Corkscrew

Synopsis:

Bryce Proctorr has a multi-million dollar contract for his next novel, a wife who is trying to extract the last pound of flesh from him in an ugly divorce, a fast approaching deadline, and a serious case of writer's block. Wayne Prentice is an author with an unwanted manuscript, and he is drifting ghostlike through a world that has forgotten his novels. When the two meet by chance, Proctorr has a proposition: if Prentice will give him his unsold manuscript to publish under Proctorr's name, the two will split the book advance fifty-fifty. But there is a significant catch: Wayne must kill Bryce's wife.

Bryce wrote: 'Kyrgyzstan. Mineral wealth includes gold. 95% within Tien Shan mountain range. Capital: Bishkek.' Then he put his pen on the pad and turned pages in the book open before him on the table, looking for more about the Tien Shan mountain range. It sounded rugged, a good setting.

Around him in this research section in the Mid-Manhattan Library were dozens of other solitaries, studying books, making notes. It felt comforting to be among them.

A whisper at his ear: 'Mr Proctorr?'

Oh, well, he thought. Duty calls. He looked up and there he was, young, mid-twenties probably, skinny and pale, his face too small for those big eyeglasses, his smile tentative, afraid of rebuff: 'You
are
Bryce Proctorr, aren't you?'

Bryce nodded. 'That's me.'

'I
love
your books, Mr Proctorr,' the fan said. 'I don't want to interrupt—'

'That's okay.'

The fan's lined notebook and ballpoint pen were extended: 'Would you?? I'll tape it into my copy of Double
in Diamonds
when I get home.'

'Well, fine, you do that,' Bryce said. He took the pad and pen. 'What's your name?'

'Gene.'

They agreed on a spelling, and Bryce wrote, 'To Gene, All The Best, Bryce Proctorr.'

'Thank you, sir, thank you.'

'My pleasure.' He felt as though he were asleep through this, watching through closed transparent eyelids. Gene went away, and Bryce tried to search again for the Tien Shan mountain range, but he couldn't. He couldn't
care
about the Tien Shan mountain range.

This wasn't working. He knew he was spinning his wheels, but he'd thought, to do some research, even to do some pretend work, would be better than to just sit in the apartment, watch old videotapes, certainly better than to go back to the empty house in Connecticut on a weekday. But he couldn't feel himself, he was here but he wasn't here, this crap he was doing was crap. There was no
story
in this.

He felt restless, a little lonely, as he moved through the library toward the exit, and then his eye was snagged by something familiar. Someone familiar, a familiar face, in profile, bent over a thick book, seated before a thick book, copying addresses into a small memo pad. A familiar face, out of the past. Bryce slowed, and the name came: Wayne Prentice.

He almost walked on by, but then he thought, Wayne. Whatever happened to Wayne Prentice? Twenty-five-year-old memories riffled, like a book of postcards, always groups, at parties, crowded into cars, at Jones Beach, in bars, the small living rooms of small under-furnished apartments. They were never close, but always friends, and then there was a day they didn't happen to meet, and now it's twenty years, more than twenty years, and whatever happened to Wayne Prentice? Didn't he publish some books?

Wayne's hair was thinner and neater than Bryce remembered, his face in profile fleshier; but I've aged, too, he thought. Both men were in chinos, Wayne's tan, Bryce's black, Bryce in scuffed big sneakers, Wayne in shabby brown loafers. Wayne's windbreaker was dull green cotton, Bryce's buff suede. We look like old friends, he thought.

Bryce veered toward the other man, his pen in his left inside pocket, notepad left outside pocket, smile on his face. Now that he was famous, recognized almost everywhere, he found it easy to approach people; they thought they already knew him. And of course Wayne already did.

'Wayne?'

He looked up, and his expression was haggard, eyes morose. He was what? Forty-four, Bryce's age? Around there, but he looked older.

And of course he recognized Bryce at once, and his expression lifted, film lifting from his eyes, eager smile on his face as he jumped to his feet, losing his place in the book. 'Bryce! My God, where did you come from? What are you doing
here?'

'Same as you,' Bryce said with an easy grin, hoping this wasn't a mistake. What if he asks me for money? 'Library research. I keep telling my editor, I got into the fiction racket so I could make it all up, but no, everybody wants the details right.' Gesturing at the now-closed reference book in front of Wayne, he said, 'You know what I mean.'

'Sure,' Wayne said, but he looked faintly doubtful.

He won't ask me for money, Bryce decided, and if he does I'll give him some and see the back of him. 'Want to take a break?'

'Absolutely,' Wayne said.

'Let's go have a drink.'

The bar was old-fashioned looking, with heavy dark maroon banquettes and fake Tiffany lamps turned low, as though the place had been designed for adulterers, but the dozen people in here at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday were all tourists speaking languages other than English. The waiter was an older man, heavy-set, sour, who didn't seem right in the job; as though he'd lost a more suitable position and this was all he could find. Bryce told him, 'A Bloody Mary,' and explained to Wayne, 'It's a food.'

'Then I'll have one, too,' Wayne decided.

The waiter went away, and Bryce said, 'God, it's been years.'

'I've been trying to think how many.'

'At least twenty. I think you'd just sold a novel.'

Wayne nodded. 'Probably. I took that money and went to Italy for a year, to Milan, research for the next one. Lost touch with a lot of people, then.'

Their Bloody Marys came, they toasted one another, and Bryce said, 'You don't write any more?' Then, at the twisted expression on Wayne's face, knew he'd been terribly stupid. 'I'm sorry, did I—'

But Wayne was shaking his head. 'No, no, don't worry about it. It's a good question.
Am
I writing any more?'

Bryce wasn't used to feeling awkward, and was regretting this reunion. 'I just, I don't think I've seen your name for a while.'

'No, you haven't.' Suddenly, Wayne gave him a beaming smile, as though the sun had come out. 'By God,' he said, 'I can tell you the truth! For the first time, I can tell the truth.'

Bryce's regret grew more acute. 'I don't follow.'

'This won't take long,' Wayne promised. 'I didn't write one novel, I wrote seven. The first one,
The Pollux Perspective,
did—'

'That's
right! I've been trying to remember the title.' And the subject; that part hadn't come back yet.

'Well, it did better than anybody expected,' Wayne said. 'So then I got a two-book deal at a much better advance, and both of those books did great.'

'This is all fine so far,' Bryce said, and wondered what the disaster would be. Drink? A bad marriage?

Wayne said, 'Let me tell you the world we live in now. It's the world of the computer.'

'Well, that's true.'

'People don't make decisions any more, the computer makes the decisions.' Wayne leaned closer. 'Let me tell you what's happening to writers.'

'Wayne,' Bryce said gently, 'I am a writer.'

'You've made it,' Wayne told him. 'You're above the tide, this shit doesn't affect you. It affects the mid-list guys, like me. The big chain bookstores, they've each got the computer, and the computer says, we took five thousand of his last book, but we only sold thirty-one hundred, so don't order more than thirty-five hundred. So there's thinner distribution, and you sell twenty-seven hundred, so the next time they order three thousand.'

Bryce said, 'There's only one way for that to go.'

'You know it. As the sales go down, the advances go down. My eighth book, the publisher offered twenty thousand dollars.'

'Down from?'

'My third contract was the best,' Wayne said. 'Books four and five. I got seventy-five thousand each, with ad-promo money and a little publicity tour, Boston and Washington and the West Coast. But then the sales started down…'

'Because of the computer.'

'That's right.' Wayne tasted his Bloody Mary. 'My editor still believed in me,' he said, 'so he pushed through an almost-as-good contract next time, sixty for the sixth book and seventy-five for the seventh, but no promos, no tours. And down went the sales, and the next time, twenty grand. For one book only. No more multi-book contracts.'

Bryce could comprehend all that, as something that might have happened to him, but had not. 'Jesus, Wayne,' he said. 'What did you do?'

'What other people already did,' Wayne told him, with a glint of remembered anger. 'I got out of their fucking computer.'

'You got out? How?'

'I'll tell you a secret,' Wayne said. 'All over this town, people are writing their first novel
again.'

It took Bryce a second to figure that one out, and then he grinned and said, 'A pen name.'

'A protected pen name. It's no good if the publisher knows. Only the agent knows it's me.' Wayne had a little more of his Bloody Mary and shook his head. 'It's a complicated life,' he said. 'Since I did spend that one year in Italy, the story is, I'm an expatriate American living in Milan, and I travel around Europe a lot, I'm an antiques appraiser, so all communication is through the agent. If I have to write to my editor, or send in changes, it's all done by E-mail.'

'As though it's E-mail from Milan.'

'Nothing could be easier.'

Bryce laughed. 'They think they're E-mailing you all the way to Italy, and you're…'

'Down in Greenwich Village.'

Bryce shook his head, appreciating that as though it were a story gimmick. Then he said, 'It's worth it?'

'Well, you know,' Wayne said, 'there's got to be a downside. I can't promote the book or go on tour or do interviews. I can't develop any kind of personal relationship with my editor, which can be a drag.'

'Sure.'

'But there's an upside, too,' Wayne told him. 'I took that eighth book, the one my first publisher would only offer twenty thousand for, I switched it around enough so it wouldn't be recognized, my agent sent it out, a different publisher offered sixty thousand.'

'Because it was a first novel.'

'Because it was good,' Wayne insisted. 'It was an exciting story, and the writer didn't have any miserable track record in the computers. So they could look at the book, and not at a lot of old sales figures.'

Bryce grinned. 'I love a scheme that works,' he said.

'For a while, it went fine,' Wayne said. 'One-book deals, because I wasn't a pro, I was some antiques expert off in Italy. But the second book went up to seventy-five, the third to eighty-five. Sales on the third were slower, the fourth we went back down to seventy-five.'

'It's happening faster,' Bryce said.

'Three weeks ago, the publisher rejected book number five. No deal at any price.'

Bryce could sympathize with that pain, though nothing quite like it had ever happened to him. 'Oh, Wayne,' he said, 'that's a bitch.'

'My agent made some phone calls,' Wayne said, 'but everybody knows everybody's track record, and everybody has to sell through the same computers. Nobody wants Tim Fleet.'

'That's you?'

'It used to be.'

'Wait a minute,' Bryce said.
'The Doppler Effect?'

'That was the third one.'

'Your publisher sent me the galleys,' Bryce said, and offered a sheepish shrug. 'I don't think I gave you a quote.'

'Doesn't matter.' Wayne looked past Bryce at nothing and said, 'I'm not sure anything matters.'