Foul Matter (13 page)

“Right.”

She took off, weaving through customers and shelves, and Karl balanced the stack of books. “Come on, C. Over there to the counter. You can get in line.”

“The damn counter’s a mile long. Look at the line.”

The place was crowded. It was hard getting through it with a pile of books. Must have been a lot harder for her because she was small. Karl made two stacks of the books on the end of the counter, then joined Candy in the line.

Candy wondered what
Don’t Go There
was about. A lot of things he didn’t care if he ever knew, probably. He looked to see how many pages, and it was as he’d feared—nearly five hundred. Four hundred eighty pages. He wouldn’t have to read it all, though. Then it occurred to him—why did he have to read any of it? Why did they have to have either book? Which is what he said to Karl.

Karl’s face showed impatience. “We’ll have to know this guy Isaly. When we run into him strictly by accident do you want to stand there with your teeth in your mouth saying, like “Yo, you say you’re a writer? I never heard of you.”

“I’m not that unclassy, K.”

“We got to see what makes these writers tick, right?” They had already moved up a half dozen places in line. Karl saw the saleslady coming toward them.

“Thanks,” he said, taking Isaly’s book.
Solace.
“Do you know anything about this?”

“Of course. It’s wonderful. I just wish he’d write quicker. And thank you for depositing all of those books—” Her head nodded toward the counter. “Well, ’bye.”

Karl wondered how old she was. She was very pretty. “Yeah, see you.”

Candy fanned the pages of
Don’t Go There
and wondered where “there” was. Well, that was the idea, he supposed. To keep you guessing and make you buy it and read umpteen million pages. A good plan. He looked around again, still astounded. “Did you ever think how a book was competing for fucking space? Look at all of them. You’d have to be shit crazy to try to break into this. You’d have to have solid gold balls to do it.”

“Either that or get an agent that already has them.”

Candy shook his head again. “So what’s yours called?”

Karl held it up.
“Solace.”

Candy studied the title for a moment. “It’s only one word.”

“Yeah. Why? What’s wrong with that?”

“The title’s only one word and there ain’t no picture on the jacket. I think your jacket sucks, if truth be known. It’s white. I mean, if the publisher didn’t like it enough to put a picture on—” Candy shrugged.

“Yeah? Well, apparently this guy Isaly can write, really write. It won some award.” Karl frowned. “New York Critics,’ it says back here.” He had turned the book over and was reading the blurbs on the back of the jacket.

“So how d’ya know mine
can’t
write? I mean, you don’t have to get awards to prove it. Look at Russell Crowe.” Candy moved his shoulders to sit his jacket better across his shoulders.

Karl just looked at him. “The fuck’s Russell Crowe got to do with it?”

“He never won the Academy Award for playing that nutty code breaker. Doesn’t mean he can’t act.”

Karl let Russell Crowe go, saying, “I think Giverney must not write all that well because the guy’s spread all over the fucking store, C.”

Candy didn’t understand this reasoning. “Which means he’s popular, popular big time. Which means he’s good.”

“No, it doesn’t, C. If everybody’s reading this fucking book, do you suppose this Giverney’s been wasting much time on how good his writing is? Consider: if everybody and his old gran’s reading it, how good could it be? I don’t know about your gran but mine’s so fucking stupid she gets the news of the day from cereal boxes. I bet she eats this stuff up.” Karl punched a finger toward the book in Candy’s hands.

“Well, we’ll see. You read yours and I read mine and we’ll just see.”

I
t was too close to the end now, thought Ned, as he read over these pages. Perhaps it
was
the end. He might have condemned Nathalie to sitting on the green bench forever. It hardly seemed fair. Ned got up and moved to the window. He looked down and saw Saul sitting in the little park. There were two men he’d never seen before sitting on a bench farther along the path. Seldom did anyone cut across the park, even more rarely did anyone sit in it. He wondered who they were for a moment and then went back to his story, wanting to rescue Nathalie. But there was nothing to hold her to the gardens or the page.

After Candy and Karl had purchased the books they had taken the A train to Chelsea and had a cup of coffee in a café there and marveled that this was what people did. This is how they spent their time. Now they sat on a bench near a flower bed, mostly planted with zinnias, in a little triangular park in Chelsea and compared books. Candy decided he liked Giverney’s flap copy better; Karl liked Isaly’s face more than Giverney’s.

“Your guy looks too fucking pretty and rich,” said Karl. “Look at that chin, that coat—cashmere, it looks like.” But Karl had to admit his jacket copy sounded a little slow going: the two main characters, the man and the woman, keep almost meeting yet never do. So where’s the solace in that? Karl frowned.

“I don’t like the sad stuff,” said Candy. “I mean, you read a book, you want to escape the sad stuff, right?”

Karl grunted. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“This Giverney writes genre books.”

Karl frowned. “You sure you’re pronouncing that accurately?”

“ ‘Books’?”

“ ‘
Genre,
’ asshole.” Karl swatted Candy on the shoulder with
Solace.

Candy shoved Karl’s hand away, settled his jacket on his shoulders. “Go easy on this suit. Fucker cost me three grand.”

“This guy”—Karl was looking at the author’s photo on the back of the book—“he could use a decent suit. I wonder what kind of money’s in this racket. I mean for guys like Isaly. Now your guy Giverney’s obviously rolling in it, but my guess is only a few get that kind of money,” he said, knowledgeably. He took out his cigar case.

Candy waved
Don’t Go There
back and forth. “Three or four mil, that’s what the girl at the counter told me.”

“What? Jesus Christ, that’s more than the both of us make in a couple fucking years.”

Candy put the book down. “We do all right, listen. And we’re particular, remember.”

“Half a million we got for the last job. That’s only a quarter apiece. And this joker gets that kind of money for a damned novel? A
mystery
at that? It isn’t even one of your
literary
type books. At least my guy’s literary.”

“But ain’t that what you were saying in the bookstore?” said Candy. “If everybody including your old gran was reading this guy, then how good can he be? Anyway, it ain’t as much as writers like Tom Clancy and who’s-it get. That’s more like fourteen, fifteen million.”

“Who’s ‘who’s-it’?”

“You know, that horror guy, one you were talking about. He wrote that book where Jack Nicholson goes berserk with a hatchet?” This was one of their favorite movies.

Karl lit his cigar (Cuban) and waved his platinum lighter into a couple of figure eights like fireflies homing in on Peter Pan. “Stephen King.”

“This clerk was talking about what this publisher, Queeg and Hyde”—Candy held the spine out—“pays that authoress that writes the chick-jep books.”

“What’s that? Hebrew?”

“Nah. It means girl in a jam. Jeopardy.”

Karl shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

“Me, neither. Fuck, you could waste your entire life doing this shit.” He held up his book.

“Yeah, but at three or four mil a crack, that’s not exactly wasting, Candy.”

“Money ain’t everything, Karl.”

“Since when?” said Karl.

He was right at the point in the manuscript where any other writer would, in a few more pages, a chapter at most, have reached The End, and, as Saul knew he’d do, he aborted, called it quits, deep-sixed it.

Saul was sitting on his usual bench in the park, regarding the cold-looking but intrepid zinnias, still blooming along the path. On the other side of the zinnia bed sat two men who looked oddly alike, in spite of their different builds. Maybe it was the clothes. Saul knew expensive clothes. They had books, unusual enough for a couple of businessmen, but these two actually appeared to be discussing them.

He slid down on the bench, thought of going to Swill’s, wondered what in hell was his problem. He did not understand himself; he never had. Perhaps if writing was his livelihood he could see this manuscript through to a close. Saul could finish nothing—not a book, not a meal, not sex. There were several women who could attest to that last bit. What was behind it? His mother’s sudden death? His father’s following shortly after? It was as if they couldn’t live without one another, but both could live without Saul. A double shock such as that could derail anyone, but why a derailment so voluptuously self-destructive as a writer’s finding himself, after having successfully published one book, incapable not of writing another, but of ending another?

Perhaps it was simply fear (if fear is ever simple) of not being able to write a book as well received as that first one. One cannot imagine coming even close to this kind of success. Saul did not think this was the reason because “success” had never meant that much to him. He certainly wanted readers, all writers did.

The hell with it. He leaned back, stretched his arms along the back of the bench, and looked again at the two men on the other side of the path. They were still talking about these books they held, one even taking a swing at the other. All in good fun, apparently.

Saul became so curious about these two men with their books that he couldn’t help himself; he saw a story. The little scene was complete within itself. That’s it, isn’t it? The linear world stops. The temporal world fades.