The final success caught Giles as much by surprise as it did anyone else. As soon as Tom had taken the book and Giles had received his two thousand dollars’ advance (no more than that and it had been Tom’s first notion to offer him five hundred) I kicked him out of my place. Giles tried to give me half the advance, but of course I didn’t take it. Still it’s rather grimly pleasant now to recall the strength and reality of his gratitude—then.
He went off to New Jersey somewhere, got married in 1973 to an older woman, and got to work on a new novel. I’d see him now and then, when he was in the city, and he was always unfailingly polite, even humble, but he never offered to show me the new novel while he was working on it and you can bet I never asked.
And now he was almost thirty and his second novel was there before me, bound and ready for the reading—and I had not yet read it.
6 THOMAS VALIER 4:45 P.M.
I picked up a copy of Evergone resenting that it was there, resenting that it looked as good as it did, resenting that it would do as well as I knew it would.
«Is one of these for me?» I said with an attempt at lightness.
«No,» said Tom, «not just yet, Darius. These are autographed door prizes. Tomorrow, Giles will be autographing a new printing of hardbacks of Crossover. Each one will be numbered—»
«And there’ll be a drawing and the lucky winners will get autographed copies of Evergone. I understand.»
I looked at the volume again, opened the cover, and glanced at the front-flap matter. It was clear at once (as I had suspected from the title) that it was a sequel to Crossover or, at the very least, an independent book set in the Crossover universe. I couldn’t blame Giles for trying to ride the wave but I bet myself four to one that it was a poorer book than the first and four to three that it would flop. I wasn’t so foolish as not to recognize a strong component of envy there; I was tilting the odds in my own favor egregiously.
Giles’s picture filled the back of the jacket. He was caught by the photographer in a look of particularly cow-like dejection and it must have been taken at least a year earlier, for his mustache (which he had begun to grow after he became a published writer) was still relatively thin and it had not yet reached the state of tangled undergrowth that now spread over the upper lip and into either cheek.
I next opened the book to the dedication page. Crossover had not been dedicated at all—Giles said he didn’t feel the book was worthy and that a dedication would amount to an insult to the person thus honored. I couldn’t argue the point, lest it seem that I was pushing for the dedication myself.
The new book did have a dedication: To my Wife.
I resented that, too. What the hell had she done for him?
Literarily, I mean.
I placed the book back on the pile and said grudgingly, «I suppose it can’t help selling.»
«It had better,» said Tom, looking despondent. «The advance was ten thousand.»
«What?» I had never heard figures like that from Tom. I didn’t know Prism Press could count into five figures left of the decimal point. I had had a three-thousand advance for my own forthcoming book and Tom had acted as though he were cutting his heart out and placing it, still palpitating, in my greedy claws.
«It was either that,» Tom said, «or forfeit the paperback rights.»
«In that case,» I said, «you have a bargain. The paperback ought to net you at least a hundred-thousand advance and you get half of that.»
«Well, maybe. You can never tell when the bubble will burst. The paperback houses have been overpaying drastically for some books that haven’t made it, and for all I know they’ll draw the line at this book. As a matter of fact,»—he dropped his voice—«this book isn’t as good as Crossover.»
I said, «You didn’t think Crossover was all that good either, when I first gave it to you.»
«Whatever I thought, this one isn’t as good.»
Naturally! I thought to myself, with a kind of grim smugness, that the new one didn’t have me plugging away at it.
«What do you care?» I said. «It will sell anyway.»
«So much the worse,» said Tom, in what seemed like downright despair, «because in that case the third book doesn’t go to me.»
«He didn’t cross out the option clause in the Evergone contract, did he?»
«No, but he is going to ask, in writing, for a fifty-thousand advance toward his third novel and when I can’t meet that—and I can’t—he’ll be free to go to one of the big houses. Harper’s perhaps. An option clause, my friend,» he said bitterly, «only holds authors who have nowhere else to go to.»
«Like me, Tom?»
«I didn’t say that.»
I shrugged it off. Tom’s estimate that Evergone wasn’t as good as Crossover made it possible for me to sit inside the Prism Press booth and sample the book. It was in what was clearly Giles’s choppy style and I came across a forceful and roughly eloquent passage at first opening. It petered out, though, into a sinuous trail of trash, twice as long—something I would never have allowed to stand if I had had anything to do with the book.
I spent twenty or thirty minutes at it (Giles could still keep you reading, even without my help) while Tom began to close down the booth for the day. I was actually cheering up a little and then a new voice distracted me.
«Darius!» The breathy catch-in-the-throat quality was instantly recognizable. I didn’t have to look up to know it was Teresa Valier, the other half of Prism Press.
«Darling!» I said dutifully, as I rose, put the book back on the pile a second time, and embraced her.
7 TERESA VALIER 5:25 P.M.
Teresa wasn’t a bad object for embracing. She was a large, plump, cheerful woman with brown hair combed straight back and a loud laugh that sounded as though it were attached to a spigot that could turn on full but in no other way.
She wasn’t laughing now; nor was she cheerful. She linked arms with me and began walking, so that for a moment I nearly lost my balance. She was a forceful woman, who gave the impression of enveloping you in a way that had nothing to do with her size.
She said, «Come on and let’s have a drink while Tom’s closing up.»
I half trotted to keep pace with her. «How come Tom is handling the booth himself?»
«It’s Sunday,» she said, «and I don’t want the girls working on Sunday.»
«Tomorrow’s Memorial Day,» I said, «will they be working then?»
«No. It’s us again. I’ll be handling Giles’s autographing session and Tom will be at the booth. Then I’ll relieve him and he’ll be seeing some booksellers. Actually, Darius, I want to keep him occupied. He’s not exactly a happy man right now.»
«I noticed,» I said. «I even notice that you’re not happy, either.»
We went down by escalator, which was always full, up and down, throughout all the sessions. At the foot of the escalator was a bar, which was apparently a good place, for it was always full, too.
Teresa found us a pair of seats at one end. «Have a drink,» she said.
«You know I don’t drink,» I said, and helped myself to a pretzel.
«Ginger ale,» she said, «on Prism Press. How’s that?» And she ordered a vodka sour for herself.
I said, «What’s this? Generosity? How come?»
«I have my reasons. Are you going to the party tonight?»
«At seventeen-fifty a ticket?» I said, «I considered it and rejected it. The fact that I even considered it is itself laughable.»