After the Workshop (19 page)

“What?”

“Don’t ever think about writing another short story. From here on out, it’s just novels. Can you promise me that?”

“I’m not sure . . . ,” I began, but Knox held up his hand.

“Ah-ah-ah,” he said. “Promise?”

“Okay, I promise.”

“And one more thing,” he said.

I nodded.

“Don’t talk to another agent. If I find out you’re playing the field, I’ll turn my back on you. That’s how I am. I’m as loyal as a service dog, but I can be a pit bull if I’m betrayed. I’ve been known to foam at the mouth and bite a writer or two on the ass. Not literally, of course. Figuratively.”

We shook hands. The next day, I packaged up my story and sent it to him. I waited for a month, two months, three months. After four months, I stopped by Gordon Grimes’s office to ask him what I should do.

Gordon, slouched as usual, wearing a Members Only jacket and smoking despite the university-wide no smoking policy, said, “You may want to think about getting a different agent.”

“Why’s that?”

“What I’m about to tell you is
entre nous
,” he said. As I stared blankly at him, he said, “
Entre nous
,” again, and then, “Between us?”

“Oh. Sure,” I said. “Between us.”

“The thing is,” Gordon said, “Knox is in rehab. Apparently, he had one hell of an addiction to crack. Lost all his clients.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “He said he was going to sign me.” There was a slight whine in my voice that embarrassed me, and I noticed Gordon cringe ever so slightly.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “
C’est la vie
. But trust me on this. You don’t want to be represented by someone addicted to drugs you can buy on the street for pocket change.
Capisce
?”

“I don’t have an agent,” I told Helga.

“Oh,” she said, wilting again.

S. S., listening in on our conversation, despite whatever was going on under the table, said, “Oh, but he’ll have his pick! Jack has written that rare book, my friends. A book that is devoid of thoughts about the marketplace or the advance he’ll get. His first priorities—his
only
priorities—are language and story. Choosing the right words. Capturing the right gestures. Making every scene both surprising yet inevitable. Imagine standing not on a hill but on a very long and subtle incline, and now imagine rolling a ball down that incline so that it rolls slowly at first, gracefully, all the while, almost imperceptibly, picking up speed. And yet, by the time the ball reaches the nadir of that incline, it is
soaring. Even so, the roll is still smooth, still steady, still beautiful. Most novels these days are like boulders pushed off a mountaintop: Once the plot starts bouncing, there’s no telling where it’s going or who’ll get killed before the story’s over. Not so with Jack’s novel. When he puts the final touches on it,
then
he’ll look for an agent. But
only
then. Am I right, Jack?”

I nodded. I tilted my head to the side, as if to say,
Yeah, that’s about it in a nutshell
.

I could tell that Sally and Helga were losing interest. Sally had already achieved her goal—S. S. was going to call his agent tomorrow and put in a good word for her—but I had nothing to offer either of them, except, according to S. S., the aesthetic pleasures of a brilliant novel, which, of course, were worth nothing. What I found particularly amusing was that neither Sally nor Helga remembered me from the night I had escorted the guru of creative nonfiction, Matthew Klotz. I knew their kind well—rarely meeting your eyes because they’re too busy looking over your shoulder to see if someone more important has walked through the front door.

The most egregious examples of this occurred at conferences and conventions. One year at BookExpo, I had run into an old Iowa classmate of mine, Carlos Ramirez, whose third novel—touted as “a cross between
The Great Gatsby
and
Frankenstein
”—was about to be published by Viking. When he saw me, he let out a loud whoop, pitched proportionately higher and with far more enthusiasm than our friendship justified, but he had no sooner finished hugging me and asking what the hell I’d been up to when, peering over my shoulder, he began scanning the rest of the room, barely listening to what I was telling him. In the middle of something I was saying about still living in Iowa City, Carlos said, “Whoa, check it out. I think that’s Norman Mailer over there. Is that Norman Mailer? Christ, someone’s in my way. Would you fucking
move, you moron? Oh, shit . . . do you think that guy just heard me? Oh, Christ, he
did
hear me. I hope he’s not an editor. No, wait, he didn’t. Good. Whew. You know what, though? That’s not Mailer. I don’t know who the hell that is. Does he look familiar to you? Yo, check out who’s behind him, though. It’s Jonathan Franzen. I think. It is, isn’t it?”

“I should go, man,” I said. “Good seeing you, though.”

Carlos said, “Good seeing you, too,
hombre
,” and locked me in a bear hug.

I took a good look now at S. S. and Sally, who were talking shop, and Helga, who was keeping an eye on the front door. I nudged Helga. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I need to go.”

“What about our friend Tate?” S. S. asked. “Isn’t he the very reason we’re here?”

“He’ll be fine,” I said. “What about you? What do you want to do?”

S. S. frowned exaggeratedly at me, the Kabuki of contemplation. After Helga sat down on the other side of the booth next to Sally, S. S. leaned back like an aging king and, eyebrows raised, asked, “Would you think it rude if I remained here?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

To Sally and Helga, he said, “I had to borrow a spare key yesterday from the naked man who lives next door.”

“A naked man? This sounds good,” Sally said.

Helga leaned across Sally, touched S. S.’s hand, and said, “You can’t stop there.”

S. S., smiling up at me, began telling them the story of the naked man, as though it were a fairy tale: “His name is Paul Thornley, but nobody calls him that anymore. Those who know him, know him only as M. Cat. In fact, they would be surprised to learn that Cat is not his real last name, or that M. does not stand for Michael or Mason.” Sally and Helga were enthralled.

Instead of leaving through the front door, where I would have had to pass Vince and company, I exited through the back door, nearly slipping on a patch of ice with my first step. The near-fall alerted me to the fact that I was drunker than I had realized. Not that this realization kept me from driving. I wasn’t seeing double, after all. And I didn’t
feel
drunk.

I drove to Jerome Ruby’s house and parked across the street. Jerome Ruby was the Mercy Hospital pharmacist who had kissed Alice this morning, and I had taken the liberty of looking him up in the phone book and then MapQuesting his drug-dispensing ass. He lived in a Queen Anne Victorian with all the trimmings: a wraparound porch, delicate spindle-work porch supports, an ornamented gable. Even in Iowa City, you had to pay through the nose for a house like this.

My car was so loud, I quickly killed the engine, but after only a few minutes of sitting there and staring at the house, my teeth began clacking together. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. There were lights on in a few of the rooms, but the curtains were shut, and although I couldn’t smell any burning wood, a steady stream of smoke rose up out of the fireplace—probably just heat rising up out of the house and meeting the cold, like puffs of visible air coming from a warm mouth on a winter day.

I’d thought coming here might answer some questions, but seeing the house only made my stomach knot up, and I felt like opening the car door and barfing all over the street.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

I started the car, revved it a few times, and tried to pull out of the parking spot, but I must have backed onto a patch of ice: I couldn’t gain any traction at all. Each time I punched the gas pedal, the car wiggled out of my control, and I risked rocketing forward into the car parked in front of me should one of my tires have unexpectedly grabbed onto something other than ice.

“Fuck,” I said, hitting the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck.”

The front door of the Queen Anne opened. A man and a woman stepped out.

“Oh, shit,” I said, and tried gunning it, but my tires merely spun in place.

The man—Jerome Ruby, I saw now—crossed the street, while the woman, who may or may not have been Alice, stood on the sidewalk, watching.

Jerome knocked on my window. I unrolled it. “Hi there! I’m just a little stuck,” I said.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll get behind and push.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I can keep trying to work it free.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. He started to walk away but then stopped and said, “Hey, don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Don’t you work at Mercy?”

“Nope,” I said, smiling.

He leaned forward and sniffed a few times. “Have you been drinking?”

“I just gave a ride to a friend of mine who was hammered. He called me from a bar,” I said.

Jerome nodded. I glanced over at the woman, hoping to get a better look, but she had pulled up the hood of her long coat. Further obscuring my view was the hood’s fake-fur trim, which circled her face like a Christmas wreath.

“Does your friend live around here?” Jerome asked.

“What? Oh, no. He lives over on Jefferson. I had to pull over to answer my cell phone.”

Jerome looked around for a cell phone, so I gave my chest two quick pats, hoping to convey that my phone was now safely tucked away.

Jerome said, “I know I know you,” as he walked around to the back of the car to push. “Okay,” he yelled. “Hit the gas.”

As ordered, I pushed the pedal, but still I went nowhere.

“Whoa!” Jerome yelled. “Try it slower this time.”

I did, but nothing happened.

“Okay, okay, okay.” Jerome walked back around to my window. That’s when I noticed yet another woman; she was walking down the sidewalk, toward the woman with the hood. They hugged when they met, and then the hooded woman pointed at Jerome, who waved back.

“Hey, there!” Jerome yelled at the new arrival. “Tommy’s inside, waiting for you. I’m just trying to get this guy unstuck.”

The new arrival looked over at me now and said, “Jack? Is that you?” It was Alice.

“You know him?” Jerome asked.

“Jack!” Alice said, walking over. “What’re you doing over here?”

Who the fuck is Tommy?
I wondered.
And why is he inside waiting for Alice?

“He pulled over to answer his cell phone,” Jerome said, “and got stuck.”

“Hi, Alice,” I said, embarrassed at having been caught.

Alice said, “You finally got a cell phone, I see,” but when I smiled and nodded, she could see that I was lying.

“Don’t worry about me,” I told Jerome. “I’ll get out of here, if it takes me all night.” To Alice, I said, “Tommy’s waiting for you. I’m fine. Really.” Without warning, I choked up but then cleared my throat to smother the gaffe.

“Tommy and I aren’t going anywhere,” Alice said. “I’m sitting for them tonight. You remember my sister, don’t you? Emily?”

The hooded woman, still standing on the sidewalk, said, “Is that you, Jack? I
thought
it looked like you, but how long has it been? It’s
the car that made me think it might be you. I do remember that car!” she yelled and laughed.

“I don’t think you ever met Jerome, though. He and Emily met,” Alice paused, “after us.”

“Hey, Jerome,” I said, reaching out of my car to shake his hand. He took hold of my hand, squeezing it harder than necessary.

“You guys really should get going,” Alice said to Jerome. “You’re going to be late for the movie.”

Jerome nodded.

Alice said, “Let me say goodbye to Emily, Jack. Hang on, okay?”

After Alice had crossed the street, safely out of earshot, Jerome said, “I remember you now. This morning. The pharmacy.”

“What? Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah! Jesus, I’m sorry about that. My head was really up my ass this morning. A friend of mine had sliced open his hand and . . .” And then I remembered that this wasn’t the story I had told him. “And then my wife . . .” I began, but Jerome held up his hand.

“Can I borrow your cell phone?” he asked.

“Battery’s dead,” I replied too quickly.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here tonight,” Jerome said through gritted teeth, “but I want you to move along right now, you hear? On foot, if need be.”

“No problem,” I said. “I can do that.”

“Tell Alice you need to leave,” he said.

“Alice!” I called out. “I need to leave!”

Alice said, “Can’t you hold on a second?”

“No!” I yelled, probably too loud for the occasion. “I have to get going!”

Jerome gave me one final stern look, then tightened his coat, turned, and said, “Ready, honey?”

“Good to see you again, Jack,” said Emily.

“C’mon,” Jerome barked at his wife. “We need to hurry.”

I got out of my Corolla and began walking. I weaved between two parked cars, tromped through calf-high snow, and then slipped on a patch of ice along the sidewalk, momentarily losing my footing. It astonished me that anyone over the age of sixty-five actually remained in Iowa. It seemed inevitable that if you lived here long enough, you’d eventually slip on ice and break your hip, or maybe pop your skull against the concrete, giving yourself a concussion, or tumble down your iced-over front porch steps, fracturing your leg in fifteen places. You could get snow tires, Timberland boots, and earmuffs, but you still couldn’t stop the onslaught of elements: wind, snow, ice, sleet, freezing rain, tornadoes, floods, droughts. I saw winds so strong, a freight train crossing the Iowa River had been blown so that it hung upside-down, inexplicably clinging to the tracks. One year, the workers at a tiny stand-alone Dairy Queen next to the river climbed down into a storm shelter when news reached them of an approaching tornado. When they came up afterward, there was nothing left above them. The entire building had been ripped from the ground and blown away. I remember drought summers when my own sweat poured freely from my forehead, dripping onto the pages of my manuscript as I read it over, smearing words and bubbling the paper. Entire fields of corn shriveled and died. One year, as floodwaters rose, a fifth-grade boy who lived forty miles away, closer to the Mississippi River, was swept down a drainage pipe. My first winter here, while I was walking to a bar called Gabe’s on a particularly cold day, a prairie wind came roaring through town, instantly dropping the temperature by almost twenty degrees. I wasn’t sure whether to turn around and head home or try to make it to the bar. I was closer to my apartment than I was to Gabe’s. Foolishly, I chose the bar, walking with my head down the whole way. Once inside, I had thought that I was fine, but my ears
began to throb and then heat up and then, finally, burn. It was probably only frostnip, but even now, many years later, if my ears aren’t covered when it’s cold outside, the rims will start to throb and ache, a subtle reminder of how the choices you make can save your life or kill you.