Corkscrew (19 page)

'Oh, my God, Bryce, so am I.'

'Confession is bad for my soul,' Bryce said, and nodded. His head felt very heavy. 'I'll remember that,' he said.

Susan's grandparents, the Costellos, used to be truck farmers years ago in central New Jersey, near Hightstown, growing tomatoes for the huge Campbell Soup processing plant, as were most of their neighbors. The plant is long gone, most of the farms have been turned into bedroom communities for New Yorkers, and highways and strip malls scratch the landscape. But Susan's grandparents, both now in their nineties, were still alive and still owned the farmhouse and outbuildings and twenty-six acres, and every Christmas the whole family collected there, from as far away as Miami and Omaha, filling the house and the two barns converted into guest cottages. This annual experience combined the wonderful and the horrible in more or less equal measure, and Wayne loved it. He himself had grown up in Hartford, Connecticut, to schoolteacher parents who couldn't have been more uptight if they'd still worn whalebone corsets. His father was dead now, his mother living in Pompano Lakes, Florida, his three siblings scattered, and they rarely if ever saw one another. Wayne supposed the main reason for that, from his family's side, was because he and Susan had no children. A lot of people, once they marry and settle down to 'normal' life with a 'normal' job and 'normal' kids, are completely uninterested in anyone who isn't exactly like themselves. Wayne did not have a 'normal' job, Greenwich Village was not a 'normal' home, and, most damning of all, they didn't have their own batch of dirty, loud, sticky, offensive kids.

All of which was fine with Wayne. Susan's family was enough for him, a large, variegated, tolerant, cheerful, boisterous clan, heavy into ribbing and joking but slow to take real offense. Wayne had a great time every year during those four days on the farm, forgetting completely his other life in New York, and the same thing happened this year. Not a thought about his perilous career, not a thought about Bryce, not a thought about Joe Katz, not a thought about that article he'd somehow written just before they'd left, and certainly not a thought about Lucie Proctorr, who was now in his mind not even a gruesome movie he'd seen once long ago but was a story, a horror story someone had told him once that his own vivid imagination had elaborated on but which was nevertheless not quite real.

They got back to the apartment on the twenty-eighth, refreshed, enjoying the accumulation of mail, seeing they now had invitations to
three
New Year's Eve parties, and of course they'd go to all three, and did, and met no one anywhere who could trouble their minds.

The Tuesday after New Year's, Wayne got two morning phone calls. The first was from Willard Hartman, his agent, who said, 'Vanity
Fair
wants your charity piece.'

'Fantastic!' Wayne hadn't really expected anything from that piece, it had just been something to do, filling the time, writing something because writing something was better than not writing something.

'They have a few questions,' Willard went on, 'and a few changes to suggest. And they want to talk about photos to illustrate the piece, they always have to have photos.'

'Oh, sure, we can figure something out.'

'Laurie Simons, the editor on this one, sub-editor, she could just E-mail it to you, or fax it, whichever you prefer.'

Tim Fleet's life had existed almost entirely in E-mail, putatively sent to and from Milan. 'Give her my E-mail address,' he decided. 'What do they pay?'

'They've offered six thousand.'

'Hah,' Wayne said. 'Go figure.' Not bad, he thought, for a morning's work.

The second call, half an hour later, was from Joe Katz, who said, 'Let's do lunch.'

Wayne's heart fluttered. 'Sure. When?'

'One o'clock?'

'Oh, you mean today!'

Joe laughed. 'Wayne,' he said, 'I eat lunch every day. Walk on up, I'll see you at one.'

They ate at Campagna, on East Twenty-first Street, where Joe was known and they got a table for two with a little privacy, which wasn't the case throughout the restaurant. They talked about the holidays and Joe ordered a glass of white wine, so Wayne followed suit. Once they'd ordered their lunch, Joe said, 'Let's talk about your career.'

'I didn't know I had one,' Wayne said.

'I'm sorry, Wayne,' Joe told him, 'but you just jumped to the last chapter.'

A cold lump formed in Wayne's stomach. He was glad he'd ordered the wine. He'd known the news was almost certain to be negative, but he hadn't been able to keep himself from hoping. Joe Katz was a senior editor, he had clout, he was respected. Couldn't he tell the computer to go fuck itself?

Apparently not. Joe was truly apologetic, wishing it were up to him, but the numbers were the numbers. 'This is a bad time in publishing,' he explained.

Wayne didn't really feel like laughing, but he laughed. 'It's always a bad time in publishing.'

'Then this time is worse,' Joe said. 'The publishers are merging, more and more imprints under the same umbrella, and the result is, everybody's publishing fewer books.'

'I know about that part.'

'Of course you do. But on the other side, there's less room in the media for book reviews, attention to books, because now they're covering all these new technologies, CD-ROM and the Internet.'

'I knew I was getting fewer reviews as time went on,' Wayne said. 'I thought it was me.'

'It's everybody,' Joe assured him. 'Or almost everybody.'

'Not Bryce.'

'No, not Bryce.' Joe shrugged. 'Which brings up the other problem. Half a dozen years ago, the book wholesalers consolidated, and that means, even if you get your book published in hardcover, there's less chance to get a paperback reprint.'

'That happened to me, too,' Wayne agreed.

'I don't know if you'll appreciate the irony,' Joe said, 'but people like Bryce are seeing slightly better paperback sales, because the people like you aren't in the way any more.'

'I don't know if I'll ever appreciate that irony, either, Joe,' Wayne said. 'But what it comes down to is, you can't do anything with me.'

'The only offer I could possibly make you,' Joe said, 'is so insulting I don't want to do it.'

'You might as well try me,' Wayne said. At this point, what could an insult look like?

'I told Carew, the publisher, I really wanted you, and he did all that good-money-after-bad stuff, and then we came to a compromise. You tell me you have a book.'

'Part of a book.'

'If I think there's something promotable in it,' Joe said, 'maybe we can work something out. You know what I mean by promotable.'

'Princess Di should be a character in it.'

Joe laughed, but he said, 'It wouldn't hurt. Promotable is absolutely distinct from quality. I know your work, I know you'll produce good readable prose, I know you're good with plots and good with characters, so let's just call all that a given.'

'Thank you,' Wayne said.

'This isn't compliments,' Joe told him. 'I'm discounting everything we know you're good at. What I want you to do is go home and look at that part of a book you have, and say to yourself, 'Never mind Joe Katz. What will the publicity department see here? What will the sales department see here? What's the hook?' You understand what I'm saying?'

'Yes,' Wayne said.

Joe shook a finger at him. 'I'm not asking you to bend your book out of shape,' he said. 'In the first place, I wouldn't be able to make it worth your while. So don't add Princess Di.'

'Okay,' Wayne said.

'But if you think,' Joe said, 'without destroying the integrity of the work, you can find a promotable element in it, call me and tell me. And
then
I'll look at the book. And if it's got all your normal strengths, plus you're right about it being promotable, I'm permitted to offer you ten thousand dollars.'

Wayne could think of nothing to say.

Joe finished his wine in a gulp, and signalled for a second glass. Wayne pointed at his own glass, and Joe showed the waiter two fingers. Then he said, 'The idea is, if we can get behind this book and promote it, and kick you up above the computer's expectations, then next time we can offer a little more and try even harder and make another increase in sales.'

Wayne said, 'You're talking about building a career from scratch, the way it used to be, when writers and publishers stuck with one another for the long haul.'

'Except,' Joe told him, 'the way the game is played now, we begin in sudden-death overtime.'

Wayne sipped his second glass of wine. There was nothing promotable in
The Shadowed Other.
You could only promote it as a novel, a story, something you might like to read. He said, 'I'll think about it.'

'Good,' Joe said.

'And I want to thank you, Joe,' Wayne said. He was sincere, and hoped it showed. 'I know you did your best.'

'We can only do what we can only do,' Joe said.

Bryce had arranged with Linda, the once-a-week cleaning woman in New York, to pack up his mail every week, the stuff she thought he'd care about, put it in a manila envelope, and send it to him in Connecticut. The Thursday after New Year's, he got such an envelope, and one of the items it contained was a brisk letter from the management firm that handled the building containing his apartment. The letter was addressed to Bryce Proctorr, and it informed him that the management firm had become aware of the fact that the leaseholder of the apartment was deceased. If Bryce cared to negotiate a new lease, he should phone Ms Teraski at the above number as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it would not be acceptable for him to remain in the apartment without a lease.

What a strange thing to realize, that even though Lucie had been the one to move out at the breakup of the marriage, it was still her name on the lease. Mark Steiner, his accountant, had had reasons of his own why Lucie should be a New York resident and lease the apartment while he should be a Connecticut resident and own the house. It had seemed unnecessarily complex at the time, in the way that tax laws lead to unnecessary complexity, but now it seemed grotesque.

They understood the leaseholder was deceased. That was the most bloodless way yet to describe the circumstance by which the life had been pounded out of Lucie's body.

He didn't call Ms Teraski, not yet, because he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He supposed he should call Mark at some point, find out what the tax laws and the accountant thought best for him at this juncture, but he didn't feel ready for that call, either.

Then, two hours later, Mark himself phoned Bryce. 'I just wanted you to know, the Pegasus money is in.'

'Oh, good,' Bryce said.

'I'll be calling Wayne Prentice next.'

'He'll be glad to hear from you.'

Mark laughed. 'I suppose he will,' he said. 'You know, I still think this is the most insanely generous deal I've ever heard of.'

'He was worth it, Mark.'

'I bet he would have taken less. If you're ever tempted to make another deal like this one, Bryce, please talk to me first.'

'It won't happen again. But I needed him right then. I wasn't working, it was going on too long, it was going to hurt the career, the reputation. He's worth the money, Mark, because the truth is, if it weren't for Wayne,
Two Faces in the Mirror
would not exist.'

'And you're sure of him.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I know he's a friend of yours,' Mark said, 'and he's a nice guy, I like him—'

'Uh huh.'

'But what about the future? I mean, he isn't going to come along some day and claim that book is
his,
is he?'

'Absolutely not,' Bryce said. 'I know I can trust him on that, Mark. I trust him absolutely on that.'

'Well, you usually know what you're doing,' Mark said. 'I'll call him now, give him the good news.'

Bryce hadn't asked this before, and it really wasn't any of his business, but he suddenly wanted to know: 'What's your arrangement with Wayne, anyway? I mean, you're handling his finances now, right?'

'It's essentially the same deal I have with you,' Mark told him. 'That's what he asked for, and that's what he'll get. I assume he'll have further income to back it up.'

'Oh, I'm sure he will,' Bryce said, and it wasn't till after he'd hung up that he realized he'd forgotten to talk to Mark about the apartment.

Well, he knew what that meant. That meant he wasn't going to keep the apartment. Not negotiate a lease, not live there, fifteen stories up, all alone. He'd move his furniture, what he wanted, up here, throw the rest away. Most of it he wouldn't want anyway; Lucie'd picked it all out. It was hers.

The phone call and the decision about the apartment, if that really was the decision, had left him restless, so that afternoon he drove to Brenford, the gourmet grocery store in this part of Connecticut, the place where you went for New York-style foods you couldn't get in a supermarket. At New York-style prices, too. There were things Bryce could only get at Brenford, the coffee he liked, a salmon dip, some other things, and it had been a while since he'd gone there.

Early Thursday afternoon in midwinter and the parking lot at Brenford's was half full, mostly of Jeep Cherokees and Toyota Land Cruisers and the like, with here and there a Volvo or a Saab or a BMW like Bryce's.

When all else failed, it was pleasant to receive this occasional reassurance, these visual signals that one is not alone, one belongs to a tribe, and one is firmly in the territory controlled by that tribe. The license plates were more than half Connecticut, the rest New York and a few Massachusetts. In summer there were New Jersey plates as well, but one knew they were not real courtiers, but merely bumpkins visiting the court.

The shopping carts came in two sizes, plus small hand-carried baskets for those who weren't really serious. Bryce compromised with a smaller-size cart, and the glass door slid out of the way as he approached, greeting him with a puff of warm air smelling vaguely like a bakery.