Port Mungo by Patrick McGrath

driven him to abandon England, and landed him in a city where he was a stranger, with a woman he now felt he didn’t know, he sank, for a day or two, into something approaching despair. A black cloud attended him, and this I know well from my own experience, that when my brother had a black cloud attending him no joy was possible for anybody else. Apparently Vera did not understand what had happened. She assumed he was anxious about money. She attempted to reassure him. She told him she could always get money from London if she had to. He asked her how. From Gordon, she said, and Jack lifted his head and laughed a bleak hollow laugh.
    That night they were in a bar as usual and Jack was still deeply absorbed in his predicament. What could he tell her, when she asked him what was the matter—that
she
was the matter, that the future she had seemed to promise him was an illusion? She would have denied it vehemently. She would have passionately reasserted her commitment to the idea of a partnership of artists—the American Studio—an idea first formulated late one night in the back of a Soho pub and embellished in the weeks since. But now Jack feared that the American Studio would never materialize, not in the form he had imagined it, and this fear left him adrift, uncertain where to go next, what to do—dear god he was only seventeen years old!
    It was a strange, violent night in New York. As though a spirit were abroad, or a posse of demons. There were jangling discordant energies wherever they went. Shouting cops, restive crowds, snarled traffic. Saturday night, a full moon, madness in the city: in one bar an enraged man picked a fight with a stranger and when they tried to throw him out he tore the washroom door off its hinges and hurled it across the counter, bottles, glasses and mirrors shattering, and they all had to run for the exit.
    An hour later, in another bar, Vera’s friend Herb turned on Jack, irritated by his silence.
    —What are you doing here, man? he shouted, over the hubbub of talk and jukebox, and in a tone of sufficient hostility that the rest of the table fell silent and looked on with interest. They all knew Herb’s history with Vera. Jack shrugged. He was burning, he told me, with rage and embarrassment, but all he did was lift his glass, lift his cigarette, as if to say, Nothing, drinking and smoking like you.
    —Yeah, but what are you doing? I mean, taking up space, that it? You give me nothing, man, you’re like a plant.
    —Shut up, Herb, shouted Vera.
    —A houseplant.
    Herb turned grinning to the table.
    —Better a plant than a Herb, shouted Vera, but it was too late for Jack. It hadn’t occurred to him that anything was expected of him here. These people were older than him, they were Americans, they knew Vera from before, their talk gave him no openings. He was not an artist, not yet, he was not an American, he had nothing to contribute. He bought drinks, he assumed that his position was understood. Now this. The rage all at once boiled over and he lunged at Herb, swinging wildly with both fists. His mood was brutal to begin with. For several weeks his existence had had meaning only in relation to Vera. He was baffled by her friends, he hated bloody Herb—he was sure there was something between them still, and it preyed on him—he felt there was no solid ground under his feet, nothing familiar to cling to. He needed me, but me of course he had left far behind. Now this. Herb scuttled away and stood panting and growling and shouting at him to settle
down,
man, be
cool,
man, and Jack slumped back onto his chair, wiping his face where he’d spilt beer in his brief assault. Then he pushed his chair back and in the sudden silence the legs scraped loudly across the boards of the tavern floor. Without a word he walked out into the night.
    For several hours he walked the streets, thinking of nothing but how good the cold air felt on his skin, and seething still with jealous rage. He didn’t