Christopher Sorrentino - The Fugitives

Such people, I have learned, are no more or less flawed than anyone else — a Bobby, for example, is more flawed, vastly more flawed. But it’s the tiny destroyers like Sandy and Kat who have the greatest effect, wreak the most damage. And Salteau has, I have, summoned the two of them to grind harmlessly against each other, and to draw Bobby into my net.

I SPENTthe next week recuperating. Locally, at least, the news dominated — a casino bigwig had been murdered, after all, and Argenziano’s criminal record came to light, prompting a state investigation. I kept checking the Mirror ’s website to see if anything had been written about it by Kat, but Chicago apparently saw no need to import news of violence and corruption all the way from northern Michigan. Kat ignored two e-mail messages I sent her.

No one associated “Alex Mulligan,” a bit player and Cherry City resident several of the stories mentioned in passing, with the faintly scandalous author from New York, so I was left alone. Or so I thought, until I was contacted by the general counsel of the Boyd Foundation, who informed me that, at the instigation of an unnamed member of the board, he was initiating an inquiry into my personal conduct. As it turned out, the old Baptist sensibilities had not been completely purged from the institution, and the awarding of the fellowship was subject to a morals clause that, I was advised, I was suspected possibly of having violated. Remittance of my fellowship stipend would be suspended while the investigation was ongoing. With this story, I wasn’t so lucky: it got picked up by the usual schadenfreude sites, and then by the Times, and that was when I heard from Rae, or rather from her attorney, who wrote to assert that since my potential change in income arose from my “negligent and/or reckless behavior” the provision in our settlement that allowed for adjustments in support in the event of hardship would not, in her opinion, apply. Moreover, she added, my “unwarranted” remittance to Rae of $10,000 had made it clear to her that I was in perfectly adequate financial condition to continue supporting Rae “in the manner to which she has become accustomed.” Next, I got a call from Dylan.

“I am leaving the profession,” he announced.

“To do what?” I asked. “Personal shopper?”

“I’m going to be cultural liaison to the lieutenant governor of the State of New York.”

What can you possibly say to that? I offered my congratulations.

Soon afterward, the other shoe dropped, and a summons and complaint arrived via certified mail: Monte had canceled my contract and was suing to recover the advance he’d paid me, with interest. It was disappointing, although the disappointment, being purely financial, was relatively easy to handle. I could have taken ten times as much money from Monte, could have taken it in completely bad faith, and the world would roll on just as it does when cities are destroyed, races exterminated — the sort of epic wounds of history memorialized (and profited from) by Monte’s celebrated publishing house. He would still find the limo calling for him at eight thirty each morning; at the office people would still flirt and cringe and watch the clock. On the other hand, I’d be a lot richer.

In happier times Monte would have been delighted with me for expressing an attitude like that; he had no problem copping to the oceans of cash that flowed from one side of his balance sheet to the other in the wake of this or that crappy decision. We were both cynics, in our different ways. Once, he’d given me a lift home from a symposium at Brooklyn College and, as we passed through Ditmas Park and its streets full of elegant houses, he pointed out three of them that had been bought with advance money on books that hadn’t panned out.

“That one’s Jenna Henson’s. Remember her? If That’s the Ladies’ Room, I’m Out of Here ? Of course you don’t. It sold eight hundred and sixty-three copies in hardcover. She was Artemis’s roommate at Wellesley. Artemis was before Shepard. The book was about a Wellesley grad who comes to New York to study graduate anthropology at Columbia. The scene that sold me was when her heroine tries to perform fellatio on the skeleton of an australopithecine hanging passively from its armature in an empty classroom. Nobody bought it. The anthropology metaphor unfolded a little narrow at the edges.”

“What about the blow job metaphor?”

“It wasn’t a metaphoric blow job at all.”

“Nice house.”

“Isn’t it? She’s writing YA novels now. Girls at risk, that’s her theme. Always bitching about the jackets. Too YA-ey, she says. I tell her that she’s chasing after a level of puerility specific to adult trade fiction. Now, that’s Gregory Mockworth’s place. He wrote I’m with the Developmentally Disabled Person. Originally called I’m with Stupid . Based on the notorious T-shirt.”

“What interested you about that one?”

“Long, long story. Vertical integration. Parker Brothers and Paramount were breathing heavily, but they backed off and left us holding the bag after the Association for Retarded Citizens pressured us into the title change. When the word stupid went, so did the magic.”

“Art really can’t be asked to accommodate those kinds of delicate sensibilities, I guess.”

“So true. There’s Oliver Parsley-Currier’s house.” He’d pointed at the biggest and grandest yet. “He’s the one who wrote Wood: The Material That Built Civilization . That one surprised me. I thought it would be a monster. I paid for a monster. People have been making things out of wood for a long time, it turns out. The chapter on dildoes alone…” He’d trailed off, sighed, and looked out the window. After a moment, he turned back to me. “It’s all a big guess, Sandy. We could easily publish the modest successes that would sustain us over the long haul if that were our model — but it’s not. Who can get excited, sexed up, about that? Not publicists. Not the sales force. Not booksellers. Not reviewers. And it’s not just publishing. Insurance, banking, religion: all the quiet industries seek out hysteria now. Fortune 50 °CEOs are trashing hotel rooms and gargling with Cristal like heavy metal drummers. Everybody wants to be a rock star. That’s the dominant paradigm. Poets and politicians are rock stars. Psychologists and defense attorneys. Even movie stars are rock stars. If nobody’s ever called you a rock star, you’re not really whatever it is that you think you are. Rock star indicates a certain magnitude of profit, however that profit is measured. Votes, share price, sales, converts. Who cares about the old ideas about prestige? They were dumb ideas anyway. You hit the ceiling too fast.”

“So I’m a rock star?”

“You’re a rock star. I’m a rock star. Just say it to yourself. ‘I’m a rock star.’ Say it every morning. And then remind yourself that all the other rock stars are writing books of their own.”

NOW I REMINDEDmyself. That part was easy. This morning I’d idly clicked on the publishing newsletter delivered daily to my in-box and discovered, listed under “Hot Deals,” news of the sale of a memoir, tentatively entitled Can’t Take My Eyes off of You . Susannah’s ex-husband had written a book about the painful journey of self-discovery he’d undergone after Susannah had dumped him. I was referred to as the “has-been Gen-X It-boy” who had seduced Susannah before forcing her to endure “alcoholism, lies, and abuse.” It had been bought by Monte, for mid-six figures. Well, fuck you too, Monte, I thought, though I really couldn’t blame him for trying to recoup.