Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

The film of The Sending had already grossed over $40 million, and Max de Lawrence was rumored to have purchased film rights to The Rending for an even million. Shaftesbury had outbid McGinnis & Parry, paying out $500,000 for hardcover rights to Nordgren’s latest, The Etching , and Warwick Books was paying a record $2 million for a package deal that gave them paperback rights to The Etching , Nordgren’s next novel, and a series of five paperback reissues of his earlier work.

Nordgren was tied up with a barrage of newspaper and television interviews when Harrington checked into the Monteleone, but by late afternoon he phoned Damon to meet him in the lobby for a quick look at the French Quarter. Harrington was just out of the shower, and by the time he reached the lobby, Nordgren had been cornered by a mob of arriving fans. He was busily signing books, and for every one he handed back, two more were thrust toward him. He saw Damon, waved, and made a quick escape.

They fled to Bourbon Street and ducked into the Old Absinthe House, where they found seats at the hollow square bar. Nordgren ordered two Sazeracs. “Always wanted to try one. Used to be made with bourbon and absinthe, or brandy and absinthe, or rye and absinthe — anyway, it was made with absinthe. Now they use Pernod or Herbsaint or something instead of absinthe. Seems like they still ought to use absinthe in the Old Absinthe House.” Harrington watched with interest the bartender’s intricate preparation. “Thought they were going to eat you alive back there in the lobby.”

“Hell, let them have their fun. They pay the bills — they and a few million who stay at home.”

Nordgren sipped the dark red cocktail that filled the lower part of a highball glass. “Hey, not bad. Beats a Manhattan. Let’s have two more — these’ll be gone by the time the next round’s ready. So tell me, Damon — how you been?”

“Things are going pretty well. Summit has accepted Swords of Red Vengeance , and I’m hard at work on a third.”

“You’re too good a writer to waste your energy on that sort of stuff.”

“Pays the bills.” Damon swallowed his Sazerac before he reminded Trevor that not all writers were overnight millionaires. “So what’s after The Etching ?”

Nordgren was already on his second Sazerac. “This one’s called The Bending. No — just kidding! Christ, these little devils have a kick to them. Don’t know what they’ll want me to title it. It’s about a naive young American secretary who marries an older Englishman whose previous wife was lost when their yacht sank. They return to his vast estate, where the housekeeper makes life miserable for her because she’s obsessed with her worship of the previous wife, and…”

“Was her name Rebecca?”

“Damn! You mean somebody beat me to the idea? Well, back to square one. Let’s have another of these and go grab a quick bite.”

“My round, I believe.”

“Forget it — my treat. You can buy us dinner.”

“Then how about a po’ boy?”

“Seriously — I’d like that. Not really very hungry, but I know I’ve got to keep something in my stomach, or I’ll be dead before the con is half over.”

At a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop they picked up a couple meatball po’ boys to go. Harrington wanted to try the red beans and rice, but Nordgren was in a hurry to get back to the Monteleone. Fans spotted Nordgren as they entered the hotel, but they caught an elevator just in time and retreated to Trevor’s room, where he ordered a dozen bottles of Dixie beer.

Nordgren managed half his sandwich by the time room service brought the beer. “Want the rest of this, Damon? I’m not all that hungry.”

“Sure!” Harrington’s last meal had been plastic chicken on the flight from Los Angeles. “Say, you’re losing weight, aren’t you?”

“My special diet plan.” Nordgren unlocked his suitcase and dug out a chamois wallet, from which he produced a polished slab of agate and a plastic bag of cocaine. “Care for a little toot before we meet the masses?”

“For sure!” Damon said through a mouthful of sandwich. “Hey, I brought along a little Columbian for the weekend. Want me to run get it?”

“Got some Thai stick in the suitcase.” Trevor was sifting coke onto the agate. “Take a look at these boulders, man! This shit has not been stepped on.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

Nordgren cut lines with a silver razor blade and handed the matching tooter to Harrington. “Here. Courtesy of all those hot-blooded little fans out there, standing in line to buy the next bestselling thriller from that master of chills — yours truly, Trev the Ripper.”

Trevor did look a good deal thinner, Damon thought, and he seemed to have abandoned the rock star look. His hair was trimmed, and he wore an expensive-looking silk sport coat over an open-collared shirt. Put on the designer sunglasses, and welcome to Miami. Wealth evidently agreed with Nordgren.

“You’re looking fit these days,” Harrington observed between sniffles. Damon himself was worrying about a distinct mid-thirties bulge, discovered when he shopped for a new sport coat for the trip. He was considering taking up jogging.

“Cutting down on my drinking.” Nordgren cut some more lines. “I was knocking back two or three fifths a day and chasing it with a case or so of brew.”

“Surprised you could write like that.” Privately, Harrington had thought The Etching little more than a 200,000-word rewrite of The Picture of Dorian Gray , served up with enough sex and gore to keep the twentieth-century reader turning the pages.

“Coke’s been my salvation. I feel better. I write better. It’s all that psychic energy I’m drawing in from all those millions of readers out there.”

“Are you still on about that?” Damon finished his lines. “Can’t say I’ve absorbed any energy from my dozens of fans.”

“It’s exponential,” Nordgren explained, sifting busily. “You ought to try to reach the greater audience, instead of catering to the cape-and-pimples set. You’re getting labeled as a thud-and-blunder hack, and as long as publishers can buy you for a few grand a book, that’s all they’ll ever see in you.”

Damon was stoned enough not to take offense. “Yeah, well, tell that to Helen. She’s been trying to peddle a collection of my fantasy stories for the last couple years.”

“Are these some of the ones you were writing for Cavalier and so on? Christ, I’ll have to ask her to show me a copy. You were doing some good stuff back then.”

“And pumping gas.”

“Hey, your time is coming, baby. Just think about what I’ve said. You wrote a couple of nice horror stories a few years back. Take a shot at a novel.”

“If I did, the horror fad would have peaked and passed.”

The phone rang. The con chairman wanted them to come down for the official opening ceremonies. Nordgren laid out a couple monster lines to get them primed, and they left to greet their public.

Later that evening Nordgren made friends with an energetic blonde from the local fan group, who promised to show him the sights of New Orleans. When it appeared that most of these sights were for Trevor’s eyes only, Damon wandered off with a couple of the local S.C.A. bunch to explore the fleshpots and low dives of the French Quarter.

Soon after, much to Harrington’s amazement, Warwick Books bought his short story collection, Dark Dreams. They had rejected it a year before, but now Trevor Nordgren had written a twenty page introduction to the book. Helen as much as admitted that Warwick had taken the collection only after some heavy pressure from Nordgren.