Pocket Kings (13 page)

Chip Zero wins $600 with two Jacks.

Artsy Painter Gal:
Oooooh, your stack just got a lot bigger, baby.

Wolverine Mommy:
You know, APG, I did see Chip first.

Artsy Painter Gal:
But, Wolve, we've never really seen him.

Which was a good thing. I didn't know what APG looked like and she had no idea what I looked like. She had only recently told me her real name: Victoria.

History Babe:
So this prof knew all about the Peloponnesian War and Herodotus and Charlemagne. We have a date skedded for 10 tonight too.

I made a mental note that at ten that night I would seek out History and her new guy, wherever they were, to eavesdrop. A solid poker player, History Babe was by far the best dirty talker on the site. Nobody else came close (or as often). She had coaxed men into sending cell phone-made videos to her of themselves whacking off. A few of the videos, she told me, had sound: you could hear the guys crying out, while they climaxed, “Oooooh, History Babe, the Edict of Nantes!” or “Oooooh Hist,
Th
e Second Punic War! Oooooh!”

Mrs. Foldin' Caulfield:
Send me a transcript tomorrow? It's all I have to look forward to.

Bubbly Brit Bird:
Awwww, poor MFC. Not getting any at home?

Toll House Cookie:
And she's married to a bone doctor too!

An hour later APG and I were at a private table. If anyone was eavesdropping on us and counting on exxxtreme nastiness, they were sorely disappointed. She told me about her high school days as the tall skinny Artsy Alterna-Dork, the outsider, growing up in a Detroit suburb. She didn't fit into any clique, she had few friends and hated the jocks and the popular girls. She had a boyfriend when she was a senior—he was six years older and was a designer at General Motors—but he ditched her. No letter, no phone call, nothing.

“I was heartbroken,” she told me. “I still think about it.”

“But I'm here for you, APG.”

“Yes. I know. And I'm glad. You make my day, baby.”

Somebody liked me again and the feeling was thrilling.

It was like a book of mine getting a very good review. Well, not quite . . . but close.

On the day of the
Saucier
party I called Clint again, this time during office hours.
Th
at cowardly evening call to his office had energized me, made my onions a bit bigger. I still was planning to keep my cool, to do a little groveling. I just had to get that list. Also spurring me on was the possibility that Clint might surprise me with: “Frank, I've got great news for you. Jerry Bathgate at Something or Other Books loves the novel. I think we've got a deal!”

Crouched over in my study with the lights off—had you seen me you would've thought I was suffering from severe intestinal cramping—I made the call, bracing myself for the good or the bad. What I was not prepared for was . . .

A young female voice answering the phone: “Reno Brothers Literary Agency, this is Courtney, may I help you?”

Huh? Wha—? Or as some poker players say when they don't have a clue as to what's going on:
WTF?

Clint and the other agents . . .
had hired a receptionist!

“Huh?” I said to young Courtney, possibly a college intern working for school credit.

“
Th
is is the Reno Brothers Literary Agency . . . how may I direct your call?”

“
Th
ey hired a receptionist?”

“Yes, I've been working here for three weeks. Whom do you wish to speak to?”

She sounded like a grad student who loved the Jonathans and the Davids and books like
Infinite Lovely Fortress of Illuminated Bones Corrections and Super-sad True Absurd Heartbreaking Debutante Clay
and was planning to write a serious novel. She'd write it, it wouldn't get published, she'd marry a stockbroker and move to Greenwich.

“
Th
ree weeks did you say?”

“Yes. Who's calling and how may I direct your call?”

I thought about it. . . . It had been four weeks since I'd called and left the message on the Reno Bros. answering machine. . . . Clint must have heard that, made a few calls, then hired a receptionist . . .
just to intercept my phone calls!

I could hang up and she wouldn't know it was me. But I had to show my cojones. I've bluffed and won hundreds of dollars with nothing but a 9 of clubs.
Th
is wasn't that different.

“
Th
is is Frank Dixon calling. . . . Can I please speak to Clint?”

She didn't say anything for a while. Had Clint instructed her:
If someone named Frank Dixon calls, tell him things are crazed around here and I'm incredibly busy right now but I'll call him back first thing when I'm free even though I won't.

“I'll put you through,” she said.

Th
e Coruscatin' Kid was still hunched over in the dark. Maybe the news would be good. Kip Nowhere at Nada, Stugatz & Squadoosh loves the book. Bob Somebody at Nobody Books loves the book. Annie Nothing at Kiss My Ass Press loves the book. Bidding war, bidding war, bidding war. Or if the news was bad, maybe Clint would give me the list I needed, and my book and I could move on.

Courtney came back twenty seconds later and said: “
Th
ings are crazed around here and Clint is incredibly busy right now. He says he'll call you first thing when he's free.”

“Okay,” I said. “Please have him do that. Tell him I said hi.
Th
anks. Bye.”

Th
e
Saucier
party was in four hours. I went online and quickly dumped $2,500, then passed a delightful hour with Artsy. Second and Toll House Cookie joined us. It was fun but my mind was only half there, the other half was still stewing over how I'd been thwarted by Courtney and Clint. (I just naturally assumed he was boning her.) But it wasn't only that. While I was going to a book party for a novel that wasn't mine, my own book was festering in a swampy limbo that I couldn't even pluck it out of, and my career was somewhere deeper, darker and more impenetrable.

I walked into Florian in the only sport jacket I had that still fit me, and it didn't even fit me that well. I'd gotten a slightly shorter haircut for the occasion: mostly gone now were the Depardieu
Return of Martin Guerre,
Late Middle Ages bangs I'd been sporting since childhood. I arrived five minutes late but saw instantly that I was one of only five people there, not including the wait staff. I didn't recognize the other four invitees—they looked like tourists fresh off a train—who were huddled and giggling together at a banquette.

Th
ere were about thirty tables; each table had three stacks of
Saucier: A Bitch in the Kitchen
on it.
Th
ere were also gimmick recipe cards, deftly designed and index-card-sized, near the books, each one bearing a small portrait of Jill Conway.
Th
e recipes appeared at first glance to be legitimate but ultimately were not: a recipe for braised short ribs, for example, was the real thing but the last ingredient was: “Add two teaspoons of venom.” For bouillabaisse, the final instructions were: “Stir in 2 ounces nitric acid. Stir and serve hot.” And so on.

I ordered a glass of white wine and hung out alone at the bar, waiting for other people to appear. Most likely, I wouldn't know them, but at least I could hide better among them and not look so pathetically alone. I thought about leaving but couldn't: I had to be here and had to schmooze and network.

I drank my first glass of wine slowly and after twenty minutes got another one. Only three more people showed up. I made a call on my cell phone to Wifey, told her that this party was miserable and that I had nobody to talk to. I waited another fifteen minutes, only five more people showed up, I called Harry Carver in L.A. but he didn't have time to talk to me.

I sat down at a banquette by myself and looked at a copy of
Saucier.
I recalled, with a giggle, how when I was invited onto the NPR show
Fresh Air
to talk about
Plague
I'd sent Lonnie Beale rather than go on myself since he had done such a great job filling in for me at my one bookstore reading. Lonnie must have been terrific again because my Amazon ranking soared to an all-time high of 357 after the show aired. Perhaps the NPR staff had found me out and that's why I wasn't invited back for
Love: A Horror Story.

(Maybe Lonnie should just start writing my books for me, too.)

I was on my third glass of wine and there was no relief in sight. Where was Beverly Martin? Where were the publishing types? Where was Jill Conway so she could thank me for my blurb and tell me as she was shook my hand, “Oh my God . . . I loved
Plague Boy
soooo much!” Whether said sincerely or not, that's what I needed to hear.

By the time I finished the fourth glass, there were about thirty-five people inside the place. I went to the bar, ordered a fifth and saw, near where the bar met the kitchen, a computer.
Th
e idea struck me: maybe I could get a few hands in, maybe I could vanish temporarily from the dismal world. I could find Artsy, Second, Cookie, or History Babe and joke the time away.

I drank the fifth glass in less than thirty seconds.
Un vin blanche, si'l vous plait.
No wonder the bartenders in Paris looked at me like I was a jerk.

“Nobody's using that computer now?” I asked one of the bartenders.

He said no and I got a sixth
vin blanche.

I swung around and saw Bev Martin enter . . . she was holding the hand of a frizzy-haired guy with glasses so chic, so architectonic, and so magenta that they only barely registered in my consciousness. He was the latest entry in the Boyfriend of the Month Club . . . but any man with post-futuristic eyewear like that required a lot of attention, and she simply liked discussions about Magic Realism too much for that (the names Borges, Barth, Barthes, and Barthelme would no doubt be shrieked in their ear-splitting breakup fight). I gave them two more weeks as a couple. A few others entered. Most of them were in publishing, you could tell just by looking at them. Every profession has its own uniform with its own nuances. Real estate people (the leather coats with the belts), lawyers (the vests, the bulky briefcases), editors (gray clothing, the nerdy glasses). Why not just tattoo your forehead:
I am a lawyer and thrive on the misfortunes of others. I sell real estate and am an inveterate snake. I edit books but people don't read anymore, they watch dumb-ass reality TV on their cellphones.

I walked up to Bev and she introduced me to Kurt, her boyfriend, an editor at a lit Web site that I told him I visited religiously but had never heard of.

“So when is Jill getting here?” I asked Bev.

“Any minute it should be, I'd say.”

She asked me if I'd contacted Ross F. Carpenter and I said I had but that there were complications. She didn't mention
Dead on Arrival
itself, which I imagined she'd already dragged to the trash on her computer. Kurt, who was a good three inches shorter than Bev, told me, “I haven't read your book but I'm meaning to.” I reminded him that I'd in fact written
two
books, and that was it, he was through with me. I could see myself transforming from a human being to a dog turd in his eyes.

Beverly and Kurt drifted away and waiters in black floated by with trays of finger food and I asked them to come to me first and then gobbled up half the tray. I got another glass of wine, downed it with one gulp. After the
Times
and
Time
and the
Globe
boiled me alive (and all of them gave away my surprise ending!), nobody wanted to talk to me. A leper I was. A financially bankrupt blind leper with SARS and Bird Flu and Tourette's Syndrome and oozing sores and sporting a glass eye and a prosthetic limb with mongoloid triplet kids . . . cursed with all these afflictions I had become the sort of human being who sweet, compassionate people in polite society go miles out of their way to avoid. At work people didn't talk to me. Lonnie and Harry Carver didn't return my calls and Toby Kwimper sent me an e-mail that said: “Frank, I'm so sorry.” It was all over and everybody knew it but me.
Th
e ship, Micheal Ray Richardson once said of the Knicks, be sinkin'. Mine had sunk, too . . . everybody had leapt off but I was the last moron standing on the deck, hoping it would float again.