“And to think,” Amanda said, “that I could have been charging Eddie for my services all along.”
“But what would that make you?” Eddie said quickly, not meeting her eyes and instead turning to Jackson. “I suppose you’re right about Whelpdale. He sounds shameless.”
“It’s the ‘manuscript doctor’ that gets me. A man who didn’t get a penny for his book and hasn’t written another one, trying to make a living by telling other people what to write. He claims that he recommends the books he likes, post-improvement no doubt, to agents.”
“I suppose anyone can recommend anything to anyone — whether he knows him or not.” Amanda smiled at Henry, whose neck blushed again.
“It’s a swindle,” Eddie said. “I suppose that’s what it’s coming to. Soon we’ll need an agent to get an agent.”
The men finished the food quickly, leaving only a green smear of wasabi paste and a few pieces of pickled ginger on the plate.
“I would have made more if I’d known there’d be four of us,” Amanda said. She returned to the kitchen, where she fanned crackers and cheese onto a white serving platter. Slicing an apple, she said over her shoulder, “Seems as though we all have new prospects of one sort or another. I did some writing myself today. I’m thinking of a whole book now.”
“That’s capital!” Jackson said. “Though I might add that this news is long overdue. You should have three books out by now. You were probably the best writer in workshop.”
Eddie grabbed a cracker as soon as Amanda set the plate on the coffee table. Through bites, he said, “Now I have to defend Amanda’s right to not-write. Should we be writing just to be writing? I always thought Amanda’s decision not to write until she had something to say was an honorable position.”
Measuring her words and looking at Jackson and Henry but not her husband, she said, “Maybe I have something to say now.”
Jackson rose to pour himself more of the whiskey he’d brought. “Hell, I’d defend her right to write about nothing at all. We would all do well to write about nothing whatsoever.”
“Besides,” Eddie said tentatively, “Amanda has all the makings of a great editor.”
Amanda felt her temper quake but kept it underground and still spoke quietly. “Quit talking about me in the third person. You need a Harvard degree or a daddy on a Fortune 500 board to get hired as anything better than a sub-editor these days. I have all the editorial smarts in the world, but I could sit on my lovely derriere in that office for another year and I’ll still be working for people who aren’t as smart as I am.”
“Lovely indeed,” Jackson whispered loud enough for Eddie to hear.
Eddie stared at Jackson before turning to Henry. “So tell us what you think about writing about nothing. What are you working on these days — a new article for (A)Musing Aloud?”
“No, they’ve totally sold out to the mainstream. Actually, I’m onto a novel as well.” Henry looked out the window, then around the room, while the others waited for him to expand.
Finally, Jackson said, “What’s it about? Something more than nothing?”
“An objectionable question. Better to ask the writer: ‘What’s the reality?’”
Jackson grinned at Amanda, then said, “Very well then, what is the reality?”
“The reality is that I’ve started observing a bailiff who eats lunch in the park where I sometimes sit, down from that bookstore that’s closing down. He’s a talkative guy who loves to go on and on about the people who come into court. He’s developed a typology, one that works for both the people he encounters and, he claims, the pigeons he feeds his sandwich crusts to.”
“A courtroom novel. Capital.” Jackson slid a slice of apple between his white teeth.
“No, no. Anyway, it’s small-claims court. My book is simply going to tell the bailiff’s true story. He’s dating now, and you should see the woman. Large and squinty, about ten years older than him,” Henry said, sounding nearly in awe. “So the book will follow his lunch hours and theories and courtship. It will be plotted not by me but by the choices my real-life character makes.”
“The ultimate in character-driven fiction,” Amanda said dramatically, imitating the voice-over on so many movie trailers.
“It will be the prime example of New Realism. Everyone will finally understand what I’m advocating. It’ll be a great book.” So excited that he forgot his shyness, Henry stood and paced the apartment. “It will encompass the decently ignoble — nothing bestial, mind you. I figure it will take me at least a year. I want the writing to be loving, slow, careful, but also blunt and true to the quotidian world.”
Amanda and Eddie exchanged a stare.
“And don’t you think this is a great title? Bailiff. Simple, clear, not deceptive.”
Now it was Amanda and Jackson who traded looks.
“I envy you,” Eddie said after an extended silence. “You have real enthusiasm in your voice.”
“I can’t imagine a man with a wife like yours envying the likes of me. Even my bailiff is luckier in love than I am.”
“Well, Henry, maybe someday soon you’ll find your own large, squinty woman. Better yet, steal the bailiff’s and spice up your novel.”
“That would be authorial interference,” Henry said, serious as stone.
Jackson cocked his head at their peculiar friend. “Speaking of courtship, I need to take off. I have a date tomorrow.”
“Good for you!” Amanda and Eddie said at once, Eddie’s voice given volume by what Amanda interpreted as relief.
“I’m worried, though. I’ve been thinking altogether too much about this girl, and I’m not sure that’s good. I suspect she’s close to flat broke, which is the last thing I need. She’s got family publishing connections, but I doubt they’d be available to me. A foot-in-mouth error I’m trying not to repeat. Anyway, even if her family did welcome me, her father’s connections are a bit obsolete. It’s not the same scene as it was even five years ago. Fadge’ll tell you that.”
“Then why her?” Amanda asked. “Surely there’s other talent afoot.”
“Of course, and I haven’t closed my eyes to the world of attractive women.” He paused. “She’s an odd girl, for sure. She reads enough for six people, I suspect. I don’t know how to explain it except to say that she’s the kind of girl that gets into your head. She makes me want to be a better person.”
Chapter nine
In his house on the hill overlooking one of the widest stretches of the Hudson River, Andrew Yarborough toiled on his critical overview of fiction. On his strongest days, he could admit to himself that, as a fiction writer, he would never shake the detested designation of “mid-list writer.” It was a phrase his editor and his agent liked to toss about, sometimes aiming to cajole him into writing something different. “If you can’t be Philip Roth, think younger,” his agent had said as he began his last novel. At other times, the blasted term was used to prepare him for a lower-than-expected advance. “Think Martin Bland,” his editor had said when making the weak offer on his last novel.
More painful, though, were the signs — increasingly hard to shrug away — that he wasn’t as important an arbiter of taste as he had been. Evidence was mounting that the literary world was trying to sidestep him. Two years earlier, the Lannan Foundation had called him, as usual, for names of promising young writers. But the Foundation had given its award to someone not on his list, to a writer he hadn’t even read. Last year, the call from the Foundation hadn’t come at all. The real blow, of course, had been the coup that led to his replacement, by the odious and unctuous Chuck Fadge, as the editor of The Monthly. His mutinous subordinates and the treacherous publisher agreed, they claimed, that the magazine needed a new look and a new vision. They accused Andrew of fossilized literary tastes, said he was stuck in some muddy past. Now, under Fadge, The Monthly reviewed every goddamn book that called itself a collage and included extended masturbation scenes.