CHAPTER SIX

Sarah had first come to me by way of my agent, Darius Crovent. Darius had sold my first novel, The Feeling I’m Not Feeling, whereupon I immediately resigned from my position as an associate editor at Random House. My plan had been to live off the $15,000 advance—against the advice of friends and colleagues, as well as various busybodies: my mother; my girlfriend at the time; my dentist, Stewart Rosenblatt; a series of cabdrivers whose services I’d begun splurging on—until the arrival of the vast riches that were sure to come my way once the royalties started pouring in. The novel, however, was poorly received where it was received at all, and riches were not forthcoming. Last time I looked at my royalty statement, it had sold fewer than twelve hundred copies; at this rate, I should earn out my advance sometime in the mid-2040s.

While I was casting about for what to do next, checking the help wanteds and wondering if Random House still had a place for me, Darius came to me with a proposal. A celebrity memoir for which he’d gotten a considerable advance, and which the celebrity had made a lot of noise about writing himself, had come in a complete mess. If I could rewrite it quickly, and keep it to myself, I would prevent a great deal of embarrassment for everyone involved. He offered me a generous amount of money, and I of course agreed. The book was a success and I soon stopped looking for work, because I became Darius’s fixer, his on-call book doctor. I polished novels before he auctioned them, made the memoirs of public figures sound insightful and intelligent, or authentic and humble, as necessary. I developed a reputation, and agents and acquiring editors began steering their writers my way.

I would never get rich doing piecework like this, but I was doing okay, better than okay, really, and I would never have gotten rich in a ten-to-eight job at Random House either. It gave me a place to stand while I wrote another novel, purchased another ticket in the lottery. I liked not having to go to an office, having no responsibilities other than making people’s books better than they were when they came to me, something I was very good at. When my second novel, Cramming for the Turing Test, came out, Darius let slip that it seemed to be the only thing I was good at. I did not have a counterargument. All I’ll say about my second novel is that I hope it someday does as well as my first.

Sarah was one of the clients Darius asked me to work with. She was the opposite of somebody like Larry; she seemed to have been born hearing the music that made prose sing. But she also had something else. Writers like the author of A Bewilderment of Echoes were smart enough, and had an imagination, but were unable to make the reader see what they saw, to bridge the gap between minds, to make a story spring to life instead of remaining words on a page. Sarah knew how to do that magic too.

Darius had seen this in her beautifully written but static first novel, which had been her thesis project for her MFA. He might have sold it for ten or fifteen thousand dollars, and it would probably have gotten some good reviews, but Darius was sure that with my help it could do better.

I seldom meet any of my editing clients; I actively avoid it. It’s almost never helpful, and it requires a different set of skills entirely. The real work takes place on the page, and can be accomplished emailing notes and revisions back and forth. Once I meet a client, though, someone who has entrusted me with their novel, the embodiment of their hopes and dreams, the repository, as often as not, of their self-worth, I become responsible for some degree of emotional support, and what begins as simple hand-holding can lead to me serving as both confessor and therapist. None of which I begrudge anyone, it’s completely understandable and I’ve been there myself, but I don’t get paid any more for all the time and energy it can take up.

Sarah, though, was special. Her novel told me that, and the evidence mounted with our first few email exchanges: she was intelligent and earnest, wry and charming, and all that came through even in our brief initial correspondence. After some quick googling, I suggested we meet, and over the next few months, sometimes by email, often on the phone, and occasionally sitting together in the back of a café, I showed Sarah how to move her story along, gently pushed her to make the plot more than a series of subtle, Jamesian shifts in understanding; how to make regular readers, not just aesthetes and literary mandarins, want to turn pages. Literature is a permeable beast; it can survive a pulpy twist or two.

Darius ended up getting her a respectable advance, and the book got respectable reviews, and I was pleased to find myself the one she called excitedly as each one appeared, and the one she turned to when it nonetheless became clear the book was not going to sell as well as we had all been hoping.

By then, Sarah was thirty-one. She’d spent her post-collegiate twenties burning through a sizable trust fund and had put the last of it into her MFA—against all odds, an investment that would pay off, but not quite yet.

Her second novel was as promising as the first, and we immediately got to work making it even better. This time, no money changed hands; it didn’t feel right. I let her buy me a drink now and then, dinner once or twice. At the end of one of those evenings, things between us changed.

Sarah, I should mention, was lovely, and she carried herself with the grace and ease that comes from growing up with money. She was worldly in the way of someone who didn’t hesitate to go to Berlin or Barcelona for a few months just because she felt like it, but she didn’t know the working world, and more specifically, the publishing world. I was fifteen years older, but I’d published two novels, ghosted some bestsellers, and had a decent income. I also had a lot to teach her, and she’d been lapping it up. So, when she let me take her to my bed, it didn’t seem unusual to me, and by never even glancing in the direction of its mouth, I was still riding that gift horse when the second novel came out. It got even better reviews than the first, but it still didn’t sell well enough to earn out her advance. Her finances were getting tight when she showed me the first chapters of Santa Country, and as I’ve said, I recognized it instantly for what it was.

People say publishing is a crapshoot, that nobody knows anything, but it’s just not true. For a writer of my talents, sure, a few of us get lucky and most of us don’t. The third through seventh volumes of Harry Potter were not crapshoots, though. A scabrous tell-all by a sexually adventurous but previously private celebrity is not a crapshoot. Even a competently written entry in an established genre series is not a crapshoot; publishers know beforehand how many copies it will sell with a surprising degree of precision. Some things you just know, and everything I knew told me that Santa Country was not a crapshoot.

Still, publishing was going through some belt-tightening, and Sarah’s track record made it unlikely that the fifty pages she’d written would get her the money she’d need to finish the book. I invited her to move into my rent-stabilized apartment with me; I would put aside my own novel, I said, and do everything I could to help her finish hers. Sometime after that—the book growing and getting better all the time—I asked her to marry me.

It was late morning and I was just back from the gym. Sarah was at the desk we’d set up for her in the bedroom, staring through the screen of her laptop at the world she’d created, the characters she’d brought to life. As was our habit, I’d picked up a latte for her on the way home, and I set it down beside her. As often as not, it would get cold before she noticed it was there, but that day I summoned her back.

“Sarah,” I said. “I think we should get married.”

I waited a minute—my words had a distance to travel before they reached her, I knew—and then she turned to me. “What?”

“I said we should get married.”

She stared at me, brow furrowed. “Why?” she asked. I was prepared to say something about love, and what a good team we made, but I knew her well enough to recognize that she was asking herself more than she was asking me. I watched her think it through, consider the variables, weigh one thing against another. After a moment, she smiled at me and said, “Okay. That’s fair.” She turned her face up for a kiss, then reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “Love you,” she said. “You’ll figure everything out?”

“Don’t you want to plan …” I started to ask, but she’d turned back to her laptop and was already gone again. We were married at City Hall a few weeks later.

A year after Santa Country took its seemingly permanent place on the bestseller lists, Sarah’s publisher flew her to London to do publicity for the UK edition. At a book party a few days after she left, I ran into Stephanie, a chic, attractive, fortyish editor at Random House whom I’d known for years. We talked about Sarah’s great success, of course, and after a couple of drinks, I’d confessed to the downside of becoming, in effect, the wife and helpmeet of a star; a WAG, as they’d put it in the Daily Mail. Stephanie had grown more sympathetic as she grew more tipsy and animated, and as the party wound down, we decided to continue the conversation at my place. We had a number of such conversations over the next few weeks. Sarah walked in on what would be the last of them.

I ARRIVED in our East Village neighborhood around ten. I was fairly lucky, and it didn’t take long to find a parking spot on Tompkins Square Park, just east of A, only a few blocks away.

There was a cold mist hanging in the air, and rainbow auras glowed around streetlights, shifting as I walked past them toward the Tenth Street townhouse I had been living in with Sarah until a month ago. Even on a damp winter weeknight like this, there were scads of young people about, heading to and from bars and restaurants, to and from overpriced apartments shared by too many roommates or paid for by parents. Groups of young women, overdressed and underdressed at the same time, their laughter performative. Fratty clumps of bros, duding about, their conversation phatic.

Our home was on one of the few quiet blocks in the neighborhood. Both sides of the street were lined with dowdy but dignified brownstones, not a bar to be seen. In summer, treetops formed a canopied promenade from one end to the other. I still had my key, and let myself in. The first floor was empty, but I could hear voices coming from above me, male and female both. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the kitchen, dining room, and parlor were.

From the doorway of the parlor, I saw Darius Crovent, in his usual double-breasted suit, leaning against the fireplace mantel, surprise on his face at the sight of me; on the couch, Sarah, confused by my unexpected appearance, in an expensive- and antique-looking pale-blue dress, her long, strawberry-blonde hair worn down; and sitting next to her, looking at me as if she would prefer that I was anyone else—Freddy Kruger, say—still dressed in clothes from the office, Stephanie Crovent, my confidante from Random House. Did I mention she was married to Darius?

Darius was the first to gather his wits, and a wolfish smile spread over his face. “Roger, come in. You’re just in time. We’re celebrating.”

I recognized that smile and it filled me with unease. It was the smile he got when he had maneuvered somebody into making a wildly inflated preemptive offer when nobody else had been lined up to bid.

I noticed then that they each held a champagne glass. An open bottle of Moët sat on the coffee table. Next to it, a fourth glass, full. Stephanie downed hers, and reached for the bottle to pour herself another.

“Hello, Sarah,” I said. She looked at me, then away. I recognized that look too. It was a look I had gotten used to seeing recently: disappointment. Disappointment in me, and maybe in herself as well, for having trusted me all this time, for assuming she could depend on me to uphold my end of things.

“Do you want to know what we’re celebrating?” Darius asked, walking toward me. Darius was an imposing man; he carried a good bit of extra weight beneath his doublebreasted jacket, but he carried it like a nineteenth-century robber baron who’d just sent the Pinkertons to crush his striking workers. He put his arm around my shoulder and drew me into the room. “Yesterday I closed the film deal for Santa Country.”

“That’s great,” I said to Sarah. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” She stood up, put down her drink.

“Sarah, do you think we can talk?” I asked her. “Privately?”

“Roger, buddy, sorry, but it’s a bad time,” Darius said, sounding not at all sorry, in fact cheerful. “We’re about to go out for dinner. In fact, I want to tell you who—”

“Stop it, Darius,” Sarah said sharply. She came over and took me by the arm, drew me away from Darius, and walked us back into the kitchen.

“Roger, this isn’t a good time. Why are you here?”

“I’m sorry. You haven’t been answering my calls, and I had to see you.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen?” she asked, with genuine concern.

Something had happened, yes, a number of things, but I was not about to tell her about Melanie and Larry and Lisa Capitano’s mother. Still, the concern in her voice gave me hope.

“No, it’s not like that,” I said. “I just … I love you, Sarah. I think we should try again. I know I can make you see—”

“Roger, I really can’t do this right now. Can I call you? Where are you staying?”

“I’m, uh, out on Long Island,” I said, which could conceivably have meant that I’d landed on my feet somewhere pleasant, and I could have stopped there, but I decided to get it out of the way. “At my mother’s house. I’m staying in the basement.”

She had the courtesy not to laugh outright at where my actions had led me, to refrain from gloating or showing pleasure at what must have appeared to her just deserts. Instead, she gave me a smile of commiseration and said, “Oy.”

“Oy, indeed,” I said, which gave her permission to laugh. I joined her, somewhat sheepishly.

“Well, tell her I said hello.”

Above our heads, there was a whoosh and a rattle of pipes as the toilet flushed.

“Listen, I have to tell you something,” she said.

Heavy footsteps began descending the stairs.

“There are some pictures, and you’re going to see them, if you haven’t seen them already—have you seen them? Is that why you came?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “No. What pictures?”

“Well, anyway, no matter what happened between us, I didn’t want to hurt you, and—”

My phone rang, and Sarah stopped, waited for me to answer or not.

“Brad!” Darius called, out in the front room. “You missed the excitement!”

“What pictures?” I asked again, ignoring the phone.

“I’ve started seeing somebody,” she said. “It was going to happen sometime, and I honestly wish—for your sake and mine—that it had been somebody else, and there weren’t pictures of us all over the internet.” She gave me a weak smile, took my arm, and said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

I followed her back out to the parlor, where Brad Elliot, tall, manly, absurdly handsome movie star, stood drinking champagne. He’d been in war movies and cop shows, played good guys and bad guys, and in every one, he got the girl, although sometimes, having gotten her, he died, leaving the girl on the screen sobbing and the ones in the audience sniffling, damp of eye and crotch. He had sandyblond hair, California hair, and his eyes were a startling blue. He was somewhere in his early thirties; his face was angled and lean, but boyish at the same time.

“Roger! Come meet Brad!” Darius said. “Brad’s production company is making Santa Country! He’s going to play Cameron. Isn’t that great?”

Brad held out his hand and smiled the most winning smile I’ve ever seen in my life.

“How ya doin’, hoss,” he said in his friendly bass rumble, and despite everything, I found myself smiling back. The man was uncannily charming.

As I shook his hand, though, I couldn’t help remembering that Brad Elliot was said to have the biggest dick in Hollywood, and there was ample pictorial evidence online, souvenir photos taken by various ex-girlfriends and fans with benefits. I released his hand quickly.

“Sarah’s told me a lot about you, Roger,” Brad said.

“Nothing bad, I hope,” I said, finishing the exchange as required.

“Hey, bro, I’m known to be a pretty bad boy myself,” he said, slapping a hand against my shoulder and laughing. Everyone in the room laughed politely, including me. “But, really, Sarah says you’re quite the wordsmith, and she’s quite the wordsmith, so she must know what she’s talking about.”

“Well, if Sarah says it, it must be true,” I said. This time nobody in the room laughed politely.

“We should get going,” Darius said, cutting off any further Wildean wit. “Already late for the reservation.” Stephanie downed her drink and stood.

“I’m sorry, Roger,” Sarah said. “Tonight just wasn’t a good time to talk. You’ll lock up when you go?” She walked over to Brad, took his arm, and they headed downstairs. Stephanie walked by, not meeting my eyes.

Darius waited until the rest of them were downstairs, then turned to look at me.

“One other thing before I go, Roger,” he said, his wolfish grin returned. “You notice how ever since you fucked my wife, nobody will take your calls?”

I realized immediately—didn’t understand how I’d managed not to see it before—why I wasn’t hearing back from anyone, why I couldn’t get any work. Darius had blacklisted me. He’d put out the word, and why would any editor cross Darius and risk not being offered the next bestseller? There was no percentage in it. I just wasn’t worth it.

I tried to appear untroubled, take it in stride. “You know I’m sorry, right?”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s no need to apologize. Do you know why?”

“No, Darius. Why?”

“Because it’s going to get worse.”

I WALKED the three blocks back through what was now a cold, light rain and arrived at the spot where I’d parked to find nothing but a spray of shattered glass where the car had been. I looked up and down the street, tried to tell myself I had parked it somewhere else, but I knew I hadn’t. I’d like to say that my first reaction was a sense of responsibility—that I felt bad for having taken Larry’s car into the city when I said I wouldn’t; that it had been stolen when I’d said that such things didn’t happen anymore; that I’d let him down—but it wasn’t. I was mostly pissed off that, against all reason, he’d been right and I was wrong. That feeling, though, was pushed aside when I remembered that my laptop had been in the car.

I began to head for the Ninth Precinct, over on Fifth Street, to report the car stolen, ignoring as best I could the knowledge that recovering my laptop was even less likely than recovering the car, and realized before I’d walked much more than a block that I did not know the license-plate number of the car; nor did I have the registration. I would have to call Larry and get all that information before I could report the crime. That set me to considering how he was going to respond. I was going to have to think of some way of explaining it to him before I called. So, instead of reporting the car stolen then and there, I decided to make my way back to my mother’s basement and take care of it once I’d figured all that out.

I took out my phone to check the LIRR schedule and see when the next train back out to Long Island on the Babylon line was, and noticed the message light blinking. It was another voicemail from my mother. I pressed play.

“Darling? I’m home. I saw those pictures on the internet of Sarah with that Brad Elliot. Is it true? Did something happen with you two? I decided to come home in case you needed me.” Her voice became a showy whisper, louder, if anything, than it had been before. “You know what they say about that Brad Elliot, don’t you? Miriam showed me a picture. I didn’t look, of course.” Her voice returned to normal. “Do you want to come out and stay with me? Call me! I’m here for you!”