After the Workshop (18 page)

“Tell me about it. I used to hate my name, but since I started the program, I’m starting to see how I can use it to my advantage. You know: marketing-wise.”

“You might have to dye your hair blonde. You know, the whole Aryan thing, or people’ll be like, ‘That girl’s
German
? No way. Uh-uh.’”

“My father’s Jewish.”

“Shut up!” Sally said. “Get the fuck outta here!”

“Is that good or bad?” Helga asked.

“Ka-
ching
? Did I say
mid
six-figures? You better not forget about me. I swear. If I had a book coming out, you know the first person I’d offer to blow?”

“No. Who?”

“Matt Lauer,” Sally said. “Just so I can be on the
Today Show
.”

“Okay,” Helga said. “Here’s a question. Would you blow Al Roker?”

“He’s the black guy, right? The one who does the weather?”

“That’s him.”

“And if I blew him, I’d get to be on the
Today Show
?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Yeah,” Sally said. “I’d blow him.”

“What about Jay Leno?”

“In a heartbeat. Are you kidding?”

“What about Larry King?”

Sally said, “I’d get to be on his show?”

“Yeah. On the show. Promoting your book.”

“For how long?”

“What?” Helga said. “To blow him?”

“No,” Sally said. “How long would I be on the show? Ten minutes? Twenty? The whole show?”

“Let’s say fifteen minutes,” Helga said.

There was silence. Then, “Yeah, sure, I’d blow him.” Sally looked up, and our eyes locked. “Hey, Helga,” she said.

“What?”

“I think those two guys behind you are listening to us.”

“
What?
”

“I think they’re eavesdropping.”

“Ew,” Helga said. She slid out of her side of the booth and joined Sally.

“Pervert,” Sally said directly to me, but I pretended I hadn’t actually been listening in on them and began picking at an imaginary string of food between my teeth.

“Sick fuckers,” Sally said, one last stab at getting our attention, and then they began whispering to each other.

S. S. lifted his drink and looked into it. “Whatever happened to that lovely woman you lived with?” he asked.

“Alice?” I said her name as though my life had been flush with women who’d lived with me. I shrugged. “She left me,” I said. “A long time ago.”

S. S. reached over and patted one of my hands. “So sorry,” he said and straightened up. “Tate Rinehart,” he said, quickly shifting subjects. “Let’s dissect.”

“I’d love to,” I said. “Literally.” Before we could say anything more, Vince Belecheck stumbled over to our table.

Pointing at me, he said, “You humiliated me this afternoon at the hotel, Jack. But you know what? To show that there’s no hard feelings, I won’t bring it up again. In fact—”

“Mr. Belecheck?” S. S. interrupted.

“Huh?”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” S. S. said.

Vince said, “You look familiar, old man. Do we know each other?”

“I’m afraid not,” said S. S., “but I know
you
. Or, rather, I know your
work
.”

“Really,” Vince said. He tried concealing the fact that he was pleased by forcing a frown and nodding, but his eyes, which only moments ago were bleary from his binge, were bright and semi-alert now.

“When a character of yours is sawing a board,” S. S. said, “I feel as though I’m right there, smelling the fresh-cut wood along with him.”

Vince smiled. “Well, hey, that’s what I’m going for. That’s the writer’s job. Isn’t that right, Jack?” he said to me.

S. S. said, “And when that character of yours—oh, what was his name, the fellow who worked for the electric company?”

“Jefferson Milosovec,” Vince said.

“Ah, yes. An interesting combination of ethnicities you have there.”

“My characters represent the melting pot,” Vince said.

“An ethnic stew,” S. S. offered.

“Exactly.” To me, Vince said, “Where did you find this guy? You should have brought him along with you last night.”

“I arrived late,” S. S. said. “And by bus.”

“In the blizzard? By bus?” Vince said. “Holy shit, old man, you’re hard-core.”

“That I am,” S. S. said. “But I have one question for you.”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Do you mind?”

“No. Shoot.”

“Who did you blow?”

Vince cocked his head, like a dog hearing an approaching siren. “I’m sorry?”

“All your success. The feature in
The New York Times
. My curiosity is piqued. You must have blown somebody. We were just wondering who.”

I watched S. S. carefully. He kept grinning, staring innocently up at Vince as though they were old friends, but he had readjusted his grip on the beer bottle’s neck so that it would be easier to use as a weapon. Vince must have noticed, too, breaking away from the staring contest to look down at S. S.’s hand and then over at me. My first impulse was to shake my head and shrug, to distance myself from the moment, but I decided to hold my ground. This way, it would be two against one—at least until Vince gathered together his troops, who, at this very second, were enthralled by something Tate was saying to all of them.

It was Sally who finally broke the silence. “Dude,” she said, laughing. “He’s joking. The four of us, we were all just talking about who we’d blow to advance our careers. He’s teasing you, is all. Everyone just . . .
chill
.”

“He’s been asking everyone who’s walked by tonight,” said Helga. “He even asked
me
.”

Vince met my eyes. “And who did
you
say you’d blow?”

“No one,” I said.

Vince said, “Probably because you have to write a book first, right?”

“Oh, but he has written a book,” S. S. said. “And it’s a rather brilliant one, too.”

Vince, taking a few steps back, said, “Hey, look. I don’t mind a joke every now and then. Just be careful where you tread.”

“Always,” S. S. said.

After Vince had returned to his table, Helga and Sally slid out of their booths, migrating to ours. Sally said to S. S., “I know who you are.”

“Please join us then,” S. S. said. “Please, please,” he said, scooting over.

Sally slid in next to S. S., and Helga sat on my side. My impulse was to be pissed off at Sally and Helga for their earlier accusations, but it was all water under the bridge for S. S., whose graciousness was genuine.

“And from whence do you two lovely women hail?” S. S. asked after I’d brought back another round of drinks for us.

Both Sally and Helga answered the question (Sally was from Berkeley; Helga, Poughkeepsie), but Sally was much more interested in S. S. and, after going on at length about how much
Winter’s Ghosts
had meant to her, wouldn’t stop drilling him for information. Where had he been hiding all this time? Was he working on anything new? What was he doing in Iowa City? Could he, if it wasn’t too much trouble, put her in contact with his agent?

This was the arc of most conversations between aspiring and established writers in Iowa City—a few compliments, a few pleasantries, and then a not-so-subtle request that would enable the aspiring writer to advance three steps beyond his or her classmates. This was the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Board Game in action: We all start together at GO, but as soon as the semester commences, we either advance or back up, depending upon the roll of the dice. With S. S. here at the Foxhead, Sally seized an opportunity to advance, maybe even at the expense of Helga, who, only a few minutes ago, was rapidly charging ahead of Sally with her Nazi grandfather at her side and a potential mid-six-figure book idea. Though I couldn’t say with any certainty, I suspected, by the way Sally was leaning into S. S. and the fact that I couldn’t see her hands, that she was rubbing his crotch right about now.

S. S. said, “My agent would love to hear from you, I’m sure. I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”

Helga turned to me and said, “S. S. said you’ve written a brilliant novel. When’s it going to be published?”

“S. S. may have spoken too soon,” I said. “It’s actually not done yet.”

“Oh,” Helga said. She slumped in the booth, as if disappointment had a direct impact on her posture.

I hated to disappoint—the gene
not
to disappoint was wired into my DNA, probably inexplicably fused to the gene that was bound and determined
to
disappoint—so I said, “I had a story in
The New Yorker
. And then it got picked up by
Best American
.”

“Really?” Helga said, straightening up again.

“What’s this about
The New Yorker
?” Sally asked. “Do you know somebody at
The New Yorker
?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“But he had a story published there,” Helga said. She was leaning into me now; I was her new best friend.

“I just wrote an essay that would be
perfect
for them,” Sally said. “Or do you think it would be better for
Harper’s
, Helga?”

“It’s definitely a
New Yorker
piece,” Helga said. To me, Helga whispered, “Who’s your agent?”

Who’s your agent?
This was the city’s mantra. Everywhere you went, you could hear someone ask, “Who’s your agent?” Most of the time, you expected it, like thunder following lightning; you knew it was coming. But other times, you had no sooner walked into a bar or restaurant than you heard it in the distance, coming from a corner booth or behind the kitchen’s double doors:
Who’s your agent?
Getting an agent was the unpublished writer’s holy grail, the difference between holding one’s laser-printed manuscript and holding one’s very own bound book. Certain agents took on mythical proportions in Iowa City, as storied as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster, and whenever somebody from the Workshop actually signed with one of the big ones, an almost visible
aura surrounded him, like a person who’s been brought back to life after being pronounced dead.
Who’s your agent?
Everyone wanted to know. There were times, I swear, you could hear the question through the wind, or during a hurricane, or in the middle of a blizzard. You heard it in your sleep, as though someone were standing below your window, asking it of nighttime revelers who stumbled by, trying to find their home.

When I was in the Workshop, I had a meeting with Knox Hanson, one of the agents who’d passed through town trolling for clients. Knox was a wiry guy, younger than I expected given his roster of writers, and he was burning with more energy than anyone I’d ever known. We met in a room that had in it only two chairs: one for him, one for me.

“Hey, how are you? Sit, sit, sit! So, you’re in the Workshop! You know what that says to me right there? It says that whether I take you on or not, you’ll be just fine. I mean, the odds of getting accepted here are, what, a thousand to one?”

“I think it’s about one in twenty-five,” I said.

“What? Get the fuck outta here! It’s more competitive than that. Trust me, I wouldn’t be out here if it was only one in twenty-five. But listen: I don’t care what the actual acceptance rate is—I can check on that later—what I want to know is what you’re working on. What are you writing? Short stories? A novel?”

“I just had a short story in
The New Yorker
,” I told him.

“You don’t say!” Even though we were sitting only two feet from each other, Knox stood up to shake my hand. I wasn’t sure whether to remain sitting or to stand, so I stayed put, but it was so awkward that I realized afterward I was supposed to have stood up so that he could have clapped my back or hugged me. When he sat back down, he said, “Tell me you’re not going to make a
habit
out of writing short stories, are you? I mean,
The New Yorker
pub is great. That’ll be our calling
card when we approach publishers.” Knox smiled at me. The switch from “you” to “we” was not lost on me. I smiled back.

“I’ve just started writing a novel,” I said.

“Bingo! Now we’re talking. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Ready? Name two established writers who epitomize your writing. If I were to say . . . what’s your name?”

“Jack Sheahan.”

“Blah. Won’t work. Do you have a middle name?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Come on, come on. Lay it on me.”

“Hercules.”

“Hercules? You’re fucking kidding me.”

“You see, I told you. My parents, they—”

“What do you mean? I
love
it. Now
that’s
a name people won’t forget. Jack
Hercules
Sheahan.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“
What
don’t you know? Listen. Are you an agent? Do you make as much money as I do? Here’s the deal.
My
name is tied to my
clients’
names. If they suck, I suck. Simple as that. I wouldn’t steer you wrong on something like this. Jack Hercules Sheahan sells itself. You gotta trust me on this one.”

“Okay,” I said, already caving in. “All right.”

“Great. Now if I were to say, Jack Hercules Sheahan’s writing is like X meets X, who would those two Xs be?”

I tried to think, but my mind went blank.

“Don’t think about it,” Knox said. “Go by your gut. The two writers whose names first come to mind. X and X. Okay, hit me with them.”

“Raymond Carver,” I said, “and Stephen King?”

“Wow,” he said. “Wow. That’s genius. Fucking genius! So, what I’m hearing you say is that you’re writing a minimalist horror novel. Is
that what I’m hearing? Well, I can already see the book review headline for this one: ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Cutting Off Your Head.’”

“I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a highly commercial domestic novel.”

“Oh,” Knox said. “Oh. Okay. That’s different. Not quite as exciting, mind you, but I can work with that. Tell you what. Send me a copy of that
New Yorker
story, okay? I’m pretty certain that I’m going to sign you. I sign only one or two writers each time I come out here, but I like you. I think you’ve got what I’m looking for. But I never sign anyone without reading their work first, so send me that story, okay? Actually, that’s not true. I’ve signed
plenty
of writers without reading their work. Can I confide in you? You start out in a business like this with ideals, with principals, but one by one they fall to the wayside, and pretty soon you find yourself doing pretty much everything you started out saying you would
never
do. Promise me something, Jack. Can you promise me something?”