Business Secrets from the Stars

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Business Secrets from the Stars Page 6

by David Dvorkin


  It was common practice for the guest of honor to give a convention speech on the topic of his choice – a well attended speech, of course. Malcolm’s speech would be brilliant. He had it planned out, written in his mind, just waiting to be delivered.

  “Were I but King of Anglophonia.” That was the speech’s title. It would detail the linguistic atrocities Malcolm would outlaw if he had the royal power to do so. He would ban the words “respect” and “disrespect” so that no one would be able to use them as rhetorical clubs against those expressing opinions the club wielder disagreed with. He would require that anyone speaking English include the w sound in the pronunciation of “Quebec” – unless the speaker consistently used the French pronunciation of “Paris” and the Russian pronunciation of “Moscow” and so on for all other foreign place names. No one would be allowed to refer to committing a moral or legal transgression as “making a mistake.”

  And there was so much more! It would be a long speech. Amusing, of course, witty, entertaining, but leaving no doubt about Malcolm’s firm opinions on how his subjects would be required to speak were he but King of Anglophonia.

  At which point in his fantasizing, Malcolm would sigh and think, Were I but guest of honor at a science-fiction convention.

  Like Joe Hoffman.

  Once, during the final stage of their marriage’s disintegration, Marlene had said to Malcolm, “Why don’t you stop whining and turn out books, like Joe Hoffman does? And start doing some kind of exercise, like lifting weights like he does. He looks great. I’d sure be better off with him — in various senses.”

  To which Malcolm had replied, “Think you could compete with that gorgeous wife of his? Hah!”

  Marlene had snarled. “At least she doesn’t have to put up with whining from her husband!”

  “Of course not. What does he have to whine about?”

  Oh, what a lovely marriage it had been.

  Its breakup had been delayed when Malcolm’s third novel appeared on the stands. Marlene had privately decided to give her husband’s career one more chance, to see if the third time was the charm, if Malcolm could finally hit the bestseller lists and bring her the wealth and ease she knew she deserved.

  However, the stands on which the book appeared were very few, and Marlene immediately recognized the pattern set by Malcolm’s first two books: high expectations followed by limited distribution followed by near-zero sales. She had ordered him out of the house and immediately filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. That, she had felt, was not an exaggeration.

  Malcolm learned from a machine that his wife had chucked him out. The machine was a computer, something soulless and without any human feelings, which seemed appropriate.

  The computer ran a voice messaging system that Western Bell had named SAM. Malcolm had no idea what that was an acronym for. A coworker had suggested that it stood for “Sadists and Masochists,” since that covered everyone who worked for Western Bell.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, he got back to his desk from a long lunch with Steve Golden at their usual Mexican restaurant and checked for messages. He was hoping for the voice of his agent — his first one, at that time — brimming with eagerness, saying that Malcolm must call him immediately because numerous publishers were beating down his door with demands that they be allowed to give stupendous quantities of money to Malcolm Erskine.

  SAM’s voice was female. How many hours of intensive thought on the part of marketing executives — who are endowed at birth with only a limited ration of hours of thought, which must last them all their lives — had gone into the choice of the woman who had recorded the phrases and digits which the SAM computer combined to make up its spoken sentences? “You have... six... new messages. To listen to your messages, press one. For more options —”

  Malcolm quickly punched the ONE button on the telephone’s numeric pad, cutting off the recorded voice. If I must listen to a computer-generated female voice, he always thought, then I ought to at least be on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Beam me up a woman, Scotty.

  And then Marlene’s message began.

  “Hello, you son of a bitch. I figured you’d be at lunch still, you lazy jerk. It’s that attitude that explains why you’re still a low-level programmer at your age, in case you’re interested, you piece of shit. Anyway, I called during your three-hour lunch so that you wouldn’t be there, because I didn’t want to have to deal with your whining. This is to let you know that when you go home tonight, you’re going to have to go to a different home. I’ve changed the locks. You don’t live here any more.”

  The message continued for half an hour altogether. Since SAM wouldn’t accept messages longer than five minutes, Marlene had had to keep calling back to complete her love note. Thus the six messages. Malcolm listened to all of them, following SAM’s instructions mechanically as each one ended, absorbing with deadened feelings the insults and the promises of financial degradation. Marlene finished with, “Take good care of yourself, sweetie, because you’re going to be taking good care of me for a long, long time to come. Shithead.”

  Buzz. “End of new messages. To erase messages, press seven. For more options...”

  Malcolm and Marlene. A match made in Heaven. Or possibly in some other place.

  Malcolm pressed SEVEN, erasing all of the six messages at once. If only Marlene could be erased so easily.

  She could, of course. Murder is a simple and easy thing....

  Malcolm shook his head. No, murder would not be simple and easy for him. He might get caught. Even worse, he might botch the job and leave Marlene alive.

  Still, it was very pleasant to imagine her dying in various grotesque ways. One of the very few lines of critical praise Malcolm Erskine the writer had received had been for the vividness of a violent death scene in his second novel. He might not have the courage to actually do anything gruesome to Marlene, but he did have the talent to imagine it well.

  The dial tone interrupted his thoughts. Almost automatically, he dialed Steve Golden’s number and told his friend what had just happened.

  “Great!” Steve said. “This is just what you needed. I tell you, I never felt so good as I did when my own divorce was finalized. Now you’re free. Now you’ll have the time and energy to write much more than before, and you’ll be able to chase women all you want. Now the fun begins, pal.”

  Like the fun life you lead? Malcolm was tempted to say. With Steve’s example as a warning, he saw a long, dreary, and lonely few decades stretching ahead of him, a sad decline toward death.

  “Tell you what,” Steve said. “After work on Friday, I’ll buy you a beer to celebrate.”

  “Sure.” On the bright side, maybe he could now undertake an earnest pursuit of Joe Hoffman’s wife. Maybe it was Ellie Hoffman who was somehow responsible for Joe’s success. Perhaps she was a talisman. It couldn’t be the quality of Hoffman’s writing. Of that, Malcolm was sure. “How would you like to buy me about ten beers?”

  “Ten — ? Well, sure. If you’re sure you really want that much.”

  “You bet. I’ve got the stomach for it.” Malcolm winced suddenly as he imagined Marlene saying, “No, you don’t have the stomach for lots of beer. You’ve got the stomach from lots of beer.” What a sense of humor. “Bitch,” Malcolm muttered. Yeah, well, he thought, Hoffman may have less stomach than I do, but he’s also got less hair.

  But he hung up the telephone and looked down at his paunch and was not happy. If he was to have a chance at a successful bachelorhood, that paunch would have to go. Joe Hoffman didn’t have a paunch. Joe Hoffman also lifted weights, as Marlene had been so careful to remind him. Maybe that was Hoffman’s secret. Maybe editors were all in love with his muscles. It wasn’t the man’s writing, he assured himself again. Surely not that.

  There were perhaps a dozen science-fiction writers living in and around Piketon. Only two of them had had novels published, a few more had sold short stories, and most had never been published
at all. They met once a month to critique each other’s work and, after the verbal knives had been resheathed, to socialize at some area restaurant. Had it not been for Joe Hoffman, Malcolm would have been the undisputed star of the gathering by virtue of having had three novels published. The poor sales of the novels wouldn’t have prevented the younger, less published writers in the group from being impressed by his achievement. As it was, the undisputed star was Joe Hoffman, with his dozen novels, his growing commercial and literary success, and his damned pleasantness.

  Hoffman didn’t exactly try to be in charge of the group or to be the mentor of the younger writers in it, but he certainly made no effort that Malcolm could see to turn down the role when the others thrust it on him. And so the rhythm and tone of the workshops were Hoffman’s, and the standards of criticism were Hoffman’s, and the literary paradigm was always what Hoffman had written, and Malcolm sank into the background and ground his teeth.

  When he sold his third book, Malcolm had swallowed his pride and approached Joe Hoffman for a cover quote. This had actually been his editor’s idea, not Malcolm’s. Malcolm would have preferred to eat a bowl of hot tar.

  “Let’s see if we can do something,” his editor had said, “to, well, frankly, break this third book out of the level of low sales expectations which the numbers for your first two books have probably preconditioned the chain buyers to base their calculations on.”

  Malcolm had had to chew that sentence over for a few minutes before he realized that what his editor was really saying was that the buyers for the bookstore chains would look at the sales figures for his first two books and would then decide not to bother picking up any copies of his third for sale in their stores. Which would be the kiss of death for his career. Whereas a favorable cover quote from some more famous, established, and respected science-fiction writer — such as Joe Hoffman, damn his eyes and his ears and every other part of him — might just possibly persuade them to give this latest Malcolm Erskine book a chance.

  And so he had had to eat the bowl of hot tar.

  He had looked up Hoffman’s telephone number in the address list for the critique group and forced himself to dial the number. Ellie Hoffman answered in that low, warm voice that had always thrilled Malcolm. He could imagine what she looked like, standing there, holding the phone, those lively, intelligent eyes shining. Then he imagined her holding the phone while dressed only in panties, and he felt the beginnings of an erection, so he asked to speak to Joe, the undeserving bastard who got to paw her.

  “Hello?” Hoffman said cautiously.

  Don’t worry, you shithead, Malcolm thought. My low sales numbers won’t rub off on you over the wire. “Hi, Joe! It’s Malcolm! Erskine! How’s everything?”

  “Just fine, Malcolm. Hope you’re okay.”

  “Oh, I’m just great!”

  “And your wife?”

  “Oh, she’s just fine, too, Joe!” This was, of course, before Malcolm knew just how perilous the state of his marriage was. Perhaps if he had realized the degree to which the future of his marriage was riding on getting a good quote from Hoffman and good sales figures for the novel, he would have been even more nervous. As it was, sweat was soaking his clothing. “And yours?” That lovely, sweet, intelligent creature, that paragon of a writer’s wife, that angel whom I deserve so much more than you do.

  “She’s fine, Malcolm. Is there something I can do for you?”

  Too fucking busy to spend any time chatting pleasantly with me, aren’t you? Bastard. You’re so goddamned superior. Shithead. “Well, actually, Joe, I called to ask a favor. It’s a big favor, and I wouldn’t blame you at all if you refused. Especially given how busy you must be, with the way your career is going. As I’m sure you know, my thir — my next novel will be coming out next summer, and my editor asked me to approach some of my friends and ask for cover quotes, so I was hoping, well, wondering if you’d be willing to read the manuscript and — if you like it, of course — say something that could be quoted on the cover. Front cover.”

  “Whom else have you asked?”

  Why don’t you say who like everyone else, you pretentious asshole? “No one else yet. You were the first person I thought of, of course.”

  “Hmm. Your publisher is Insignifica Press, correct?”

  “Uh huh.” After an awkward pause, Malcolm added, “They’re based in New York.”

  “Hmm.”

  “They have national distribution.”

  “Umm.”

  “Some of their books have been mentioned as possibilities for some awards.”

  A heavy sigh came across the line. “I suppose you could send me a copy of the manuscript, and I’ll try to look at it if I can. Of course, I can’t promise anything.”

  Oh, thank you, thank you, Sahib. I kiss your shoes. I lick the ground you walk on. I abase myself before your awesome awesomeness, you shithead. “Wow, that’s wonderful, Joe! Thanks so much!”

  So Malcolm printed out a copy of his manuscript on the trusty printer at work and mailed it to Joe Hoffman, and in the fullness of time he received a letter couched in Hoffman’s usual pretentious circumlocutions but containing one passage that Malcolm and his editor agreed would make a very suitable quote to put on the front cover of Malcolm’s novel: “Erskine delivers precisely the kind of plot and characterization that those familiar with his previous work have come to expect. They will have anticipated the derring-do of the novel’s writer-hero, the malice of its attractive female antagonist, and the passion of the dark-eyed, dark-haired heroine the writer just barely manages to rescue in the book’s event-filled final scenes. It has been said by a far more accomplished and respected genre author than I that to be successful, science fiction should eschew character development, and certainly by this measure Erskine’s latest effort achieves success.”

  Malcolm was delighted. His editor was delighted. They were both convinced that this quote alone would propel the book to the top of the bestseller lists, or at least the science-fiction bestseller lists.

  The book came out, Malcolm and his editor waited eagerly for the success that would be so good — and was so necessary — to both their careers, for the gushing reviews, the remarkable sales figures. And they waited. And they waited....

  Eventually Malcolm’s editor stopped waiting, shrugged his shoulders, and turned his attention to another novel by another author, another book he hoped would make his career and get him the hell out of Insignifica Press.

  Malcolm kept on waiting. Unlike his editor, he had no other options.

  Alas, Book #3 was also quietly received, just like the two Malcolm Erskine novels that had preceded it.

  There were only three reviews. Two of them were lukewarm. In the third, Malcolm read this:

  The only good thing about this book is the cover quote by the justly esteemed genre author, Joe Hoffman, to whose forthcoming novel this reviewer looks forward with anticipation whetted by frequent rereading of the excellent Mr. Hoffman’s previous works. The quote from the highly acclaimed Hoffman amounts to saying, “For those few people who like the kind of garbage Malcolm Erskine keeps rewriting, this is the kind of garbage they like.” Most amusing of all is the fact that neither Erskine nor his publisher seem to have understood just what the brilliant Joe Hoffman was really saying! But then, they wouldn’t, would they?

  Malcolm wanted to scream, but he couldn’t because Marlene was in the next room. He wanted to strangle Joe Hoffman, but he wouldn’t have dared try because of the brilliant Hoffman’s large muscles. He wanted to settle for stealing Joe Hoffman’s wife. The bastard deserved to have that happen, at least.

  He wanted to...

  He didn’t know what he wanted, except to succeed, to be rich, to be famous, to never again have to be torn from sleep by an alarm and stagger off to a day of humiliation and degradation and emasculation at Western Bell. He didn’t want to have to endure any more of that at home, either.

  Despite himself, a whine escaped him.

&nbs
p; “What’s going on in there?” It was Marlene, calling from the next room. “Did you break something of mine? Did you spill something on my furniture? Did you hurt my house?”

  How foolish could Malcolm have been in those days that he didn’t notice her choice of possessive? Not foolish, perhaps: just overly focused on his own misery. Perhaps he did sense, just a bit, on some level, that his marriage would stand or fall on the success of this book, for he tried to make his voice sound bright and cheerful as he said, “Nothing’s wrong at all, darling. Just talking aloud. Just planning the sales promotion for my new novel. It’s going to be a big one, you know. My breakout book. This is the one that’ll finally make us rich. Make us both rich. Really, really rich.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Some day, he would be rich and famous. Some day, Joe Hoffman, his once-promising career having evaporated, would come crawling to Malcolm, begging for a cover quote for the stupid, dumb, pointless, worthless novel he had just managed to sell to some laughable, insignificant, fly-by-night publisher, a cover quote from the great, famous, brilliant, universally admired Malcolm Erskine, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize and all the available genre prizes, a cover quote that would resurrect Hoffman’s career and give him a faint chance of rising out of the gutter again, and the illustrious Malcolm Erskine would put his hand on the bowing and scraping man’s head in benediction and he would smile and he would fill his lungs and he would shout until all his breath was gone: “Noooooooooooooooooooooo!”

  * * * * *

  After he received Marlene’s six messages on SAM, Malcolm realized he would have to leave work early and find a place to stay.

  By coincidence, the previous day, he had seen a TO RENT sign next to an apartment building near work. Perhaps if he went there right away, it would still be available. However, his work group was scheduled for a warm, collegial meeting that afternoon with Milo Grossbuck, the Big Guy of Western Bell, and Malcolm knew he dare not miss it because now he needed his paycheck more than ever.

 

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