Elise Blackwell - Grub

Since her father had passed up the chance to make a crack about her work, she refrained from saying, “But I thought people publishing their friends was part of the problem.”

Over the days that followed, her father continued to be solicitous, and even kind. Margot was not so stupid or naïve as to believe he was a changed man, but she did think his recent knocks had softened him, and certainly she enjoyed their more harmonious domestic life. If she could launch the journal he wanted and if it could succeed, then perhaps the tranquility would continue. And so she did as she had promised: she considered the proposal. Setting aside the Maine novel, which was causing her trouble because she could not figure out how to account for the presence of a solitary orphan boy on the rocky island, she researched the world of literary journals and magazines. From website to website, she saw the usual writing-program suspects everywhere represented. And she read the appalling web-published efforts in flash fiction side by side with the desperate appeals for donations. The cross-breeding of editors, writers, journals, and links sickened her in the same way as would staring at the progeny resulting from long inbreeding.

She emailed Jackson about her quandary, which elicited the speediest response she’d ever received from him: “Save your money. Just write your next book. Let them publish you and not the other way around. And come see me soon. I’m surrounded by idiots. I’m lonely for you. I’m becoming someone I don’t even like.”

They weren’t right for each other on paper, no matter what her mother’s charts proclaimed, but she knew Jackson was fond of her. Margot pictured herself at his side, imagining both of them with money in the bank and books on the shelves. Yet each time she tried to still the image, to hold it in her mind and see it clearly, it went grainy and faded out.

She approached her mother, who advised her to go ahead and extend the invitation for Jackson to visit. “I’m playing my cards with your father, and he’s unlikely to ever be in this good a mood again. He certainly won’t be after he reads his reviews.”

It was a good idea, Margot decided, to see Jackson in another setting, to determine if their affection was transferable or belonged only to the city. She had never seen him anywhere else.

Henry Baffler had saved his manuscript from the fire, but he had lost everything else beyond the clothes he was wearing and his cash-empty wallet. In the confusion, he had even lost track of the beer and bread that had occasioned his excursion. Faced with seeking a shelter cot, he phoned Eddie Renfros.

Henry had worried that Eddie had invited him to stay without first asking his wife, and Amanda’s greeting had been a little cool, even as she’d fluffed guest pillows into clean cases. Yet she seemed genuinely enthusiastic when they saw the story on several television news shows: “Local writer risks life for novel”, and “Would-be novelist risks all for book”.

“I’m not a would-be novelist,” Henry objected, but he laughed at the footage of him pulling his manuscript from its corduroy swaddling as the firefighter’s smile smeared into disapproval.

Even The Times covered the event, including with the story a photo of Henry, flat on his back on the inflatable trampoline, manuscript lifted triumphantly toward the camera. The three writers laughed themselves hysterical.

For two days, Henry enjoyed the Renfros’ hospitality, which included the sizeable pleasures of sweetened coffee, good water pressure, and hearing Amanda pad around in bare feet. The sofa pulled out into a bed more comfortable than Henry’s own, and he realized that a clean apartment with hardcover books and CDs and nice things on the wall calmed his mind. New stories tickled his brain, exciting but soft like feathers. On the third day, however, when Henry remembered to phone his absentee roommate, he found out that he was planning to tell his Southern Baptist family he was living with his girlfriend. Henry realized the dire nature of his situation.

“I’ve lost everything!” he said to Eddie that morning. “I’ll never find such a cheap and easy living arrangement. My clothes weren’t much, but they were my clothes. And my books — and the years of handwritten margin notes. And my copies of Swanky .”

“Henry,” Eddie said kindly. “Is there anyone you can email or call? Family that could help out?”

The last time Henry had seen his brother, he’d just lost the condo flanked by stone lions, lost their grandparent’s furniture store, and relapsed after thirty days in rehab. “I’d rather starve,” he told Eddie.

“People always say they’d rather starve, but as soon as their stomachs growl, well, the call doesn’t seem as hard to make.”

“That’s people, but you may have noticed there’s something wrong with me. I actually would rather starve than speak to my brother. He can’t help me anyway. There’s no one I can call.”

“The starvation outcome seems increasingly likely, Henry, unless you can find a job quick. You and I are alike in one sense: no one warned us that writing is now a gentleman’s profession, an occupation only for those who don’t need to make money.”

A series of images of himself at work blinked across Henry’s mind, clicking in and out as in a child’s viewfinder: screwing in the grounds holder of an espresso machine, spreading mayonnaise on a slice of white bread, handing ticket stubs back to cinema goers, netting goldfish to transfer into a portable plastic bag.

“Maybe now that the book is done I can spare the time,” he said.

Amanda, who had been watching the street from the window, chimed in. “Is your novel completely finished? Yes? It’s obvious then: you saved your bailiff and now maybe he can save you. You’ve got to query agents right away. I’ll help you research some.” Just before the doorbell sounded, she added, “Jackson’s here.”

“I’m sorry to come over uninvited,” Jackson said as he entered the room. “But I wanted to talk to Henry. I think he’s got to strike while the iron is hot.”

“Precisely what I was just saying,” said Amanda.

Jackson and Amanda helped Henry compose a query letter on Amanda’s computer, while Eddie, drinking in the living room, shouted occasional comments across the blue shoji screen.

“Should I say much about the nature of the book? Maybe hint — only hint — that it deals with the ignobly decent?” Henry asked his friends.

Eddie called out, “Maybe you should just say that it’s a realist novel about a court worker in New York. You know, keep it simple.”

“You need to make it sound even more interesting than I’m sure it is,” advised Amanda.

“I know. I’ll just say that I’d like them to consider a novel of modern life, the scope of which is in some degree suggested by the title.” He paused, liking the idea. “I wish I could tell them how close the manuscript came to conflagration, plead with them to save from obscurity the book I saved from oblivion.”

“That’s exactly what you have to do,” Jackson said. “Include clippings, for godsakes. Name the TV stations that covered you.”

“Wouldn’t that be tacky? I couldn’t do that.” As he contemplated the idea, Henry’s neck heated, the warmth spreading up each side and climbing over his jaw and into his cheeks.

“Oh, hell.” Clearly exasperated, Jackson asked Amanda for the phone and took it around the screen.

While he was gone and Amanda rummaged for scissors to cut out The Times report, Henry searched the internet for Clarice Aames. There were several websites paying her homage, but Henry was disappointed to discover that none of her fiction was available online. He would have to write to the editor of Swanky and get his copies replaced.