“What have you done?”
“I guarantee every copy will be gone by this afternoon. I’ve just ordered another fifty thousand to be printed. First day, and it’s a hit!”
“BUT TERRY DIDN’T WRITE IT!”
“OK, come on, Martin. The cat’s out of the bag. I know you’re Terry’s brother. You tried to keep that secret from me, you naughty boy. Actually, believe it or not, you know what put me onto the idea? My fucking ex-wife! She recognized you from the papers. It hit her a couple of hours after she left that day and she called me, demanding to know what I was publishing with Terry Dean. Then it hit me. Of course! It was so obvious! Harry West was a pseudonym for Terry Dean! It’s not clever like an anagram or anything, but it is bullshit. Problem is, pseudonyms aren’t going to sell books, my friend. Not when the author is as famous as your brother is!”
I moved closer to Stanley ’s desk, wondering if I was strong enough to pick it up and squash him with it.
“Listen to me, you dopey bastard,” I growled. “Terry didn’t write it! Harry did! Oh my God! Harry! Harry is going to explode!”
“Really. And who is this Harry?”
“He was Terry’s mentor.”
Stanley looked at me curiously for a long time. “Come on, mate, give it up.”
“I’m telling you. You’ve fucked up! Harry’s going to go on a rampage! He’ll tear us all to pieces, you idiot!”
Stanley ’s face looked as if it were tossing up between smiling and frowning and finally settled for an uncomfortable combination of the two. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious.”
“You’re saying, then, that Terry didn’t write this book?”
“Terry can’t write his name in the snow with his piss!”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Oh,” Stanley said, before burying his face behind a pile of papers. He picked up a pencil and started scrawling something. I went over and ripped it out of his hands. This is what he’d written: “Oops!”
“Oops! Oops? You don’t know! You don’t know Harry! He’ll kill me! Then he’ll kill you! Then he’ll kill Terry and then he’ll kill himself!”
“Why can’t he be first?” Stanley cried absurdly. He stood, buttoned up his jacket, unbuttoned it, and sat down. He finally had the sense to panic.
“Didn’t you think of at least checking my story? Didn’t you think to find out about Harry?”
“Now, hang on…”
“Call them back!”
“Who?”
“The press! The publishers! Everyone!”
“Now, wait a tic!”
“Do it!”
“I can’t!”
“But it’s a lie!”
“Sit down. Calm down. We have to think about this. Are we thinking? Let’s think. OK. Think. Are you thinking? I’m not. I don’t have a thought in my head. Stop looking at me for a second. I can’t think when someone’s looking at me. Turn around. I mean it, Martin, turn around.”
Reluctantly, I half swiveled my body so I was facing the wall. I wanted to smash my head against it. I couldn’t believe it! Here was Terry again! Taking center stage again! What about me? When was it going to be my time?
Stanley rattled off thoughts that stank up the room. “OK. OK. OK. So…what we had, with The Handbook of Crime, was a literary scandal. Spectacular. Controversial. Polemical. That we already have. But now it turns out the author is in fact not the author. That means…what we now have, on top of the scandal…is a literary hoax.”
“A what?”
“OK. You can turn around now.”
When I swiveled back, Stanley was beaming at me triumphantly. “Two in one!” he shouted joyously.
“ Stanley -” I started.
“This is brilliant! It’ll serve us well. Tell Harry to be patient- in a year or two, we’ll leak out the truth. He’ll be famous.”
“A year or two!”
“Sure, what’s the rush?”
“You still don’t get it! Harry will think I was in on this. He’ll think I’ve betrayed him. This is his legacy to the world! You have to tell him! You have to tell him it was your own fault, that you made a mistake! You fool- he’s going to kill us!”
“So what? Let him come. I’m not afraid! If I have to die, let it be for a book. Yes, I like it! Let it be for this book. Yes! Bring him on!”
Stanley held his fist up in the air as if it were an award he’d just won. Can you beat that? This was the worst crisis imaginable, and I was in the company of a man right at the time he’d found something to die for. He looked disgustingly, inappropriately peaceful. I wanted to tear his lips off.
I took a cab to Harry’s, thinking I was going to have to tread very, very carefully. Harry loved me, and I loved him, but that didn’t mean he was above putting a bullet between my eyes. That’s what love is all about, after all. I rolled down the taxi window. Outside, the air was supernaturally still, as in a windowless room. Nothing stirred. It was as if the hatch on the world had been hermetically sealed and we were, all of us, shut in.
I did the secret knock and then the not-so-secret knock, the one anyone can do. I hollered his name. I hollered an apology. It was a waste of hollering- he wasn’t home. What should I do? A cab sailed past and I hailed it and went back into the city, where I wandered aimlessly through the streets, deep in my tumult. The level of activity made my head spin, and it irritated me that no one else looked lost. A little sad and lonely, maybe, but they knew where they were going. I bumped into people on purpose, in the irrational hope of eliciting some kind of sympathetic reaction. The faces of a city take on a supremely cruel and indifferent quality when you wander through it in the midst of a personal crisis. It’s depressing that nobody stops to hold your hand.
I went into a pub, the Park View, took a seat at the bar, and didn’t dwell on the lack of a park or a view. I ordered a beer. A song was on the radio, a nice cheery love song that clashed with my mood. I drained the beer quickly. The pub was empty except for two old drunk men who were bickering about someone named Gazza; one of the old men thought Gazza was pussy-whipped by his new bride, while the other thought Gazza had her on the ropes. Either way, the upshot was that Gazza wasn’t coming out to the pub as often as he used to, and it just wasn’t the same without him. I nodded in sadness, and stared at my empty glass as if it had wronged me for the last time.
Then the news came over the radio and my ears went into high alert. Fugitive Terry Dean had written a scandalous book instructing would-be criminals on how to break the law. The most recent development in the story: the publisher of The Handbook of Crime was under arrest.
So! Stanley was under arrest! Just as well, I decided. At least that would keep him safe from Harry for a while. I supposed they couldn’t hold him long. When the police are hunting for someone they can’t find, it just gives them relief to arrest someone connected to him.
While I contemplated Stanley behind bars, and the possibility that as the credited editor, I might be the one they came for next, the last story of the news came on: fugitive Harry West had climbed to the top of the Harbor Bridge armed to the teeth and was threatening to jump. The story added a little afterthought which put it all into perspective: if Harry West plummeted to his death, he would be the first person to commit suicide from the Sydney Harbor Bridge on live television. Yes, it made perfect sense. Terry had robbed him of the democratic cooperative, and Stanley had pulled The Handbook of Crime from under his feet. Harry was desperate to leave his legacy, any legacy. First person to be broadcasted suiciding off Sydney ’s bridge and in color too. No wonder Harry had taken his arsenal up there. Anyone tried to jump first, Harry would shoot them before they got a toe near the edge.
I ran out of the pub, leapt into a moving cab, and hightailed it to the bridge. If he was armed I supposed there’d be a chance he’d shoot me, but I had to explain that this was a mistake that could be cleared up in a day or two. I had the nauseating feeling that something terrible was going to happen on that bridge. He was going to toss himself into the drink; that seemed unavoidable. But knowing Harry, he’d want to drag as many souls into the abyss with him as possible. He wanted to turn the harbor red, I just knew it.