Gun Church (8 page)

So entranced by what I’d written, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. The phone hadn’t done much ringing since the day Janice Nadir moved upstate.

I picked up after catching my breath. “Yeah.”

“You’re such an asshole, Weiler. Don’t you ever return phone calls?”

Technically, I guess Meg Donovan was still my agent, a position her colleagues no doubt coveted as much as receiving placebos in a late-stage cancer study. Although I hadn’t seen her in years, Meg was still more friend than agent, really. She was my only remaining link to the Kipster.

“It was you who called?” I asked, pretending I’d noticed the red message light flashing. I hadn’t.

“You haven’t listened to the message yet?”

“Come on, Donovan. You know how it is with me and the phone. The last time someone called with good news, the Mets won the World Series.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve spent the better part of my life lending credence to that assertion.”

“Shut up and listen. Your second fifteen minutes of fame might pay off.”

“A reality show? Survival of the Fittest Has-beens? I’ll kick Webster’s little black ass.”

“Very cute, but no. Besides, my money would be on the dwarf.”

“Isn’t it your job to be on my side, Meg?”

“It’s a lonely place, being on your side. My job’s to tell you the truth.”

“Agents and the truth, now there’s unexplored territory.”

“If you haven’t managed to alienate me after all these years, you’re not going to do it now.”

“Okay, Meg, what are we talking about?”

“A book deal.”

Book
deal
: those two words made me weak. If I’d been born with a vagina, it would have been wet.

“What kind of book deal?” I asked.

“Haskell Brown at Travers Legacy has had a big Eighties retrospective series in the works for a year or so and—”

“A year, huh? And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”

“Don’t be a dunce cap, Weiler.”

“So I wasn’t part of the original retrospective.”

“Very good. You should take the
Jeopardy
home challenge. Now can we talk money?”

“Who was in the original deal?”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Kip.”

“If I don’t, who will? Names, ranks, and serial numbers, please.”

“The usual suspects: Bart, Nutly, Kate Silva, Marty Castronieves … ”

I couldn’t believe how much hearing those names hurt me. Surely the omission of my name should have come as no shock. I think maybe it was that I knew the Kipster had once been able to write circles around them all, even his Highness, Marty Castronieves.

“Earth to Planet Weiler, are you reading me? Over.”

“Sorry, Meg. I was lost there for a minute. Do the others know I wasn’t part of the original package?”

She hesitated. “Come on, Kip, of course they know. Publishing makes
Oedipus
Rex
look like a play about distant cousins. Now can we stop talking about what was and get to what is? This could be a nice paycheck for us both.”

“Sure.”

Meg wasn’t exaggerating. Travers Legacy was willing to pay me big bucks for my backlist, which—not having published a novel in about fifteen years—was all the wares I had to sell.

“They’re going to do big print runs on your first three novels and might send you guys out on tour. Lots of press, lots of stores, even late night TV. Think of it: you, Bart, and Nutly back on the road together, and you could get away from that dreadful Garden State Brickface Community College.”

“Yeah, it could be just like one of those British Invasion tours with Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Swinging Blue Jeans.”

“Weiler, this is your chance to get out of Dodge.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get out of Dodge.”

“What?”

“It’s a rights deal, not a book deal,” I said.

“It’s a money deal.”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s not to know? No one’s pounding down the door for you, honey. I’m the one who parlayed your saving those kids into this deal and, trust me, it wasn’t easy. You may have really straightened yourself out, but it’s the Kipster people remember in this town. Around here, you’re still that boorish, coked-up horn dog who turned his silk purse talent into a sow’s asshole.”

“And,” I said, “if the sales numbers were good on
Clown
Car
Bounce
,
The Devil’s Understudy
, and
Curley
Takes
Five
, they’d still be lining up to suck my dick.”

“If my bowling ball had square corners, it wouldn’t roll. If, if, if … ”

“Look, Meg, I’m not ungrateful and I know it’s a miracle you still talk to me after all the bullshit and heartache I put you through, but can you stall them a little while? Tell them I want to be sure I can handle the road again.”

“Fine. I’ll tell them whatever I have to, but other than pissing away a lot of my hard work and a fat payday, why exactly am I doing it?”

“So you can think of a way to have the deal include a clause for a new book.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. At least I didn’t hear her collapse to the floor or beg me to call 911.

“A new book?” she said at last. “You’re writing again?”

“Yes, sort of.”

“Can I see it?”

“Not yet.”

“So you’re willing to blow the biggest money offer we’ve had since MTV actually played videos because you’re sort of writing again?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“This ain’t old times, Kip. I’ve got lots of other clients who pay my various mortgages, but you’re all you’ve got.”

“I know.”

“There won’t be any more offers like this.”

“I know that too.”

“Okay, I’ll ask, but they might think you’re being difficult like the Kipster they all know and hate. This might queer the whole deal. You understand that? Are you sure this is what you want me to do?”

“Strangely enough, Meg, it is.”

When she clicked off at the other end, my hands were shaking. It had been many years since I’d burned a bridge, and I remembered it being much easier as the Kipster.

About an hour after I got off the phone with Meg, the St. Pauli Girl showed up on my doorstep with three bags of groceries. Did I have mixed feelings? Fuck no, especially when I saw her smile. It was like a love letter in the
Times Book Review
. Those smiles, the lighting up when you came into view, the brush of fingers against cheek, the first desperate hug, that first kiss are more powerful than a locomotive. But the flip side is always more insipid, because you don’t notice the individual aspects of attraction when they’re going, only when they’re gone. You can feel yourself falling in love, not out of it. By the time you’ve noticed the fading, all the color’s been bleached out.

Love?
Who was I kidding?
I’d be bored with Renee soon enough. I always got bored. It was in my nature. My fame, even the frayed and threadbare variety with which I was now afflicted, guaranteed me a steady stream of eager young women like Renee or bored women like Janice Nadir. I may well have been a self-absorbed prick, but I wasn’t so shut off that I didn’t recognize the underlying current of anger in my boredom. Every first kiss, every orgasm—genuine or suspect—was a reminder of persistence and loss: the persistence of my inconsequential fame and the loss of my talent.

Still, I smiled back at the St. Pauli Girl. She had already occupied my attention longer than anyone in my sorry tenure at Brixton, with the exception of Janice Nadir. And why not? Renee was easy to look at, fucked like a demon, and was as yet untouched by the bitterness of age. No pillow talk of limp penises for the St. Pauli Girl. My inevitable boredom didn’t prevent me from enjoying the onset of romance, no matter how brief or ill-fated. I was an asshole, not anhedonic. And when I smiled back at Renee, I was smiling as much at the three bags of groceries as at her.

Other women had tried this sort of mothering, you-look-like-you-could-use-a-good-home-cooked-meal approach on me before with little or no success. Sometimes I enjoyed the meal, sometimes the sex. Seldom both. On those most rare occasions when I did, my partner didn’t. Janice Nadir tried this routine early on, but abandoned it almost immediately. She was a bright woman. I hoped the St. Pauli Girl would catch on quickly too.

When I opened the door for her, she put the groceries down on the table, felt my smile with her fingertips, and kissed me hard on the mouth. I returned the favor.

“What’s on the menu?”

“Me,” she said without a hint of guile. “I thought we could work up an appetite.”

Smart girl.

The fucking was spectacular, if not quite as ferocious as it had been the last few nights. As soon as we hit the sheets, I realized I had been too quick to dismiss the meaning of the grocery bags. Even as we were otherwise engaged, I detected subtle, barely perceptible signs that tenderness was already seeping into the relationship. There was warmth in her sighs, less urgency in my thrusting, gentle caresses. And when the St. Pauli Girl nuzzled her cheek against my chest and fairly pulled my arm over her back for a post-coital cuddle, I was sure of it. I managed not to run screaming. It was actually kind of nice. Maybe it was too early and there was still too much ground to cover for me to get bored.

She made us grilled chorizo, avocado, queso fresco omelets with chipotle salsa and garnished with chopped cilantro. This wasn’t your typical Brixton fare, not by a long shot. Brixton was your basic ham, eggs, grits, scrapple, bacon, American cheese, and ketchup kind of place. Around here, if you didn’t need to chase it down with Lipitor and baby aspirin, it wasn’t food. And when she pulled the bottle of fine French Chardonnay from my fridge, I knew the St. Pauli Girl meant business. She might’ve been able to scrape together the omelet ingredients from stores in surrounding towns, but she definitely had to go to Stateline to get the wine. During dinner, I had actually reached my hand across the table and placed it atop hers.

“I heard you had some trouble at the diner today,” she said, while doing the dishes.

“You talk to Jim?”

“Come on, Ken, the whole town knew five minutes after you left Stan’s place. Are you okay?”

“You would know.”

She walked away from the sink, threaded herself into my arms and sat in my lap. “Much better than okay,” she whispered, her lips touching my ear. Then she kissed me gently. When our lips separated, she just sort of stared at me.

“Stan Petrovic isn’t the kind of man you should be messing with.”

“
He
messed with me.”

“I heard, but you punched him.”

An involuntary smile appeared on my face. “I guess I did.”

Renee frowned. “If Jim wasn’t there, would you have … you know, would you have done that?”

I jerked my head back. “What are you getting at?”

Her body stiffened. “Nothing.” She stood up and went back to the sink to finish the dishes. “I’m not getting at anything. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

I walked up behind her and put my arms around her. “Too late for that.”

“I guess.”

I told her about the call from Meg Donovan and the Travers Legacy deal. That seemed to excite her.

“They offered you
how
much?”

“You heard me. It’s a lot more than I make teaching here.”

“And what did you say?”

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you just take it?”

“I’m not sure I can explain it in a way that will make much sense to you.”

Renee actually slammed the dishes in the sink and pulled out of my grasp. “I’m young, not stupid.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. The thing is I’m not sure I can explain it to myself in a way that makes any real sense.”

“Try.”

“It’s not that I don’t want the money. I do. It’s that all the other people included in this deal, they’re still writing. Go into any book store, go on Amazon and you’ll find their books. Mine are so long out of print you can’t even find them on the discount racks. My agent got me included in the deal because Frank Vuchovich got himself killed.”

She turned to me, brushed the back of her hand across my cheek. “But it’s still your work, Ken. What does it matter why someone buys it or reads it as long as they read it?”

I winked. “Spoken like an agent. You could have a bright future in the business.”

“Brixtonians don’t have futures.”

Christ, what do you say to that?

She saw the question in my eyes and rescued me. “You didn’t answer me. Why does it matter to you why they included your books in the deal?”

“Because in New York, I’m still a joke. No, I’m not even a joke. I’m a punch line to a bad joke.”

“You’re not a joke to me,” she said in that earnest way only the young can and not sound ridiculous. The St. Pauli Girl rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re here, not there. I can’t hear them laughing.”

“I can. I couldn’t before Meg called, but I can now.”

“Listen, Ken … you should take the money and get as far away from here as fast as you can.”