For two days, Henry enjoyed the Renfros’ hospitality, which included the sizeable pleasures of sweetened coffee, good water pressure, and hearing Amanda pad around in bare feet. The sofa pulled out into a bed more comfortable than Henry’s own, and he realized that a clean apartment with hardcover books and CDs and nice things on the wall calmed his mind. New stories tickled his brain, exciting but soft like feathers. On the third day, however, when Henry remembered to phone his absentee roommate, he found out that he was planning to tell his Southern Baptist family he was living with his girlfriend. Henry realized the dire nature of his situation.
“I’ve lost everything!” he said to Eddie that morning. “I’ll never find such a cheap and easy living arrangement. My clothes weren’t much, but they were my clothes. And my books — and the years of handwritten margin notes. And my copies of Swanky.”
“Henry,” Eddie said kindly. “Is there anyone you can email or call? Family that could help out?”
The last time Henry had seen his brother, he’d just lost the condo flanked by stone lions, lost their grandparent’s furniture store, and relapsed after thirty days in rehab. “I’d rather starve,” he told Eddie.
“People always say they’d rather starve, but as soon as their stomachs growl, well, the call doesn’t seem as hard to make.”
“That’s people, but you may have noticed there’s something wrong with me. I actually would rather starve than speak to my brother. He can’t help me anyway. There’s no one I can call.”
“The starvation outcome seems increasingly likely, Henry, unless you can find a job quick. You and I are alike in one sense: no one warned us that writing is now a gentleman’s profession, an occupation only for those who don’t need to make money.”
A series of images of himself at work blinked across Henry’s mind, clicking in and out as in a child’s viewfinder: screwing in the grounds holder of an espresso machine, spreading mayonnaise on a slice of white bread, handing ticket stubs back to cinema goers, netting goldfish to transfer into a portable plastic bag.
“Maybe now that the book is done I can spare the time,” he said.
Amanda, who had been watching the street from the window, chimed in. “Is your novel completely finished? Yes? It’s obvious then: you saved your bailiff and now maybe he can save you. You’ve got to query agents right away. I’ll help you research some.” Just before the doorbell sounded, she added, “Jackson’s here.”
“I’m sorry to come over uninvited,” Jackson said as he entered the room. “But I wanted to talk to Henry. I think he’s got to strike while the iron is hot.”
“Precisely what I was just saying,” said Amanda.
Jackson and Amanda helped Henry compose a query letter on Amanda’s computer, while Eddie, drinking in the living room, shouted occasional comments across the blue shoji screen.
“Should I say much about the nature of the book? Maybe hint — only hint — that it deals with the ignobly decent?” Henry asked his friends.
Eddie called out, “Maybe you should just say that it’s a realist novel about a court worker in New York. You know, keep it simple.”
“You need to make it sound even more interesting than I’m sure it is,” advised Amanda.
“I know. I’ll just say that I’d like them to consider a novel of modern life, the scope of which is in some degree suggested by the title.” He paused, liking the idea. “I wish I could tell them how close the manuscript came to conflagration, plead with them to save from obscurity the book I saved from oblivion.”
“That’s exactly what you have to do,” Jackson said. “Include clippings, for godsakes. Name the TV stations that covered you.”
“Wouldn’t that be tacky? I couldn’t do that.” As he contemplated the idea, Henry’s neck heated, the warmth spreading up each side and climbing over his jaw and into his cheeks.
“Oh, hell.” Clearly exasperated, Jackson asked Amanda for the phone and took it around the screen.
While he was gone and Amanda rummaged for scissors to cut out The Times report, Henry searched the internet for Clarice Aames. There were several websites paying her homage, but Henry was disappointed to discover that none of her fiction was available online. He would have to write to the editor of Swanky and get his copies replaced.
“What are you doing?” Jackson asked when he returned.
Henry closed the browser.
“Never mind,” Jackson said. “I just got off the phone with my agent and asked her if she’d heard about the writer who saved his book from the fire on New Year’s Eve. She actually saw your jump on late-night news.”
Henry shrugged.
“She loves the story.”
“But she hasn’t read it,” Henry said.
“Not the book, the story. She loves the story. Fantastic publicity, she said. Anyway, she wants to read your manuscript. Right away — an exclusive. We can take it over so she can read it while you’re waiting on the other queries, which you are going to let Amanda write for you. No ignobly decent crap, and we’re certainly not going to call extra attention to the title.”
Henry smiled at the idea of an exclusive; he wouldn’t need to borrow the money to copy the manuscript.
Jackson walked him through the cold, sunny day to a large office building in midtown, joking that he should take an ad out, à la Whelpdale, as “fiction security” or “the novel guard”. Jackson laughed at his own tag line: “Call him when it’s your only copy.”
After Jackson delivered his name to the security desk, they were issued clip-on badges and allowed to cross the shiny-floored lobby and board the elevator for the eleventh floor.
Though the building was grand, the office had been subdivided with cheap screens to accommodate all four agents who formed the agency. Jackson introduced Henry to Suzanne Reznick, a middle-aged woman dressed in the print skirt and tinkling silver-and-bead earrings of a younger woman. She had interesting eyes, somewhere between green and hazel. Henry tried to invent a word for the color.
“Call me Suze,” she said, shaking his hand. She wrote down the Renfros’ telephone number and Henry’s email address and told him she’d be in touch.
She hugged Jackson, kissed him on both cheeks, and told him to phone the next day. “We have so much to talk about. First serial rights, for starters, and our foreign rights person is working on the Asian markets now.”
“Can you find your way back to Casa Renfros?” Jackson asked when they were back outside.
Henry grinned. “You know me, man on the street.”
That night, Jackson returned with pizzas and bottles of Chianti. His high spirits infected everyone but Eddie.
“I just can’t believe,” Eddie said to Henry, “that you have had to struggle so hard and in such squalor only to lose everything.”
Amanda glared at her husband. “But of course, to every man of mettle comes an opportunity, and Henry’s has arrived. I have a superstitious faith in Bailiff. Henry, I only hope you won’t forget us when you’re famous.”
“I’ll never forget my friends,” Henry said, enjoying the pleasant sting of young wine on his tongue.
Jackson set down his third piece of pizza crust, refilled his glass, and crossed his legs. “So then, Amanda, you’ve read about the days and joys of our bailiff?”
Amanda smoothed her hair and held her smile. “I haven’t yet had the pleasure. I’m sure that when I do my faith will no longer be superstitious.”
“Well, Henry,” said Eddie, “I hope that your success will be long lasting. That’s what I wish for you, that your book will stay on the shelves. To have had even a small reputation and to have outlived it, that’s the worst. It’s like anticipating your own death.”