Scissors (4 page)
I need women. Mm
-mm
. Women. I want women. Young, mature, in the cradle, I don’t care. But women.
I never stop telling them that the short story’s a feminine form. She gives you a sidelong glance at the bend of a narrow lane, and when she disappears you search all over town for her. Woolf, Mansfield, where
are
those broads?
If I can find ten—ten good stories written by women—I’ll put out my special issue. But I’m never going to find them. Because I can’t put enough money on the table, not all by myself.
What? Yes, I talked to you about my special issue. Yes I did, Gerald. I’m calling it
Our Secret Lives
. Or
The Season of Our Secrets
. No, I’ll come up with something better. I’ll bring it out in the fall and blow away the anthologies. They’re all old hat. But the magazine, the magazine will put out its special issue, and that territory will be ours for the next twenty years. We’ll piss on the competition. You and me, Gerald.
You want to know
who
we’re going to piss on? I can’t believe it. You don’t read the other magazines? Look, I’m
going to beat it across the street. I can cross the street and take an office on the other side. And I can publish novels. I have an offer. Yes, I have an offer. But they don’t make my dick hard, Gerald. What makes my dick hard is the magazine. And what I can do with it.
Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about, the only reason you come here is to hang paintings. You hang your paintings and I edit the fiction. To each his own. But no, I’m not going across the street. I’m staying here with my rose window.
I’m talking about doubling. About paying twice as much per story as we do now—that way, we attract the best. Yes, it’s indispensable. So that they’ll accept my cuts. If we double our price, they’ll stop flinching. Why do I cut their stories? Why do I rewrite them? Oh, don’t talk to me about that … Gerald. Don’t talk to me about their artistic int … their artistic integrity.
I have a magazine to publish. Three short stories per month. Do I have to justify myself? Show my receipts? For God’s sake.
I’ll give you
one
example. If a short story … Gerald. If I buy a story and I’m able to fix it by cutting it a little, or by cutting half of it, well, that’s what I do. Here’s the thing, though. A great many stories may be excellent except for one problem: a terrible ending. That makes for an awkward situation, because I can’t tell the author—I’m simplifying this totally so you’ll understand—I can’t say, “Your story is good, your ending is bad … uh … could you rewrite the end?” Because if I say that, every one of them will write another ending even worse than the first, and then I’ll be in a real fix, because a
relationship, an editorial bond will have been established, and at that stage it would be impolite or incorrect to reject a story they’ve reworked at my request. That’s why I rewrite them.
Gerald, how do you think I can make them swallow that bitter pill without paying them double? Yes, I’m a progressive!
I have an ideal in my head. A voice for the magazine. Except I’ll never find an author who’ll say to me, “Douglas, you’re a genius. Rewrite me. You’re a god.” I’m never going to find that author. But with double the amount of cash on the table, I have a chance to approach my ideal. By constructing it myself.
No, Gerald, it’s not a magazine. It’s a manifesto. You don’t know that because you keep your eyes riveted on those daubs of yours. But if you page through the magazine, you’ll yield to the evidence. Those short stories, all together, side by side—that’s their voice. Their voice, you understand me?
But it’s
my
signature.
You’ve reached Marianne and Raymond’s house. Please leave a message, we’re all ears, and if you’re looking for Leo or Sarah, try the soccer field, the video arcade in the middle of town, or even their school. No, on second thought, don’t try their school
.
“It’s me. It’s Raymond … uh … I don’t know what to say … I’m lost. I’m calling you from a phone booth near the highway. I left the clinic. I took the car, and it broke down.
You know it didn’t have a reverse gear anymore, and now the transmission’s completely shot. I’m so sorry, Marianne. I don’t know who could have done that to you. It was me, of course. I’m stupid. It was me … I can see you, you know. I see you on the telephone. Or rather I can imagine you. You’re wearing your sister’s sweater. Her navy blue sweater. You’re holding yourself as straight as the flame of a cigarette lighter. Your hair’s hiding your cheekbones. You’re rolling a few strands between your fingers. Are you still listening to the same song? I see a glass of something on the coffee table. Magazines all around, a lot of magazines. How can you read that, Marianne? How can you believe in astrology …? And then I see your eyes. Your eyes that catch everything, your wonderful gaze. You’re standing at the window, turning the answering machine around, on the lookout for a distant signal. I’d like to be that guy on the horizon signaling to you. Someone you’d be glad to go to. Describe him to me so I can try to be like him. Pick up and describe him to me.”
What’s that? What does that mean, he doesn’t want to? Put him on. I’m telling you to put him on. Lorraine … Turn the receiver toward him. Ithaca, it’s Daddy. Daddy isn’t happy. Daddy has to stay at work, he won’t be home until late. Mommy’s going to have to read you “The Imp of the Perverse.” It’s going to be Mommy for a change. So you go to bed now, you hear me? Ithaca, stop that shit right now. If you don’t go to bed, Daddy’s going to come home and cut your
balls off. What, Lorraine? I can’t? I mustn’t? A three-year-old doesn’t have balls? My son has … Ithaca has … oh, all right, you’re the boss.
I’ll be home by midnight. Midnight or maybe one. I’ve got three manuscripts to read, I should be there by … that’s going to depend on … on how much cutting I’ve got to do. No, I have to do it myself. They don’t know how. I do it myself. I love you too.
*
If it weren’t for Lorraine, I’d forget to go home. I’d spend my life in this office and not even remember that I have a family. Do I have a family? What’s it like? Like the magazines lined up on my shelves? Like the stacks of proofs I have to correct? People in my profession take words for flesh. We can hear their hearts beat. We discover a disconcerting kinship with them.
The hour has come. The offices empty out, and I have no more enemies. My rose window switches off. My psoriasis calms down. It’s time for my tête-à-tête with the authors.
Outside there’s darkness. And a thousand little lights in that darkness, trying to clear a way for themselves. I can’t bring them all on board. I’m the Captain of the Storytellers, not the Shipwrecked. You go to sea at your own risk.
However, I’m standing watch. I’m reaching out.
*
I’ve taken Raymond out of the wastepaper basket. His first sentence has been making me itch since this morning. I don’t know why. It didn’t have much going for it. Or rather, it had just enough going for it to get stuck in my head.
“Ambulance sirens, that’s what I bring home with me from my nights on duty.”
Sirens
…
I bring home sirens. From my nights. That’s what I br
…
I bring home sirens from my nights
. Why use more words? Raymond brings home sirens from his nights. That’s all. The reader understands.
“From midnight to eight in the morning, the sirens follow one another, or sometimes blend together, on the two-lane road that circles …” Uh-oh.
They blend around the hospital
, period. “I can hear them from my night-watchman’s box, first far, then close, and finally not at all, when …” More itching. Pruritus. Pruritus between two commas. “… when the lights are still on but the sound is off and the ambulances park in the back, unburdened of an injured person or a corpse.” Don’t you see that “the back” equals “exile” equals “death”? Either you choose the back or you choose death. You have too much heart, Raymond.
When they park in the back, I can hear them from my night-watchman’s box
. “At the moment, my thoughts go no farther than that.” Why “at the moment”? You’re already there, in the moment. “To me, emergencies are distant sounds …”—argh,
distant
, an adjective, a scale—“I hear from inside a glass cage.” That has to go, zip, all of it.
So what are we left with?
I bring home sirens from my nights
. Paragraph.
They blend around the hospital. When they park in the back, I can hear them from my night-watchman’s box. My thoughts go no farther than
that. Emergencies are sounds I hear from inside a glass cage
. Paragraph.
Not one word too many. A single comma, after the parking lot in the back, which is death. Raymond, I’m starting to like you.
*
Hello, Lorraine? It’s me. Don’t wait up.
I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you very well. I’m … The telephone’s right next to the coffeemaker. No, a diner on the highway.
Raymond, yes. Paula gave … A friend gave me your message. I just got it.
We’ve met, you know. We used to work for the same editor. School textbooks, right. I compiled excerpts from short stories. But the company did some reshuffling and I got laid off. It’s me, Raymond. May I call you Douglas?
Right, I’ve sent you some … I’ve sent you a bunch of stories. Ten at least, maybe twenty. Yes, I should have mentioned it. I didn’t think you … I didn’t think you’d remember who I was.
You read one? Which? “Who Needs Air?” Mm-hmm. Ah. But you’re calling it what? “Compartment.” Sure, why not? “The Compartment,” then. Oh, I see. A single word. “Compartment.”
So you’re accepting it? I can’t hear you. I’m sorry, it’s the coffee ma—
What do you mean, “No”?
Why are you cutting it if you’re not going to accept it?
Well, what are you taking out, exactly? Then … then what are you
keeping
? The argument. Nothing but the argument? You reduced the first three pages to a paragraph? And that doesn’t work. Mm-hmm.
But then don’t take it, I don’t give a shit. How much? You’re paying twice as much as …? I see. Yeah.
So you would cut the end. You’d cut the beginning and the end. Yes, it would be shorter like that. How far in? But that’s the middle! That’s right in the middle of the argument! “Always cut off arguments in the middle.” No, I’ve never heard that. And your students listen to you? Well yes, of course, that means there’s less to write. If they all stop in the middle …
Hello? Mr. Douglas?
God damn it.
*
Hello, it’s me, it’s Raymond. We were cut off. You hung up? You were finished. That was all you wanted to tell me? No, I’m going to sell it somewhere else. All right, I’ll think about it. Yes, I’ll send you others. I’ve got a whole raft of arguments. They’re my specialty. And thanks! Asshole.