By day he went through the house, searching for Craven’s room, but there was no sign that any of the other rooms were occupied. Well over a week into the visit, he had still not caught even a glimpse of the cook. The pile of blankets on the pantry floor never seemed to have been slept in. There were, he thought, too many Cravens and too few chefs, and then he winced as he remembered another line from Velvet Fury
Too many ravens and too few corpses
for it seemed that the syntax of Craven’s sentences was rewiring his head.
He would leave, he told himself, he would pack his things and depart that night. He even managed to fill and close his suitcase and sit in the chair awaiting darkness. But darkness was scarcely come when the light was there again, again cast upon the ceiling. He abandoned the suitcase to pull the chair again to the window, speculating on what Craven was writing, the imagined words swirling about within his head, settling briefly, then swirling off. The words would, he realized, continue to spin about, continue to batter the insides of his head even after he had left the house. Better, he thought, to see the actual words, to read what was there on paper, to allow the words to set and solidify and thus sink lower in his head and be forgotten. The imaginative process can ruin a good head, he thought, and must be brought to a halt before it is too late. The actual was the only way to stop the whirligig of the possible. There seemed no choice but to once again read Craven.
But when, and how, was one to go about it? It could not be done by night, for at night Craven was in the greenhouse himself, composing. Sindt could not simply ask Craven to show what he had written, for Craven had claimed not to to be writing at all. During the day, too, Craven came and went about the grounds and might well discover him as he forced his way into the greenhouse, particularly if there were more than one Craven. And where, too, was the chef? He had never seen the chef, but that did not mean that the chef had never seen him. Perhaps the chef was observing him even now.
He finally settled on early in the morning, thinking it possible, perhaps, to sneak down the stairs and out to the greenhouse after Craven had left it, while Craven waited for him at the breakfast table.
He slept, or tried to, through most of the night, finally jerking fully awake with the cold light of dawn. Having slipped on his socks, he slowly granched the door open. The stairway was empty. He made his way slowly down, turning around the narrow staircase, dragging his hand along the wall for balance. He crossed the hall carefully, eased the front door open, went out.
The air was sharp, crisp. He could feel the prick of gravel through his socks. He picked his way carefully along the side of the house, crossed to the greenhouse.
He peered in. The greenhouse was empty. Trying the handle, he found it locked, so he pressed his shoulder to the metal edging of the door and bore down. He could see the wall and door bulge, the metal grating against the glass, the lock slipping. And then the door burst open and he was in.
He approached the simple desk, the chair. On the desk: two sheaves of paper, the one on the left higher, a pen between. He approached the leftmost, found the paper empty, blank, but of course Craven had always moved the paper from left to right.
He approached the rightmost stack, found the top sheet blank. Turning it over, he found the reverse blank as well. He leafed down through the stack but there was nothing, no words, not a mark.
When he turned he could see, through the ceiling of the greenhouse, the window of the tower. Through that window, distorted by both the glass of the window and the roof of the greenhouse, he glimpsed a figure. Perhaps Craven, he thought, Cravens, one of them. Or perhaps the cook. Don’t forget the cook. He had a feeling that everything had already occurred. The figure was looking down, he thought, looking at him.
Not knowing what else to do, he turned from the gaze, sat down at the desk. He could guess what was expected of him. Picking up the pen, he began to write.
After nearly ten months of struggling to write, he started. He continued writing uninterrupted until he again, both in prose and in life, found himself sitting in the greenhouse, pen in hand. He had, he realized, allowed himself to be used. Yet, nevertheless, I have now approached some sort of conclusion, he wrote. All that remains is for me to destroy this manuscript as well.
Ninety Over Ninety
During his tenure at Entwinkle House, Philip Kossweiller had purchased fiction that received stunning acclaim but hadn’t, to quote his boss, Vincenzo Darba, sold a good goddamn. Well, admitted the former publicity chief who insisted that everyone call him “Cinchy” and who enjoyed pronouncing himself “a boss of the people,” sure they had sold, but they hadn’t broken even. Well, sure they had broken even, but they hadn’t made much. Not enough to sneeze at anyway.
“Think blockbuster,” Cinchy told Kossweiller. “‘Every book a blockbuster’: that’s your new motto.”
“Blockbuster?”
“No,” said Cinchy, jutting himself forward conspiratorily. “Wait a minute. Blockbuster isn’t enough for us. You and me, we’re not the sort satisfied with just blockbuster. Go for the three b’s.”
“The three b’s?”
“Big-ass blockbuster.”
“That’s only two b’s.”
“Big-ass. Block. Buster. Three b’s. No more of this literature crap. Sure, it’s good, but literature’s the icing on the cake. You don’t spread icing all over an empty plate, do you? What have you got to do before you spread the icing, Karsewelder?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Darba.”
His boss gave him a look that seemed pained, slightly constipated. “Not Mr. Darba — Cinchy. You see,” said Cinchy, throwing his hands up, “that’s your problem. You have to bake the fucking cake first.”
“What cake?”
“Go bake the fucker,” said Cinchy, boss of the people, clapping Kossweiller hard on the back and pushing him out into the hall. “God help you, Karsewelder. Bring me something that sells for a change. Blockbuster!” he yelled after him.
Back in his office, Kossweiller examined his fingernails, then tried to clean underneath them with his lower incisor. He stared at the pile of manuscripts on his desk, then went back to reading the typescript for Robert Barney’s O Fickle God, a “historical novel of the West” overladen with poorly veiled attacks on contemporary middle America. According to Barney’s agent, it was written in a “fluid, beautiful prose,” a stylistic strength that Kossweiller was having some difficulty locating. Perhaps this made it blockbuster material.