What a trap that is. I tried it myself, I tried to be a writer. You make your living writing novels, it doesn’t matter what kind of novels they are, you begin to think maybe you are a writer after all. So I tried some mystery stories. I read Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and I tried some stories. One sold, for a penny a word, to a magazine that isn’t around any more, called Shock Action Detective Tales. The other three nobody wanted. Samuel said, “Ed, I don’t think you’re comfortable in the short story form.” With that dead frog expression on his face. Meaning, stick to the sex books, sonny, that’s all you’re good for.
I tried articles, too. That was even worse, I never even got anything in shape to be submitted. I discovered Reinhard Heydrich, the beast of Belsen, and Samuel said, “He’s been done too much, Ed.” I didn’t know he’d been done at all.
That’s the trouble, you can’t try to sell to magazines you don’t read, because you don’t know what’s old hat to them. But the magazines I felt I could take a stab at were all too crappy for me to read.
The point is, I’m not a writer. Or have I made that point too much already? I don’t give a damn, it seems to be the only point of my life. Through a fluke of fate I have been let into a room where a fantastic feast is being presented. All around me people are moving up the line of the table, the food’s getting better and better. I wasn’t hungry before I came into this room, but smelling the smells of the food, seeing the other people eat, now I’m hungry. But the only problem is, you can’t get any of the food unless you ask for it. And I don’t speak the language, all I can do is point. And if all you can do is point, all you get is boiled potatoes. So here I stand, eating my boiled potatoes, watching the feast going on all around me, and wishing I knew the language.
Well, it’s midnight. I have a small white plastic clock on my desk, we got it with Plaid Stamps, and it says midnight, twelve o’clock. November 21st is gone, absolutely gone, and I haven’t written a word of the sex novel. Just this junk, this feeling sorry for myself.
I came in here at ten-thirty, full of ambition, determination and terror. After I finished this afternoon’s wasted effort I went out to the kitchen and got into a stupid argument with Betsy. One of our stock stupid arguments, the one about Fred.
Fred was in the kitchen, sitting at the table and eating a vanilla yogurt, and she said, “Hello, Daddy.”
I said, “Hi, Fred.”
Betsy turned around from the refrigerator and said, very cold, “Her name is Elfreda. She is a girl.”
“When you want a fight,” I said, “you jump on that, or something else, or whatever you want. When you don’t want a fight, I call her Fred and you never say a word.”
“We won’t discuss it,” she said, “in front of Elfreda.” And she turned her back on me and went back to the refrigerator, whatever she was doing there.
I didn’t need that, I really didn’t. It isn’t my fault if something went wrong at the A&P or she hates the Buick or whatever set her off, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to pay for it. So I kept it up, in front of Elfreda, and pretty soon she was crying and Betsy had those white marks on her cheekbones that meant she was enraged beyond endurance and I was ready to murder everybody in sight and make page 3 of the Daily News. That’s my big threat around here: “You want to make page 3 of the Daily News?”
The thing is, I have no respect for myself.
Maybe if I call Lance tomorrow and explain things, I’m having a little trouble, I may have to skip a month, but I’ll be back as good as ever, I just need a little time off...
Maybe he’ll say, “I’m sorry, Edwin.”
Five books in a row have been late, that’s the problem. Raving Passion, due on Friday, in on Monday. Then in July, Beachcomber Sin, two days late, due on Monday, in on Wednesday. August, Summer Sex, five days late, due on Thursday and I didn’t get it in till the following Tuesday. That was when Samuel said, “This is three times in a row, Ed.”
“Oh,” I said, with my foolish grin. “Are we keeping track?”
“Yes,” he said. “Spack called Lance yesterday afternoon, he said the shipment’s one book missing. He wanted to call Rod, he wanted to know what’s the problem.”
“Oh,” I said, with my foolish grin dying. “I’m sorry about that.”
Because Spack is the publisher, down in New Orleans, and he’s paying the twelve hundred dollars every month because he thinks these Dirk Smuff books he’s getting in are still being written by Rod Cox. Why he would think somebody with a successful spy series at Silver Stripe, getting three thousand a book, plus a thousand from France, money from Italy, Japan, Mexico, all those places, plus one of the books sold to the movies for twenty thousand dollars, why Spack would think somebody with all that would keep turning out this garbage for him every month I don’t know, but he does. And Rod has already told me, the one thing he doesn’t want is for Spack to call him on the phone sometime and start talking about the books. Because Rod doesn’t read these things, why should he?
I have no readers, you know. I mean, among people I know, friends of mine. Rod can hand me a book and say, “Here, I just got copies of this one,” and then I take it home and read it and it’s great and I call him and say, “It’s great,” and he says, “Thanks.” Who am I going to hand Escape to Lust to? Even Betsy stopped reading these things, about a year ago.
Escape to Lust was the September book and I really tried to get that one in on time. After what Samuel had said when I brought in Summer Sex. And I missed. September 30th was a Saturday, which meant the 29th was the deadline, which meant I started the book on the 19th, and I didn’t turn it in till Monday, October 2nd, three days late. I needed that extra weekend again.
This time, Samuel called me on Monday morning, a little after nine. I was still in the rack, I tend not to get up much before noon, but Betsy woke me and Samuel said, “Are you going to have the book in today, Ed?” He sounds just as snaky and nasty on the phone as he looks in person, which is his big difference with his employer, Lance.
“Sure,” I said. “I finished it last night. I’m really sorry about not—”
“Try to get it down here by eleven,” he said. “We held up the package so we could put your book in with it if you got it done over the weekend.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “Thanks a lot, Samuel. You know I really tried to—”
“We have to ship it out by eleven,” he said.
So it wound up with all of us going into the city, me driving, Betsy beside me, Fred in the back. Betsy never let me forget that she had wash to do, she had things to do. But there’s nothing you can do with a car in midtown, and the car was the only way we could get in there on time, and I didn’t want the Buick towed away, so I needed somebody to sit in the car while I parked it on Madison Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets and dashed into the Solinex Building and up in the elevator to the seventeenth floor and into the door with Lance Pangle on the glass and gave Samuel the manuscript.
Then I had to stand around while Samuel gave me a lecture. “Everything is supposed to run smooth, Ed,” he said. “Spack doesn’t buy from anybody else, we supply him exclusively. Do you know he puts out sixteen books a month?”
Yes, I already knew that. Spack puts out sixteen books a month and pays twelve hundred a book, of which Pangle gets ten per cent as the agent. That makes Pangle better than twenty-three thousand dollars a year. Plus all the other writers he has, other stuff he has, Rod and Pete and Dick and some science fiction writers and all sorts of people. Anyway, out of the sausage machine of which I am a part, twenty-three thousand a year for Lance Pangle.