Pocket Kings Page 12

  On this sweltering day I saw that there were no Plague Boys on the Urban Fiction table. I headed up on the escalator to the fiction floor and looked down and saw the Paperback Favorites table. Corrections, Infinite Jest, Absurdistan, Extremely Successful and Incredibly Rich, the Eggers masterwork . . . they were all there. The enemy redoubt. All the clever, coy, convoluted, self-conscious, postmodern, post-post-ironic books the Times finds fit to love, books not about human beings but about their own cleverness. You had to squint through the pyrotechnics just to read the words. The only thing more intolerable than reading books about writers is reading a book about itself. To my right I saw beneath me the New Fiction shelves—never again would my name and words besmirch its particle board—and there it was: Saucier: A Bitch in the Kitchen. It had recently gotten a rave review—written by a chef who probably hadn’t ever read anything but cook books—in the Sunday Times. I also saw the stacks of books on the Have You Read a Memoir Lately? table. The absolute fabulist James Frey, the truth-stretching, untalented Augusten Burroughs, and the archfiend of all archfiends, the King of Plop, the Supreme Czar of Lite FM Smooth Jazz Soft-core Comedy: David Sedaris. There were books by other writers who had screwed up their lives and then decided to unscrew them by writing about it. Whiners, public nuisances, nudges, whores for literary fame. The nerve of these people . . . mining every little scrap of their private lives, no matter how uninteresting, and making it public. (And no one had asked them to!) And if the facts weren’t tragic enough, make a few up. Add something, multiply, spice it up, stretch and hang-dry it, lift and separate and toss the works into a blender and puree. No way I’ll ever resort to this, I promised myself. If I ever sink that low then please dear God just let me drown in a vat of my own self-pity instead. I’d rather work at Friendly’s again. These books shrunk to postage stamps as I ascended. As long as Frey’s book was in print, poor Lilly would forever be sucking off a drug-ravaged scumbag in the rat-infested Crack Dens of Eternity, only to be rescued just before the money shot by our fearless and gallant hero-narrator (who a few years later would need to bring his mommy onto Larry King with him.) If Sedaris were to read his grocery lists of the last twenty years at Carnegie Hall, I reflected as the novmoirs and memvels faded from view, not only would every seat in the house be filled but everyone present would be pissing themselves with laughter. Yep, a goddam yukfest. Why? Because they were David Sedaris’s grocery lists! Awww.

  Finally on the paperback fiction floor I headed to the D’s. There were no copies of Love: A Horror Story there. No Plagues 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. Then 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 The 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. Thanks.”

  Slumping like a hairy figure in an evolution poster, I headed for the exit, went past the table labeled Who The Hell Knew? or Who’da Thunk 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. The 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. Thus I had no customers. Thus I had not a friend in the world.

  But there was the movie. The 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: “This 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. There 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. They 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 peopl
e 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: There must be hundreds of games going on in NYC this very second.

  Toll House Cookie: There 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. The desktop died of old age, the laptop overheated and caught fire. The 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? Thanks, 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 cjb@renobros.com.

  This is an automatic message. Do not reply.

  Clint Reno

  The Reno Brothers Literary Agency

  Boca Barbie: That 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. Think 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. There 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? That’s my sister Daphne. I painted that up in Mendocino.

  Chip Zero: The 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: The 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? These 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.

  Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

  Frank Dixon:

  Sorry, I wasn’t able to find the list you need. I don’t know if there is such a list. Clint is in the Lake District in England for a month and when he comes back I’ll ask him.

  By the way, I read Plague Boy when it came out. One day I was reading it on the train and this weird guy walked up to me and told me that he had written it! I looked for the author photo to verify but there wasn’t a photo so I guess he was just some creep.

  Oh well. Just thought I’d let you know that. J

  Courtney Jane Bellkamp

  The Reno Brothers Literary Agency

  Bubbly Brit Bird: haven’t seen you around for a while, luv.

  Pest Control: lost the internet here for a while.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: for 6 days?

  Pest Control: y. for 6 days.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: and you’re telling me the truth, philly? promise?

  Pest Control: i promise, georgy-girl. i missed you.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: too bad you couldn’t call.

  Pest Control: my wife looks at the bills. don’t know how i’d explain a call to england.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: i know. but it would be so sweet to hear your voice, that’s all.

  Pest Control: if you heard it right now you might not think that.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: oh, of course I would!

  Frank:

  Hey you! Good news/bad news/good news.

  The good news is that —— is still in. His agent really wants him to star in Plague Boy. The bad news is that even if —— is in, —— is now 100% definitely out. He just committed to the sequel of his last picture.

  However, there’s a chance now that —— might want to costar. His agent read the script and really loved it. He told me that —— and —— have tried for years to get together on a project and this just might be it. Also, Pacer Burton and —— are friends, so that’s good.

  I’m in New York Sept. 5–Sept. 9. We’ll set something up!

  Barbara

  Chip Zero: Are you sure you don’t want to fold, Swede?

  Bjorn 2 Win: Why? Should I?

  Chip Zero: Well, let’s put it this way. I have 2 Kings and 2 Queens right now. One of the Kings is a club as is one of the Queens. I own this hand so much that I’m holding the deed for it right this very second.

  Bjorn 2 Win: I don’t believe you would still use the same tired tactic.

  Wolverine Mommy folds. Mrs. Foldin’ Caulfield folds. Bjorn 2 Win raises $100. Chip Zero raises $100. Bjorn 2 Win calls.

  Chip Zero: I don’t get it. Do you like losing money to me?

  The turn card is an Ace of Clubs.

  Chip Zero: Okay, so now look at what I got. Ace-high club flush. Why do this to yourself? I know
you slaughter horses . . . but why slaughter your own bank account? Why make luncheon meat of what little that remains of your self-esteem?

  Bjorn 2 Win: Maybe I have a full house, Aces full of Kings.

  Chip Zero: Yeah, and maybe I’m Greta effin Garbo.

  Bjorn 2 Win raises $200. Chip Zero raises $200. Bjorn 2 Win calls.

  The river card is a King of hearts. Bjorn 2 Win raises $200. Chip Zero raises $400. Bjorn 2 Win calls. Bjorn 2 Win shows 3 Aces. Chip Zero shows a Full House, Kings full of Queens. Chip Zero wins $2,800.

  Bjorn 2 Win has left the table.

  yo, frankie!

  long time no see. wanna go out and get a few burgers and beers just like the old days, boooooooy? we could hit a few of our old stomping grounds if they’re still around.

  bad news: i’m getting divorced. very sad. vanessa and i tried but couldn’t make it work. i feel terrible for the kids. when we go out I’ll hit you with all the gory details.

  lonnie

  ps: does harry ever come to nyc? if so, maybe the 3 of us could get together and relive the glory days that never were. and then, what larks!

  lonnie b.

  Frank

  Guess what? I found some tony downtown publishing house just gullible enough to hire me. So I’m back in business! I was thisclose to working at the Wok & Roll in the local mall. Sadly, there will be no more daily golf for me. I shall miss it. I was quite hooked!

  Hope to hear from you soon.

  Toby Kwimper

  TriHo Books, Inc.

  Toby:

  Every time I see the word “tony” I can’t help but think of the posh well-to-do golf-playing, tennis-playing swell Tony Newport in Love: A Horror Story. How come not 1 single solitary reviewer ever pointed out that clever pun? What, they didn’t get it? And how come not 1 single reviewer mentioned that the name of the coffee bar in Plague Boy was Max Perkins and that there was once a very famous editor named Max Perkins? And back to­ Love again: Why did not 1 reviewer mention that the names of the two movie body doubles in the book were Bill Wilson and Golyadkin? Were they not familiar with Poe’s doppelganger story William Wilson and Dostoyevsky’s doppelganger story The Double, whose main character is named Golyadkin?! Nope. See, Toby, if you’re a “good” writer, an “important” writer, if you’re “postmodern,” if you’re “self-conscious” and “post-ironic,” then critics appreciate your witty wordplay and cutesy literary references; if you’re not 1 of the lucky, the blessed, the darlings, the privileged, the cream of the crop, the proud, the few, the chosen, the elite, the anointed, the sanctified, the A-list, then they find them stupid if they find them at all. Critics! 20 years of schoolin’ and you’re still writing book reports. Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all and let God sort ’em out is what I say.