So it would be garbage, David thought, looking down, ashamed. His eyes fell on the partially serrated stainless-steel knife resting nude on the Formica table. Unable to question Gott at length, it was obvious they would be left with an interview that would consist of denials. Other than the pure sensation of having an interview with him, there would be no news in this story — nothing of real benefit to history. The fact of the event would be news, not what David contributed. I was there, he could say, and go on pompously about his feelings. The knife was there. In a moment it could be in the old man’s heart. That would be real news. History. Justice. Fulfillment.
But the knife was flimsy — probably it would bend comically, or its dull tip would fail to penetrate, and if he plunged hard enough, it might rebound and take out Chico’s eye.
He could decline to write the piece.
He could—
“Gott?” a woman’s voice asked. David glanced up and saw Gott’s small head turn to the side. Chico’s large body, leaning forward to ask questions, had cut off David’s view of her, but in her hand, emerging from a coat, he saw the long black nozzle of a gun.
“No,” he heard the rasping voice say.
She spoke in the language of the holidays, softly, like his mother reciting a prayer while she lit Hanukkah candles.
And then the world ended. Something splashed on his face. The noise was ghastly, screeching at the world, filling it with sound. The Formica table was streaked with elegant lines of blood. Gott’s head seemed to move on its own, trailing goo like a jet’s tailstream, disappearing under the table’s horizon.
Horror roared in David’s brain — he leapt up, his thighs banging hard against the table. Crowds shouted at him, and in his brain he was screaming for mercy. Chico seemed stuck in place. David pulled himself up onto the booth. She stood at the edge of the table, sweet and demure, and pointed the gun down at the fallen old man, firing into his already lifeless body. She spoke again, screaming this time, in Hebrew.
“I’m a Jew!” David shouted, crying to her like a frightened baby. “Don’t shoot me! I’m a Jew!”
Marion frowned at Fred. “What’s bothering you?”
“I told you. I’m making these guys a fortune!” He paused to see if this astonishing fact registered. She stared back stupidly. “A fucking fortune! And Bart turns down offers without telling me, sets up my next book with Bob and I’m barely consulted—”
“Why did you sign the contract, then?” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. You just got angry about this?”
“He doesn’t think I can write a book without Bob.” Fred said, admitting this to himself fully for the first time.
“Bart? Oh, come on.”
“He doesn’t. Because of the rewrite.” Fred closed his mouth, kneading his lips in and out. He wanted to shut himself off, stop talking about it. He was rich. Soon he would be famous. Shut up already.
“Everybody makes changes for their editor. I’m sure Bart thinks Holder is useful because of the marketing. He’s done a great job selling your novel — you have to give him that.”
“Goddammit. Can’t you, my wife, at least give me credit for writing a good book—”
“Fred!” Marion stood up. “I can’t take this. You’re not happy when you can’t sell a book. You’re not happy when you do sell a book. You’re not happy when you can’t write. You’re not happy when you can. You’re scared the book won’t succeed. And now you’re not happy when the book is a success? It’s insane!”
Fred laughed. She was right. “You know me so well.”
“That’s right. And you’re damn lucky to have me. ‘Cause from now on no one’s gonna tell you when you act like an idiot. You’re too successful to criticize.”
He carried her statement with him into the world, like a photo in his wallet, to remind him of home. Now when he went to Karl’s poker game, he was greeted enthusiastically. Karl. Tom, and even Sam Wasserman (who had once threatened to leave the game if Fred continued to attend) all asked him to read their works in progress. They stopped the game to listen to his account of having lunch with the Book-of-the-Month Club people, they asked if he planned to adapt his novel to the screen, and hooted down his honest reaction — that he doubted he would be asked to.
He took out Marion’s sentence and looked at it: they once despised me, he repeated over and over. Their performance of admiration and deference was so convincing, so seductive, that he found himself wondering: maybe when they read the book (he had had advance copies sent to them) they realized how wrong they were.
After the game, Sam Wasserman asked him if he wanted to share a cab since they were both going in the same direction. That had been true for the last two years, but Sam mentioned this geographical marvel as though it had only now occurred to him. Fred agreed and also accepted Sam’s invitation to come upstairs for a drink. They tiptoed past the bedroom (Sam’s second wife was asleep in there; his first now lived in Great Neck) into the study, where Sam poured cognac.
“Writers are so competitive,” Sam commented, staring at his snifter.
“Yeah — the game gets pretty loud.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of the game.” Sam drained his glass in a quick motion. “I was thinking of Tom Lear. You have to watch out for him. He fights dirty in the clinches.”
“Really? Tom’s always been great to me. Very supportive of my book before anybody else.” That was the closest Fred had come to chiding Sam for his earlier rejections.
Sam shook his head. “He’s smooth. You should be careful what you say to him.”
“Like what? You mean, ideas?”
“No, no. He’s not a thief. Tom hates other people’s success. I don’t know why. We writers aren’t in competition, right? I mean, it’s not like batting averages — there’s no such thing as somebody leading the league in writing. Just because Anna Karenina is a masterpiece, it doesn’t mean we don’t want to read Crime and Punishment.”
“That’s true,” Fred said. It sounded all right, but it wasn’t true nevertheless. No doubt Dostoevsky had been sick and tired of hearing about how great Tolstoy was: he probably compared how many full-page spreads he got in the Moscow Times Book Review and fumed if Raskolnikov came up shy of Anna’s ad budget.
Sam nodded at Fred with great significance. “I don’t know why Tom feels another writer’s success has to be diminished for him to feel good about his work.”
Fred felt a headache coming on. Sitting in the stuffy room playing cards had wearied him, and the cognac seemed to go to his head. The lamp lights glared harshly. “I … I don’t see that in Tom. He’s … I’ve never heard him put down another writer’s work. I mean, he kids around with you — but that’s to your face.”
“He’s not kidding.” Sam stood up. “Do you want some more?”
“No thanks. I’d better be going.” Fred felt uneasy, almost trapped.
Sam picked up the bottle on his desk and started pouring more into his snifter. “Maybe he isn’t backbiting when he talks about your book. I just assumed he was lying.”
This is bullshit. Fred told himself. Sam was an asshole, he’d known that from the moment he met him. He couldn’t trust anything Sam might have to say about Tom — Sam was jealous of Tom’s more glamorous reputation and was often stung by his wit. “Lying about what?” Fred asked, emphasizing “what” in a challenging and skeptical way.
Sam shrugged. “He talks as if Bob Holder wrote the book.” He sucked on his teeth and went on casually: “Says he had you rewrite it almost page by page.” Now he looked Fred straight in the eyes. “Told me you gave him the first hundred pages to read before you submitted them to Holder. He says not one word of those pages is now in the book.”