Elise Blackwell - Grub

Afull week after the initial phone calls suggesting that his novel would soon be at the center of a bidding war, Jackson Miller still lacked a firm offer. He began to revise his expectations. His initial plan had been to pay off his debts, leave Doreen with a few extra months rent, and buy and furnish his own place. Perhaps also a home in the country or, better still, in Europe. After those interminable six days, he would have been relieved to just pay off most of his credit card debt, square things with Doreen, and buy some Italian shoes and a really good steak.

Even with his cell phone in his pocket and set to ring loudly as well as vibrate, he felt anxious away from his home phone and his email, which he checked hourly even though he knew that good book news always arrives by phone. He limited his calls to his agent to once a day, but this was not an easy discipline. For the first time in his life, his confidence felt brittle, like dry earth that could be washed downslope by sudden rain.

It was during the night of the fourth day of this misery that he re-read Margot’s email about the sale of her book over and over. For a moment, a short but whole moment, he felt only happiness and respect for her. In the next moment, he felt angry that she still hadn’t set a date for him to visit. Then he decided that what he wanted more than anything was to sell his book for stacks of money so that he could sweep Margot off her feet — her pedantic asshole of a father be damned — and take care of her so that she could write her little books and mother their children and keep him from becoming the awful person he knew he was capable of becoming.

“I’m worried about your mental health,” Doreen told him on the fifth day.

After telling Doreen to go to hell, he phoned Amanda, who wasn’t home. He told himself that was a good thing, that she would only get him into trouble with his friends, with himself, and with the world.

On day six, his agent sounded annoyed when she said, “There’s no need to check in. You know that I’ll call you the second I hear.” Later that day, she offered to give the editors a deadline. “I can call this thing in,” she said. “There’s some risk, but the outcome will probably be the same either way. They either want the book or they don’t.”

Jackson asked her to hold off, promised to calm down, and drank himself nauseous. He didn’t make any phone calls the next day, which he spent on the stained futon sofa, sipping ginger ale and nibbling saltines to cure his hangover and nourish his self-pity. On Monday, recovered fully from the hangover if not the self-pity, he phoned his agent. “Let’s call it in, risk be damned.”

“That’s my boy. I’ll set the deadline for Thursday. I’ll call you Thursday at five with the good news.”

That night he was back at the vodka when Margot phoned. “I’m having lunch with my editor and my agent tomorrow. I thought we might take a walk or something after.” Her voice was still hesitant and girl-like, but Jackson thought he could hear something new: the lilting confidence of success.

“If you can squeeze me in,” he said and heard her tinkling laugh.

“Doreen,” he was saying even as he hung up. “You still dating that lawyer?”

“Must you call him ‘that lawyer’ every time? I might start thinking that you’re jealous.”

“My sincerest apologies. Of course he has a name. Calcium or Limestone or something, isn’t it?”

“Dolomite. Mark Dolomite. I wasn’t so sure at first — just thought it would be nice to go out with someone who has real furniture and new clothes and a job he goes to every morning. I thought it would be a refreshing change.” She gave him a pointed look. “But now I quite like him. He’s not witty, exactly. You know lawyers. Their brains are, well, specialized.”

“The intellectual version of the tennis forearm on a scrawny body?”

“But he’s sweet and really a lot of fun.”

“You know me, I don’t judge a person by looking into his heart but by looking at his bookshelves and CD collection.”

“Gotcha. You’d approve of his music. He listens to a lot of the same awful music you do.”

“What about his bookcase?”

Doreen sighed. “He doesn’t have one. Why are you asking anyway?”

“Does he have books?”

She shook her head.

“Doesn’t he even read books on the airplane?”

“Magazines, most likely. Why are you taking such an interest?”

Jackson stood behind the futon sofa and massaged his roommate’s shoulders. “Well, dear, I was wondering if you might stay over there tomorrow night.”

“You slut!” she exclaimed, but her relaxed shoulders suggested only feigned interest.

“Not like that, not this time. This is a nice girl, and I’m serious about her.”

“You aren’t still picking on that sweet pixie-looking girl from the bookstore, are you? Jackson, are you?”

“She has a name, too, just like your Dolomite. And I’m not picking on her. She’s not helpless. She happens to be publishing a novel, I’ll have you know. I admire the hell out of her. At least I’m a good enough person to recognize she’s a much better person than I am. I should get some kind of credit for that.” He squeezed the back of Doreen’s neck, working his way up and down.

“You are serious, aren’t you?” Doreen pulled forward, out of his grip, and turned to look at him. “I guess I’d better check the temperature in hell and the flight path for pigs.”

Jackson took the vodka from the freezer and refilled his small tumbler. “I was serious about you, too, you know.”

Doreen rolled her eyes. “I’ll stay over at my beau’s tomorrow if you promise not to have a hangover for your big date. And don’t call your agent until she calls you.”

“Of course, you’re as right as ever.” Jackson smiled at his pretty roommate, pleased to realize that he was no longer interested in anything other than her friendship. “Oh, and Doreen, ask Mr. Dolomite if he’d buy a book about cut-throat, bed-hopping, ecstasy-taking Wall Street types. Say if he saw it in an airport bookstore near the magazines and it was titled Oink . For instance.”

“For instance,” she repeated.

The ringing phone annoyed Henry Baffler. He had tried to ignore it, but whoever it was kept calling back and Henry worried that the bell’s rhythm would disrupt the cadence of his prose. Across the fall, he had pressed at his glacial pace, working with great patience and affection. It wouldn’t be a terribly long novel, but it would be a book without a single discordant word choice. Every phrase, every punctuation mark would be essential. He believed he was making a perfect thing. And that’s how he thought of it: as making something, rather than writing it. He was constructing a piece of visual art with words. It was a long poem, really, he sometimes thought.

But on other days, he thought, no, it’s a mosaic — and each word is a small colored tile.

“Yes,” he said harshly into the receiver of the old phone.

“Yes, Henry, dear, is Patrick there?” It was the syrupy drawl of his absentee roommate’s mother.

“I haven’t seen him today,” he said, and then caught himself.

“Because I just got in. Should I have him return your call when he gets back?”

“That’d be lovely. You know how a mother worries.”

Henry returned the phone to its cradle, then picked it back up, dialed the number of Patrick’s girlfriend, and left the dutiful message. He could not afford to lose this living arrangement. He’d already cut back on the number of students he tutored so that he could give himself more fully to his book. To survive during this particularly lean stretch, he’d sold everything of value he had and was down to his last three CDs, his signed first-edition of Naked Lunch , and his grandfather’s pocket watch, which his brother hadn’t wanted. These might have to go, too — a sad conclusion he accepted as the price of art. Such was the life of the writer, now as much as ever in history. Burroughs would have understood, even if his grandfather wouldn’t have forgiven him.