Corkscrew (29 page)

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'That's common, you know,' Bryce said. 'A traumatic experience, and people block it from their memory.'

'Yeah, I know,' Wayne said.

'So he doesn't know who did it, and he doesn't know why,' Bryce said, 'and he doesn't know if they're waiting out there to finish the job.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

'So when he gets out of the hospital,' Bryce said, 'he starts searching back, trying to get to that moment of the beating,
understand
it.'

'Uh huh,' Wayne said.

Bryce looked at him. He didn't say anything.

Wayne said, 'And?'

'That's all,' Bryce said. 'I mean, that's all I have so far.'

'Well, who beat him up? Why?'

'That's what I haven't worked out,' Bryce said. 'I thought, this week, that's what I'd work on. If you thought it was a good, you know, setup.'

'Sure, it's a good setup,' Wayne said, 'but you need more than that.'

'Oh, I know.'

'And it's gotta come from you, Bryce,' Wayne said. 'You know that. If I say it was this person beat him up, or that person, for this or that reason, then it isn't your book any more. And the idea is, this is your book.'

'Oh, I know, I know,' Bryce said. He smiled and said, 'It's gonna be mine, but you're gonna help me make it happen.'

'Absolutely. And on the other…'

'I saw that. You brought me some more pages.'

'I mentioned it to Joe,' Wayne said.

Bryce felt a little pang. He said, 'Oh? You saw Joe?'

'He wanted to know how we were coming along,' Wayne said. 'I said you'd found something that I thought was gonna be good, gonna work out, and you were at work on it, and he wanted to know when he could see pages.'

'I don't show Joe pages,' Bryce said. 'I show him the book when it's done.'

'This time,' Wayne said, 'he's more comfortable if he sees pages. I told him, in a couple weeks you'd probably have enough to show him. You can send him a hundred pages or so, a couple weeks from now, say, the middle of May.'

Bryce didn't like this. 'That's not the way we've always done things,' he insisted.

'Once he sees you're back at work,' Wayne said, 'he'll calm down. But you know yourself, this isn't a normal situation. By the next book,
your
book, things will be back the way they were.'

'But this time,' Bryce said, 'I have to show him pages.'

'Just to keep him calm,' Wayne said.

The next Wednesday, the first week of May, they came to open the pool. Bryce went out and stood out of the way to watch them do it. The water was unappetizing when the cover was first folded back, oily-looking and gray and metallic, but he knew the chemicals would clear that up in a couple of days. When the water was clear, he'd turn the heater on. Saturday, you could swim in it, and so far, the weather prediction for Saturday was very good: sunny, low- to mid-sixties.

The story about the computer salesman in the hospital wasn't going to work. He couldn't think why the man had been beaten or what he could do to trace it back. It was a dry hole, a dead end. Before Saturday, he had to have something else, something new, something better.

What was working, and very well, was
The Shadowed Other.
He liked what Wayne was doing with the original idea, and he could see more or less where it was going, and he was very interested in making the book just as good as possible. He spent time thinking about that story, as though it actually were his own, and he liked to sit at the computer and tinker with it. He didn't do too much of that, because it was very good as it was, and also because any changes he made he'd have to clear with Wayne, and he wanted to be sure he could justify them. But those parts of his day felt good, working on that book, at that time he felt exactly the way he used to feel, at the computer, the story rolling out.

They're digging a swimming pool, he thought, and they come across ancient Indian burial mounds. Sacred Indian land, and this radical Indian group attacks the house, to burn it down.

With his left hand, he brushed cobwebs from his face.

Wayne and Joe had lunch, late in May, to discuss the first hundred pages of
The Shadowed Other.
'You do miracles with Bryce,' Joe commented.

'He's doing it himself,' Wayne said. 'He was just thrown off his pace for a while, that's all, things got to him, he got confused. All he needed was another writer, another novel writer, somebody who knows what it is, just to sit there and talk to him and listen to him. And now he's unblocked.'

'He certainly is.'

'This book is coming out of him, I bet it's faster than he's ever worked before.'

'It's prime Bryce Proctorr,' Joe said, 'that's all I know, and all I care, and I'm grateful to you, Wayne.'

'I'm glad I can help.'

'I have a few notes,' Joe said, 'I thought it would be easier to discuss them with you, and then you can pass them on to Bryce. I know he doesn't like to come to town these days.'

He knows, Wayne thought. He knows, and he'd rather not know. What's important to him is the brand name, keep that brand name solid and everything will be just fine. He likes Bryce, and he likes me, and if he can do this without having to admit to himself he's doing it, what's the harm? Bryce's reputation stays solid, his income remains high, and I'm a lot better off than I was before. Where's the downside? There is none.

Wayne remembered, way back when he'd first met Joe and told him about the secret pen names, Joe had said, if he had any reconstituted virgins on his list, he didn't want to know about them. So that was true. Here's one, and he doesn't want to know about it.

Susan was in the pool, and the two men sat on the terrace in the sunlight. 'So he likes it,' Bryce said.

'He's very happy,' Wayne told him, 'and he said no more pages, don't worry about it, he knows everything is fine now, just go ahead and finish the book.'

'Everything is fine now,' Bryce echoed, but his voice was flat.

This was the difficult part, keeping Bryce in line. If only the man could relax and enjoy it, if only he could say, 'What the hell, I've got a ghostwriter, I'm taking some time off, I still get half the money, and I'll get back to it when I get back to it.' But he couldn't do that, unfortunately; the thought of not working on his own novel just made him too scared, as though his not being able to work
today
meant he wouldn't be able to work
forever.

Wayne didn't want to try to deal with that fear, because he didn't want to bring it out on the surface, where they could all look at it and Bryce could get even worse. Somehow, Wayne had to keep Bryce from losing heart, even though he wasn't really working.

He said, 'Bryce, have you figured out any more about the Indian burial mounds?'

'No, forget that, that doesn't work, that's, I don't know, juvenile. Indian raids in Connecticut, today. I'll put them in war paint, I suppose.'

'Birch-bark canoes,' Wayne suggested.

'From Sears,' Bryce said. He seemed more cheerful now.

Wayne said, 'So what've you got?'

Bryce rubbed his face. 'I think and think,' he said, 'and I don't get anything. Nothing at all this week. I like working on your book.'

'Is that enough for you?'

'No!'

'I didn't think it was. Can I make a suggestion?'

Bryce looked at him, hopeful but wary. 'Sure,' he said.

'First,' Wayne said, 'you remember the deal, this story is yours, it has to be yours or you won't be happy with it.'

'Yeah, sure, I know.'

'But I can make a suggestion once in a while.'

'Oh, please. Please.'

'Okay. I think you gave up too quickly on the story about the guy who murdered the woman he didn't know. I mean, nobody knew he knew her.'

Bryce cocked his head, gazing off. 'You think so?'

In fact, Wayne did not. He thought the story was suited to a paperback original published around 1954, and the woman's brother would be a gangster, probably in a gambling racket somewhere.
Kill Me Slowly
, it would be called.

But Bryce had to work on something, had to at least
believe
he was at work on something, and of all the fragments and remnants he'd come up with,
Kill Me Slowly
was the closest to coherence. It had a storyline, it had characters, it had a few scenes.

If Wayne could get Bryce to concentrate on that story, and stick with it for a while, everything would be okay. Just until
The Shadowed Other
was finished, and accepted by Joe, and paid for. Then Wayne and Susan would have a million dollars that Mark Steiner could invest for them, and Wayne could go on doing the magazine pieces, and Susan would still have her job, and they'd be set in that terrific apartment on Central Park West. He wouldn't even
start
another novel, not even if he thought of one, and if he was concentrating on the magazine pieces he doubted he'd even come up with another story.

And Bryce, after the acceptance of
The Shadowed Other,
could sink or swim on his own. All Wayne had to do was steer Bryce through these rapids. And remember never to call his idea
Kill Me Slowly.
Smooth water lay ahead.

So he said, 'I think that story has stuff in it that you can use, that can help you get into that subject you write about so often, the other possibilities besides what really did happen.'

'That's true, isn't it?' Bryce said. 'It's just — I don't see anything between when he does it and when he confesses to the brother and the sister. What you said the first time, it's all too interior, he's got nobody to talk to, nothing to
do.'

'Well, that's where my suggestion comes in,' Wayne said. 'What if he meets the brother and the sister early on? Not long after the murder. But in a different context.'

Bryce considered that, slowly nodding. 'Seeks them out,' he said.

'Sure.'

'Wants to know more about the woman he killed. Killed her, but didn't really know her.'

'That's right.'

'Tries to learn about her through the brother and the sister.'

'It's worth fiddling with.'

'The second woman,' Bryce said.

'What second woman?'

'That's the title,' Bryce said. 'The first woman is the one he killed. The second woman is the one he's trying to find out about.'

'That's good,' Wayne said.

There was another party Saturday night, at the big weekend house of people named Hendrickson. Bryce had been right, the social life up here was varied and full. And Wayne and Susan fit into it immediately, probably better than Bryce, because it was mostly couples. Susan in particular nestled in as though the world had merely been holding a place for her here all these years, and Wayne glowed in the light of her pleasure. He loved to see Susan happy.

And everybody here was friendly, everybody was comfortably well-off, and by now most of them recognized Wayne and Susan as being a part of the group. 'You really have to get a place up here,' several people told Wayne.

On the way home, in Bryce's BMW, Susan in front, Wayne in back, Susan said, 'I really like the Hendricksons. I like them all.'

'So do I,' Wayne said.

'They're great people,' Bryce agreed.

'They kept saying,' Susan said, 'we should get a place up here.'

'They said that to me, too,' Wayne said.

Bryce said, 'You could do that. Why not?'

Susan said, 'You know, I'm taking two weeks off early in June. I could do some house-hunting then. Bryce, would it be too much if we stayed with you for part of that?'

'Stay the whole time,' Bryce offered. 'Wayne, you bring your laptop, we can both work.'

'That's perfect,' Wayne said. 'You on
The Second Woman,
me on
The Shadowed Other.'

Three weeks later, on the Saturday, they drove up in the forest green Toyota Land Cruiser they'd just bought. Early June, bright sun, already talk in the neighborhood of drought. Mrs Hildebrand greeted them like old members of the family and helped them carry their luggage up to the guest room, where Bryce had moved in a large refectory table to serve as Wayne's desk, putting it in front of one of the windows. The view was of the pool and the hilly woods beyond. Bryce's office was on the same side of the house, just beyond the guest bathroom, with the same view.

After lunch, Susan went swimming while Wayne and Bryce sat in the living room to read each other's work for the week.
The Shadowed Other
was almost finished. Wayne believed they'd be ready to turn it in to Joe before the Fourth of July, giving him the holiday weekend to read it.

As to
The Second Woman,
progress there was more difficult to gauge. The first week, Bryce had worked with manic energy, as though something in him that had been imprisoned had finally been granted release. He'd handed Wayne thirty-two pages of finished copy that Saturday, taking Luke Parmalee from his appointment with the school board's purchaser through his meeting of Brenda Wade in the high school's parking lot, dinner, and to bed. Bryce had never been known in his novels for particularly graphic sex scenes, but this one had seemed to Wayne particularly perfunctory, as though the writer weren't entirely sure what sex was, or even if he wanted to know. Otherwise, the two characters were very good, their dialogue humorous and touching as they hesitantly revealed themselves to one another.

Wayne hadn't seen any point in negative criticism, since
The Second Woman
was very unlikely to ever be an actual completed and publishable novel. It was make-work, meant to keep Bryce happy until
The Shadowed Other
was done. So he'd merely complimented Bryce on the positive things, the sweetness and humanity of Luke and Brenda, and let it go at that.

The second week, Bryce had produced twenty-one more pages, but they were jumpier, less polished. The transition from the first night in the motel to the later meeting outside the second motel was abrupt and awkward, badly written, with lumpy sentences. In the dialogue, while Luke remained essentially the same character as before, sweet, a little sad and unsure of himself, Brenda was almost a different person, harsh and accusative and manipulative in obvious ways. The dinner scene was awkward and stilted, and the manuscript ended as they were leaving the restaurant.