Pocket Kings (16 page)

Finally on the paperback fiction floor I headed to the D's.
Th
ere were no copies of
Love: A Horror Story
there. No
Plague
s either. Not even a telltale tiny vestigial gap between Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and E. L. Doctorow, where my babies should have been nestling.

I had three more hours to kill.
Th
en I could go home and tell Wifey I'd had a really productive day at work.

I went back down the escalator and all the books got closer and closer.
Truckstop Tranny Crack Whore! Babes in Gangland! My Holocaust Wolf Baby Wife!
Could the other customers in the store see the pints of clammy envy oozing out into the armpits of my shirt?

“Hey, you don't have any more copies of my book,” I said to the genial store manager, who looked like any number of
Jeopardy!
contestants.

“And what book is that, sir?” she said.

“
Plague Boy
? Usually you have some there.” I pointed to Urban Fiction.

She told me to hold on and started typing on her keyboard. She told me to hold on again and chewed on a pencil as she gazed intently into her screen.

“Well, we could get more of
Love: A Horror Story
in,” she told me. “I could do that. And we do have
Th
e Missing Chums
in Young Readers.”

“Wrong Frank Dixon.”

“Right.” After a few seconds she said, “Look at this . . .”

She showed me her screen. It took a few seconds before I knew precisely what to look at and when I did I was struck by such a violent shiver that Barnes & Noble could have shut off their mighty AC system—that chill would have kept the place, all five floors, cold for the next three summers.

“It's out of print,” the manager told me.

“Ah. I see.”

I was too embarrassed to know whether I should have been embarrassed or not.

“But we'll get more of
Horror Love
in here. I'll order them.”

“Okay.
Th
anks.”

Slumping like a hairy figure in an evolution poster, I headed for the exit, went past the table labeled Who
Th
e Hell Knew? or Who'da
Th
unk It? or I Had No Fucking Idea! or whatever. Books on the history of salt, oysters, wind, cork, turmeric, helium, the fork.

I staggered out into the swamp of summer again and was walloped by an oncoming wave of “air.” I was gasping now not only from the heat but from the failure of my first book. Failure: my oldest, dearest friend. Even when I succeeded, I failed. I'd gotten a book published, it got mostly positive reviews, I did some press, it didn't sell, it died. It was that simple.
Th
e thing was dead.

“I have no fans,” Mickey Spillane once said of his loyal readership. “You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.”

But I had no books anymore.
Th
us I had no customers.
Th
us I had not a friend in the world.

But there was the movie.
Th
e movie! Surely Pacer Burton and Hollywood would save me.

I walked around and around, shaking my head all the way. What had I done wrong?

I had come so close to being successful. Although, in truth, not that close.

When your book dies, I now knew, it's not nearly as sad as burying a child—nothing is—but I would put it somewhere between burying a grandparent and burying yourself.

I walked toward the Hudson River, fuming and cursing aloud, and happened upon a small cybercafé in far west Chelsea. For ten dollars an hour I could sit down and access the Internet.

I stayed there for two hours. At noon Artsy/Victoria came on and we chatted for twenty minutes. I told her about
Plague
being out of print and she said she was sorry. “Check your e-mail in three minutes,” she said right before she logged off. I went into my Yahoo account and saw that she'd sent me an e-mail with an attachment. Her message said: “
Th
is is a nude I painted about 10 years ago. Of me. A detail of a much larger painting.” I downloaded it and there on my screen was an extreme close-up of a right breast of peachy pink and a small nipple of cherry red.

I won $800 in those two hours, went to a Gap and bought a few shirts that fit me, and went home. (Either I had passed from Medium to Large or they had drastically reconfigured their whole sizing scheme.)

Wifey was still in bed. She was shaking with the chills and was bundled up under two blankets.
Th
ere were bottles of ginger ale and Tylenol on her night table. As bad as she looked, I don't know if she looked as bad as I did at the bookstore.

“Hw wz wrk, Frnk?” she asked me, the thermometer in her mouth.

“Productive,” I told her.

8

Our Mutual Jigs

Frank:

Hey you! Sorry for not having e-mailed for a while but I have very good news!

I think we can get
——
1
and
——
to star in
Plague Boy.
Th
ey have the same agent at IGT and the agent read the screenplay and really loved it.
——
would be perfect to play Luke.
——
is very much in demand right now but the agent says that if
——
commits, then
——
is in. He's perfect for Benny; it's almost unimaginable anyone else playing him. Pacer Burton wraps
Breakthrough,
his new movie, in about 2 weeks and still wants to make
Plague Boy
next and he and
——
have wanted to collaborate for years. So this is fabulous news!

I may be in New York early September. We can do lunch!

Barbara Bennett

Egregious Motion Pictures

Los Angeles, California

Second Gunman:
Won 4,000 quid yesterday, lads. Not bad for 2 hours work.

Chip Zero:
Where? Ultra-High?

Second Gunman:
No. Right here in Blackpool. Just a few streets away.

Chip Zero:
Huh? You mean, like, playing with real flesh and blood people in real life? Real people with real lives and real bodies, sitting across a real table with real cards? Talking to each other instead of typing? In real time? Are you telling me you really did this?!

Toll House Cookie:
You telling us you've never played real cards?

Second Gunman:
Th
ere must be hundreds of games going on in NYC this very second.

Toll House Cookie:
Th
ere are. I know of 2 places in NYC where they have games going 24/7, no shit. I saw Halle Berry there one night drop 3 large on 1 hand and throw a serious hissy fit.

Second Gunman:
Have you not even played Go Fish with a real person, mate?

Chip Zero:
I think so. Yeah. Maybe. Long time ago. Summer camp.

Toll House Cookie:
Dude, you need to get out more.

Chip Zero:
Why?

CR:

Hey, sorry to bother you but both my computers conked out last week.
Th
e desktop died of old age, the laptop overheated and caught fire.
Th
e fire destroyed a rug passed down to me from a great-uncle who passed away in Auschwitz only hours before it was liberated. Also, it killed our cat. I was here when it happened but my leg is still in a cast from that Drakes Cakes truck thing and I couldn't do anything but smell my hair singe.

Anyway, all the e-mails I may have received the last seven days were lost. So if you responded to my queries, then I didn't get it. Could you please re-send?
Th
anks, Clint.

FD

To all:

I am out of the office until the first week of August. If you need to contact me, e-mail my assistant Courtney Bellkamp at [email protected].

Th
is is an automatic message. Do not reply.

Clint Reno

Th
e Reno Brothers Literary Agency

Boca Barbie:
Th
at last poem was so beautiful. It got me through a very tough day.

Kiss My Ace:
I don't know what my life would be like if we hadn't met.

Boca Barbie:
But Tim. We haven't met.

Kiss My Ace:
I know. But we will. I promise you. You've become my best friend.

Boca Barbie:
And you're mine. I've never thought about anyone so much ever ever ever in my life. I live for you now. I feel so happy and young and alive. You're everything to me.

Frank:

No, haven't read
Dead on Arrival
yet.

Going to Martha's Vineyard for last 2 weeks of July, 1st week of August. You get me that list from Clint and I'll read it. Can you re-send the ms.? Don't think I have it anymore. What was it about again?

Did you hear the good news?
Saucier
was bought for the movies. Jill Conway will be a millionaire! She's julienned her last potatoe [sic].

Ross

Artsy Painter Gal:
So tell me. When you lived in Gay Paree, you bought your paints there or you brought them all with you?

Chip Zero:
I brought them, they ran out, I started buying supplies there. Man, one cold night around Christmas I was so hungry I almost bit into a tube of vermillion.

Artsy Painter Gal:
I still can't believe you did that. Lived there and starved and painted.

Chip Zero:
In retrospect I should've eaten a lot more and not painted at all.
Th
ink of all the boeuf bourguignon and pastries I was missing! Speaking of artsy matters, I Googled you this a.m. Forgive the cyber-stalkage but I found an article on you.
Th
ere were two paintings I could see. One was a sort of Max Beckmanny portrait of a woman.

Artsy Painter Gal:
In a white slip drinking coffee staring out a window?
Th
at's my sister Daphne. I painted that up in Mendocino.

Chip Zero:
Th
e other was a combo still-life and landscape.

Artsy Painter Gal:
Apples in a bowl, ocean in background, periwinkle sky at dusk. Painted under the influence of shrooms in Cozumel. Not my best stuff.

Chip Zero:
I'd give everything I've got to have your talent.

Artsy Painter Gal:
I'd give everything I've got to
not
have it.

Chip Zero:
I liked what I saw. I'd even buy it. Is any of your stuff still around somewhere?

Artsy Painter Gal:
Can we change the subject please? Just play a few hands with me, baby.

Saucier: A Bitch in the Kitchen (Hardcover)

by Jill Conway

Amazon.com Sales Rank:
#17 in Books (See Top Sellers in Books)

Yesterday:
#22 in Books

0 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

Hard to Swallow, Inedible, Unsavory, Tasteless, Not Fit for A Starving Dog

Reviewer:
Th
e Suburban Mimetic (New York, USA)

Like 5 week-old moldy pork rinds, this book was lukewarm garbage from the first page to the last. Jill Conway HAD to have been a better cook than she is a writer. Her prose is bland, flat, mealy, unfit for human consumption, raw and overcooked. When I finished the book—which I barely did—I felt I had caught e. coli AND botulism AND ptomaine. Let me FURTHER beat the food metaphors into the ground: Had this book been served to me in a restaurant, I would have returned it after the first half-page. So THIS is the swill that readers consume nowadays?
Th
ese are the kind of books publishers are churning out? Someone call the Health Department and have Jill Conway condemned! I felt as if I ordered chicken and they cooked up the nearest cat and it's 4 days later and I'm still pulling pieces of this book from my teeth.

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