Small Town

Far as that went, she wasn’t the only one he’d just disappointed.

He rang her back. “Changed my mind,” he said. “Yes, keep me posted.”

“If it’s gonna interfere with your writing—”

“Who are we kidding? What am I going to get written today, whether or not the phone rings? You know what I realized? I’m in a profession that’s supposed to be glamorous, and maybe it is, if you’re sitting upstairs of a garage in Moline, Illinois, typing away and dreaming of someday seeing your words in print. But when you’re doing it, all it is is a combination of daydreaming and word processing.”

“And?”

“And here’s the one time in a writer’s life when it’s genuinely exciting, and the horses are leaving the paddock, and I’ve got a fistful of tickets, and here I am telling you I don’t want to watch the race, just call me when it’s over. So I changed my mind.”

He’d figured work was out of the question, but decided there was no reason why he couldn’t tinker with what he’d written earlier that week. He went over what he’d printed out, noting typos, finding and fixing the occasional infelicitous phrase. He was entering his changes on the computer when she called at ten-fifteen.

“I drew lots,” she said, “and called Putnam first, and they didn’t have to go into a huddle, they’d already gone into their huddle because they knew what the floor was. They bid one point two.”

“That’s more than one point one.”

“You could have been an accountant, did anybody ever tell you that? The important thing is they’re in. I’d rather have a slight increment from them than a big jump now.”

“Why’s that?”

“Psychologically I think it’s better at this stage. Anyway, I knew Gloria wouldn’t try a preemptive overcall, if you don’t mind a bridge term in the middle of an auction, because it’s not her style, which is why I called her first.”

“I thought you drew lots.”

“No, why on earth would I do that? I know what order I want them in. I said I drew lots, because that makes it sound fair, and they pretended to believe me, but I didn’t and they know I didn’t.”

“Wheels within wheels,” he said.

“Now I’m waiting to hear from St. Martin’s. Having fun?”

“Uh-huh. Are you?”

“Time of my life,” she said. “Stay close to the phone, okay?”

In the beginning, a rejection slip with a handwritten Sorry! on it was encouraging, while an actual note saying that they’d liked his story (albeit not enough to publish it) was cause for minor celebration. His first sale was to a little magazine that paid in copies, but it was his first sale, for God’s sake, and what difference did it make how much they did or didn’t pay him?

It was never about the money. He hadn’t gotten into the business to get rich — and, indeed, hadn’t thought of it as a business when he got into it. It was what he wanted to do, and he had the unwarranted self-assurance to believe he’d be able to make a living at it.

And, one way or another, he had. Somebody (he was pretty sure it was James Michener) had said somewhere that a writer could make a fortune in America, but couldn’t make a living. It was a great line, and there was truth in it, because the men and women who hit the bestseller list did make a fortune, and the overwhelming majority who ground away at it, and who were good enough to publish one book after another, had to have professorships or day jobs or trust funds to get by.

But there were others who didn’t hit the list or line up for food stamps, people like him who came out with a new book every year or two, and wrote short stories, and did some reviewing, wrote the occasional article. Picked up a few dollars running the odd workshop at a writers’ conference, critiquing manuscripts, looking good for the wannabes. Knocking out a novelization of a film, or a TV tie-in, or whatever someone would pay you to write quickly and under a pseudonym.

Writing, and turning a buck at it. Never getting rich, always getting by.

But it had gotten harder in recent years, and not just for him. Increasingly, the top and bottom grew at the expense of the middle. Michener’s half-truth was becoming unqualified fact. You could make a fortune as a writer, but you couldn’t make a living.

And it was beginning to look as though he was going to be one of the ones who made a fortune. Of course, whether or not he would get to spend any of it was an open question.

“St. Martin’s just bid one point three.”

“A subtle pattern begins to emerge.”

“Next up is Simon & Schuster, then Little, Brown.”

“This could be a long day.”

“Jesus, let’s hope so,” she said.

Trevino might be right about pressure, but there was a difference between pressure and excitement. He wasn’t under any pressure right now, there was nothing he had to do, nothing expected of him. After the deal was done, when he had to sit down and produce a book to justify an advance of one point one or two or three or four million dollars, that’s when the pressure would come in.