Potboiler

Zhulk threw himself to his knees. He began to keen and pull at his hair.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Pfefferkorn said.

Zhulk moaned.

“I’m not saying it doesn’t stand to benefit from a little editing. But for a first draft—”

With a howl Zhulk sprang to his feet. He grabbed the bars and shook them like a madman. “It is bad,” he yelled, “and you must say it is bad.”

There was a silence.

“It’s . . . bad,” Pfefferkorn said.

“How bad.”

“. . . very.”

“Use adjectives.”

“. . . sickening?”

“Yes.”

“And, and—and juvenile.”

“Yes . . .”

“It’s repetitive,” Pfefferkorn said. “Pointless.”

“Yes, yes . . .”

“Trite, bland, rambling, overwritten. Poor in conception, worse in execution, just bad, bad, bad. Its only virtue,” Pfefferkorn said, finding his groove, “is that it’s short.”

Zhulk honked pleasurably.

“The person who wrote this ending,” Pfefferkorn said, “deserves to be punished.”

“How.”

“How should he be pu—eh, well—”

“Spare nothing.”

“He should, uh—beaten?”

“Oh yes.”

“And—shamed.”

“Yes.”

“He should . . . be forced to wear a bell around his neck so people can know he’s coming and run away.”

“Truly, he should,” Zhulk said. “Truly, his is a dead soul, and the ending reflects that.”

“You said it,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Yes, maestro. But tell me: if the ending seems bad now, how much worse will it seem when the maestro’s ending is revealed? And how much more glorious will the maestro’s ending be? Speak, maestro: how glorious will the ending be?”

There was a silence.

“Pretty darn glorious, I guess,” Pfefferkorn said.

Zhulk stood back, starry-eyed. “The suspense is killing me, the individual.”

Pfefferkorn did not share his patron’s optimism. Ninety-nine lines in twenty-two days equaled four and a half lines per day. By day eleven, the halfway point, he was still stuck on line nine. He knew exactly what was happening to him. He’d gone through it before, only this time there would be no salvation. He was at the mercy of a villain crueler than any Dick Stapp or Harry Shagreen had ever faced: crushing self-doubt. And he was beginning to understand the word “deadline” in a whole new way.

97.

Late at night, unable to sleep, Pfefferkorn wrote unsendable letters.

He wrote to Bill. He described his earliest memories of their friendship. He remembered their eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Flatt, who everyone had a crush on. He remembered taking the wheel of Bill’s Camaro, only to get pulled over for speeding. He had counted off the officer’s steps in the sideview mirror while Bill fumbled with the glove box, trying to hide an open can of beer. After the cop had ticketed them and sped off they heard dripping. The glove box was leaking into the footwell. He couldn’t believe what they’d gotten away with. Could Bill? Times were simpler then, weren’t they? Weren’t they. He asked if Bill had ever read any of the books he had recommended. He admitted that he hadn’t finished some of them himself. He reminisced about breaking into the university boathouse and stealing a flatbed cart of equipment. The next day they had stood in the quad among the crowd, watching the crew team try to get their oars down out of the trees. He painted pictures of all-nighters at the literary magazine, the two of them hunched over a drafting board, working the monthly puzzle of text, image, and advertisement. He wrote fondly of their basement apartment. He still savored the cheap, greasy meals they had shared. He wrote that Bill was a true gentleman. He confessed that he had been jealous of Bill, but that his jealousy had its origin in admiration. He wrote that once, in the thick of a fight, his ex-wife had told him he was half the man Bill was. He had been so furious that he hadn’t returned Bill’s calls for months. He apologized for punishing Bill for someone else’s sins. He wrote that he still thought of Bill’s first story. It had been better than he had been willing to cop to at the time. He wrote that, clandestine government activities aside, Bill surely would have made it as a writer. He wrote that their friendship was precious to him, no matter what else had been going on behind the scenes, and he regretted that he hadn’t come out to California while Bill was still alive. He hoped it was all right that he had slept with Carlotta. He wrote that he believed Bill would have given them his blessing, because that was the kind of person Bill was. He wrote that he wished he himself could be more generous. He wrote that he was working on it.