How I Became a Famous Novelist (3 page)

Hearing him out was the closest thing I did to charity, but today I didn’t want to deal. So to keep him away, I’d brought Hobart’s Sunday
New York Times
along with me. I ate hunched over the magazine. I stared at the ads for houses in the back, sprawling Gothic castles in places called Bass Harbor and Elm Neck, and wondered how I would get the requisite 3.5 million dollars. I flipped through an article about the next generation of kitchen designers.

Turning the page, I saw a full-page photograph that captivated me.

It was black-and-white, and this is what it showed: in front of the shattered window of a discount electronics store, the mystery novelist Pamela McLaughlin was squatting, clutching a notebook. She was leaning over the chalk outline of a body. Her tube top was pulled tight over her fulsome cleavage by the weight of a pistol in her shoulder holster, and she stared grimly at the camera. Next to the chalk outline lay a book. Unclear what book, but you don’t have to be the steel-willed and firm-bodied, half-Vietnamese, half-Cuban crime reporter/freelance investigator Trang Martinez to realize that’s an important clue.

It was part of one of those photo essays they have sometimes. This one was called Best Sellers, and it was all portraits of writers who were currently on the best-seller list.

The Pamela McLaughlin photo suggested an editorial message, like “readers are America’s real victims.” You might agree, if you read Pamela McLaughlin’s latest,
Fashion Victims,
wherein Trang penetrates the lingerie industry in a desperate ploy to stop a serial killer who targets makers of bridal wear. For one regrettable chapter, Trang poses as a pre-op transvestite to lure a depraved leather magnate into an unwitting confession. The tagline on the paperback was
Blood is the new pink
.

I took a bite of fish, and with a mouthful of saccharine sauce turned my attention to the opposite page: the sunglassed eyes of Nick Boyle, my beloved author of action thrillers, gleamed against the light. Nick Boyle was wearing a wind-breaker, and a baseball hat that said “USS Hornet—CV-12.” Framed against the sky, ocean spraying behind him, he was at the helm of a hulking World War II amphibious landing craft.
True Nick Boyle fans wouldn’t call it a landing craft, of course. They’d identify it as an LCT Mk-5 or whatever, because you’ll find his books baffling if you can’t keep track of different pieces of military hardware.

Nick Boyle has the smushed-up face of a bullfrog. His cheek-skin could be stretched into a full yard of normal face. I counted twenty-six folds of faceflesh, and eight isolated bulges. But he was grimacing with vindictive American anger. And he pulled it off. He looked ready to start setting wrong things right with the business end of a 20mm machine gun.

The eyes of Nick Boyle, who’d given me so much weapons-related entertainment, accused me of civilian weakness. He looked at me with revulsion, knowing I was unworthy to stand beside him in the crush of battle. He looked at me as though the best thing I could do was get the hell out of his way, so he could launch armor-piercing shells and win freedom for pantywaists who didn’t know what to do with it. Later, at some salty bar where war banners hung, he and his comrades would mutter grimly over bourbon and nod at each other’s bloodstained shirts.

I took a sip of Nepalese nut soda and turned the page.

Next was Josh Holt Cready. He was done up like a Civil War tintype. Clever enough, although it looked like those oldtimey photos lame families get at amusement parks. Josh Holt Cready was the precocious author of
Manassas,
a novel about a precocious author named Josh Holt Cready who retraces the steps of his ancestor who fought for the Union and died at Cold Harbor. Writing a novel about the Civil War is lazy. Brother against brother, battles in peach orchards and wheat fields, all those Biblical names, the poignant geography, Abe Lincoln
and slavery hanging over everything. There’s so much built-in pathos, it writes itself.

But being lazy myself, I couldn’t fault Josh Holt Cready for cheating. So I didn’t hate him. Not even when his book first hit the best-seller list. Or when awestruck profiles of the fresh-out-of-Yale prodigy started cropping up everywhere. I certainly didn’t hate him when
Entertainment Weekly
ran a three-page feature and talked about him as though you were some kind of crazed nihilist if you failed to be floored by his brilliance. I didn’t hate him when his smarmy wide eyes stared out at Ann Curry on the
Today
show while I tried to get through a bowl of Froot Loops. And I didn’t hate him when he was briefly linked to Scarlett Johansson. Or when Sean Penn signed on to play Grant in the
Manassas
movie, to be directed by Tim Robbins.

In a burst of not-hatred I turned the page so fast I gave myself a paper cut.

There was Tim Drew, he of
The Darwin Enigma,
posed with his arms folded, in a natural history museum, in front of a Victorian phrenology model.

Turning the page again, I was confronted by a man of about sixty. In contrast to Nick Boyle, the skin on this face was stretched tight around the skull like a drumhead. Two thin lines of beard converged on his chin into a vulpine point. He was sitting on a park bench, shot in dreary overcast gray. Along his arms and legs, birds were perched. Different kinds and sizes of birds. One nestled in the lap of his corduroy pants.

The picture, like all those in the Best Sellers series, was identified only by the author’s name and his current best-selling book: “Preston Brooks,
Kindness to Birds
.” This was just too much, the old bastard sitting there with birds on his arms. I
smushed some fish rind on his face, threw him in the garbage, and said good-bye to Sree.

It’s likely I never would’ve thought about Preston Brooks again if it wasn’t for an e-mail that I read when I got back to my desk.

2

FROM: [email protected]

TO: undisclosed recipients

RE: announcing . . .

Hello all—

Sorry for the mass e-mail, but not sure when I’ll see some of you, and wanted to give you the news. It’s been a year and a half since I first met James. Back then I thought he was the only good thing about DC:) Last weekend we went up to the Shenandoah Valley, blankets, hot chocolate, lovely B&B. James played me a song on the piano (I know, almost too cheesy, right?) and—you know what’s coming—WE’RE GETTING MARRIED! So weird even to type it, but I’m giddy.

Okay, so planning time, guys—wedding is a year from April. I know it’s a long way off, but now you’re committed! That’s the only time we can get the whole James clan in from Australia. And it’ll be cherry blossoms, Virginia spring—the works! Plus all of you are coming! OF COURSE you’re all coming. Mark those calendars. Big drunk wedding, cheesy band, crazy relatives, the whole deal.

Anyways, drop me a line, let me know what’s happening. I’m still doing diligence (and avoiding office politics!) at Mintz Cohen. Probably get a chance to see you New York folks a bit this spring, and also hoping to get back to Granby and show James all the places I puked. You guys ALL have to call and fill me in!

Cheers,

Polly P.

Polly Pawson

Associate

Mintz Cohen Condon Keane

Washington, D.C.

—E-mail sent to Pete Tarslaw

Now, I’m not saying I’m blameless in all this—far from it. But read that e-mail. Start with the address—I don’t care if “pollypawson” and “ppawson” and “pawsonpolly” were all taken, “pollypizzazz” is unacceptable.

Imagine reading that e-mail like I did, after everything I just told you. And I think I won’t seem quite so bad.

The news wasn’t a surprise, really. She’d mentioned this “James” in our awkward and infrequent conversations. Losing Polly didn’t bother me. That false-hearted overcapitalizing strumpet was welcome to marry whatever Pacific Rim lout would call her missus.

The problem was the wedding.

I could picture it. I’d be seated at a table with the disgusting sort of apprentice adults with whom Polly had now made common cause. Strapping men with dimpled chins in khakis and blue oxford shirts, with false casual laughs and slappable shoulders, who look like they’re fresh from crewing the first boat and are now in the glorious rise as junior analysts at Bain. Men already accustomed to putting their Black-Berries and laptops through airport security as they fly back from Denver and Dallas.

If it sounds like I’m describing someone specific, by the way, I am—this dude named Chad Cooley who went to Granby with us, a guy we used to mock when we’d see him jogging, who
was now Friendsters with Polly (this was before the Facebook Revolution). I’d stuff artichoke appetizers into my face as this vapid ant regurgitated magazine articles and spouted misremembered movie quotes and faulty sports analogies.

Also at the wedding would be women, talking about how beautiful Polly looked. Secretly of course they’d all be full of the primal jealousy that surges through women at weddings. Their crazy woman-brains would be telling them they’d better get cracking if they wanted to avoid a life of barren spinsterhood.

So there’d be that to deal with.

Worst of all, Polly’s wedding would be filled with Australians. Men who forked snakes in the sun-baked desert, and popped the eyes out of dingos with old anzac rifles, and surfed between gaping shark mouths, all while downing 20oz. cans of Victoria Bitter. Men trained by gap years padding about Thailand and India in a drunken stupor, flipping off the local constabulary. These men, friends of the groom, would dare each other to feats of athletic drinking. One of them, the one called Bonky or Rhino, would collapse off his chair half conscious as his comrades hooted with raucous delight.

The desperate women, bridesmaids especially, would swoon over these marsupials, and wedding-weakened ladies would be treated to vigorous matings on the coatroom floor.

Back at my table, some well-meaning bald guy who’s Polly’s boss or something would turn to me and ask, “So Pete, what do you do?”

I’d answer, “I write fake application essays for foreign kids.”

My neighbor would look at me with enough shame for two. Then, first chance he got, he’d wheel himself—for some reason I pictured this guy in a wheelchair—to the bar.

Rumors of the shattered ex-boyfriend whose pathetic presence was a blight on the reception would trickle through the hall. The aunts and cousins and the reverend would all hear about it. As I stumbled to the bathroom, Polly, glowing and radiant, would clutch the firm arm of her new husband, and point at me, and whisper to him about the sorry wretch she toyed with in her younger days. Then they’d kiss, full on the mouth, as the entire assembly applauded.

I’d end up carried home by my two remaining college friends, Lucy and Derek. They’d haul me back to the Marriott as I alternated between begging them to stop for pancakes and passing out.

Polly would win. The whole event, from the reading of First Corinthians 13 to the dainty little chocolate tarts with raspberry filling and the creepy old guy who dances with the little kids, it wouldn’t just be a wedding. It would be a celebration of how Polly defeated me.

That’s how I thought about it at the time.

Now, you might suggest that I could’ve just declined Polly’s invitation. But that would be admitting defeat. I’m lazy, but I’m no quitter. I wouldn’t let her have the satisfaction of telling her friends, “I wish Pete had come,” and later sending me a little note about how “unfortunate” it was that I “couldn’t make it.”

Again, I’m not proud of feeling this way. I’m just trying to let you know where my head was at.

After work, on the way back to Somerville, I stopped at a liquor store and picked up a case of Upstream Ale. I don’t even like Upstream Ale. It tastes spiky like it’s brewed from a mixture of club soda and creamed corn.

But the label features a grinning cartoon salmon. He’s flinging himself into the air from a rocky stream. He’s smiling like he loves the challenge. That was the spirit I needed.

A few hours later I was sitting on the couch in my apartment, watching TV with seven empty bottles of Upstream Ale in front of me, eating some smoked almonds I’d found in the bowels of our kitchen cabinets.

Next to me was my roommate, Hobart. He was eating instant mashed potatoes right out of the pot. This was the only thing he ever ate.

Hobart had hair that looked like a nest made by an incompetent bird. He seemed not to know how to shave quite right, so tufts of fur were always lingering on his face.

But lifewise, he seemed to have me beat. Hobart was a grad student at Harvard, studying for a joint MD/double PhD in chemistry and economics. The only books on his shelves were volumes of medical reference and a thin guidebook called
The Gentleman’s Code
:
Etiquette for the 21st Century Man.
This was produced by “MacAllister Distillers, Crafters of Fine Spirits Since 1818.” Hobart had gotten it for free with a bottle of whiskey he bought one night after a pained conversation with his girlfriend back home in upstate New York. At least half of his conversations with this woman were followed by hours of piercing sobs. This was his major flaw as a roommate. On the plus side, he was rarely home. When he wasn’t studying, he was a research assistant at Lascar Pharmaceuticals, where they made medicines to control attention deficit disorder.

Hobart and I sat on a secondhand beige couch that sagged and slumped like an old lady’s bosom. We watched our TV, which had had a green tint ever since an incident three months ago when I threw my shoe at a commercial for a Zach Braff movie and scored a solid hit.

I’d like the reader here to really get a sense of how pathetic our apartment was. It’s important, storywise. Just know that there was a scratchy gray carpet splotched with Rorschach stains, random bolts and things sticking out of the walls, and deep fault lines in the plaster. There were no posters. I’ve never had a poster I wasn’t later embarrassed by, so why bother? Some US Postal Service crates held my old paperbacks. A review copy of
Peking,
a novel Lucy had sent me, had been on the coffee table for months. We used it as a coaster.