The Thieves of Manhattan (16 page)

Geoff said
“Ceauşescu”
had already been chosen as an alternate selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club; it was an IndieBound pick; Big Box Books had chosen it for its “3B’s Breath of Fresh Writers” program; rights had been sold in more than a dozen countries, though not yet in Anya’s native Romania; the audiobook was being recorded by Stockard Channing; Gwyneth Paltrow’s film company, which needed a “prestige project,” had already put a bid on an option;
Redbook
would be running an excerpt. Plus, advance praise for Anya’s book was stellar—starred reviews in
Library Journal, PW
, and
Kirkus
. Every blurb Geoff had gotten for the book was incredible too, he said, especially the one from Blade Markham.

Geoff’s enthusiasm for Anya’s work wouldn’t have bothered me so much if he had said something, anything positive about
Thieves
, but it was clear that he didn’t regard its author and
Ceauşescu’
s in the same light—Anya was the genius and I was the hack who would make some money for a publisher so it could sign up more “good writers” like her. Even when he was flattering me, Geoff couldn’t help but remind me that I would never match Anya. I hated him for this. And when the time came for me to reveal the truth, I knew I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad about having betrayed him.

Geoff Olden sent out
Thieves
to half a dozen publishers on a Friday, then called me during my morning jog to tell me not to expect anything exciting to happen soon. One of his most important jobs, he said, was to “manage authors’ expectations.” Then he told me he had to take another call—the art director of
Lucky
was on the line. “Masako” wanted to do a photo shoot with his “Russian author,” but he wouldn’t say yes until he’d approved the photographer, something upon which he’d been insisting ever since
Details
had published pictures of Blade Markham shirtless, just as the author had requested, but had airbrushed out his gang and prison tattoos.

When I called Roth to ask how long I should expect to wait for Geoff’s call, he said that if Geoff didn’t call within a week to tell me about a deal, it would be time for us to find a new agent.

“Things happen quickly or they don’t happen at all,” Roth said. “When people think there’s money to be made, they don’t wait around.”

Three days later, my phone rang and, when I picked up, I heard Isabelle DuPom—“I have Geoff Olden on the line,” she said.

“You’ll want to sit down for this,” Geoff told me.

When I met Olden at his office, he was oozing more self-satisfaction than he usually did. He was wearing his eckleburgs up on his head. He rubbed his hands, then tapped the fingertips of one hand against the palm of the other. Every move he made seemed rehearsed to create maximum suspense.

“I’ve only had the manuscript out for seventy-two hours, and I already have three offers, Ian,” said Geoff. “But there’s one on the table from Merrill, and I think we’d be
loco
not to take it.”

I regarded Geoff blankly. “Which editor?” I asked.

Olden cackled, put his eckleburgs back on, then looked at me as if ready to play an ace.

“Rowell Templen,” he said. He waited for me to look either interested or surprised, but something felt wrong to me.

“This is a win-win-win-win, Ian,” Geoff continued. “Rowell’s young, he’s smart, he’s still hungry, he’s an up-and-comer. What do you think of him?”

“What do I think of him? I think you’re sitting on him,” I said, and when Geoff seemed not to understand, I said, “That guy’s an ass.”

Geoff smiled oddly. “I’m sorry?” he asked, and so I launched into every reason why I didn’t want Rowell Templen working on my book:
Thieves
wasn’t the right project for some oily opportunist only four years out of Princeton and only two years out of the Columbia Publishing Course. I was remembering something Roth had told me—one day, everything Templen had edited would be more closely scrutinized. I figured I needed a more experienced editor, one with an unassailable reputation.

“I’m not sure you heard me. I don’t want to work with him,” I said. “Who else have you got?”

“Do you know who Rowell Templen edits, Ian?” asked Geoff.

I said I knew he edited Blade Markham.

“And what do you have to say to that?”

“I’d say it serves them both right.”

“Do you even care how much money we’re talking about here?” asked Geoff. And now it was my turn to smile as I thought about the story Roth and I had written, of a man who risks his life just to bring a rare book to a girl he saw once in some strange library.

“If you read the last chapter of my book, I think you’d know the answer to that one, Geoffrey,” I said.

I kept speaking at the same volume and pitch, but Geoff’s voice was becoming louder, his gestures more frantic. Outside the office, I could see Geoff’s junior agents beginning to take an interest in our discussion. They passed his door with greater frequency, loitered by the water cooler. Isabelle DuPom seemed to be focusing with unprecedented intensity on whatever rejection letter she was ghostwriting for Geoff; anyone paying such close attention to her work must have been eavesdropping. Geoff closed his office door.

“Are we going to have a problem here, Ian?” he asked.

Ian Minot might have been intimidated; the author of
The Thieves of Manhattan
, not so much.

“That’s up to you,” I said.

Olden’s face flushed. “You are nobody, Ian,” he said. “You have no track record, no platform. Do you understand your position?”

I told him that I did, and that I didn’t work for him, and that I didn’t want Rowell Templen editing my book. And before I had even completed that thought, I knew exactly what I would say next. It was like taking a dive and realizing there’s a parachute on your back and all you have to do is pull the rip cord.

“If Merrill Books wants the book so bad,” I said, “let Jim Merrill edit it.”

There it was—Jim Merrill, the celebrated editor who, according to Jed, read only the first and last pages of anything his company published. He’d be perfect.

“Jim Merrill has not edited a book in twenty years,” said Geoff.

“He’ll edit this one,” I said. “You call Jim Merrill. Tell him I want as much money as he gave Blade Markham for his book. Plus one dollar more. And you know what else? You tell him that I don’t want a one-book deal. You tell him I want two. I want one for my memoir; the other for my short stories.”

Geoff’s face lost its ever-present cheshire. “You’re gonna blow the one chance you’ve got, Ian,” he said.

“Only losers get one chance,” I said. “I’m gonna keep getting ’em. Either Jim Merrill buys the books, edits them, or they’re out and you’re out. You call me when it’s done.

“You’ll excuse me,” I added, remembering Roth had said exactly that when he walked out on Merrill Books rather than help Rowell Templen edit
Blade by Blade
.

In the past, after I had done just about anything that I considered to be uncharacteristically bold, I immediately started to regret it. Moments after I had thrown Jed Roth’s book down Broadway, then lost my job, I was already wondering if I had done something stupid. This afternoon, I had no second thoughts, in fact I kept gaining confidence with every step as I jogged to the Broadway-Lafayette subway station. I could take
on anybody, I thought; I was in a zone. Throw me a basketball, I’ll nail every free throw; pass me a pool cue, I’ll sink every shot; introduce me to any woman, I’ll tell her my story and she’ll fall in love with me. I didn’t play basketball, though, I didn’t know of any pool halls nearby, and as for women, I was out of practice; when I flipped open my cellphone, I saw only two names of people with whom I wanted to share my tale.

I arrived at Morningside Coffee shortly after five, always the slowest part of the day save for closing time. When I peered through the window, I felt as if I were gazing into a past I had gladly left behind, a world of small people leading small lives—smart, well-turned tales, perhaps, but nothing anybody would really want to read about.

Joseph was behind the counter, looking slower and heavier than ever. Faye wasn’t even pretending to work; she was sitting on a stool behind the register, sketching in a notebook; she didn’t look up when I came in.

I strutted toward the counter, one hand in a front pocket of my butter-colored suit jacket. Joseph spotted me first. He looked me up and down, seemed to understand in one glance that I had moved on while he was standing in place.

“Nice duds,” he said with a smirk.

Faye still wasn’t looking at me, so I kept talking to Joseph even though he was behaving, like always, as if he had something against me, maybe because my presence reminded him that he would always be stuck here, now 325 pounds and still counting.

“Hey, man,” I said, “get cast in any shows?”

“Hell, no,” he said, adding that he had all but given up acting. The only times he ever got cast was as a funny fat guy. He’d
liked acting because he thought doing it would allow him to escape his life, but what was the point if you only ever got to play the same role, and never got a chance to play a hero? Joseph sighed, then asked the question I was waiting for—“What about you? Sell any books, man?”

“Maybe I did.” I brushed a speck of lint off my jacket.

“Lucky you,” said Joseph. He shuffled to the sink, while I leaned on the counter where Faye was sketching, effortlessly as always. She was drawing a landscape—water, a bridge, a clock tower. Maybe when she was done with it, I could buy it from her gallery and put it on my wall, I thought.

“Sell any paintings, Betty?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Faye said, still sketching.

“You’re lying,” I said. “I know for a fact you sold at least one.”

Faye stopped drawing, then looked up at me. I never understood how much she must have liked me before until I saw how she was looking at me now. For a moment, I wondered if I’d lost even more than I realized that last night with her at the KGB.

“What do you want, Ian?” she asked.

I tried small talk, told her I was just passing by and wanted to see how she was doing.

“I’m doing shitty, Ian,” she said, “but why would you care?”

“Well, we never really had a chance to talk.” I thought I had gotten pretty good at BSing by now, but Faye could see through me: I had come here to brag and make her feel like she had missed out on something, but now I just felt petty and small.

“So, how’s your Ukrainian?” she asked.

“Romanian,” I muttered.

“Whatever works,” said Faye. “Look, Ian,” she told me, “I’m seeing someone else anyway. I was even when we were going out.”

Joseph smiled, and in that smile I could see that Faye was telling the truth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“Because I thought I might’ve liked you better,” she said. “Turns out you fooled me; I just liked your stories.

“For a while, I thought you were an honest, decent guy,” she continued. “Then you showed me who you really were, no different from the rest of them. I was upset for a while, but it was really my fault. I’m over it now anyway. Whatever. It’s done.”

“I just thought you’d like hearing about something that happened to me today,” I said. “It’s another good story.”

She paused for a moment. I could see her deciding whether she wanted to hear the story. But no, she was done with fakes like me.

“Why don’t you tell them to someone who still cares about you,” she said. “You should go back to your Ukrainian; you guys deserve each other.” She didn’t look up when I walked out the door.

Now the only person I wanted to talk to was Anya, but I needed two fitzgeralds at the 106 Bar before I could call her. And when I heard Blade’s recorded voice on her number, I needed another.

“Yo,” he said. I could imagine him throwing his hands out, flashing his phony gang signs. “This here’s the number for Blade Markham and Anya Peh-tresh-KOO. Y’all wanna rap
with
Anya
, press
one
. Y’all wanna talk with the
main man
, press
two
. Y’all wanna suck
mah dick
, you press the motherfuckin’
three
, yo.”

I didn’t leave a message. To tell the truth, I was laughing too hard. The woman I had loved had left me for a fraud, and now I was a fraud too; it was pretty funny. I sat at the bar for hours, ordering fitzgeralds until the bartender told me I’d had enough, and did I need a taxi to take me home? A taxi might have been a good idea. That way I wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the train and woken up at 207th Street to see Blade’s grinning mug staring down at me from the subway ads.

By the time I got home, morning had arrived, and my cellphone was ringing. “I don’t know how I did it, but I did it, you
ladron culo,”
Geoff Olden said with a cackle. He asked when I would be available to meet Jim Merrill, Jr., at the Century Club. “Oh, and
por favor?”
he said after we had set the time and date. “Those short stories of yours better be good, Ian. I already told Merrill they were.”

I met Geoff Olden and Jim Merrill, Jr., at the Century Club on Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, a relic of Manhattan’s artistic and literary past. New York city law decreed that cigars could no longer be smoked in the club, but the cloakroom still smelled of them and so did the doorman’s jacket; women were now admitted to the club, but the place still exuded an old boys’
clubhouse, a place where men gathered in dim, smoky light to drink, chortle, and discuss the serious business of literature and art out of the sight of their wives and mistresses. The ghosts of onetime members Winslow Homer, the architect Stanford White, and the late railroad magnate and manuscript collector Chester Blom seemed to swoop in and out of the dining room and bar.

Michael’s Restaurant may have been located less than a mile from here, but entering the Century Club was like stepping fifty years into the past. The difference between the two was that of new publishing versus old. It was that of JMJ Publishers versus Merrill Books, between the works of literary titles that Jim Merrill published under his old company’s name and the diet and exercise books JMJ published to keep Merrill Books solvent. Here at the Century Club, there was no overt discussion of deals or bottom lines, no crass displays of publishers’ catalogs. It was a place where cash was rarely seen and money exchanged only via scribbles on club members’ accounts. Conversations were confidential, muffled by carpets. Men wore corduroy blazers and sipped brandy from snifters; waiters in slightly frayed uniforms called members by name and spoke to them in low, respectful tones—“Right this way, Mr. Minot,” “Good afternoon, Mr. Merrill,” “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. Olden.”