Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Gee,” Joe breathed, “I’m going to keep this forever. I’m going to paste transparent paper over it, so it won’t get rubbed off, where you wrote.”

“I would have done it in ink for you,” Moody said benevolently, “only the pulp paper won’t take it — it soaks it up like a blotter.”

The phone gave another of its irritable, foreshortened blats.

Joe jumped guiltily, hastily backed toward the door. “I better get back on duty, or he’ll be raising cain down there.” He half closed the door, reopened it to add, “If there’s anything you want, Mr. Moody, just call down for me. I’ll drop anything I’m doing and beat it right up here.”

“Thanks, I will, Joe,” Moody promised, with the warm, comfortable smile of someone whose ego has just been talcumed and cuddled in cotton-wool.

“And good luck to you on the story. I’ll be rooting for you!”

“Thanks again, Joe.”

Joe closed the door deferentially, holding the knob to the end, so that it should make a minimum of noise and not disturb the mystic creative process about to begin inside.

Before it did, however, Moody went to the phone and asked for a nearby Long Island number. A soprano that sounded like a schoolgirl’s got on.

“It’s me, honeybunch,” Moody said.

The voice had been breathless already, so it couldn’t get any more breathless; what it did do was not get any less breathless. “What happened? Ooh, hurry up, tell me! I can’t wait. Did you get the assignment on the cover story?”

“Yes, I got it! I’m in the hotel room right now, and they’re paying all the charges. And listen to this: I’m getting double word-rate, two cents—”

A squeal of sheer joy answered him.

“And wait a minute, you didn’t let me finish. If he likes the job, I’m even getting an extra additional bonus on top of all that. Now what do you have to say to that?”

The squeals became multiple this time — a series of them instead of just one. When they subsided, he heard her almost gasp: “Oh, I’m so proud of you!”

“Is Sonny-bun awake yet?”

“Yes. I knew you’d want to say good night to him, so I kept him up. Wait a minute, I’ll go and get him.”

The voice faded, then came back again. However, it seemed to be as unaccompanied as before. “Say something to Daddy. Daddy’s right here. Daddy wants to hear you say something to him.”

Silence.

“Hello, Sonny-bun. How’s my little Snooky?” Moody coaxed.

More silence.

The soprano almost sang, “Daddy’s going to do a big important job. Aren’t you going to wish him luck?”

There was a suspenseful pause, then a startled cluck like that of a little barnyard fowl, “Lock!”

The squeals of delight this time came from both ends of the line, and in both timbres, soprano and tenor. “He wished me luck! Did you hear that? He wished me luck! That’s a good omen. Now it’s bound to be a lulu of a story!”

The soprano voice was too taken up distributing smothered kisses over what seemed to be a considerable surface-area to be able to answer.

“Well,” he said, “guess I better get down to business. I’ll be home before noon — I’ll take the ten forty-five, after I turn the story in at Tartell’s office.”

The parting became breathless, flurried, and tripartite.

“Do a bang-up job now”/“I’ll make it a smasheroo”/“Remember, Sonny-bun and I are rooting for you”/“Miss me”/“And you miss us, too”/“ Smack, smack ”/“ Smack, smack, smack ”/“ Gluck! ”

He hung up smiling, sighed deeply to express his utter satisfaction with his domestic lot. Then he turned away, lathered his hands briskly, and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

The preliminaries were out of the way, the creative process was about to begin. The creative process, that mystic life force, that splurge out of which has come the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Fantasie Impromptu, the Bayeux tapestries, Romeo and Juliet, the windows of Chartres Cathedral, Paradise Lost — and a pulp murder story by Dan Moody. The process is the same in all; if the results are a little uneven, that doesn’t invalidate the basic similarity of origin.

He sat down before Gertie and, noting that the oval of light from the lamp fell on the machine, to the neglect of the polychrome cardboard mat which slanted in comparative shade against the wall, he adjusted the pliable lamp-socket so that the luminous egg was cast almost completely on the drawing instead, with the typewriter now in the shadow. Actually he didn’t need the light on his typewriter. He never looked at the keys when he wrote, nor at the sheet of paper in the machine. He was an expert typist, and if in the hectic pace of his fingering he sometimes struck the wrong letter, they took care of that down at the office, Tartell had special proofreaders for that. That wasn’t Moody’s job — he was the creator, he couldn’t be bothered with picayune details like a few typographic errors. By the same token, he never went back over what he had written to reread it; he couldn’t afford to, not at one cent a word (his regular rate) and at the pressure under which he worked. Besides, it was his experience that it always came out best the first time; if you went back and reread and fiddled around with it, you only spoiled it.

He palmed a sheet of white paper off the top of the stack and inserted it smoothly into the roller — an automatic movement to him. Ordinarily he made a sandwich of sheets — a white on top, a carbon in the middle, and a yellow at the bottom; that was in case the story should go astray in the mail, or be mislaid at the magazine office before the cashier had issued a check for it. But it was totally unnecessary in this case; he was delivering the story personally to Tartell’s desk, it was a rush order, and it was to be sent to press immediately. Several extra moments would be wasted between manuscript pages if he took the time to make up “sandwiches,” and besides, those yellow second-sheets cost forty-five cents a ream at Goldsmith’s (fifty-five elsewhere). You had to watch your costs in this line of work.

He lit a cigarette, the first of the many that were inevitably to follow, that always accompanied the writing of every story — the cigarette-to-begin-on. He blew a blue pinwheel of smoke, craned his neck slightly, and stared hard at the master plan before him, standing there against the wall. And now for the first line. That was always the gimmick in every one of his stories. Until he had it, he couldn’t get into it; but once he had it, the story started to unravel by itself — it was easy going after that, clear sailing. It was like plucking the edge of the gauze up from an enormous criss-crossed bandage.

The first line, the first line.

He stared intently, almost hypnotically.

Better begin with the girl — she was very prominent on the cover, and then bring the hero in later. Let’s see, she was wearing a violet evening dress—

The little lady in the violet evening dress came hurrying terrifiedly down the street, looking back in terror. Behind her—

His hands poised avariciously, then drew back again. No, wait a minute, she wouldn’t be wearing an evening dress on the street, violet or any other color. Well, she’d have to change into it later in the story, that was all. In a 20,000-word novelette there would be plenty of room for her to change into an evening dress. Just a single line would do it, anywhere along.

She went home and changed her dress, and then came back again.

Now, let’s try it again—

The beautiful red-head came hurrying down the street, looking back in terror. Behind her—

Again he got stuck. Yes, but who was after her, and what had she done for them to be after her for? That was the problem.