Sal. So it’s okay as is?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He was gathering up his stuff, obviously anxious to leave.

  “Oh, Sal, these black dots, is this ink, maybe, or paint?”

  Sal looked where I was pointing. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, moving to the door.

  I held up the usual tip but he was already in the hall and headed toward the service elevator.

  I called out to him, “Sal, you didn’t see any dots or a grid, did you?”

  The elevator doors slid open. “No, sir,” he said as he disappeared inside.

  I went back into the apartment, intent on testing the toile
t. The grid was still in place. I urinated and flushed. The liquid disappeared from the bowl but the grid screen persisted. I reached my hand into the fresh toilet water and tried to grab the grid and pull it away. There was nothing to grab. The grid was on the water but there was no actual grid.

  I recoiled in shock. Something ominous was obviously happening to me, but what? I was seeing things others did not see. I went into the living room and turned on the television, hoping its reality would dispel my feeling of panic. A news program flooded the room. The familiar newscasters somewhat assuaged my dread. But after a few minutes of the newscast, a well-dressed man walked into my room and came to my chair. He stood beside me and watched the program. He was tall and wore a dark suit with a yellow tie, a simple black design on it. He was an absolute stranger whom I had never seen before.

  I jumped up from my chair, fear sweat breaking out on my face.

  “Who the hell…!” I could barely gather my voice, although I tried desperately to yell. “Get out of here!”

  He did not look at me, nor did his expression change. He wore an expensive wristwatch and a gold ring on one of his little fingers.

  I went to my apartment’s wall telephone. “I’m calling for help!” I grabbed the phone from the wall. Not looking at me, the man turned around and left, but I did not hear the front door open or close. I searched around to be sure, but he had left, all right. There was no sign of anything missing nor of his having been there.