Misfortune Read online

  I’d been invited to that condo, not once but dozens of times. She urged me to come along with her to parties, told me about the directors and producers who would be there. She offered to take me to dinner. I made excuses, stopped returning her calls. All I needed, I thought, was to owe Jessie my career. No, I’ll be honest here-I just didn’t want to see her.

  I thought a lot about envy. In college I had been in a production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, in the scene with the seven deadly sins. I’d played Envy: "I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife… I am lean with seeing others eat. Oh, that there would come a famine over all the world, that all might die, and I live alone, then thou should’st see how fat I’d be!"

  If I tried I could remember the six other sins-pride, anger, gluttony, sloth, lechery, and greed. Envy was definitely my sin, though. I thought I would have taken almost any of the others: pride, lechery, even gluttony. Sloth would be good. Here I was, I thought bitterly, envying other people their sins.

  The phone rang. I worried that it was Jessie, full of more cheerful good news, but for some reason I answered it. It turned out to be Ellen, a friend of mine from college, and I relaxed.

  "Hey, isn’t that woman in the movie Jessie What’s-her-name?" Ellen asked after we’d caught up on news. "I met her once at your house, didn’t I?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Well, give her my congratulations. It must be exciting for her."

  "Yeah," I said again. There was silence-a puzzled silence, I thought-at the other end of the line. "I guess this proves beyond a doubt that Hollywood values looks over talent," I said finally.

  Ellen laughed. "I thought she was a friend of yours," she said. "I guess not."

  "I guess not," I said.

  I felt briefly better, and then a whole lot worse. What was I saying? Jessie was a friend, wasn’t she? Didn’t she deserve better from me? What was wrong with me?

  Envy. Envy was wrong with me. I realized when I hung up that I couldn’t get rid of it, that it was part of me, the way the other sins were part of other people. That’s why people in the Middle Ages had named them, why the terms had stayed around for so long. No one was perfect. I would have to come to terms with my sin, domesticate it. I would have to make it mine.

  It felt like hard-won wisdom. I would call Jessie, I thought, meet her somewhere for lunch. I’d even congratulate her-congratulations were long overdue. I reached toward the phone I had just hung up.

  I stopped. This wasn’t taming my envy. This was covering it up, sweeping it under the rug, pretending it didn’t exist. I knew what I had to do. I opened my phone book and looked up Jessie’s new number.

  I got her secretary. I should have expected that. The secretary had me wait while she looked through a list of approved callers. I was on the list, she told me, in a voice that suggested I’d just won a car. I felt absurdly grateful.

  She put me on hold and then Jessie came on. "Hi, how are you doing?" she said. "It’s been far too long." She sounded cheerful, happy to hear from me.

  "Not too good," I said. I told her the whole story, the book in the library, the calamities that had happened soon after, the terrible envy I had felt over her success. I very nearly recited the words from the book to her, but something stopped me. That wouldn’t be coming to terms with envy-that would be giving it free rein.

  "You ninny," she said when I finished.

  My heart sank. She hadn’t understood. She had never been bothered by envy-she couldn’t know how devastating it could be. Any minute now she would say, "Why on earth should you envy me?" or something equally inane.

  Instead she said, "What about the book?"

  "What?" I said stupidly. I couldn’t imagine what she might be talking about.

  "The book in the library. You said it was called Fortune and Misfortune. If it has a phrase that brings bad luck, it probably has one for good luck as well."

  I stood still for long seconds, dumbfounded. "Oh my God," I said finally. "Listen, I’ve got to go."

  "Tell me what happens," she said. "And good luck!"

  I called a cab to take me to the Los Angeles airport. I got a stand-by flight to Oakland, and took BART from Oakland to the Berkeley campus. I didn’t have time to call Iago, the guy with the library card, so I bought my own.

  I cranked apart the shelves in the Greek drama section. The book wasn’t there. It had probably been misfiled, I thought. It certainly wasn’t about Greek drama. I ran out of the stacks and waited to use a computer terminal.

  Nothing with that title was listed in either GLADIS or MELVYL, the two university catalogues. I went back to the stacks, looked on the shelf above and the one below. Nothing.

  I’m going to stay here until I find it, I thought. I turned the crank to get to the next shelf, then the one after that. Fortune and Misfortune, I thought. A black book, covered with dust.

  I looked at books until my eyes blurred, turned the crank until my muscles ached. I waited impatiently while someone perused a shelf I had already looked at, eager and anxious to turn the crank and move on. I was still carrying my overnight bag, hastily packed with a change of clothes, and I set it down to concentrate on my task. A black book, covered with dust.

  After a few hours the lights, already dim, darkened further like the signal to return to a play after intermission. The library was closing. I left the stacks, asked one of the librarians if he could recommend a cheap place to stay.

  I returned the next day, without the overnight bag. And the day after that, and the one after that. I had packed only one change of clothes, and I needed a laundromat very badly. But I couldn’t take the time.

  Finally, on the fifth day, I found it. I couldn’t believe it at first-I had to read the title at least three or four times to make sure. But this was definitely the book. The dust was spotted with fingerprints, my own and those of whoever had misshelved it.

  My hands were trembling. I opened the book and read the headings at the top of the pages. Phrases for health, love, money, beauty, knowledge. All these things would have interested me once but I rifled past them, looking for the section I wanted, hoping it would be there.

  It was. "And the following words will bring good fortune forever, and are proof against all words of ill fortune," I read. " Tay, tay, tray. Tiralanta, tiralall. All, call, lall. Tiralanta, tiralall."

  So. Those are the words-the bad luck you had begun to fear will not strike, and maybe even something truly wonderful is about to happen to you. Maybe the phone is ringing right now, maybe it’s good news. I won’t tell you what happened to me after I read these words-it’s outside the scope of this story, and anyway I think I’ve already done enough for you. I will say that I was sick and bitter for a long time but that now I’m better, though I’ll never be entirely free of these awful feelings. And that the change in my fortune did not start when I read the book the second time, but when Jessie reached out her hand to me and started to pull me toward health. It’s because of her friendship, and my father’s love, that I can pass along these words to you. It’s still difficult for me, but I give you-I give you all-my blessing.

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