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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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My MFA was granted in 1989, and I have "made my bones" in over 20 literary magazines, received a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and recently found a producer for my feature film script entitled A Nefarious Woman. My collection of short stories is called Righteous Indignation. |
Too weak to climb the two flights of stairs as I usually did, I took the elevator, pausing at the black and white list of tenants and wondering if I should use a pseudonym so the hordes of newspaper reporters wouldn't be able to find me. Or the doctor who was probably still living 2 doors away as he had been that fateful night when he’d asked me to bump off his ex-wife. Or his henchman with the silver bullet with my name on it like Vicky, my psychic friend, said it would be.
Holding my breath, I scraped out the shreds of remaining Franco-American and put it in a bowl for the next day. My choices in this new apartment were limited: tuna fish or a can of double-rich, double-strength Beef Broth Bouillon. Somewhere in America migrant tomato pickers' kids were going to bed hungry. That's how it was with my principles, I'm afraid. I knew about the boycott and still I bought the can, minus the smiling Campbell kids, for at least the company is not hypocritical enough to put a picture of smiling kids on the label.
Bad enough the day before I had to spend an hour on the phone to see if my line were tapped. I'd called Vicky in California station-to-station and when I'd hung up, the operator called back with time and charges. I was so shocked I didn't get her name, and the next operator said she couldn't tell me who ordered them until ten days after I got my bill! I knew I didn't order them and I called Vicky back to make sure she hadn’t. The operator distinctly said the request for charges came from my end. “It’s not the 10 dollars for 20 minutes,” as I explained to security at the phone company. “If I did not ask for time and charges, who did?” She must have thought I was a loony.
By the time Paul came, I was totally paranoid, with the curtains drawn, going down the list of security companies in the Yellow Pages, trying to order a bullet proof hat. Naturally, he laughed at my worries, did his best to calm me down. “Who do you think they would have to okay the hit with?” he asked, with a self-aggrandizing smirk. I appreciated his efforts, but having a hit man in the family didn’t mean I didn't have to worry, not when kids were getting blown away for a pair of Nikes. I had even called an astrologer who said that no one could predict the exact date of my death, so I had to take my chances like everyone else.
The next morning, when the phone was out of order, I went to the B&D deli to call the publisher only to find that something had come up and they couldn't meet me until 2. I had just enough time and money to get copies made of my manuscript and the transcripts. 9 pages were missing and a chapter done twice. If I were to have enough money for the weekend to eat, I had to write another bad check. What with the hurry of getting it finished and the haste of leaving Florida because Paul was in the hospital, I was lucky to have any semblance of a manuscript at all. It was carefully packaged in a Copy Cop box, complete with clippings. Awash in delusions of grandeur, to me it was worth a million, even if I didn’t have the slightest idea about publishing protocol, nor how hard it is to sell a first novel. Nobody understands how hard it is to be a schizophrenic, except maybe another schizophrenic.
Coincidentally, I was reading a copy of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar when the publishers came in. I used to think the only way she made it was to kill herself, but every line was as shiny as crystal, words jumping out at me on the page as if they were all in italics or dark, black, bold print. When you start seeing what other people don’t see it’s time to worry, but I rapidly segued into thinking that anyone as stupid as I was should never be a writer, though having attempted careers in other avenues and failed, I wasn't good for much else. That I could say with equanimity.
The good guy bought me a coffee, and the other one, with his hair combed sneaky-like, to cover a bald pate, carried a clipboard. I was wearing jeans and a denim jacket, a black turtle neck with a red silk scarf around my neck, to give me confidence. Red is an assertive color. With my dark hair and a slight blusher to highlight the cheekbones I was coaxing to show, I thought I didn't look half bad.
The bald-headed one wanted to get right down to business over his corned beef. I chattered nonstop to the good guy who chose turkey. I was too polite to ask for a salad, too psyched to keep quiet and let my writing speak for itself. They perused my clippings: the whole fiasco of my misspent youth and the trial against the shrink who had used me. I would never be satisfied until my name had been cleared. I wanted to expose the whole legal system for what it was after I'd heard that the judge, in chambers, had called me promiscuous. The newspaper reporters had all been men. The good guy had been listening to me on the phone all week so he had a pretty firm grip on where I was coming from. Neither of us was prepared for his partner's response: "Frankly, I think this is too hot for me to handle. Have you ever sent this out and what did they say?"
I was too honest for my own good. "Houghton-Mifflin turned it down on the grounds that they didn't think it had what it took to conquer the hurdles a first novel must face. Of course they didn't know I was about to go public, that that was the only way I could figure I could save my life, that once it was out there would be no reason to kill me.”
"I don't think I want to get involved in anything political."
"I guess you're not the publisher for me. I'm what they call a radical militant feminist."
"Of course I could take it with me and get back to you in a couple of months. I'm a very busy man." The biggest thing this publisher ever published was a book by an old World War I soldier. The rest of his income depended on doing the annual reports for the outlying towns. I found them in the Yellow Pages under Publishers.
"Frankly, Mrs. . . ."
"I scare you to death,” I said, finishing his sentence. I had a bad habit of interrupting people in conversation, poor impulse control. Sometimes, when the synapses were really clicking, when I’d been smoking pot in Florida, for example, I could become disconcertingly Delphic. It wasn’t a talent I’d tried to develop, set up a shop with beads and lavender curtains, God forbid, buy myself a crystal ball. No. Better to remain an amateur, maybe called out at parties, should there ever be any, just to keep my hand in these freaky disturbances.
"Where are the chapter titles?"
"There aren't any. I thought it would save ink."
"Look," he said, most patiently, turning to the good guy, "Do you get the feeling this is something out of a Watergate novel, or that movie with Paul whatsisname, The Verdict?" He was beginning to catch my drift.
"Newman," I said. "I slept through it twice.”
"Even if we were to print 5000 copies. Where do you think you would sell 5000 copies? All we do is print, we have nothing to do with marketing."
"Have you seen how many copies have been sold of that nun/lesbian book that Naiad put out?"
"I haven't, but I was thinking of buying it."
"Don't worry about marketing. The lawyer I talked into reading it is also in P. R. He won't charge me like that fancy lawyer did who wrote me a release that no one but an aborigine would sign."
"And then there's the matter of libel. I don't want to get in over my head."
"Look, what this man said is part of the public record. It was plastered a
ll over my hometown newspapers. Everyone in the whole world thinks that my bedroom door was swinging open day and night. What I said was part of the public record too, even if the newspaper guy didn't print it. Besides, we could always do what the big guys do, change corporations so that by the time it comes to court, they're suing air. Do you understand that I'm a Greek girl, and Greek girls don't go around opening their legs for every Tom, Dick and Harry?"
The publisher looked like he was ready to jump out of his seat. I knew that I was talking a little bit too loud, but this was the B&D where anything goes and the waitresses holler their orders in to a short order guy with a diamond in his ear and he hollers back, 'don't bother me I'm busy.' When you went to the B&D it wasn't just for the food. The whole staff put on a show; from the big fat guy wearing a black T shirt with the huge letters B&D on it, to the bus boys who swear at each other in Arabic. Unfortunately, that day, I was the only one in the place with any joie de vivre. The good guy tried to change the subject.
"I used to go out with a Greek girl in college," he said wistfully.
Greek women made good wives, I was always told. It was a very patriarchal culture. The men were treated like pashas, the women like slaves, cooking, cooking, and never complaining about any women on the side a husband might have. I whipped open my jacket for a quick show of my boobs. "I am sick to death of people thinking I am an easy make just because I have big boobs. Can I help it if I have the classic Mediterranean figure?"
The baldish guy in his conservative suit and tie looked like he wanted to crawl under the table. "Have you any idea how much it would cost to put out 5000 of these whatever-you-haves? Paper, ink, typesetting?"
"No. What?"
He does his calculating on a yellow legal pad, reminding me of the many times a lawyer had used one, listing such luxuries as laundry and haircuts. "I figure we could put them out for $1. 75 apiece and you could sell them for 3."
The good guy nodded his head and said: "Too cheap."
"How do you think I am going to make a million bucks selling a book that took me ten years to write at 3 bucks apiece? Have you got something against thinking big?" I was totally frustrated by then. "Personally, I like a lot of zeroes. I can't think in small numbers after turning down a million dollars." Every woman before me had been smart enough to settle, but I had married the first boy I ever kissed, so there was very little dirt they could throw.
A foggy look came into the semi-bald publisher's eyes, as if I had him totally confused. "How many pages, do you figure?"
"About 400."
"Too long."
"What do you mean too long?"
"People would be bored."
"You think I would write a boring book? Did you ever happen to read Kinflicks?” I had laughed myself silly, reading that book. The narrator, while having kinky sex, had been tied to a beam and left to hang by her wrists, as I remembered. “By the way Knopf, turned me down too. Kinflicks was probably the last best seller they had and that was 450 pages." Boring, the very idea.
"And where do you think we are going to get 10,000 dollars to publish this book, even if our editorial staff were to approve. It has to be good writing and it has to be sellable."
I was beginning to think that I knew more about the publishing business than he did and I was starting to get hot even though I realized that this was a very nice man to have put up with me so long. He kept looking at his watch.
"That is one of the signs that you're not buying. I learned that selling time sharing," I said.
"Well . . . my wife is waiting for me."
"And when I'm on the Johnny Carson show you can kiss the ship that you didn't catch goodbye." I learned that selling time sharing too.
"It was nice meeting you," he said, giving me a limp- wristed shake. "If you want to give me the box, I'll have our editorial staff look it over."
I leaned forward, giving the good guy on the right a wink to show him I was on the rib. "Just between you and me and my gypsy princess grandmother, I think I'm looking at your editorial staff. I'm willing to sell my house in Florida, at a loss if I have to, to come up with the money. If someone were to hand me an opportunity to make a million bucks, I would take this book home and read it over the weekend. But that's me. I don't want to be poor anymore." This speech took everything out of me. My legs trembled when I stood up.
The baldish publisher stopped at the cash register to pay the check. His buddy walked me out to the sidewalk to apologize. "My partner hasn't read a book in 10 years. I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too." I tried not to stare at the belt he was wearing, crinkled and white, where the cardboard showed through. "But at least now I know a small publisher is what I'm looking for. Someone that has some convictions. Someone that cared."
He handed me his business card. "Good luck and if you change your mind, give us a call." I was clutching my million dollar manuscript under my arm, halfway down the block, when I discovered I'd left behind my red silk scarf. By the time I walked back, it was gone. The guy in the black T shirt, with his belly hanging out, was cutting up a brisket. I left my phone number with him in case it ever showed up. It was crazy to be paranoid of anyone who could wear a T shirt with such aplomb. A man that big who could let it all hang out had to be admired.