Lineage (12 page)

“Lance, really good to see you again,” Howard said as he pumped Lance’s hand up and down twice.
Always twice.
Must’ve learned that in publisher’s college,
Lance thought absently.

“You also,” Lance said, still smiling. Howard turned to Andy and extended his hand, which Andy gripped in what seemed to Lance to be an overenthusiastic greeting.

“Good to see you, Allen.”

“Andrew,” Andy said flatly, the smile hanging on his face like a bad painting.

“Of course, please sit down, gentlemen.”

The three men sat and noisily scooted their chairs closer to the table. Howard reached out and tipped the plate of cookies toward Andy and Lance.

“Cookies?” he said, looking from Lance to Andy, smiling like Mr. Ed. Both men shook their heads in unison, Lance smiling and Andy glaring openly. Howard set the plate down and
steepled
his fingers together while gazing over the tops of them. “Well, guys, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Sure,” Lance said.

“Please,” Andy murmured. Howard shot a momentary look of annoyance at Andy and then his smile wiped it away.

“So Lance, what’s going on? I’m told you had to put a hold on
Harbinger’s Regret
?”

Lance nodded, encouraged by how understanding and open Howard’s voice sounded. “Yeah, I’ve had some plot issues. I have maybe another twenty thousand words to go, and I just ran into a snag. I’m thinking I’ll need at least another three weeks to work out the kinks.” Lance stopped speaking as Howard looked down toward his lap and put up one hand in the universal sign of silence. Lance’s eyebrows drew down as the man who sat behind Howard flicked open both latches on the black briefcase he held on his lap.

“Lance, we were right on track for an October release. That’s your best month. We talked about this on the phone not two months ago. What happened from when you told me it was all coming together to now?” Howard asked.

“Well,” Lance said, licking his lips. His jaw felt tight. It needed to be stretched and cracked. He could feel a pilot light beginning to burn in the pit of his stomach, the warning sign, as loud as any tornado
siren, that
his anger was beginning to wake. “Like I said, there were a few things that just didn’t seem to mesh well with the resolution, so I went back and changed them. That, in turn, weakened a couple of details that I really liked. I can iron it
out,
I just need a few more weeks.” Howard sat staring at him over the bulbous sweating pitcher and flat cookies. His eyes were unmoving in their sockets, and Lance suddenly had the overwhelming impression that everyone else in the room had died. For a few seconds, Howard ceased to breath, the enigmatic man behind him was a taxidermist’s canvas, and even Andy seemed to have stopped his near-constant motion.

Life snapped back into action as Howard sighed and ran his tongue over the outside of his massive teeth. The silent man behind him opened the briefcase and pulled a staple-bound mass of paper out of the black carrier. He then stood just enough to slide the sheets onto the table a few inches from Howard’s elbow.

“Well, I’m really disappointed, Lance.
Really disappointed.
No offense, but now I’m going to have to fly back to New York and tell Richard why the next Lance Metzger novel won’t be out in time for the season next fall.”

“I’m
sorry,
I just can’t throw it all together for the sake of hitting a deadline. I’m sure you understand,” Lance said imploringly, the anger in his stomach starting to rise like mercury in a thermometer.

“I do and I don’t, but I guess there’s no choice, is there?” Howard said, beginning to stand. “Oh, but one more thing,” he continued with a vaguely amused tone, and Lance noticed one of his undertaker hands lightly touch the papers on the table. “I was notified that this was your last book on contract with us—”

“Like you didn’t know,” Andy said, his words cracking off like rounds from a pistol. Howard looked over at Andy with unveiled disgust but only sneered, his culvert-like nostrils flaring.

“As I was saying, this is your last book with us, and before we renew your contract, we’ll have to go through the necessary—”

“Oh, enough of this shit!” Andy said as he stood with sufficient force to knock over his chair. “Do you know who this man is? He’s probably your fucking bread and butter, Cole. His last three novels have outsold anything else on your roster.
People line up for blocks to see him when he does a signing.
His advances are in the six digits, and you’re sitting here actually
threatening
him with not re-signing a contract for missing a publication date?” Andy leaned over the table, and Lance watched the redness in his palms become white with the pressure he exerted. “We’ll go somewhere else, you fucking moronic cartoon! Shit, he’ll publish his next work himself! How’s that for negotiating?”

“What do you know about anything, you weird little—
”

“I’ve represented two platinum recording artists, three best-selling novelists not including the one in this room, and an actor that’s received more Oscar nominations than anyone I can think of, so I know my way around the entertainment industry, Mr. Cole, and you do not!” Andy turned from the table and began to walk to the door. Lance stood and finally met eyes with Howard, who was clenching his
Chiclet
-like teeth within the snarl of his parted lips.

“Basically, what Andy was saying was, you’ll get my book when I’m done with it, not a second sooner or later. If that’s unacceptable, take me to court and I’ll show up with bells on.”

Without another word, Lance walked around the large table and out the door, which Andy held open for him. When it finally clicked shut behind them and their footsteps were the only sound in the hallway, Lance turned his head to look at his friend. Andy’s face was still contorted in what Lance imagined were thoughts of what he had wanted to say but hadn’t. Andy mouthed something angrily incomprehensible, and Lance couldn’t stand it any longer. His laughter sprung out of him and echoed loudly off the walls. Andy turned his attention to Lance, and the look of utter frustration was so complete and profound that another gale of mirth blustered in Lance’s stomach and he nearly doubled over with it.

“What?” Andy said, the irritation rising in his voice.

“You, you …” Lance gasped as he staggered with laughter. “You fucking moronic cartoon!” Another fit squeezed Lance’s midsection until he had to lean on the wall near the elevator. Andy stood to the far side of the double doors, frowning at Lance, his hands deep in the pockets of his expensive suit pants. As the elevator doors dinged open and announced the arrival of the car, Andy finally spoke.

“You’re a fucking loon, you know that?”

The car ride home was quiet once Lance’s laughing fit had finally passed. A quarter turn had been taken off the vice that pressed on the sides of his head. He could feel the pressure there each time his thoughts returned to the unfinished novel, like a tongue probing at a hole where a tooth used to be. At least telling Cole off had felt good. The laughter afterward had been even better. As the car glided around a long bend in the highway, keeping time with the other vehicles around it, Lance turned to Andy.

“Thank you again.”

“For what?”

“For standing up for me.
You know you didn’t have to literally stand up.” Lance smiled, hoping to crack his friend’s oppressive mood. Andy merely looked sidelong at him before returning his eyes to the road.

“You’re welcome. I’m guessing we’re soon going to be on the receiving end of some angry calls from
New York
about this, so be prepared.”

Lance nodded while making a mental note to add an extra fifty thousand to Andy’s bank account this Christmas, and sunk back into his seat. Now that the laughter had escaped him, he felt hollow. His nerves were like unbraided cables, and a draining weariness began to settle over him. At that moment he felt sure he could sleep without interruption, without the feeling of water running over his feet and soaking his back, without the sounds of sliding footsteps just behind him.

“So what are you going to do?” Andy asked, bringing Lance back to the sounds of the car around him. Lance sighed and rubbed his face. Up until this point, he had hoped that the words would just return. He didn’t have a contingency plan other than waiting, but when he stopped to think about it, waiting didn’t seem to be such a great idea either.

“I don’t know. Sit down at the computer and stare into the abysmal whiteness of the blank page until my muse returns?”

Andy blinked abnormally long. “I think you should go on vacation.”

“What? Why? I can’t take a break now, I’m on a break.”

Andy tipped his head toward him. “Sometimes the best thing to do is just step back and get away for a while, get a different perspective on what’s bothering you. You should go somewhere warm, lie on a beach. Bring Ellen, do nothing but have sex and drink for a week, see if that gets things going again.”

The thought of Ellen’s last words and the slamming door caused Lance to grimace. “I’m guessing Ellen wouldn’t go to the park with me right now, not to mention on vacation.”

Andy looked over at him and then back at the road before speaking. “I never liked her.”

“God, Andy!”

“I’m just telling you the truth. She always treated me like I was mentally retarded, talking slowly to me and speaking a little louder than normal. I’ve got
Asperger’s
. I’m not hard of hearing.”

“Noted.”
The harshness in Lance’s voice didn’t go entirely unnoticed as Andy fell silent and turned into Lance’s drive.

Andy threw the car into park and glanced over at his friend. “If you don’t want to go away,
then
go see Dr. Tyler.”

Lance shook his head and looked out of the passenger window, a flash of anger running through his stomach like a hot blade. “I don’t need to go see him. I’m fine. I just need to calm down and be alone for a while with my thoughts. Besides, he moved to
Michigan
a couple years ago.”

“Then call him, you know he’d talk to you.”

“I know he would. I just want this to go away. It’s been gone for so long. I was free of it, and now this? I lost my ability to do the only thing that makes me feel worthwhile.
Really?”
Lance fell silent as the anger turned into a sour despair that sat burning within his chest. Andy shifted in the seat beside him and finally broke the stiff silence inside the car.

“You were never really free of it, your past. No one is. It just went dormant, that’s all.”

Lance nodded with a few quick jerks of his head. Andy may not have always been the most emotional friend through the years, but he could be damn insightful at times.

“I guess I’ll just have to sit down and grind it out, do the best I can. It’s not like my fingers are gone and I can’t type.”

“God helps those who help themselves,” Andy said.

Lance snorted and looked over at his friend, who sat frowning back at him. “Andy, I have the distinct feeling that God set things in motion a long time ago, and he hasn’t been back since.” Lance reached out and grasped the handle of the door, but stopped halfway out of the car. “Besides, that’s just a nifty way of saying ‘get off your ass and do it yourself.’”

The right side of Andy’s mouth curled up in an attempt at a smile as Lance stepped out of the car and shut the door behind him.

Chapter 5

“Happiness is always a coincidence.”

—José
Bergamín

Welcome home, son.

The scream raced free of Lance’s throat and rebounded off the walls of his bedroom. His stomach muscles cramped from the effort of bringing himself upright off the bed and his chest heaved with the exertion. Lance brought one shaking hand from the mattress and rubbed the back of his sweat-slicked neck. The skin was smooth, unblemished, and uncut. His eyes searched the dark room as he regained the sense of being in the waking world, and his mind began to brush away the clinging miasma of the dream. Something different had happened this time. He pushed at the boundaries of the memory that inched its doors closed to his prodding thoughts. He had seen something just before he woke. The light had come on fully this time, but the figure before him hadn’t had a face. Instead, it was nothing but shadow.

Lance swung his bare feet out and put them on the coolness of the floor. The sensation brought him fully awake, and he rubbed his eyes to clear them. The clock on his bedside table read
3:31
.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he stood from the bed and crossed the room to his door. The landing outside his room gave him a great view of the darkened house. He imagined for a moment that he could see shapes moving in the shadows and hiding behind couches and chairs below him, but he shoved the images away. He didn’t have time for imaginings that weren’t on paper.

As he made his way through the house, flipping on the occasional light here and there, he tried to remember all the details of the dream so he could repeat it when the time came. His study glowed with the dim ambient light of his computer screen, which he left on constantly, and when he entered the room, he didn’t bother to turn on the overhead fixture.

The black folder of business cards sat right where he had left it, in the top right drawer of his desk. He flicked through the small pages and panic began to creep into his chest when the card failed to reveal itself. On the second, much slower, inspection, the card was there. The taupe lettering on the gray background was a familiar sight that filled him with conflicting memories of fear and comfort.

Turning the card over, Lance picked up the phone from his desk and dialed the number written in sloppily scrawled blue ink. Beneath the number Lance could see the words
day or night
written in the same looping hand. The line began to ring and he almost hung up, but before the receiver had left his ear, the phone on the other end was picked up.

“Hello?”

Lance
froze,
his mouth half open, as he sat in his boxer shorts with the phone pressed to his ear.

“Hello?” the voice inquired again, and Lance could almost see Dr. Tyler’s lanky form hunched on the side of his bed—probably a mirror image of himself at the moment—his eyes beady from the lack of glasses that Lance had never seen him without.

“Dr. Tyler?” A beat of silence, and Lance winced as he read the clock’s accusing hands on his desk.

“Lance. What’s wrong?” The 650-odd miles that separated them did nothing to conceal the concern in the doctor’s voice.

Lance exhaled and rested his forehead in his palm. “Nothing … I mean, not nothing, I wouldn’t have called you at this hour for nothing. I just …” His voice trailed off and he pressed his lips together until they became a white line.

“
It’s
okay, Lance. Are you hurt? Are you in trouble?”

“No, I’m not hurt. I think I’m having some sort of night terrors or a recurring nightmare. It seems stupid now that I’ve got you on the phone.”

“Tell me.” The doctor’s voice left no room for argument. Lance began to talk. The words spewed out of his mouth. He described the events of the past six weeks—the dream, the sudden writer’s block, his missed deadline, and the meeting with Ellington & Field. Dr. Tyler asked him to describe the dream as best he could, and as Lance spoke, the doctor occasionally stopped him to ask about a minor detail or for him to repeat a certain part, but mostly he was silent. When Lance finished, he sat back in his office chair and closed his eyes, listening to the humming quiet of the doctor’s bedroom in
Michigan
.

“Well, my boy, this is fairly simple. Your writing becoming inhibited by the dream’s presence is easily explainable. Your writing, the words you put down in your books, has been your shield ever since you learned to put pencil to paper. It’s been your refuge. We made huge breakthroughs several years ago, and the anger, along with the feeling of helplessness, was well within check, correct?”

“Yeah, the last three years have been really good. Sometimes, days will actually go by when I don’t think of him or my mother.”

“Exactly.
And furthermore, I think you’ve done your best work recently.”

“
What,
are you a critic?” The doctor laughed but then fell silent again. Lance nodded to himself. “Yeah, I guess I have.”

“You were finally letting go, Lance. Your past and your future were separating and you were moving forward, but I think somewhere deep in your mind you realized it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the dream might be a self-protection mechanism.”

Lance leaned forward in the chair again, resting his elbows on his thighs. His forehead wrinkled as he frowned. “You think I’m trying to hold on to my past?” Lance heard the anger in his voice before he felt it and immediately tried to calm himself.

“I think you’re consciously ready to move on. The fear you have of your anger, it almost falls into obsessive-compulsive country, and that’s because your real fear is being anything like your father. Your father was a sadist, at best; you are a gentle person. Your father hated creating things, and that’s all you do. Do you see? You’ve changed your physical appearance by working out so you wouldn’t even resemble him in stature. You are as different from him as a rock is from water.

“Lance, you’ve told me things that would curl the hair of many a child therapist, and unless you’re withholding something major from me, you’ve let all the monsters out of your closet.”

Lance sighed. “I haven’t kept anything from you, I’ve told you about every time that bastard hit me or my mother. How he liked to watch us in pain. He fed on it. Each time he beat either one of us, it gave him the energy to keep doing it. It was intrinsic violence at its purest. So no, I haven’t kept anything a secret.” Lance began to sweat again, the drops tickling his naked back like cold fingernails stroking his spine.

“Please don’t get upset. All I’m trying to say is that somewhere in your subconscious you’re panicking because I think you’re ready to let go.”

“Let go of what? I’ve vented everything that’s happened to me.”

“Let go of it all. Of your hatred for a man so violently killed that the medical examiner did the autopsy in a bucket instead of on a table. Of your longing for a mother who disappeared, and the anger you harbored for her. Of the immense physical and emotional trauma you endured and overcame.
Of your past, Lance.
You can finally let it go.”

The study began to blur as warm tears surfaced in Lance’s eyes. He breathed in deeply and released it, so surprised that he nearly laughed at the relief starting to ebb through his tangled nerves.

“It makes sense. It feels right,” Lance
said,
his voice breaking. He could almost feel the doctor nodding on the other end of the phone, as he had done so many times before when a legitimate step had been made.

“That’s because you’re ready. The writer’s block you have will pass. You’ll finish the novel, and the dream isn’t going to bother you nearly as much if you have it again. Personally, I don’t know if you’ll have it at all. If you need to, take a break or a short vacation to really come to terms with it. It’ll do you good.”

Lance shook his head and smiled in spite of himself. “Oh man. Now you sound like Andy.”

“Well, I always said he was a very intelligent person.”

“He’s a foulmouthed
Aspie
that thinks he knows what’s best for me.”

“Like I said, he’s a very intelligent person.”

Lance laughed loudly and genuinely, and a smile remained after the laughter receded. “Thanks so much, Doc. I really owe you a lot.”

“Lance, you were my first patient when I was fresh out of my internship. You were my favorite back then, and you still are today.” Lance’s eyes softened and he looked at his reflection in window across from him, the background beginning to brighten. For a moment he expected to see a boy staring back.

“Sorry again for waking you.”

“No need to apologize, but do me a favor and call me sometime just to chat. I want to know how your book ends before
it’s
published, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” Lance said, laughing again.

“Good night, Lance.”

“Good night, Doc.”

Lance pressed the end button and laid the phone face-down on the desk. He could just make out the looming silhouettes of trees in the growing light. His eyelids dipped slightly as fatigue, which had been elbowed aside by his terror a half-hour before, finally caught him firmly in an undeniable grip.

He stood from the chair and made his way back through the house, turning off the same lights he had flipped on earlier. He paused at the base of the stairway and peered up at the unlit rectangle of his bedroom door. Instead of turning right and heading up the stairs, he went straight, into the sunken living room. He sprawled out on the large sectional couch and pulled a down comforter over him. Without so much as another thought, Lance looked one last time at the steadily graying light in the east before closing his eyes to the morning. As he gradually dropped into darkness, he heard the sound of scuffing footsteps, but they did not pursue him as he finally slipped deep into sleep.   

A muted chiming pried Lance’s sealed eyelids open to the sunlight-flooded living room. He licked his dried lips and tried to blink away the crusted sleep that scratched the corners of his eyes. The musical alarm continued until Lance sat up and looked about for its cause. By the time he realized that his cell phone all the way upstairs in his bedroom was the culprit of the noise, it had fallen silent.

Lance sat up from the couch and squinted at the digital clock on the stove in the kitchen. “Shit, almost noon,” Lance croaked to the empty room. He stretched his jaw, as was his routine, and listened to the snap of tendons and bone. A deep rumble issued from his stomach and he felt hunger pangs working their way through his guts like thin knives. His head felt as though heavy syrup had been poured in one ear while he slept. As he rose from the couch, his phone began to vibrate and chime again above him. Lance stopped to listen to it for a moment, his head cocked to one side, before continuing to the kitchen to make breakfast.

“Fuck it.”

Lance placed the clean plate in the wire dish-drainer and wiped his hands on the towel near his waist. His stomach was overly full due to the seven-egg omelet he had consumed along with two pieces of toast and a glass of orange juice.

As he climbed the stairs to his room to see who had incessantly called him during the morning hours, he had a sudden stab of melancholy. He mulled over the feeling, like a man rolling a misshapen rock in his hands, before realizing that Ellen might never climb these stairs with him again. He paused at the landing until the feeling became less poignant, and then entered his room.

When he turned his phone on, the list of missed text messages and phone calls filled the screen. Most of the numbers had a
New York
area code.

“E and
effin
’ F,” Lance murmured as he scrolled down the messages. There were two from Andy, both encouraging him in no uncertain words to call his publisher and basically set them straight, and five from
Rashir
Smith, the assistant to the executive publishing rights agent at Ellington & Field.

Lance threw the phone onto the bed and made his way back downstairs without answering a single request. As he strode purposefully in the direction of the basement with full intentions of putting himself through a grueling workout, something stopped him near the door to the study. Lance’s eyes narrowed as he listened to the silence of the house. He had heard something. Something
like
a word, a whisper in the air the second before as he stepped toward the stairway. He shook his head and began to move again, but paused when he noticed another sensation.  

A slight pressure had begun to build in his head. It felt as if he
were
driving down a long hill toward the sea and the heaviness of the descent was pushing its unrestrained fingers at his eardrums. Lance stopped and turned toward the study. He half expected to see the room in shambles—the computer screen overturned, the books thrown from their shelves, and the knickknacks broken upon the floor. Instead, the room looked tidy, just as he had left it earlier that morning.

The pressure abruptly intensified.