He didn’t look forward to the whole business, but at least it was early days for the relationship, and he’d be wise to nip it in the bud before he found himself married to her, and looking for ways to get rid of her.
Like, Jesus, that insane moment in the motel room when he’d actually contemplated killing Penny. And just suppose he’d taken the fantasy one step further, suppose he’d gone out and come back with a tire iron...
From there his imagination just ran with it. Striking the blow, Jesus, he’d regret it immediately, and the minute she came to he’d — but wait a minute, suppose she didn’t?
The story was essentially complete in his mind by the time he sat down and started putting it on paper, but it morphed and evolved as he wrote it, the way they always did. Once it was done, though, all it needed was a word changed here and there and a fresh trip through the typewriter and it was done. He sent it out and it came back and he sent it out again and it stuck.
He thought of that blond bitch from the DA’s office, had an Italian name. Fabrizzio? Hadn’t wanted him out on bail, wanted him stuck in a cell at Rikers.
Would she think to read his books?
Well, if she didn’t somebody else would. “A Nice Place to Stop” was just another story, a little more violent than most, maybe, but violence was often present in his work, and he’d already found himself wondering what the prosecution would try to do with that, and what a jury would make of it. People in the business knew to separate the writer from the writing, knew that the author of a sweet little juvenile book about cuddly bears and talking automobiles might indeed be a plump grandmother who smelled like cookie dough, but could just as easily be a grizzled old drunk with tattoos and a bad attitude. But were jurors that sophisticated?
They might be, here in New York, where everybody was an insider, at least in his own mind. Still, it would be easier all around if they didn’t happen to know the precise origins of “A Nice Place to Stop.”
He went to the refrigerator, gnawed at a slice of leftover pizza, took out a beer, hesitated, put it back. Sat down again and booted up the computer, opened the thing he’d been working on when — Christ, a million years ago, it seemed like — when those two refugees from the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program had turned out to be cops.
He read some, scrolled down, read some more. Shook his head.
Nothing wrong with it, really, and he sort of saw where he was going. But it felt like something he’d been working on in another lifetime. He was the same person who’d written these pages, he was in fact the same person who’d written “A Nice Place to Stop,” the same person who’d stood in that motel room and contemplated — hell, call a spade a spade, forget contemplated — who’d planned murder.
The same person throughout, but he felt further detached from the writing on the screen than from that ancient short story. He frowned and tried to find his way back into it, writing a sentence to follow the last one he’d written. He looked at it, and it was all right, it fit what preceded it. He took a breath and let himself find his way, batted out a couple of paragraphs and stopped to look at them.
Nothing wrong with them. Still...
He went to the fridge, reached for the beer, put it back, checked the coffeepot. There was a cup left. Cold, but so what? He took it back to his desk and closed the file, opened a new one. Without really thinking, he let his fingers start tapping keys.
Fifteen minutes in, MS Word asked him SAVE NOW? He clicked the Yes box, and, when asked for a title, keyed in Fucked If I Know and clicked to save what he’d written under that title. Not quite in the same league with “A Nice Place to Stop,” and maybe he should call this one A Nice Place to Start, and maybe it was. But Fucked If I Know was okay for the time being, and God knows it was accurate.
He reached for the coffee, found the cup empty. Couldn’t even remember drinking it.
He put his fingers on the keys, went back to work.
Roz said, “Give me a reality check, will you? It wouldn’t be for a couple of years yet, but do you think I ought to enroll Hannah in Hebrew school?”
“You’re a lapsed Catholic,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of converting to Judaism?”
“No, why would I do that? I rather enjoy being a lapsed Catholic.”
“And Hannah’s Chinese,” he said. “But you said Hebrew school.”
“Right.”
“Well...”
“If I don’t send her,” she said, “isn’t she going to feel left out? She’ll be the only Chinese kid in Park Slope who doesn’t have a bat mitzvah.”
He said, “Is that from some comic’s routine? Did Rita Rudner try it out on Letterman last night?”
“I’m serious,” she said. “At least I thought I was serious. Is it really that ridiculous?”
“What do I know? I don’t live in Park Slope.”
“Well, I’ve got a few years to think about it,” she said. “How come you picked up before the machine? I thought you were screening your calls.”
“Phone calls haven’t been a problem lately. Maybe my fifteen minutes of fame are over.”
“Don’t count on it, honey.”
“No,” he said, “I guess not. When the case goes to trial is when it starts in earnest. Unless they catch the prick before then, and then the phone’ll really start ringing off the hook. Not just reporters wanting to know how it feels to be vindicated, but the department head from the New School saying of course they’ll want me back in the fall, plus all the old friends I haven’t heard from, telling me they knew all along I was innocent. Jesus, I sound like a cynical bastard, don’t I?”
“Actually,” she said, “you sound like your old self.”
He flexed his fingers, looked at the computer screen. He’d been at a natural stopping place when the phone rang, and had picked up without really thinking.
“My old self,” he said. “That’s pretty interesting.”
“Not that the John Blair Creighton we all know and love can’t be a cynical bastard. And ironic. Didn’t Kirkus comment on your almost diabolical sense of irony?”
“Devilish, actually, but that’s close enough.”
“Devilish is better, it sounds more playful. Well, ironically enough, you old devil, this may not be an entirely bad thing.”
“How’s that?”
“I know what you’re going through, to the extent that it’s possible for anyone but you to know it, and I don’t want to minimize it, but—”
“But there’s a bright side? I’d love to know what it is.”
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but all in all it’s not a bad career move.”
He got a cigarette going and smoked it while she talked. She’d had a phone call from an editor at Crown, where his most recent book had been published. Sales had been disappointing, and his editor was no longer with the publisher, had in fact jumped ship before his book hit the stores, which certainly hadn’t helped his cause. It was the second book in a two-book contract, and Crown had had no further interest in him, or he in them, truth to tell, but this editor, whose name he didn’t recognize, had called Roz to talk about something else entirely.
“And then it just happened to occur to her to ask about you. I represented you, didn’t I? She thought she remembered that. And of course they’d published you, and people there had good feelings about your books, in spite of the fact that sales hadn’t been what any of us had hoped for, quote unquote.”