Rebecca Johnson: I dated Freddy when he was finishing up Omega. He was a really affectionate guy and he always had time for me. That was a surprise. I’d been with artists before and they always wanted whole weeks to themselves so they could work. “Becky, if you don’t let me be, I’ll never finish!” “Becky, get out of here, you’re ruining my career!” It was like they needed a hundred hours of absolute silence just to get a few words on the page. Not Freddy Langley. He wanted to go out and have some fun. He loved going to fancy restaurants and ordering for everyone at the table so he could taste a bit of every dish. One time a waiter thought he was a food critic and gave us all free chocolate cake.
I did see Freddy in a dark mood this one time when he had to go see his dad. He said he had to “kiss the ring,” which I guess was a reference to the Mob, which was strange because his dad was the headmaster at a religious school. Afterward he was in an even worse mood. He said his dad, who at first wasn’t too pleased about the writer thing, was finally coming around. Freddy’s dad saw that Freddy was doing well, making money, getting his name out. Everyone likes success, right? The way Freddy’s dad saw it, if writing was what Freddy did best, and he was good at it, and he could earn a living at it, there was no harm in it. I was confused. “Shouldn’t you be relieved, Freddy? Shouldn’t you be happy he feels that way?” Freddy sneered.
Andrew Cafferty: In October of 1963 — I remember the month because the Dodgers had just swept the Yankees in the World Series — I threw a dinner party at my country house in Maine and I invited Freddy. I’d recently returned a pair of boots to L. L. Bean, the retail company, and was extolling their great customer service. I’d had the boots for eight or ten years already, but when I told the salesclerk that they were letting in water, he gave me another pair, no trouble at all. I guess I was going on.
All of a sudden Freddy stood up and declared he had an idea that he couldn’t let get away. He demanded a pen, paper, and privacy.
In the morning — he’d spent the whole night writing — he came downstairs with “Lifetime Warranty,” the famous story about a woman who purchases her husband from L. L. Bean via mailorder catalog and then returns him decades later because he no longer satisfies her. You know, sexually. That was the husband’s “design flaw.” He “did not perform as advertised.”
October 1963. Langley’s final collection, which contained “Lifetime Warranty,” came out in September 1964. Assuming Andrew Cafferty had the date right and building in book-production lag time, then “Lifetime Warranty” must have been among the last stories that Langley completed for publication. I skipped ahead to the remembrance from Langley’s book editor. He also mentioned “Lifetime Warranty.”
Richard Anders: The highbrow crowd mostly ignored Freddy, I suppose because he was popular. There’s nothing they despise more, you see. But they loved “Lifetime Warranty.”
Marxists claimed that Freddy was critiquing capitalism and the way a profit-motivated society teaches men and women to treat each other like objects. Feminists read it as an empowering revenge story. Women have needs too. Women should realize that they, too, have the right to discard unsuitable partners. Choosy selfishness isn’t just for men anymore! Loyalty is a feudalist hang-up! The New Critics obsessed over a single line describing the husband’s outfit: “George wore his navy and mountain red Norwegian sweater, which Alice had given him on their first date, and which he had never liked.” It didn’t sound like much, they admitted, but it was the only time Freddy had chosen to give the husband’s point of view — shared his feelings. What did it mean? It had to mean something!
Freddy found the whole “Lifetime Warranty” mania funny, because he’d intended the story to be just that: funny. “It’s too much,” he said, laughing. “I wrote it all in one night and I’ve never even read any Marx.” The enthusiasm for “Lifetime Warranty” took me aback as well. I didn’t say this to Freddy, but I didn’t think the story was all that refined. It was a good read for a train ride. A trifle.
Richard Anders was naive — oddly so for an editor. He didn’t seem to realize that critical feeding frenzies often had little to do with the objective quality of the work in question. If a story could be used to promote a pet construct, nothing else mattered. Not its heft. Not its finesse. Nothing, including the author’s intentions. Langley had never read Marx. The Marxists did not care.
I looked for remembrances of Langley’s later years, but his friends and professional acquaintances, the people who knew him best, knew him exclusively as a young man. There was only one entry concerning Langley’s life after publishing.
Daniel Godolphin: I was living in Paris when Freddy was there, and we got along. We’d hang out at cafés and kid around. He listened to me complain about how much cheaper the city had been when Hemingway and those people were doing the expatriate thing. They could get by pretty nicely on the peanuts they got for their stories. On one occasion I worked up the guts to ask, “How much did you get for your stories?” I may have had a few too many drinks. He may have had a few too many drinks. He was annoyed. He wouldn’t say. I’m pretty sure, though, that he got more than peanuts. It’s weird he didn’t keep churning that stuff out. If I’d had a major-league New York publisher and a fawning audience, I would’ve milked that situation. But I never saw him so much as sit down at a typewriter. I don’t think he even brought one with him overseas.
Once a cub reporter tracked Freddy down with a magazine profile in mind. The reporter needled him: “Are you working on anything? More short stories? A novel? A screenplay?” Freddy kept saying no, but the reporter didn’t take him at his word. He assumed he was hiding something, and he suggested that in his article. It was ridiculous. Freddy started getting letters from people back home saying, “When can we expect your great work?” It made him uncomfortable. He’d been inspired once, but he wasn’t inspired anymore.
Again I walked to Worcester Square. Again Helen greeted me shoeless at the front door. This time she’d expected me. Again she led me to the den, and again she left me there alone, this time while she finished cooking. I took in the room like a familiar place, or, more precisely, with the wonder one feels at finding a place familiar that so recently seemed alien. How quickly one goes from What’s all this? to Oh, this. Resting on the window ledge were unopened letters from multiple credit-card companies and a copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Its pages were yellow and its dustcover worn. COPYRIGHT MCMXXXVI BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Helen returned to find me reading the racist classic.
“Um,” she said, infusing that one syllable with a heap of disapproval.
“Sorry. This must be for work, a look-but-don’t-touch type of situation. Is it a first edition?”
“No, no, dear. That’s not actually from 1936. It’s a facsimile. I’m pleased, though, that you fell for it.”
“There’s a dark side of antiquarianism, I guess.”
“Some clients don’t care about the real thing. All they want is an impressive-seeming library.”
“And do those clients know they’re not buying the real thing?”
“I wouldn’t dream of deceiving anyone.”
Was she winking at me?
“The trickery’s all on their end, not yours,” I said.
“I disapprove. It’s just — I have bills to pay. And rent. When I see