Bag of Bones (8 page)

It went no further—in a houseful of Arlens and with Susy Donahue not quite officially divorced yet (like me, she was an honorary Arlen that Christmas), it hardly could have done—but I decided it was time to leave . . . unless, that was, I wanted to go driving at high speed down a narrow street that most likely
ended in a brick wall. I left on the twenty-seventh, very glad that I had come, and I gave Frank a fierce goodbye hug as we stood by my car. For four days I hadn't thought at all about how there was now only dust in my safe-deposit box at Fidelity Union, and for four nights I had slept straight through until eight in the morning, sometimes waking up with a sour stomach and a hangover headache, but never once in the middle of the night with the thought
Manderley, I have dreamt again of Manderley
going through my mind. I got back to Derry feeling refreshed and renewed.

The first day of 1998 dawned clear and cold and still and beautiful. I got up, showered, then stood at the bedroom window, drinking coffee. It suddenly occurred to me—with all the simple, powerful reality of ideas like up is over your head and down is under your feet—that I could write now. It was a new year, something had changed, and I could write now if I wanted to. The rock had rolled away.

I went into the study, sat down at the computer, and turned it on. My heart was beating normally, there was no sweat on my forehead or the back of my neck, and my hands were warm. I pulled down the main menu, the one you get when you click on the apple, and there was my old pal Word Six. I clicked on it. The pen-and-parchment logo came up, and when it did I suddenly couldn't breathe. It was as if iron bands had been clamped around my chest.

I pushed back from the desk, gagging and clawing at the round neck of the sweatshirt I was wearing. The wheels of my office chair caught on a little throw
rug—one of Jo's finds in the last year of her life—and I tipped right over backward. My head banged the floor and I saw a fountain of bright sparks go whizzing across my field of vision. I suppose I was lucky not to black out, but I think my real luck on New Year's Morning of 1998 was that I tipped over the way I did. If I'd only pushed back from the desk so that I was still looking at the logo—and at the hideous blank screen which followed it—I think I might have choked to death.

When I staggered to my feet, I was at least able to breathe. My throat felt the size of a straw, and each inhale made a weird screaming sound, but I was breathing. I lurched into the bathroom and threw up in the basin with such force that vomit splashed the mirror. I grayed out and my knees buckled. This time it was my brow I struck, thunking it against the lip of the basin, and although the back of my head didn't bleed (there was a very respectable lump there by noon, though), my forehead did, a little. This latter bump also left a purple mark, which I of course lied about, telling folks who asked that I'd run into the bathroom door in the middle of the night, silly me, that'll teach a fella to get up at two
A.M.
without turning on a lamp.

When I regained complete consciousness (if there is such a state), I was curled on the floor. I got up, disinfected the cut on my forehead, and sat on the lip of the tub with my head lowered to my knees until I felt confident enough to stand up. I sat there for fifteen minutes, I guess, and in that space of time I decided that barring some miracle, my career was over. Harold would scream in pain and Debra would moan
in disbelief, but what could they do? Send out the Publication Police? Threaten me with the Book-of-the-Month-Club Gestapo? Even if they could, what difference would it make? You couldn't get sap out of a brick or blood out of a stone. Barring some miraculous recovery, my life as a writer was over.

And if it is?
I asked myself.
What's on for the back forty, Mike? You can play a lot of Scrabble in forty years, go on a lot of Crossword Cruises, drink a lot of whiskey. But is that enough? What else are you going to put on your back forty?

I didn't want to think about that, not then. The next forty years could take care of themselves; I would be happy just to get through New Year's Day of 1998.

When I felt I had myself under control, I went back into my study, shuffled to the computer with my eyes resolutely on my feet, felt around for the right button, and turned off the machine. You can damage the program shutting down like that without putting it away, but under the circumstances, I hardly thought it mattered.

That night I once again dreamed I was walking at twilight on Lane Forty-two, which leads to Sara Laughs; once more I wished on the evening star as the loons cried on the lake, and once more I sensed something in the woods behind me, edging ever closer. It seemed my Christmas holiday was over.

*   *   *

That was a hard, cold winter, lots of snow and in February a flu epidemic that did for an awful lot of Derry's old folks. It took them the way a hard wind will take old trees after an ice storm. It missed me
completely. I hadn't so much as a case of the sniffles that winter.

In March, I flew to Providence and took part in Will Weng's New England Crossword Challenge. I placed fourth and won fifty bucks. I framed the uncashed check and hung it in the living room. Once upon a time, most of my framed Certificates of Triumph (Jo's phrase; all the good phrases are Jo's phrases, it seems to me) went up on my office walls, but by March of 1998, I wasn't going in there very much. When I wanted to play Scrabble against the computer or do a tourney-level crossword puzzle, I used the PowerBook and sat at the kitchen table.

I remember sitting there one day, opening the PowerBook's main menu, going down to the crossword puzzles . . . then dropping the cursor two or three items further, until it had highlighted my old pal, Word Six.

What swept over me then wasn't frustration or impotent, balked fury (I'd experienced a lot of both since finishing
All the Way from the Top
), but sadness and simple longing. Looking at the Word Six icon was suddenly like looking at the pictures of Jo I kept in my wallet. Studying those, I'd sometimes think that I would sell my immortal soul in order to have her back again . . . and on that day in March, I thought I would sell my soul to be able to write a story again.

Go on and try it, then,
a voice whispered.
Maybe things have changed.

Except that nothing had changed, and I knew it. So instead of opening Word Six, I moved it across to
the trash barrel in the lower righthand corner of the screen, and dropped it in. Goodbye, old pal.

Debra Weinstock called a lot that winter, mostly with good news. Early in March she reported that
Helen's Promise
had been picked as one half of the Literary Guild's main selection for August, the other half being a legal thriller by Steve Martini, another veteran of the eight-to-fifteen segment of the
Times
bestseller list. And my British publisher, Debra said, loved
Helen,
was sure it would be my “breakthrough book.” (My British sales had always lagged.)

“
Promise
is sort of a new direction for you,” Debra said. “Wouldn't you say?”

“I kind of thought it was,” I confessed, and wondered how Debbie would respond if I told her my new-direction book had been written almost a dozen years ago.

“It's got . . . I don't know . . . a kind of
maturity.
”

“Thanks.”

“Mike? I think the connection's going. You sound muffled.”

Sure I did. I was biting down on the side of my hand to keep from howling with laughter. Now, cautiously, I took it out of my mouth and examined the bite-marks. “Better?”

“Yes, lots. So what's the new one about? Give me a hint.”

“You know the answer to that one, kiddo.”

Debra laughed. “‘You'll have to read the book to find out, Josephine,'” she said. “Right?”

“Yessum.”

“Well, keep it coming. Your pals at Putnam are
crazy about the way you're taking it to the next level.”

I said goodbye, I hung up the telephone, and then I laughed wildly for about ten minutes. Laughed until I was crying. That's me, though. Always taking it to the next level.

*   *   *

During this period I also agreed to do a phone interview with a
Newsweek
writer who was putting together a piece on The New American Gothic (whatever that was, other than a phrase which might sell a few magazines), and to sit for a
Publishers Weekly
interview which would appear just before publication of
Helen's Promise.
I agreed to these because they both sounded softball, the sort of interviews you could do over the phone while you read your mail. And Debra was delighted because I ordinarily say no to all the publicity. I hate that part of the job and always have, especially the hell of the live TV chat-show, where nobody's ever read your goddam book and the first question is always “Where in the world do you get those wacky ideas?” The publicity process is like going to a sushi bar where you're the sushi, and it was great to get past it this time with the feeling that I'd been able to give Debra some good news she could take to her bosses. “Yes,” she could say, “he's still being a booger about publicity, but I got him to do a couple of things.”

All through this my dreams of Sara Laughs were going on—not every night but every second or third night, with me never thinking of them in the daytime. I did my crosswords, I bought myself an acoustic steel guitar and started learning how to play it (I was never going to be invited to tour with Patty
Loveless or Alan Jackson, however), I scanned each day's bloated obituaries in the
Derry News
for names that I knew. I was pretty much dozing on my feet, in other words.

What brought all this to an end was a call from Harold Oblowski not more than three days after Debra's book-club call. It was storming outside—a vicious snow-changing-over-to-sleet event that proved to be the last and biggest blast of the winter. By mid-evening the power would be off all over Derry, but when Harold called at five P.M., things were just getting cranked up.

“I just had a very good conversation with your editor,” Harold said. “A very enlightening, very
energizing
conversation. Just got off the phone, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“Oh indeed. There's a feeling at Putnam, Michael, that this latest book of yours may have a positive effect on your sales position in the market. It's very strong.”

“Yes,” I said, “I'm taking it to the next level.”

“Huh?”

“I'm just blabbing, Harold. Go on.”

“Well . . . Helen Nearing's a great lead character, and Skate is your best villain ever.”

I said nothing.

“Debra raised the possibility of making
Helen's Promise
the opener of a three-book contract. A very
lucrative
three-book contract. All without any prompting from me. Three is one more than any publisher has wanted to commit to 'til now. I mentioned nine million dollars, three million per book, in other words, expecting her to laugh . . . but an
agent has to start
somewhere,
and I always choose the highest ground I can find. I think I must have Roman military officers somewhere back in my family tree.”

Ethiopian rug-merchants, more like it,
I thought, but didn't say. I felt the way you do when the dentist has gone a little heavy on the Novocain and flooded your lips and tongue as well as your bad tooth and the patch of gum surrounding it. If I tried to talk, I'd probably only flap and spread spit. Harold was almost purring. A three-book contract for the new, mature Michael Noonan. Tall tickets, baby.

This time I didn't feel like laughing. This time I felt like screaming. Harold went on, happy and oblivious. Harold didn't know the bookberry tree had died. Harold didn't know the new Mike Noonan had cataclysmic shortness of breath and projectile-vomiting fits every time he tried to write.

“You want to hear how she came back to me, Michael?”

“Lay it on me.”

“She said, ‘Well, nine's obviously high, but it's as good a place to start as any. We feel this new book is a big step forward for him.' This is extraordinary.
Extraordinary.
Now, I haven't given anything away, wanted to talk to you first, of course, but I think we're looking at seven-point-five, minimum. In fact—”

“No.”

He paused a moment. Long enough for me to realize I was gripping the phone so hard it hurt my hand. I had to make a conscious effort to relax my grip. “Mike, if you'll just hear me out—”

“I don't need to hear you out. I don't want to talk about a new contract.”

“Pardon me for disagreeing, but there'll never be a better time. Think about it, for Christ's sake. We're talking top dollar here. If you wait until after
Helen's Promise
is published, I can't guarantee that the same offer—”

“I know you can't,” I said. “I don't want guarantees, I don't want offers,
I don't want to talk contract.
”

“You don't need to shout, Mike, I can hear you.”

Had I been shouting? Yes, I suppose I had been.

“Are you dissatisfied with Putnam? I think Debra would be very distressed to hear that. I also think Phyllis Grann would do damned near anything to address any concerns you might have.”

Are you sleeping with Debra, Harold?
I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the world—that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor.
Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while you're lying in bed together in a room at the Plaza? Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose before you finally wring its neck and turn it into pâté? Is that what you're up to?