Elise Blackwell - Grub

“But the person who wrote this letter admired, hell, she adored your essay, your ideas. Look here: she uses the word ‘brilliant.’ And I hope you caught the fact that she signed her name Nancy Horny.”

“Exactly. One can spot an imposter by the absurdity of his fans.” Henry shoved the last quarter of bagel into the pocket of his cheek.

“So a silly and apparently randy girl wants to feel smart by writing Swanky and saying she liked your essay. So what? Accept her flattery and get hold of her email address if they’ll give it to you.”

“It’s not just the letter, Eddie. It’s the fiction in this issue. There’s a story by an emerging writer named Clarice Aames. It is, hands down, the most interesting piece of fiction I have read in a decade.”

“How old are you, Henry?” Eddie cocked his head. “Oh, never mind. Is it really that good?”

“It’s called ‘Bad Dog Séance.’ It does everything, in a dozen or so pages, that I’d hoped New Realism would do in my lifetime. Except that it’s not at all like New Realism. It’s a solution to the problems I merely name.” He paused to let his breathing catch up to his words. “I’ve never heard of this Clarice Aames, but all I can think about now is throwing myself at her feet. If I could just follow her around, just so my eyesight could follow her gaze, see what she sees—”

“I believe that’s called stalking. I take it she’s good-looking, then, this Clarice?”

“I have no idea, nor do I care. Fat or thin, fair or pimpled, eighteen or eighty. I’m in love. Really in love.”

Just as Eddie was about to explain to his friend that his absurd declaration was certainly the product of a famine of both stomach and heart, a rock hit the window hard enough to leave a thin, jagged fracture line in the glass.

Henry ignored the damage to his window and mumbled, “Could you buzz in whoever that is?”

What seemed like a good while later, Whelpdale heaved into the room. As if on cue, he said: “Whatever you do, never trust a woman. Stay away from them. Avoid them at all cost. If you must consort, make it an affair of the genitalia only. Guard your hearts, brothers!”

Hearing the word ‘genitalia’ issue from Whelpdale’s fleshy mouth nauseated Eddie. It was also the case that he had never quite forgiven the fat writer for stealing his stage minutes at the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference. Not to mention the fact that Whelpdale’s goals in life were to make a living as a fiction writer without actually writing any fiction, and to make himself the center of any conversation or situation he was peripheral to. Nevertheless, Whelpdale’s voice held true pain. Eddie rationalized his reluctant sympathy this way: just because I eat steak doesn’t mean I wouldn’t pity the agony of some poor cow. He gave up his chair, the sole comfortable one in the place, and joined Henry on the piece of foam they pretended was a sofa.

Whelpdale wept — real tears and many of them — into his plump hands.

To help him along, help him get it out and then get out, Eddie said, “Girl from Birmingham broke your heart?”

Whelpdale nodded into his cupped palms, his crying still audible.

“Get a little bit of your money along the way?”

Eddie tried to say this in a soft tone that would imply that every man had trodden a few steps in those shoes. And though his own situation was not identical, Eddie’s shoulders lowered at the thought that he could understand woman trouble all too well.

“I’m very sorry. You won’t believe it just now, but you’ll get over her soon and find a much better one.”

Even as he passed along this masculine wisdom, he hated Amanda for being the most attractive woman he would ever have.

“I think I’m through with the softer sex this time.” Whelpdale pulled a creased letter from his coat pocket. “I feel monstrously unlucky. She was my perfect woman. I should never have let her go back to Alabama, not for a week, not for a day. She got back together with an old boyfriend down there. If I had kept her near, captive audience and all, I believe I could have made her love me permanently.” He unfolded the letter and pushed it toward Eddie and Henry. “Read it for yourself.”

Eddie shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. You should burn it so you never read it again.”

“I just want you to see what she’s like. She seems quite torn up about it herself. She blames only herself. Oh God, she’s so gorgeous.”

Eddie listened to him detail the beauty of an apparently anemic and austere-looking young woman with a hick twang. When Whelpdale started to describe her sexual tastes, Eddie held up his hand. “You’ll be sorry later if you go on.”

Henry displayed the new Swanky , not mentioning his own fan-mail but downright bubbling about the remarkable Clarice Aames. Whelpdale’s crying diminished to sniffing, and he talked some about the new features of his website and his plans to compose a novel-writing manual. This cheered him up sufficiently to depart with a bit of dignity.

After he left, Henry asked, “Do you think it’s possible that his girlfriend was actually decent in the first place? Or was it a scam all along?”

“Anything is possible in women,” Eddie replied. “Speaking of which, are you getting out and about at all?”

Henry laughed. “Missed a chance not long ago. But as soon as the novel’s done, I might just write a fan letter of my own.”

“The mysterious and possibly lovely Clarice Aames?”

“I’m mostly just kidding, but I really would like to meet her. How many people are there in the world I can talk to about what I do?”

“Four?” Eddie said, pushing the rest of the bagels toward his friend. “Or is it three? Tell me, have you ever thought about doing something else?”

Henry’s grin faded and he blinked slowly. “Something else?”

“Besides writing. It’s all I ever wanted to do, but now I’m not sure why.”

“Who was it who said that writers write because the poor bastards can’t do anything else?” Henry poked through the bag and extracted an onion bagel. “Or did he say that writers write because the poor bastards can’t help themselves?”

Eddie watched his friend. If he ignored Henry’s Ramones tee-shirt and imagined a white smock instead, he could see an eighteenth-century poet: thin frame, pale cheeks, large, heavy-lashed eyes. “Do you think it was easier,” he asked, “back in the days when artists had patrons?”

Henry shook his head. “Just the tyranny of a different kind of marketplace.”

On Thursday, Jackson Miller stayed close to his phone but tried to distract himself with work. He was writing a satirical article on “services” being offered to aspiring writers by those seeking to take financial advantage of them — themselves often writers more failed than aspiring. He debated whether to name Whelpdale specifically or merely describe him.

Writing such a piece, he felt like a “content provider” more than a writer. Yet the work was fun, and he hacked out a few pages with little effort. As the morning wore on, though, he found it difficult to concentrate. What he needed, he knew, was to master the art of unconscious composition — to write without thinking about it.

When Doreen emerged from her room at eleven, Jackson feigned irritation to mask his relief. He shoved back his chair with a great show and a loud sigh; in truth he was glad both for the company and for the excuse to take a break.

“Sorry,” said his roommate from the doorjamb. “Don’t mind me. Just grabbing a bite and a shower and heading to work.”

“It’s all right, sorry,” he said. “I was in deep concentration is all. You know how I am when I write.” He followed his roommate to the kitchen.