“Still obsessed with that bleeding-edge girl? Clarice something?”
Amanda chimed in. “I think Henry’s sweet, and we would all do well to begin thinking about our next books.”
Unable to help himself, Eddie said, “I suppose that comment was for my benefit.”
“Not at all.” Amanda gave him a china-cold look. “I was chastising myself, if you must know. I think the ideal is to have the next book finished before the last one hits the stores. I wasted too much time this go round, but that’s my plan from here on out.”
Eddie worked on his fillet and horseradish mashed potatoes and had to admit that the food at Grub was nothing short of very good.
“Oh, I have news,” Jackson said, tapping his water glass with his fork. “I’m appalled, of course, but happy for her. My former girlfriend cum former roommate has betrothed herself to Whelpdale.”
Amanda laughed so hard she choked on her water.
“He became a regular customer here and apparently was quite smitten by her complete disinterest in all matters literary. He’s going to marry her and put her through cooking school. She says he’s the perfect eater.”
“He’s going to put her through cooking school with what?” said Amanda, now recovered from the skirmish with her water glass.
Jackson’s bangs fell across his eyes as he shook his head, laughing. “I would have been annoyed if my own lot hadn’t improved so much since the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference, but Whelpdale’s non-writing writing career is going very well. He’s making a lot of money as a ‘manuscript doctor’ and gets scores of referrals from an unscrupulous agent he’s befriended. The agent hints to the authors of the lackluster novels that populate his slush pile that their work has real promise and that he might take them on with a bit of restructuring. He includes in these rejection letters a flyer touting Whelpdale’s services. Great racket, no?”
“That’s criminal,” Eddie said, glad he wasn’t one of the unfortunate souls.
“It would be,” Jackson agreed, “if it preyed on anyone who wasn’t completely lacking in both intelligence and talent. Anyway, Whelpdale’s fishing deeper waters now. He read some book about getting rich by hanging out around rich people, and, sure enough, he found some wealthy literary-wannabe to finance a publication. He’s calling it ProProse. Every story in the thing will be a contest winner, meaning he’ll clean up with entry fees. It’s like vanity publishing for the short story, but he’s also including interviews with real writers and what amounts to a literary gossip column — who’s publishing where, which prize judges are selecting their friends, that sort of thing. That will give the magazine some legitimacy and no doubt boost circulation.”
“Not so unlike what Fadge has done with The Monthly,” Eddie said and then wished he hadn’t.
“Well, I’ve got to hand it to him,” Amanda said quickly. “If he pays for Doreen’s culinary training while removing some of those horrid stories from the desks of real journals, then maybe he’s actually doing the world some good. Speaking of real journals, how’s the Chekhov project coming along?”
“Speaking of literary gossip columns for the vain?” Jackson gave Eddie a pointed look, but smiled it away. “You’re not going to believe this: I actually did receive a rejection that accused the story of being too Chekhovian and another suggesting that Anthony Chernesky would benefit from reading more Chekhov. Eighteen of the twenty journals rejected the story, and the rejections contradict each other all over the place. Not enough setting. Too much setting. Not character-driven. Flimsy plot. Of course, the form letters all say the same thing.”
“What about the other two?”
“One journal still hasn’t responded. The last — some tiny magazine I’ve never heard of that publishes out of some woman’s house in Idaho — actually recognized the story. The editor sent a long letter about the evils of plagiarism but conceded that my choice was, at least, in good taste. She’s the one person I’ll allow to come off looking good in the piece I write.”
They finished with Stilton and port, and Eddie experienced as a warm swell the satisfaction he’d been missing. At that moment, he felt right with the world because he again felt a part of it. He sipped just a little more port, listening to the sounds of conversation and eating from the open dining room behind him, and set his gaze on his lovely wife, who — flushed from her wine and softly lit — seemed to glow from within.
It was a few weeks later, after Amanda left on her tour, that the sourness arrived and lingered, helped along at regular intervals by whiskey and its morning-after aftermath. Eddie knew he was turning feral and promised himself a return to structured living as soon as Amanda was back home. But for now, he needed to survive the four weeks alone. He told himself not to watch the calendar; instead he watched the clock.
At first twice a day and then giving way to hourly counts, Eddie checked the Amazon sales rankings of The Progress of Love, Oink, and Conduct. His book had not yet been officially published, so it was unsurprising albeit disappointing that his number was over a million while Amanda’s and Jackson’s ranked in the thousands, then hundreds.
Two weeks later, though, his book was in the stores and had been reviewed in a few places, including an in-brief review in The Times. He’d expected a full review, but any review in The Times was good. Beside, the in-brief reviews were almost always neutral or slightly positive, whereas the full reviews could be vicious, as Chuck Fadge had found out the hard way. The West Coast papers had ignored him so far, but Conduct had been reviewed in the Chicago, Philly, and Minneapolis papers. The reviews were guardedly mixed, but he hadn’t been savaged. Most reviewers ended with some variant of “We’ll look forward to seeing what the author of Sea Miss writes next” or by suggesting that any sophomore book by a talented writer is expected to be a tad disappointing, a small letdown between the charming debut and the break-out third book.
Still, Eddie’s Amazon numbers hardly budged once publication pushed him into the high six figures. Occasionally, what he presumed was the sale of a single book spiked Conduct into five-figure territory, but it always dropped back into the hundreds of thousands within a few hours. Eddie’s misery only increased, against his best efforts at magnanimity and high-mindedness, when Amanda and Jackson both entered bestselling territory: Amazon numbers under one hundred and reviews in America Today, not to mention everywhere else. His and hers bestsellers, Eddie thought, king and queen of the prom. What they wouldn’t understand is that his sourness wasn’t simple envy. He craved bigger reviews and higher sales — yes, it was true — but he didn’t envy them authorship of their books. He did not want to be the person who had written Oink.
Amanda phoned in regularly with news of large crowds, successful signings, radio interviews, wining and dining. “I’m going to be on national television!” she exclaimed into the receiver one night.
“It’s three hours later here,” Eddie said.
“Need that beauty rest?” she’d asked sharply.
“No,” Eddie lied. “I’ve been getting up early. I’m working on a new book — something I’m really excited about, something that feels important.”
“Fantastic,” Amanda said, compounding his guilt with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm. “That’s great! Now we can all be on TV.”
“All?” Eddie asked, but she’d already signed off with a smooch sound that barely simulated a real kiss.