“How about I hand you the manuscript over lunch?” he said to the agent who phoned. “I promise that if you liked the chapters I sent, you’ll love the whole book.”
“Hell, I don’t even have to read it,” she said. “How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow should work,” Jackson answered. “Half past twelve at Grub? Can you make the reservation?”
That night, working straight through the small hours, Jackson finished writing his first novel.
Chapter fifteen
Eddie Renfros stared at the computer screen, his knuckles locked as he faced the first page of the fifteenth chapter of Conduct, a page that was, after an hour of sitting, still blank. The viola player and her husband were scheduled, according to his outline, to fight over their deaf daughter’s tentatively planned surgery. But Eddie could not shake the belief that these two characters were not combative. As he had grown to know the two as people, he saw that the husband’s reaction to disagreement was avoidance, while the wife sought escape in excitement and pleasure. Neither of them was pre-disposed to direct conflict. Yet to stay on schedule and keep his plot in line, he needed to stick to his outline and force the characters into a full-blown argument. He imagined Amanda laughing at him, saying, “My God, they aren’t real people.”
At this moment, he felt enormous admiration for Henry Baffler — for Henry’s commitment to his artistic ideas, loony though they sometimes were. Eddie also admired Henry for protecting his independence. Henry had no wife to support, no literary reputation to protect, and he didn’t seem to mind living in near squalor.
Eddie took a third coffee break and reconsidered Amanda’s words on the painter Hobbema. It seemed highly peculiar that she should want him to write such a book — a novel about a talented but not especially well-known painter who quit painting in his early thirties. And then it struck him that he was in Hobbema’s position, albeit removed by three centuries and one art form. Perhaps Amanda was telling him something altogether different than what her literal words said. Perhaps she had planted the idea not because she wanted him to write about Hobbema but because she wanted him to imitate the painter — to get a job at the ministry of weights and measures or whatever the hell it was that Hobbema had done. And to quit writing.
He went back to the computer and stared at the words ‘Chapter Fifteen’ until they blurred and then came back together distorted. He played with their letters like an anagram, came up with the word ‘fatter’ but no noun for it to describe. His heart fluttered, as it did when he was nervous before a public appearance, but here he was all alone with just his partially written novel. Again he tried to decode Amanda’s intent. Hobbema just quit, and he could too. No one ever said he had to be a writer. It would be liberating to quit: no more guilt when he didn’t work, no more worries about succeeding at something few people can succeed at, no more thinking about invented lives in the middle of the night.
Eddie took his mug to the dining room table, rummaged through the paper until he found the want ads, and circled every job that anyone might possibly give him. Copyediting seemed most likely, and there was a copyediting gig at one of the major house’s small imprints. An editor at that imprint had been one of the first to reject Vapor, and Eddie had admired the directness of her letter to his agent. Where certain other editors had overextended metaphors about unfinished paintings and vague “editorial” concerns about not having fallen in love with the main character “as a man,” this editor had declined on the grounds that the book “would be a modest seller at best.” It was an opinion he could swallow, not the kind that tormented him with revision possibilities in the middle of the night.
He phoned the number listed and was granted an afternoon interview. He told himself that this didn’t signal the end of his writing career, that he might well get more writing done under the discipline of a job schedule. He reasoned that the less time he had, the more he would appreciate it and the more wisely he would use it. He’d benefit from the variety of occupation. He would write novels precisely because he didn’t have to. Writing could become a treat and a joy, or maybe he’d prove himself one of those writers who can’t not write. Kafka had had a job and so had Wallace Stevens, and that wasn’t even counting all the writers working as teachers. Even the great Faulkner had paused to earn a few bucks from Hollywood.
To prove his point to himself, Eddie returned to his computer and marched his characters through their confrontation and through the first six pages of chapter fifteen — twice his regular daily quota. He showered, dressed in slacks and his only fresh-looking blazer, walked up to his midtown interview, claimed his visitor’s badge at the security desk, and rode the elevator to the nineteenth floor.
The man who interviewed him — and would be his superior if he landed the job — looked to be several years younger than Eddie, and worked not in an office but a cubicle. He shook hands energetically and spoke with the animation and satisfaction of a man whose income, however small, is assured.
“We’re launching a new line of romances,” he said, pushing bangs from his eyes to peruse Eddie’s resume, which highlighted his degrees and his publications but listed little in the way of employment history. “Not exactly the literary work you might have been hoping for.”
Eddie smoothed his slacks with his palms. “Doesn’t matter. I enjoy copyediting. It may be my favorite part of my own process. Seriously. I’m good at it, and I want the job.”
“But can we afford you?” The young man leaned forward as he asked this. His tone was difficult to parse, and Eddie couldn’t discern whether it was serious, lightly joking, or downright mocking.
“I’m not as much above your figure as you might imagine.” Eddie’s voice was husky, his words ending with a cracked laugh. He paused. “Please give me the job.” His tongue sat dry and heavy in his mouth.
“Well, it’s a bit comical to have a well-reviewed author copyediting bodice busters, but you know your own business best and no doubt you’re not the only writer in this line of work. Just promise: only copyediting, no editing. The prose will appall you, but you must leave it alone. Just fix the outright errors and find the typos.”
They agreed on thirty hours per week, because the publishing house would be unable to offer health insurance or the other benefits of full-time employment. Despite the paltriness of the salary named, Eddie felt good as he walked home. He was downright happy about the prospect of some regular income — at least he could pay the interest on their credit-card debt — and pleased with himself for having done something, having taken matters into his own hands. No more feebleness; he had made a decision and was on his way to acting like a responsible man. He nodded to the cops outside the Cuban embassy as he rounded the corner toward home.
When he entered the apartment, he heard the once-familiar rhythm of Amanda’s fast typing on a keyboard. Whereas he could only hunt and peck, Amanda had been properly trained and could type as fast as she could think. He’d always taken pride in his slow, old-fashioned typing, imagined that it improved the quality of his word choices and cadences and put him in the company of those great writers of decades past who worked with manual typewriters. Now, though, he wasn’t sure. If he could type properly, perhaps Conduct would already be completed and he could move on.