Sylvio has heard from the other publisher. Hey, says Sylvio as I’m in his office after inviting myself over.
Hey, says Sylvio, not bad.
This publisher likes Smooth Operator. Are we talking contract? Not so fast. All he wants, this publisher, are a few changes, and then yes, we can talk. Nothing major, nothing drastic, nothing that departs from my “vision.” The publisher wants the man, the hero, turned into a woman. Just a suggestion. He wants the locale switched from Cincinnati to New York.
“That should be no big deal, right?” says Sylvio as he’s on the phone with someone else but still talking to me as well.
The publisher wants more description, less dialogue. Wait. Maybe it’s the other way round. The publisher wants more dialogue and less description. After all, show, don’t tell. We’ll find out, if we get that far. Wait. The publisher wants less of both or more of both, yes, more description, less dialogue. Sylvio is quite positive. Also – less interior dialogue.
“He wants the weather,” says Sylvio.
That means more interior dialogue.
What else?
He wants a new beginning, a new ending, a happy ending. I can do new beginnings, but endings are tough. I had my ending pretty much as it should be, vague.
A novel, really, should never END. It should go on, as unwritten.
As for a new opening I had this in mind, “Call me Ishmael,” but that’s been taken.
What else?
He wants the ages of my characters reduced by 10 years, make it more hip, more accessible to younger readers.
You really can’t identify with anyone over 25, according to the publisher. Beyond a certain demographic (I think it’s age 41) Americans are as good as dead. On the other hand, the publisher also wants more old people, as the young don’t read. Only old people read. So he wants my young people younger and my old people older. He also wants more people in the middle, as this generation still reads, though some don’t.
He wants more sex. He wants two or three more female characters, since only women buy books. Only women read. Men watch football.
What else?
I mention a second marriage but nothing about the first, how and why they got divorced. The publisher says I must explain. No I mustn’t. This isn’t a biography. This is a novel. If I go into the first marriage and the divorce it will throw the entire novel off its rhythm and take it into new territory that has nothing to do with the story. It will bring up things that don’t belong.
“You’re the writer,” says Sylvio.
Also, I say they fell in love, but why…the publisher wants to know what made them fall in love.
“I don’t know,” I tell Sylvio.
“What do you mean?”
“How do I know what makes people fall in love? There’s no REASON. People fall in love, period. There doesn’t have to be a reason. There shouldn’t be a reason.”
“I’m just telling you what the publisher wants.”
What else?
He wants no religious or ethnic references. No Jews, no Arabs, no Christians. He does want an African American, as that’s how it is these days.
Above all, he wants a yarn.
“Can you do all or some of that?” says Sylvio. “If you can, we maybe got a sale.”
“I can give more sex.”
“I know you can. You’re good at sex.”
That is true. I am very good at sex. One reader once told me that The Ice King was the best sex she ever had.
“I don’t know if I can change Cincinnati into New York. The locale is one of the characters.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“People in the Midwest think and act differently from people in New York. It’s miles apart in more ways than traffic.”
“He thinks nobody cares about Cincinnati.”
“Faulkner wrote about a county that never really existed and what about Atlanta? Did anybody care about Atlanta until Margaret Mitchell came along?”
“Actually, nobody even cared about the South,” Sylvio agrees.
“So there,” I say.
“What about changing the man into a woman?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” says Sylvio.
“Question. What’s this about a yarn? What is a yarn?”
“A yarn is a yarn.”
“I really don’t know what a yarn is, Sylvio.”
“A yarn is a story…”
“That says nothing.”
“You’re trying to say something.”
“Yes. I’m not trying to teach or to preach, but yeah, I’m trying to say something.”
“Like what?”
“That’s for the reader to figure out. The writer is the last two know.”
“Well, he wants a yarn.”
“I don’t do yarns, Sylvio. The Ice King wasn’t a yarn, either, and it did all right.”
As of right now, this publisher sees the movie, not the book. It is photographic, too photographic.
Meanwhile, Sylvio has submitted Smooth Operator around Hollywood and the word back is that they see the book but not the movie, not photographic enough.
New York says my book is perfect for Hollywood. Hollywood says my book is perfect for New York.
So we’re back to Roe Morgan, our last chance, again. But that’s the business, one last chance to the next.
I have begun to get nauseous at the very name Roe Morgan, the very name. Maybe it’s from the moment he said No Thanks. That probably did it for me. But Sylvio assures that the door is still open with Roe Morgan. He, Sylvio, is selling me as part of a package deal along with that other writer Roe Morgan has the hots for. I am the loss leader in this deal. Roe Morgan is not asking for changes. That’s something. Sylvio, who seldom gets personal, tells me not to despair. We are still very much in the hunt.
Sylvio says, “Have you thought about golf?”
“Golf?”
“Those books sell. Golf is big.”
“Golf?”
“Give it some thought.”
But for perhaps the first time I think Melanie is despairing. “What happens if that falls through?”
We’re having donuts and coffee after she’s picked me up from the bus station at Mount Laurel. I had fallen asleep on the bus and am still drowsy. We’re at the Dunkin Donuts in Cherry Hill, where Melanie had just gone for her regular medical check-up. I love those glazed donuts and that coffee.
I hate it when Melanie starts despairing. I’m always tottering myself and without her spiritedness, who knows? She does snap back awfully fast, though, and that’s good for both of us. I wonder sometimes if I’m manic depressive. I think I would like that, as it would be something to talk about and wear around at parties. I don’t drink or take drugs, and these are flaws if you’re an artist. I do smoke, a pipe, of course, but that’s not serious enough unless you light up around non-smokers, which is practically everybody these days. People need you to be recovering from something. I’m not manic depressive, either. If I am, one good phone call, and I’m cured.
When Melanie is down, it’s like an affliction that I’ve caused by my failure to produce, and that’s a guilt nobody needs.
She says, as she begins to brighten, that we should take in a movie at the Loews while we’re here, it’s been so long, so long since we’ve taken in a movie, or done anything, what with my hours being what they are and me being so tired even on my days off. We don’t do anything, go anywhere. “You want a date, huh?”
“What’s wrong with that?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“You used to be so romantic.”
“When?”
“When you were courting me.”
“I was courting you?”
“You sure were.”
“Didn’t we go to bed that first date?”
“Second date. You’re thinking of someone else, or all of them.”
“No I’m not.”
“Second date,” she insists.
“So that’s not courting. Courting is when you’ve got chaperones and all that business.”
“You were romantic.”
“First date.”
“Second date, Jay. I wasn’t that easy.”
“Second date is playing hard to get these days, right?”
“I think so. That’s our culture. Our parents never KISSED until the fourth date.”
We sit there, and we’re enjoying ourselves, and trying to remember the last movie we saw together.
“Was it The Ice King?” she says. “Our movie?”
“That far back?”
“I think it was,” she says.
“Can’t be.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m sure we’ve gone out since. Can’t be that far back.”
Melanie’s connection to the movies dates back even before our movie. She was named after what’s-her-name in Gone with the Wind.
Well, of course we’ve seen other movies. I usually pick the ones that got the worst reviews, upon my conviction that the world and everything in it is upside-down. I use the same method of handicapping in choosing what books to read and what horses to bet. I don’t always win but I make my point. I have read reviews of movies, say Woody Allen movies, where the critic says I’ll be rolling in the aisle, and this has never happened. I have never rolled in the aisle.
“So the publisher can see the movie but not the book, and the producers can see the book but not the movie. Ridiculous,” she says.
Same thing happened with The Ice King. First New York saw it as a movie and Hollywood saw it as a book. Finally, after many tries, someone saw the book as a book and someone saw the book as a movie, and both turned out to be winners. Until then they were all wrong. Maybe they’re wrong again.
I give her my mantra. “Is it possible that I am right and everybody else is wrong?” Again!
“That’s more like it,” Melanie says. “That’s the talk I like to hear.”
Yes, maybe I am right and the rest of the world is wrong. This happens.
Golf?
We drive over to the Loews multiplex to see something with Tom Hanks, and maybe catch a double-feature, which everybody does, I think, by sneaking into the neighboring plex. I like Tom Hanks most times. I did not like him in Saving Private Ryan. I think he was miscast by Spielberg. Should have been an unknown. I always knew it was Tom Hanks, an actor, and not a real soldier. Anyway, we buy the oversized popcorn and a Pepsi and walk over to the usher to get our tickets ripped up, and the usher is a kid, well, around 22, and he gives me the up and down and practically gasps.
He says, “I know you. You’re the author.”
Melanie starts beaming. But I am sure he is thinking of someone else. Been years since I made the papers, certainly television, and certainly any new book cover. For sure, I’m guessing, he thinks I’m Tom Wolfe, though I am not wearing a white suit and am not nearly that age. I know that Melanie is in for a huge letdown and am already kicking myself for letting her talk me into this.
“You’re Jay Leonard,” he says.
He says he reads me all the time, on the Internet, and knows The Ice King, movie, and book. He asks for my autograph.
I do that and he says, “Thank you.”
“No,” I say, “thank YOU.”
As we’re walking into the theater, Melanie, smiling high and wide, says, “See!”
“See what?”
“Tell me you’re not pleased.”
I’m thinking F. Scott Fitzgerald and that movie about him, of his later years, from the story by his lover Sheila Graham, Beloved Infidel. Gregory Peck plays Scott and Deborah Kerr is Sheila in this movie that nobody thinks is all that terrific except me, particularly that scene where they find out that a play has been adapted from one of his novels and is being produced off Hollywood, and out they go, Scott in his tux, Sheila in her evening gown, and Scott, of course, has been forgotten and unpublished for years, so this is a big moment, and Sheila is so determined to make him happy, and when they get there, instead of arriving at a major theater, the place is a basement of some sort, and it’s all a bunch of kids who are doing the play. Sheila asks a group of them if they know F. Scott Fitzgerald and they giggle and someone says, “I thought he was dead.” I can watch that scene a hundred times, and probably have.
“Go ahead,” says Melanie. “Tell me you’re not pleased.”
“I’m pleased, Mel. I’m pleased.”
“Remember, it’s only the moments that count. This was a moment.”