Grub (10 page)

J
ackson Miller ignored the pile of clothes, some clean and some dirty, sprawling on his unmade bed. He ignored the dust animals congregating in the corners of his room. He ignored the stack of unopened mail. As he had every morning since he’d started his novel, he wrote. He was two chapters from finished.

All fall he’d been living off ongoing rent extensions from Doreen and a new credit card from a bank he’d never heard of, as he typed away at his tale of greed and drugs but mostly sex on Wall Street. His working title was
Pig-Male-Ion
, though he knew he’d have to come up with a serious title soon. He routinely reminded himself: I am writing a young man’s book, but I am writing it for women more than for men. They’d buy it in droves, he believed, because women want to understand men, because women do not understand that men fall into two categories: those who are inexplicable and those too dull to require explication. That’s what he planned to say in the interviews—that men are either inexplicable or too dull to bother with.

Jackson wanted to appeal to young readers, to hipsters, so he played with every trick he thought he could get away with: letters written in alternative typescripts, diaries that trail off pages with the suicides of their authors, the inclusion of small illustrations and visual puzzles, the occasional blank page signifying moral bankruptcy. There would be stuff to talk about, texture to make his readers feel clever.

He’d cleaned up as he went along, so there’d be no need for a second draft. The story was the story, and, font tricks aside, it told itself. He’d worked well and quickly, and the end was within a week’s reach.

He spent the afternoon crafting the query letter he planned to send to twenty agents whose names had recently appeared in the “Hot Deals” section of
Publishers Weekly
and then checked his email. Plenty of new messages, but none of them were from Margot. He’d been so sure, that day on the ferry, that she was falling for him. And once a week she sent him a long email—or sometimes an actual letter by post—detailing her life or discussing some idea she was pondering. But she often went days without contacting him, and she never mentioned missing him or suggested that they might get together. Jackson, used to being chased by women, wondered if she was playing by some old-fashioned rule book, if she’d found an etiquette book in some used book store on courting for girls fresh out of finishing school. He wanted to see her but couldn’t very well knock on her father’s door, and he didn’t have the money to take her out. He’d have to invite her down for a night in, he decided, which would require getting Doreen out of the house.

Despite their lack of forwardness, though, Margot’s letters were intimate in their own way, and unless he was a poorer judge of character than he had reason to believe, Margot wasn’t playing at anything. She wasn’t calculating. He sent her another email, this one containing a corny joke about a writer who comes home to find his house on fire. His wife explains that she’d been lighting the fire when his agent called and the curtains ignited. His every possession charred or consumed, the writer asks, with uncontained excitement, “My agent called?”

“I’d rather have you call me,” he concluded the email, and signed
Love, Jackson
, though Margot continued to close her notes
Fondly
.

He was constructing a well-deserved sandwich when Doreen came home. “And how are the luminaries at Grub?” he asked, spreading spicy mustard on a slice of rye. “Overhear any agents wooing bestselling authors or hammering out hardcover-softcover deals?”

“I did cook for those tennis sisters and their editor.”

“Editor? You mean coach.”

Doreen shook her long ponytail. “Editor. They’re writing a series of young adult novels.”

“I keep telling you, Doreen. That’s exactly what you should be doing.”

“Jackson, you’ve said this kind of thing yourself. It’s like that actor who wrote the novel about the retarded kid. Their books are being published because they’re already famous. I’m not. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to be a writer.”

“You like to read.”

“Yes, but I don’t like to write. Part of your problem is that there aren’t enough readers who aren’t also trying to be writers. I don’t want to be a writer. I want to be a chef, have my own restaurant, and have all those editors and agents and big-time writers and tennis stars lunching on my roasted beets.”

Jackson cut his sandwich in half and opened a bottle of beer. “Say, Doreen,” he said, “think you could get me a discount if I have lunch at Grub in a while?”

“Not with your credit history,” she laughed.

Jackson awoke the next morning with a title, which he pasted into his query letter. To save money as well as time, he emailed the letter, together with the first three chapters, to those agents who accepted electronic queries. He printed out the other queries, addressed the envelopes, and walked to the post office. In the crisp air, Jackson felt the energy of fall, of school in swing and people back to work, of productivity and success. The day was going his way. The line at the post office was short, and the clerk was young and pretty. The bagel he picked up on the way home was still warm, and that afternoon the sentences came easily. Shortly before five, he received two emails and one phone call from agents interested in representing the book now titled
Oink
.

“How about I hand you the manuscript over lunch?” he said to the agent who phoned. “I promise that if you liked the chapters I sent, you’ll love the whole book.”

“Hell, I don’t even have to read it,” she said. “How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow should work,” Jackson answered. “Half past twelve at Grub? Can you make the reservation?”

That night, working straight through the small hours, Jackson finished writing his first novel.

E
ddie Renfros stared at the computer screen, his knuckles locked as he faced the first page of the fifteenth chapter of
Conduct
, a page that was, after an hour of sitting, still blank. The viola player and her husband were scheduled, according to his outline, to fight over their deaf daughter’s tentatively planned surgery. But Eddie could not shake the belief that these two characters were not combative. As he had grown to know the two as people, he saw that the husband’s reaction to disagreement was avoidance, while the wife sought escape in excitement and pleasure. Neither of them was pre-disposed to direct conflict. Yet to stay on schedule and keep his plot in line, he needed to stick to his outline and force the characters into a full-blown argument. He imagined Amanda laughing at him, saying, “My God, they aren’t real people.”

At this moment, he felt enormous admiration for Henry Baffler—for Henry’s commitment to his artistic ideas, loony though they sometimes were. Eddie also admired Henry for protecting his independence. Henry had no wife to support, no literary reputation to protect, and he didn’t seem to mind living in near squalor.

Eddie took a third coffee break and reconsidered Amanda’s words on the painter Hobbema. It seemed highly peculiar that she should want him to write such a book—a novel about a talented but not especially well-known painter who quit painting in his early thirties. And then it struck him that he was in Hobbema’s position, albeit removed by three centuries and one art form. Perhaps Amanda was telling him something altogether different than what her literal words said. Perhaps she had planted the idea not because she wanted him to write about Hobbema but because she wanted him to imitate the painter—to get a job at the ministry of weights and measures or whatever the hell it was that Hobbema had done. And to quit writing.

He went back to the computer and stared at the words ‘Chapter Fifteen’ until they blurred and then came back together distorted. He played with their letters like an anagram, came up with the word ‘fatter’ but no noun for it to describe. His heart fluttered, as it did when he was nervous before a public appearance, but here he was all alone with just his partially written novel. Again he tried to decode Amanda’s intent. Hobbema just quit, and he could too. No one ever said he
had
to be a writer. It would be liberating to quit: no more guilt when he didn’t work, no more worries about succeeding at something few people can succeed at, no more thinking about invented lives in the middle of the night.

Eddie took his mug to the dining room table, rummaged through the paper until he found the want ads, and circled every job that anyone might possibly give him. Copyediting seemed most likely, and there was a copyediting gig at one of the major house’s small imprints. An editor at that imprint had been one of the first to reject
Vapor
, and Eddie had admired the directness of her letter to his agent. Where certain other editors had overextended metaphors about unfinished paintings and vague “editorial” concerns about not having fallen in love with the main character “as a man,” this editor had declined on the grounds that the book “would be a modest seller at best.” It was an opinion he could swallow, not the kind that tormented him with revision possibilities in the middle of the night.

He phoned the number listed and was granted an afternoon interview. He told himself that this didn’t signal the end of his writing career, that he might well get more writing done under the discipline of a job schedule. He reasoned that the less time he had, the more he would appreciate it and the more wisely he would use it. He’d benefit from the variety of occupation. He would write novels precisely because he didn’t have to. Writing could become a treat and a joy, or maybe he’d prove himself one of those writers who can’t not write. Kafka had had a job and so had Wallace Stevens, and that wasn’t even counting all the writers working as teachers. Even the great Faulkner had paused to earn a few bucks from Hollywood.

To prove his point to himself, Eddie returned to his computer and marched his characters through their confrontation and through the first six pages of chapter fifteen—twice his regular daily quota. He showered, dressed in slacks and his only fresh-looking blazer, walked up to his midtown interview, claimed his visitor’s badge at the security desk, and rode the elevator to the nineteenth floor.

The man who interviewed him—and would be his superior if he landed the job—looked to be several years younger than Eddie, and worked not in an office but a cubicle. He shook hands energetically and spoke with the animation and satisfaction of a man whose income, however small, is assured.

“We’re launching a new line of romances,” he said, pushing bangs from his eyes to peruse Eddie’s resume, which highlighted his degrees and his publications but listed little in the way of employment history. “Not exactly the literary work you might have been hoping for.”

Eddie smoothed his slacks with his palms. “Doesn’t matter. I enjoy copyediting. It may be my favorite part of my own process. Seriously. I’m good at it, and I want the job.”

“But can we afford you?” The young man leaned forward as he asked this. His tone was difficult to parse, and Eddie couldn’t discern whether it was serious, lightly joking, or downright mocking.

“I’m not as much above your figure as you might imagine.” Eddie’s voice was husky, his words ending with a cracked laugh. He paused. “Please give me the job.” His tongue sat dry and heavy in his mouth.

“Well, it’s a bit comical to have a well-reviewed author copyediting bodice busters, but you know your own business best and no doubt you’re not the only writer in this line of work. Just promise: only copyediting, no editing. The prose will appall you, but you must leave it alone. Just fix the outright errors and find the typos.”

They agreed on thirty hours per week, because the publishing house would be unable to offer health insurance or the other benefits of full-time employment. Despite the paltriness of the salary named, Eddie felt good as he walked home. He was downright happy about the prospect of some regular income—at least he could pay the interest on their credit-card debt—and pleased with himself for having done something, having taken matters into his own hands. No more feebleness; he had made a decision and was on his way to acting like a responsible man. He nodded to the cops outside the Cuban embassy as he rounded the corner toward home.

When he entered the apartment, he heard the once-familiar rhythm of Amanda’s fast typing on a keyboard. Whereas he could only hunt and peck, Amanda had been properly trained and could type as fast as she could think. He’d always taken pride in his slow, old-fashioned typing, imagined that it improved the quality of his word choices and cadences and put him in the company of those great writers of decades past who worked with manual typewriters. Now, though, he wasn’t sure. If he could type properly, perhaps
Conduct
would already be completed and he could move on.

He waited for Amanda to finish what she was working on, pushing aside the thought that it might be a long, heartfelt email, for he knew that his wife corresponded back and forth with several friends. Sometimes she told him a joke that Jackson had emailed, and he wondered how often they communicated.

“How did the writing go today?” she asked when she walked into the living room. As always, her face made the room seem lighter, sunnier.

“Six pages, so I could even take tomorrow off if I wanted to.”

She sat directly across from him, on the red leather chair facing the sofa. “But you aren’t going to do that, are you?” She looked steadily at him, her gaze underscoring the tone of her comment as instructional rather than inquisitive.

“I’m not going to,” Eddie assured her. “But I am going to have to tinker with my writing schedule. I’ve taken a job.”

“A job? What job?” Amanda sat straight and smiled with only one side of her mouth.

He told her about the interview and the job he’d been offered.

“Let me go over this and see if I have it right. You applied for a job as a romance-novel copyeditor? And then you actually went to the interview?”

“It’s just part-time, to supplement what you’re making until I can get an advance. I’ll still be working on the novel. I’ll still be first and foremost a writer. But unless you’re willing to move somewhere much less expensive, we’ve got to do something to make some money. I wish I were a rich and famous writer, but the truth is that we’re broke. Flat broke.”

Amanda stroked the fine hairs on her arm. After a long silence, she said in a quiet, resolute voice: “I won’t allow it.”

“Either I take this job or we move to New Jersey.”

“To me, it makes no difference. Either option is intolerable.”

Eddie’s anger, pent up so long by his fear of annoying his beautiful wife, swelled into something he couldn’t contain. “Amanda, are you my wife or not?”

“I am certainly not the wife of a copyeditor of romance novels. That’s not why I’ve been working for idiots for two years.”

“You were the one who told me the Hobbema story. What was I supposed to gather from that?” His rage now full blown, he was bellowing.

“Hobbema? My God. You are so thick. I wanted you to write a book about something interesting, something with a bit of human drama in it, not to abandon your talent!”

“But all that talk about how he quit painting at my age and got a job and supported his wife.”

“Was it lost on you that Hobbema could have gone on to be a great painter? Instead he’s a footnote about what might have been. He spent over four decades—forty fucking years—weighing bottles of imported wine that he couldn’t afford to drink. He and his maid of a wife are buried in a paupers’ cemetery. Is that what you want for yourself? For me?”

“I notice you didn’t say ‘for us.’” Eddie paused, force draining from his words even as they grew more harsh. “Whatever you think of me, you’re my wife. Now you are the wife of a copyeditor as well as a novelist. If I see fit for us to move to Jersey City, you’ll come with me.”

Eddie saw now what he’d never noticed before: the four years they had passed together were starting to appear on his wife’s face. A line marked the width of her forehead and the corners of her eyes crinkled just slightly. He couldn’t call them laugh lines, though, as she glared at him with a fierceness he’d never seen.

“Do as you see fit? You’re out of your fucking mind.”

She’d never before said such horrible things to him, never yelled at him with profanity. He wanted to grab her arm, yank her to her feet, and then shove her back down to start the conversation over again. He held his hands in fists on his thighs, choking down anger, and felt his tears come. As Amanda looked away in scorn, Eddie wished that he
had
grabbed her, shaken her up. She would have at least recognized him as strong. She would have been the one crying instead of sitting there coolly. Finally, they both stood, facing each other across only a few feet.

“You won’t move with me then?”

“If a copyeditor commuting from New Jersey is the life you offer me, then no, I think I’ll pass. I’ve been working to support your writing. I’m certainly not going into the business of offering subventions to copyeditors.”

“You would be more ashamed to share my plight than to have everyone know that you’re a heartless wife?”

“Look, Eddie, you have one more chance to save us from degradation: finish your goddamn novel. Yet you refuse to do the work and instead embark on this ridiculous course of action. You want to drag me down with you. I can’t and won’t do it. The disgrace is all yours. Everyone I know thinks I’m a martyr, but I don’t want to be a martyr just because I was unlucky enough to marry a man with no ambition, no fortitude, and certainly no regard for my feelings.”

“No regard for your feelings? Everything I do is for you!”

He stepped closer to her, but he could see in her face no vulnerability to him at all.

“If you leave me,” he said, “that’s it. I won’t take you back.”

“I’m afraid that’s likely.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? You’re bored with me and looking for a reason to leave. Maybe the copyediting was a bad idea, but the absurdity of our situation made it seem plausible. Amanda, you’ve given me no hope. You insist on staying in this ungodly expensive apartment. And you’ve never given me any reason to believe that you’ll stand by me if the worst happens.”

“Eddie, I don’t want to argue anymore. Call that publisher and tell them you don’t want the job. Finish your book. Then we’ll decide what to do about the apartment. And our marriage.”

He yelled: “Decide what to do about our marriage?” After a few audible breaths, he continued, in a softer tone, “See, I always know that leaving me is an option for you. It kills me. It’s probably the reason I can’t write well anymore. If you only realized, then maybe you wouldn’t be so heartless. Instead of confirming my worst fears, you could be trying to prove that I’m wrong about them.”

“And you might try proving that you’re willing to do your utmost to save me from humiliation.”

“Humiliation is a pretty strong word. Jesus. And I
am
doing my utmost. It’s hard, though, when I get so little encouragement from the woman who is supposed to love me, from the one person who is supposed to be on my side.”

“Eddie, I know that you’ve had to work in the face of repeated rejection. I feel awful for you, I really do. But you need to work in a better way, to write smarter. Until you really give that a try, you have no right to give it all up and no right to drag me down with you. I want to lead a big life, not a pathetic one. And as for encouragement, well, what the hell have I been doing if not encouraging you by working so you can write?”

“Would it be such a disgrace to be the wife of a copyeditor? And if it became full-time, maybe you could quit your job and write that novel you were thinking about in Iowa.”

“A copyeditor of romance novels? I’m ashamed all the way down that you would sink to this. You’re an author. You’re Eddie Renfros, author of the critically acclaimed novel
Sea Miss
.”