Elise Blackwell - Grub

“I see, I see,” Matt murmured. “Don’t worry. I don’t fear revision. It’s compersition that scares me silly. Know what I mean?”

“What you mean is composition,” Jackson cracked from his seat on the floor.

“Indeed, I do know what you mean,” Eddie chimed in. “It’s the same for me. I’m misery personified until I have an entire draft.”

“Personified,” Matt said, “I think that’s one of the words on the sat practice test.”

At the end of the lesson, Matt collected his papers and books and stood. He shifted his weight from the heels to the balls of his feet and back again. He glanced at Eddie and Jackson. At last he said, “Mr. Baffler, is a check all right? My mother sent a check this week.”

Henry calculated the length of time it would take to clear the check, and the pit in his stomach enlarged. “Of course, Matt, that’ll be fine. I’ll see you next week and we’ll get that essay ready to send out.”

After Matt left, Jackson asked, “So what are that young man’s chances of getting into a good school? Seems rough-edged but looks kind of smart. Or at least he would be if he washed all that rockabilly crap out of his hair and lost the loafers.”

“He’s really smart,” Henry said. “But he can’t write a sentence to save his life. He’s getting better, though. I wouldn’t take his money if I didn’t think I could help, if I didn’t think he had a chance.”

“Really?” Jackson cocked his head, amused.

“I turned down another student recently. Really, that guy had no chance of anything but community college in a poor state. I could have used the money — and how — but the food would have choked me. Matt’ll be okay, though. He’ll get in somewhere. And it’s not like he wants to be a writer or anything. He wants to program computers or work in a lab or some such — I forget exactly.”

“Henry,” Jackson said. “Have you considered trying to get a full-time teaching job? You seem to be good at it. And you don’t look like you’re eating very well.”

“I don’t want to talk about day jobs,” Eddie said, his voice a weird mix of angry and forlorn.

Henry looked at the floorboards. “No school would hire me. I never even finished my undergraduate degree, and I don’t have anything to wear to an interview.” Brightening, he pointed to the Swanky open on Eddie’s knees. “Hey, guess what. That essay just received a fan letter. It’ll be published next issue, on the letters page.”

“That’s terrific, Henry,” said Eddie. “I hope its author is a beautiful girl who goes weak at the knees for New Realists.”

“I don’t suppose you get paid for a fan letter?” Looking almost comfortable in his foam nest, Jackson reclined further, crossed his ankles, and put his hands behind his head.

Henry shrugged, considered the idea further, then laughed at its absurdity.

“Jackson’s got some pretty good news,” Eddie said.

“Yes, lunch is on me. I’d say at Grub, but I don’t think they’ll let us in looking like we do. But let’s go somewhere good.” He smiled at Henry. “Somewhere with very large portions and imported beer.”

Henry was now so hungry that he had no appetite whatsoever. “What’s all this about? You were almost as bad off as me last month.”

“Jackson’s got a big-time agent. She submitted his novel to fifteen different editors and already has two calls of interest.” Eddie’s delivery was hurried, cheerful but forced.

“Yes,” said Jackson. “One editor said that he was a fan and not to make a move without talking to him first. The other called to ask if we’d sell world rights or just North American. It’s starting to smell like a bidding war.”

Henry felt a smile come on. “How terrific for all of us, Jackson, to hear that it can happen like that!”

Jackson led them the long blocks across town. Henry’s appetite was still stunted by the queasiness of a long-empty stomach; he had to remind himself to push forward, maintain the pace, keep up. Half an hour later, they stood on the crowded sidewalk in front of a store-front Italian restaurant.

Jackson said, “It’s a hole in the wall, but I’ve heard the entire Italian press corps eats here.”

Unlike Henry’s neighborhood, the area was one of busy people — people with jobs, people with things to see and places to go and stuff to buy. It required strength combined with a little give to stand still, and Henry was being pushed toward the restaurant behind his friends just as Jeffrey Whelpdale stepped out. Eddie greeted the coincidence with enthusiasm, but Jackson’s reaction was cool.

“Glad to see you guys!” Whelpdale exclaimed. “I’ve got big news!” Whelpdale struck a match and held it to a cigar. He puffed at the cigar with exaggerated inflations of his jowls, yet failed to keep it lit. Though Henry had never smoked, even he could see that Whelpdale had no idea what he was doing. “I started a workshop: how to write a novel in ten easy lessons. And, well, the workshop was a bit of a wash, but I met a great girl. Very attractive, tremendously interesting. Just my type, too: dark, pale, skinny, anemic looking.”

“Skinny?” Jackson said, suddenly interested in what Whelpdale was saying. “What’s her name?”

“Theresa. She’s from Birmingham, of all places. Great accent — the whole southern thing.”

“Right,” Jackson said, seeping sarcasm. “The whole southern thing.”

“Anyway, she’s very soft-hearted, wants to learn to write but couldn’t afford the workshop. I asked her on the spot to marry me. I scared her, which is understandable, but then she softened. I told her I’d work day and night to help her write and sell her novel. I practically had to beg her to borrow a little money from me. Anyway, that’s how it started, and now she’s agreed to marry me. A month from today, as soon as she returns from a trip to Alabama.”

“I congratulate you,” Eddie said, his voice hollow. He held out his hand to Whelpdale, who dropped his cigar to shake it.

“You give hope to us all.” Jackson gripped Whelpdale’s hand, preventing him from rescuing his cigar before it was crushed under the foot of someone with somewhere to be.

“Great,” Henry whispered, wondering if he would ever be lucky in publishing or love — and then puzzling over which he would choose if he could only have one or the other. Love, he decided; he would choose squalor with love. The words ‘love’ and ‘squalor’ invoked Salinger for him. He realized that he hadn’t read Salinger in years and really should go back to him to see how his work intersected with New Realism. Someday he hoped to write a literary history of New Realism — after it was established — and it was possible Salinger could be seen as a precursor.

Realizing that Whelpdale had gone on his way, Henry followed Jackson and Eddie into the restaurant. The smell of slow-cooking sauces warmed the room, and breathing the air inside felt almost like eating. A stooped, square-shouldered Italian man of indeterminate but advanced age led them to a table and handed them menus listing the names but not descriptions of the establishment’s dishes. The other waiters congregated in the back of the rectangular dining room, near the kitchen’s swinging doors, in ill-fitting black suits, looking nearly as out of place as the black-and-white zebras on the shiny red wallpaper.

“I’ve never before associated zebras with Rome,” Jackson said, his smile relaxed.

Henry grabbed a breadstick and consumed it faster than he meant to. He took a slice of bread, stacked it high with butter, and ate that too.

When the waiter trudged over, Henry ordered last. “Bring me your largest meal, but no squid.”

“Bring him a steak,” Jackson said, “with a few pounds of pasta on the side.”