Needle Too (26 page)

By the end of the month Emily purchased a copy of
The Writer’s Market
for my birthday. Obviously, the implications of her gesture were clear and not at all surprising given the fact that I’d never shared my concerns about publishing the past. But the feedback I’d received from the few souls I trusted with my dirty laundry was so overwhelmingly positive that the notion was actually beginning to stick in my brain.

As I thumbed through detailed listings of literary agents in what was clearly the Holy Grail for writers trying to get published, I realized that after almost three years of writing
Needle
—which otherwise would have been dedicated to some other professionally ambitious though probably unsuccessful undertaking—I owed it to those around me to at least look into whether or not this 130,000-word monstrosity had a chance. And of course, as Savannah was becoming more expensive by the minute and already halfway to college, I needed to fiscally address the future.

Although I hadn’t completely finished the book, in August I began mass-mailing queries to agents that supposedly specialized in this sort of nonfiction, and at first I was puzzled by the fact that I received no responses of any kind, and concerned that the contact information listed in
The Writer’s Market
was either flawed or outdated. Then, within a couple of weeks my fears were put to rest as 78 rejection letters appeared in my mailbox…which I found both concerning
and
comforting at the same time.

41

It’s just after 5 p.m. but it’s mid-November and it’s already getting too cold to be outside and too dark to even see the ball, so I head home up that not-so-steep hill and around that circular driveway surrounding that fountain that leads to the lobby of my building. This is where I
live
. This is where I watch television. This is where I do my homework. This is where I run for cover. This is where I make up excuses. This is where I…bide my time.

As I approach the Cryder House lobby a shiver suddenly ripples through me as I remember that Mother has been in the apartment all afternoon and I’ve broken the law by sneaking off the property—so I look up at the 17th floor of the building to make sure she isn’t at one of the windows as I sneak back on. I then push open the gigantic glass doors and head into the lobby as I notice a bit of a disturbance on the front lawn by the river, as some of the building’s youngest residents are congregating around a terrace belonging to one of the ground-floor apartments. So I step outside and toward the edge of the grass to investigate:

“What the fuck are you assholes doing?!” I shout at the little shits.

“Nothing!” bellows Marc—the five-year-old leader of the partially post-pamper wearing pack.

“WHAT?!”

“NOTHING!!” he screams at me again and then darts between the thick bushes beneath the terrace.

I almost decide to ignore the kindergarten commotion and continue upstairs to whatever awaits when my curiosity finally gets the better of me because I know with this particular troop of twisted tykes—there’s no telling what’s behind those thick bushes that
conceal what’s beneath that cement terrace. So I head in that direction.

As I kneel down and part the prickly bushes I am startled to find six black and white puppies with rounded, floppy, ears. But I think two of them are dead from exposure to the cold, while in a desperate bid to stay warm two others have draped themselves over their remaining siblings which are either sick or have also succumbed to the plummeting temperatures.

“Oh my gosh!” I accidentally say out loud as I’m suddenly aware of my breath lingering in the air which makes me only
more
aware of the gravity of the situation. “Did any of you dumb asses tell a grown-up!?”

“No,” says Marc.

“WHY NOT?!”

“Cuz then they gonna take’em away!”

“Oh, Christ!” I say as I’m now almost certain that four of these little puppies are dead. “Have you seen the mother?”

“Whose mother?”

“THE PUPPIES’ MOTHER!”

“
NO!
” Marc screams back at me as he tries to grab one of the two that are still alive.

“Don’t touch him,”
I say as I grit my teeth and growl in a voice that I hope is nothing short of terrifying to a five-year-old. “I’ll be right back!”

I race across the lawn, stampede into the lobby and then pound incessantly on the elevator buttons as if that might somehow
expedite things. After what seems like an eternity, an elevator finally arrives and I jump in and employ the same button-pounding technique as the door slides shut across the threshold before any late-to-the-party residents have a chance to delay my ascent.

After what seems like yet
another
eternity the elevator finally arrives on the seventeen floor as I explode out of it and sprint down the hallway to apartment #17-H. As I enter the place I call home I am overcome by panic—not panic like when I realize my mother’s about to launch an attack—but a
desperate
and
frigid
kind of panic that extends from my belly on up to the middle of my chest and makes my legs shake and takes my breath away and makes it difficult for me to say:

“MA!”

“You’re late,” she responds coolly to my cracking voice as I dare to run through the hallway and into the kitchen with my sneakers on while she’s stirring tomato sauce that my grandmother sent home with us the night before.

“I KNOW—I’m sorry but listen! There are these six little puppies downstairs and they’re freezing and I think four of them are dead already but two—”

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

Immediately I feel a cold, panicky shudder run through me like a bolt of icy lightning…and then I begin to fall apart.

“Ma,” I decide to try again in between a spate of sudden sobs. “There’s four of them…and two are dead…and the others are trying to keep warm but I don’t think they’re gonna make it…and—”

“And?” she interrupts me dispassionately as the tears start to really flow and I start to really feel sick and try to take a breath.

“And…
please
, Ma, can we
please
bring them in… just for a little while…just to get warm?” I can barely manage to get out as I am absolutely terrified and beside myself and overwhelmed with tears and grief and heartache like I’ve never felt before because I know exactly what’s coming:

“No.”

“Oh, please, Mom…just for a little bit…just until they—”

“NO.”

And that’s that. Whenever Mother speaks in bold print—
that
is
indeed
that
.

So I turn around and begin to walk down the long hallway leading to my bedroom as I wipe away the tears that continue to roll and try to come to terms with this terrible thing but then suddenly—

“I
REMEMBER!” I spin around and scream at her with a sudden burst of bravery as the sobs subside but the anger rises to the surface while the tears continue to roll.

“WHAT?!
”
she shouts at me like she dares me to answer while taking three menacing steps in my direction.

“
DAD
said—
I
remember!” I shout back at her and hold my ground.

“WHAT?!”
she asks again in an angrier way as she clenches her jaw along with her fists.

“DAD said, DAD said!” I scream at her once more while trying to wipe away tears that refuse to be tamed. “A German Shepherd! Dad said at Uncle Joe’s he was gonna buy us a German Shepherd and then he died! And we don’t even need to buy one because
there’s two of them downstairs right now and
they’re
gonna die! PLEASE, MOM—PLEASE!!”

“Craig—do you wanna know what your dad said to Uncle Joe after you left the room that day?” she suddenly asks me in a calmer voice with a wooden spoon in her hand and a self-serving smile on her face while ignoring my plea and without waiting for me to answer her question. “‘LET HIM DREAM!!’ That’s right, Craig—that’s what he said! That’s what your dear-old departed father said the moment you left the room. ‘LET HIM DREAM!’”

With that the tears subside and the last vestiges of my childhood are left in a puddle on the expensive black tile my mother was always so fond of. Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t quite finished:

“You know, Craig, I love you—I do! You came out of me! I have no choice—I
have
to love you…but I
don’t
like you.”

“Yeah, yeah—I know, I know!” I tell her and if I had a dollar for every time she said that shit I could’ve hired a hit man to kill her. And then I head for the door.

“Where do you think
you’re
going?!”

“Downstairs for a minute. Maybe I can find a blanket for them or something.”

“No you’re not,”
she says to me in a voice that makes my head spin around and see that fire in her eyes as she must’ve already been a few beers deep. “Dinner’s almost ready. Go wash your hands and tell your sister.”

At that very moment I had the chance to be an amazing 11-year-old. I had the chance to be one of those kids you read about in the newspapers and admire—the kind of kid who goes against the grain and stands up for what’s right while staring into the face of
opposition and the threat of injury. Instead, I let the fear take me.

The next day was Saturday, the day I delivered newspapers for Greg Kirsch for $20, and as I headed out of the building I saw Marc on the pier throwing plastic bags of puppy into the river. So I delivered my newspapers and then in the afternoon returned home where I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and wept for so long I forgot to remember.

Leo is my dog, my son, my
kemo sabe
and at 20 pounds—a true GIANT among Pomeranians. I truly believe that was it not for Leo I might have offed myself already. In fact, given my reputation for bandying about brutal honestly, I know for certain that when his time comes—something I think about incessantly—I’ll be reduced to a sniveling mound of mess for who-knows-how-long and will grieve the loss more thoroughly than any from the past, as well as any I might expect to in the future.

In early 2008 Leo accidentally fell into my lap, and given the enormity of the impact he would soon have on my life it was virtually the last, viable, moment for him to do so. Since that day he has taught me things I never knew and things I
needed
to know in order to do the things I think I have to do—and those things have nothing to do with writing. Indeed,
writing
—in and of itself—is merely the vehicle and environment in which I am most comfortable and, more importantly,
most persuasive
.

On January 12
^th
in 2008—which was a Saturday I’ll never forget—I received a text message from Brent, a former coworker of Emily’s who had an uncle in the navy that travelled around the world meeting interesting people from exotic places, and when he wasn’t killing those people and incinerating their places he was exploring the local customs and fare. And, when the opportunity presented itself he would sample the local cannabis as well, and if
it was something to write home about he’d send it instead and if he sent it he sent
a lot
of it in the safest way possible which, of course, meant stowing it away at the bottom of an 8000-ton destroyer.

As a result, Brent was enlisted as an occasional pot dealer…a very
paranoid
occasional pot dealer dealing what, ironically, would soon become among the most popular, heavily sought after and expensive smoke in Southwest Florida—at least while it lasted which was never very long. Unfortunately, Brent’s occasional but extreme and rapidly increasing popularity among some of the area’s most notorious, discriminating and committed cannabis connoisseurs only escalated his paranoia and as a result—cryptic text-message drug-dealing alerts like ‘
I’m ditching the dirt bike. Ready to ride?’
or
‘Delilah’s in the garden…wanna let her out?’
were hardly met with confusion or surprise. So, of course, on January 12
^th
when I flipped open my phone and read ‘
I’m getting rid of Leo for a hundred bucks…are you interested?’
I was like ‘
Fuck
yeah,
man!! I usually spend
two
-hundred on that shit!’

So I ended up spending 300.

42

Dear Craig
,

Thanks for giving me the chance to read A NEEDLE IN THE PAYSTACK. I'm not sure that's the right title for the book you've written, but I'd like to talk to you. Is there a good time on the weekend for me to call you? Saturday or Sunday morning, perhaps?

The book is going to need some cutting, and in addition your technique (having a short comment or scene at the start of each chapter, followed by a break in the narrative) doesn't serve you well, and I found it somewhat confusing. Do you think you'd be able to keep the narrative more or less in a straight line? An occasional flashback or interruption might be okay, but we can judge that as we go along—if you decide you'd like to work with me on the manuscript before submitting it to a publisher. The good thing here is that you can write, and if you can take suggestions, then I believe I can sell the book. It's in a genre that's been getting a workout lately, so you need to be well prepared before you go into the marketplace
.