The Return (13 page)

"All right," she said bitterly. "How does the stupid book end?"

He glanced over and took another big bite out of her sandwich. "It ends in a cliff hanger," he said. "The reader doesn't know whether Alisa makes it or not."

"That's it? That's no ending."

"You're wrong. It's the perfect ending. But how you do it is important. I'll fix it up after my show." He paused and nodded to the nearby couch. "I want to go over a few more of my conditions. Just so we understand each other."

Feeling miserable, she sat down. He was right about the ending, she realized.

He must have been helping her with her books since the days of Slumber Weekend, the first book she ever sold. Before then she had written plots like a—damn, she couldn't describe to herself how poorly she had plotted. Hell, and he knew it, too—he was snickering at her again.

"Besides wanting half your income and my name on every book," he began, "my picture is to appear on the back flap beside yours. We'll hire a professional photographer who can touch up my rough edges, give me a yuppie look. Also, we're firing your agent. He gets ten percent and he does nothing. From now on I'll negotiate all our contracts. I'll get us bigger advances, higher royalties. And I want to take over your fan mail. There are a lot of cute babes who write you. I want to get to know them, and let them get to know me. I want them to know just who turns them on in the middle of the night. And give me your car keys. I have a date tonight."

"But I just bought that car," she protested. "It's the only one I have."

Sam chuckled. "Then I guess you'll be staying home tonight. Maybe you can brush up on your grammar. It's all you're good for, Debbie." He took another bite from his sandwich and let out a loud belch. "You might as well face it—I'm the talent."

Debra had a horrible time firing her agent. He had been with her from the start. He pleaded with her to reconsider, begged her to tell him whom she had found to take his place. Finally, when she told him nothing, he threatened to sue her. She hung up. She had received a legal-looking letter from him a few days earlier but was afraid to open it. Sam told her not to worry. He said he knew a great lawyer. He seemed to know a lot of people for having spent so much time in her closet.

She had invited a photographer out to shoot Sam, but the guy had fled the moment he saw her muse, which put Sam in a bad mood. He continued to be sensitive about his appearance. She had ended up photographing him herself and had an expert rework the negatives. The expert kept asking her what the joke was. It didn't seem Sam would ever look like a yuppie.

Sam had taken over her bedroom. She now lived in one of the smaller rooms at the front of the house with no view. She had purchased another car, but Sam had put a ceiling on how much she could spend. She had ended up replacing her new Mercedes with a used Ford. Sam laughed at her every time she went out to start it.

He had no dates, however, even though he said he did. He went out often but returned fast, and usually in a lousy mood. He scoured her fan mail for eligible young women. She heard him flirting with them on the phone, setting up lunches and dinners. She could just imagine the women's reactions when they finally met the genius behind the books they loved. She had suggested he join a dating club, but he had told her to shut up.

They had started immediately on a new book, a horror story for teens. Debra had written Young Adult novels for several years before breaking into mainstream fiction, and still enjoyed the form. She'd wanted to take a break after completing her—their adult novel, but Sam had insisted she keep writing.

Yet his input from outside the closet was not as easy to take as it had been from inside. He paced ceaselessly behind her as she worked, muttering swear words and personal insults as often as he did fresh lines of dialogue.

"All right," he said when they got stuck in the middle of a particularly violent scene. "We can't pull any punches here. We've got to go for visceral impact.

Write, 'Maria shot Tom directly in the belly. The blast went right through his guts and painted the wall behind him a lumpy red. Tom stared at Maria and tried to speak. A portion of his lower intestines and pieces of yesterday's lunch dripped out the side of his mouth. His breath stunk like an outhouse. Cursing Maria and her mother to eternal damnation, he slumped to the floor. A stunned silence choked the room."' Sam paused and grunted in satisfaction. "Write that, Debbie, word for word."

"Wait a second," Debra said. "Are we forgetting something here? This is a Young Adult book. We don't have lower intestines and yesterday's lunch dripping out the side of people's mouths. Our editor won't stand for it. Neither will the teachers and librarians. We have to tone it down."

Sam was suddenly enraged. "I never tone down my words! What I have just told you is perfect. You write it that way or you stop writing altogether."

That was a typical retort from Sam. If she didn't do what he said, she could hang up her career. What he didn't seem to realize was how close she was to saying, "Fine. Take the money and the Mercedes. I can get another job. Just get out of my house and stop sleazing all over my fans." But she had books left on her contract to finish, this Young Adult novel being one of them. She feared getting stuck with half a dozen lawsuits and no income coming in. Plus she doubted there was anything else she could do, except maybe be a full-time secretary for some sexist male executive.

She cautioned herself to speak carefully before responding.

"I have written dozens of Young Adult books," she said. "If what you say is true, I have written them with your help. Together we have pushed the limits of the genre. But there are certain limits it would be a mistake to go beyond. We can shoot Tom in the guts, and we can even talk about the blood that gushes out.

But that's as graphic as we can get. There are even more rules when it comes to sex. None of our characters can have sex onstage."

"What do you mean onstage?" Sam growled.

"None of our characters are in the school drama club. They can do it in their cars or at the park. Which reminds me. I have a great scene planned for the middle of the book. After Carol and Larry have been turned into aliens, and been killed by the police, we'll have them rise from the dead and make love in the morgue with formaldehyde dripping all over each other from their gory wounds. That will give us another half million in sales, I guarantee it."

Debra leaned over and turned off the computer. "If we write that scene we guarantee ourselves zero sales."

"No way!"

"Yes, way! The publisher won't accept the book."

"Then we'll get another publisher. New York City is riddled with them. I don't know why you stay with that house you're at. Most of what they publish is written by failed actresses and politicians trying to lose weight."

"It's not that simple. The same rules will apply wherever we go."

"Rules?" Sam said indignantly. "I'm an artist. I don't have to follow rules. Do you think J.R.R. Tolkien was worried about rules when we wrote The Lord of the Rings?"

Debra paused. "Are you insinuating that you were Tolkien's muse?"

"Damn right I was. Where do you think he got the Ents and the Ores? I made those up, not him."

"Well, I can see you and the Ores," Debra mumbled.

Sam took a step closer. "I didn't quite catch that?"

Debra cleared her throat. "We're going to have to argue about this later. I have to meet my younger sister, Ann, for lunch."

Sam stopped and smiled. "Your sister, hey? I've seen Ann's picture in the other room. She's a babe. How about me coming to lunch with you two? You can introduce the two of us, tell her how creative I am." He grinned and winked. "In all kinds of ways."

Debra stood hastily. "You're not meeting my sister."

Sam stepped in front of her as she moved toward the door. "Why not? You don't think I'm good enough for her? How many other guys can she meet that have my imagination?"

"None." Debra shook her head. "That's not my point."

"What is your point? You think she won't find me attractive?"

"You're not exactly her type."

"What is her type?"

"Well."

"Ah! You still think I'm ugly!"

"I didn't say that. It's just that, well, you are kind of short."

"I can wear my platform shoes. I bought some the other day."

"That would help. But it's not the main problem."

"What is the main problem? Is it my face? I can get these scales removed. I'm going to see a plastic surgeon on Thursday. I'll tell Ann I'm recovering from a fire."

"No! You won't tell Ann anything. You're not going to meet her."

Sam paused and nodded to himself. "So that's the way it is." He drew himself up on his hairy toes as he did when he was about to make a threat. "If you don't introduce me to Ann, I don't tell you how this new book ends. I'll let you work on it until the last chapter, and then when your editor's screaming for the manuscript, I'll leave you hanging."

Debra had had enough. She defiantly thrust her hands onto her hips. "Go ahead! Stop helping me! I've made enough money to live on for the rest of my life even if you take half. Go find another writer to play muse to. Get a nerdy teenage boy who looks up cheerleaders' skirts. I'm sure you'll get along fabulously."

Unfortunately, much to her surprise, Sam was not impressed by her retort to his threat. He let out a sly chuckle. "You'll live on half of what, Debbie? I copyrighted the plots of each of your books before you even wrote them. I have certified letters mailed to myself containing detailed outlines of every one of your stories. You walk out on me now, and I'll drag you into court and sue your ass off. The whole world will know that you're nothing but a scam. You'll owe me more money than you have. You'll have to sell that old Ford you're driving just to buy food."

Debra stared at him. "You're bluffing. You ruin me, you ruin yourself."

Sam grinned. "I can always make another you. But where are you going to find another me?"

Debra brushed him aside. "I'm going to lunch with my sister."

Sam let her pass. "That's fine," he called after her.

"As long as you tell Ann I'll be calling her for dinner soon. At her place!"

Debra did not enjoy her afternoon meal, even though she ordered her favorite food at her favorite restaurant. She picked at her swordfish and stared out the window at the ocean. Her sister asked her what was bothering her, but she just shrugged and said she was under a lot of pressure because of a deadline.

Finally lunch was over and she was able to kiss her sister goodbye and think seriously about what she was up against. Not for a moment did she consider telling Ann about Sam. It made her sick just to think of that smelly creature touching her sister. She thought seriously but not creatively, and that was the core of her problem. Her enemy was her inspiration. She couldn't destroy him unless he helped her, which was not likely in the next fifty years.

What to do? She had to go to someone else for her ideas. But who could she ask? Who would even believe her story? Then it struck her. She was a storyteller, still, at least in the eyes of the world, even if, apparently, she couldn't think up an opening line without her troll cackling in the background.

But no one knew that yet, she reassured herself. Among other writers, she was seen as brilliant. Why couldn't she go to another writer, present her dilemma as a plot problem, and have him solve it? She knew just the man, Scott Alan.

He was a local author of horror stories. He had yet to hit it big, but he had published a number of well-reviewed novels. She had considered him something of a beginner, but secretly she thought he was at least as, if not more so, creative than herself. He would probably be thrilled to help out The New York Times Best-Selling Melissa Monroe.

She drove to Scott Alan's house after finding his address in the book. His face shone excitedly when he answered the door. He invited her in. Wow, it was neat of her to stop by. Could he get her something to drink or eat? He'd loved her last book. How long had it stayed on the Times list? Four months? Amazing, he said. She was amazing.

"Thank you," Debra said as she took a seat on his couch. "I loved your last book as well."

He grinned. He was a handsome young man in his late thirties with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes and a nice round face that—damn! She couldn't think what his face was like. But it was attractive enough, she thought. Not that she wanted to have sex with him in a morgue or anything kinky like that.

Where did Sam get such disgusting ideas?

"What did you like about it the most?" Scott asked.

Debra hesitated. Actually, she hadn't read his last book. "I liked how the main character changed as the novel progressed."

"Which main character was that?"

She smiled. "You know, Scott, the one who was on the most pages."

Scott was doubtful. "You mean Lucifer, the robot? I guess he did kind of change." Scott chuckled. "When he blew up."

"That's what I mean, yeah, exactly. You blew him up and his whole perspective changed." Debra paused. "Scott, I'm working on a short story for an anthology of major horror writers and I'm stuck." She batted her long brown lashes, knowing she could look pretty sexy to a struggling author. "I was wondering if you could help me get unstuck?"

He was interested. "What's the problem?"

"It's kind of unusual," she began. "My main character's a famous author and she has this troll for a muse...."

It took Debra almost an hour to tell her story. She hesitated to leave out any detail for fear she might skip over the weak point in Sam's armor. Scott listened intently, as if she were telling him a real-life dilemma, which just happened to be the case. When she was done, he sat thoughtful for a moment.

"This story isn't like any of your others," he said finally.

"Tell me about it," she muttered.

"I'm not saying it's not clever. It's just that it's not as based in reality as most of your work."

"That may be why I'm having trouble resolving the main conflict. But you know what they say, if you don't take chances sometimes, you'll never know you'll never know ..."