Brett’s nostrils flared as if he already knew where Kyle was going with this.
“Who’ve you brought in recently?” Kyle continued.
Carter let out a carefully concealed smirk; he liked it when his employees tussled.
“I have a long list and I’m not necessarily after new blood,” Brett said.
“You should always be after new blood,” Carter said. “Writers get old and dry up or die. Some of the best works are made by the young.”
“Speaking of ancient,” Brett said with a whistle. “How’s Tucker Noley’s new Spade saga coming along?”
“He’s finally back to writing it,” Kyle lied.
“Really?” Brett asked, elongating the word in a comical fashion. “Because I had to call Tucker this weekend about a foreign offer for one of his earlier books, and he told me he hadn’t started his new one, that the well was—to use his exact phrasing—empty.”
Carter stubbed out his cigarette angrily. “Is this true?”
Kyle coughed into his fist. “It’s taken longer than expected to get him going.”
“Kyle,” Carter said, “I think you’ve been spending too much time getting sucked into your own personal thriller and not enough time living in reality.”
“I think you’re right, sir,” Brett agreed.
Of course you think he’s right, you kiss-ass fuck, Kyle thought.
“Brett, you give the beginning of this…” Carter said, running his finger under the title. “Devil’s Hopyard, what the sweet Christ does that mean?”
“It’s a park in Connecticut—” Kyle began, but Carter held up a fist, a sign he often gave at meetings when he wanted absolute silence.
“Like I said, Brett, you peruse the first chapter,” Carter continued. “But if it’s utter dreck I don’t want to hear one more word about your psycho professor, Kyle. He’s obviously getting in the way of you taking care of business with the few authors you have.”
Carter chucked the manuscript in Brett’s lap, whose butterfingers let it fall to the floor. Brett picked it up and apologized to Carter.
“Now make yourselves scarce while I give Shane Matthews the call that will change his life. The kid doesn’t even have an agent.”
Carter picked up the phone. Both Kyle and Brett just stood there.
“Go on,” Carter said.
Outside their boss’s office, Brett jabbed Kyle in the spleen.
“Fuck you for trying to throw me under the bus,” Brett said, his breath garlicky.
“You drew first blood,” Kyle said, pleased to see Devil’s Hopyard tucked under Brett’s arm, finally giving him a break by torturing someone else.
“I see you, you sneaky son of a bitch,” Brett said, halfway down the hall already.
“We see each other, buddy.”
“I saw your mother on my dick last night,” Brett called out at the door to his office.
“Yeah, well, she’s dead, you necrophiliac asshole.”
Brett’s door slammed, and Darcy’s shocked expression told Kyle that he’d probably gone too far there. He reasoned that an outburst like that came from this last week of strange occurrences with William, who’d affected him more than he initially thought.
* * *
WHEN KYLE GOT home after stopping in a bar for one, two, well, maybe three bourbons, he decided to call William, knowing that Brett would absolutely lambaste Devil’s Hopyard to Carter, especially after what had transpired between them. This would be the final nail in the manuscript’s coffin. Then he’d need to cut off the twisted relationship with his mentor because it was becoming a distraction and harming his career. He didn’t want to chicken out, so he made up his mind to dial and got William’s voice mail.
“Hey, William. Kyle here. So I gave Devil’s Hop to another editor and I’m afraid it’s a no-go. They found it obscene and wondered if it was some kind of joke. After our meeting the other day, I also think it’s best if we keep away from each other, at least for the time being. I’m super busy and can’t have any other … stresses. So, you know, I wish you best and … yeah … that’s it, that’s all I got. Take care of yourself, William. Okay, bye.”
He ended the call and stared at the phone. The words seemed to flow out of him without any censoring. He winced at the thought of William listening, thinking that the message might be hopeful, and then having his heart broken by the end. He debated leaving another message to apologize, but he knew there’d be no going back. This was what had to be done before things got worse. The tie was severed and he could resume his life as a rising editor with the talent to wring a bestseller out of Sierra Raven and soon have the kind of sway at Burke & Burke to keep every author he found. He reasoned that if he hadn’t left this message, a poison like William would have wormed its way into his veins. He was certain of that and gave himself a mental pat on the back for taking charge of the situation before it spiraled too far out of control.
12
LAURA HAD BEEN preparing dinner all afternoon, since Alicia and Bill were coming over. Mondays were William’s full days at Bentley, so she had the house to herself. If William were around, he’d be sure to have to an opinion on what she planned to make. She decided on a buttery roast chicken with yams and parsnips grown in the garden. This season’s parsnips had been exceptionally plentiful and she’d been hoping to cook a dish for a while that highlighted their beauty. Surprisingly, she’d spent much of last week eating dinner by herself. William had meetings in the city, all centering around the book. She sometimes joked that for the past decade she’d been in a marriage with the book as well, but William didn’t like when she poked fun. She used to ask to read a few chapters, but that was shot down quickly. He wanted professional eyes on it first, and she couldn’t argue with that.
After playing some Joni Mitchell and getting the bird in the oven, she picked some marigolds from the garden and set them in a vase at the dining room table. With winter coming, it’d be too cold to grow any more flowers, and this change in seasons often made her melancholy. Hours spent cultivating her flowers and vegetables would be traded for soap operas and mystery novels and a shade of loneliness. Even with William home over winter break, he still went into Bentley to work on his novel or retired up to his office, which was off-limits to her. Sometimes she stood in front of his closed office door when he wasn’t home with the urge to twist the doorknob and snoop around inside. But she never did, mostly out of respect for his space. She also had the inkling that somehow he would know if she’d been spying. He had the uncanny ability to sense things—she’d never try to keep a secret. When her hair first starting going gray she lied to him that she hadn’t colored it and was met with a fistful of receipts from Annie’s Hair Salon in Old Saybrook that he’d found in her purse. He wasn’t angry, just disappointed because he didn’t like lying. She knew this stemmed from his relationship with his mother, and she tried to be understanding. His mother had left when he was about seven years old and promised she would return, that she needed a break from his controlling father and would come back and take him with her once she set up a new life; but she never did. Laura pictured little William waiting at the window until he started to lose her face, her smell, her mannerisms, since he’d been too young for those memories to truly stick.
It was tough for Laura to relate, since she’d had a wonderful relationship with both of her parents. They had passed some time ago, but she’d had an idyllic childhood in Darien, Connecticut, living in a home with a literal white picket fence, a dog named Lady, a father who drove his Cadillac into the city every day for his advertising job, and a mother who nurtured the most plentiful garden, a warm woman who always wore chunky knit sweaters and passed down her green thumb. Sometimes Laura missed her terribly, but she could never talk to William about that for fear it would bring up his own dark childhood, which he struggled so hard to forget.
She’d lost herself in the garden for the rest of that afternoon and almost forgot about the roast chicken, rushing inside and r
emoving it from the oven just before it was about to burn.
* * *
WILLIAM’S MONDAY HAD been jam-packed, as per usual. He’d delivered his final lesson on The Stranger, reaching the end of the book, where Meursault meets with a chaplain while waiting for his death sentence by guillotine. Meursault rejects the chaplain’s proffered opportunity of turning to God, explaining that God is a waste of his time. In a rage, he mocks the absurdity of the human condition and conveys his personal anguish at the meaninglessness of his existence. He states that no one has the right to judge him for his actions of murder or who he is. He ultimately grasps the universe’s indifference toward humankind, which finally allows him to come to terms with his own execution.
This year’s class didn’t offer anything new in terms of a discussion, rehashing the same boilerplate SparkNotes drivel that William had come to hate. When he first began teaching, the Internet wasn’t a resource, forcing students to form their own opinions. It upset him that he could never return to those days, that the idea of an English professor had lost some clout. The majority of students who took his 100-level classes were required to do so, and his senior seminars had turned into independent studies due to a lack of enrollment. Brooks Jessup, the new literary wunderkind busy at work on his second novel, never had a problem filling up his classes after publishing his much-lauded The Long and Winding Road, and garnering comparisons to Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, which couldn’t be more off base. William had forced himself to slog through the guy’s novel, a coming-of-age bore about a poor white boy growing up in a heavily black Mississippi town. William almost gave up after each chapter and debated among tearing it to shreds, throwing it in the fire, or shoving it in the toilet (after he finished, he finally chose the fire). The problem was that Dr. Joyce Yancey, the department chair, sang the book’s praises to such an extent that no accomplishment from any other professor could quite match up. She barely blinked when he had discussed Devil’s Hopyard as the kind of work that could be nominated for awards and bring respect to Bentley’s English program. When he gave a dig about Brooks, she cautioned him not to be the kind of writer prone to jealousy.
“We should want to uplift our peers’ success and have it drive us to reach such great heights,” she had said, scurrying away from him and feigning interest in anyone else, like he usually found her doing at parties.
After his independent study on Edgar Allan Poe with two students ended for the day, he returned home to the smell of buttery chicken in the air. Laura opened the door wearing oven mitts.
“The chicken didn’t burn,” she said, flapping her hands as if the room was smoky. “It’s just a little dry.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” William said, wishing to have a moment of silence before she engulfed him. Sometimes he wondered if she sat poised at the front door, waiting for the lock to turn.
“I also made yams and those parsnips I showed you growing in the garden. One was as thick as a baseball bat!”
“Okay,” he said, practically peeling her off of him like a dog that had latched on to his leg. “Just give me a second, Laura.”
She scooted away, humming a Joni Mitchell song, and he found solace in the bathroom. He locked the door and turned the water on, staring at himself in the mirror. He’d been feeling out of sorts ever since his final lecture on The Stranger. Saying good-bye to Meursault until next semester was never easy—the book was one of his favorites. His eyes clouded over with the tiniest trace of tears, but he splashed water on his face to keep them at bay. In the mirror, he had a vision of a corpse that resembled him. This doppelgänger was feeble and skeletal, left to pasture for the worms and the bugs. He touched the mirror as the corpse touched back, whispering “soon” to him through its dried lips. William nodded, understanding this foreboding premonition, and left the bathroom.
* * *
WILLIAM WAS SIPPING his second rye neat of the night when Alicia and Bill Jr. arrived. Laura was fussing over the flowers, the candles, and any other busy work she occupied her time with, so he got the door. Alicia and Bill were leaning on each other, as if each sibling needed the other one to keep them propped up. Alicia wore a belly-bearing Sex Pistols shirt, which bared too much of a stomach that had seemingly grown larger since he saw her last. Her hair was dyed white with the roots showing, giving her appearance a ghostly pallor.
“Daddy-O,” she said, disentangling from her brother to throw her arm around William’s neck. An array of her bracelets jangled.
“Kitten,” William said, and pecked her on the cheek. She flew inside, stomping around. Ever since she was a little girl, she always liked to make her presence known.
Conversely, Bill gave a tired wave, unable to look William in the eyes. While his sister had gotten larger in the few years since Bentley, Bill seemed to shrink until he was barely a presence at all. He had a goatee, a receding hairline that always puzzled William since there was no DNA evidence explaining it, and wore oversized clothes, making him resemble a coat hanger.
“Hey, Billy,” William said, forcing the kid to give him a hug. “How’s the bar?”
“People seem to always need drinks,” Bill replied, without an ounce of humor. From an early age, Bill had been a frighteningly serious child, prone to conspiracies, secrecy, and sulking. William and Laura had thought he was on hard drugs as a teenager, and William even demanded he get a blood test to prove it, but the test came up negative for any toxins, depressing William even more. His son was simply a humorless cipher.
“Your mother made roast chicken,” William said. “Your favorite.”
Bill had already shuffled inside without a response.
When they sat down to eat, Alicia and Bill were, as usual, next to each other, leaving Laura happily beside William. She scooped up his hand in her own.
“Your father has some news,” Laura said, clinking her glass of sherry.
William looked at her sideways.
“Go on,” she gushed. “Tell them what you told me about the manuscript.”
“The one you’ve been working on since we were teens?” Alicia asked, placing a napkin over her lap. “Does it finally have a title?”
“Yes, Devil’s Hopyard.”
Bill had been taking a sip of wine and choked, sending a shower of red spittle onto the tablecloth.
“Sorry,” he gulped.
“Think nothing of it, honey,” Laura said, and patted William’s hand. “Tell them about your former student.”
“Yes, a former student of mine has become a big editor in New York City at Burke & Burke Publishing, a very reputable house.”
“And…?” Laura said, singing.
“And he’s very interested in Devil’s Hopyard. Of course, the publisher needs to get on board too, but it looks very promising. And once they buy it, who knows? Maybe a movie deal in the future?”
“My Mr. Hollywood,” Laura said with a big smile.
“I still need to finish it,” William added.
“So cool, Dad,” Alicia said. “Rock on.”
Bill picked at a parsnip. “Yes, congratulations, Father.”
“It just goes to show you,” Laura began, “that if you set your mind to something and really, really work, anything could happen.”
She leaned in to William and puckered her lips for a kiss. William complied.
“I love you, Frankenstein,” Laura cooed. This had been her pet name for him when they were grad students, since William was so much taller than her.
“To Devil’s Hopyard,” Alicia said, holding up her glass of red wine. “Man, I haven’t been in that park in forever. Used to be such a druggie hangout.”
“I was there the other day,” William said. “It’s really been cleaned up. The whole area too. It’s almost as if its past is unrecognizable.”
“Billy boy, when was the last time you were in Devil’s Hopyard?” Alicia asked, jabbing her brother in the shoulder.
Bill was concentrating on cutting up his oversize parsnip. “Uhh … lo
ng time, long time.”
“Yeah, it has been a long time,” Alicia agreed, and clicked her tongue. “Maybe a decade for me too.” She looked her father square in the eye. “Maybe I should check it out again soon?”
William raised his own glass in response. “Maybe you should.”
In his pocket, William could feel his phone vibrating. He went to answer it, but it was deep down and difficult to grab. By the time he was able to locate it, the call had already gone to voice mail. He could see that it had been Kyle who called, maybe with some stellar news that he actually liked Devil’s Hopyard now?
“William, you know I don’t like cell phones at dinner,” Laura said, cocking her head to the side in disappointment. “Whoever it is can wait until we’re done.”
“Of course,” William replied, his heart pounding. He could feel it stretching against his chest cavity, the anticipation of the voice mail message making him excited beyond words. He rationalized that he needed to be cool. Even if it was good news, Kyle should have to wait for a response after his reprehensible behavior over the last week. If they wanted William so badly now, it would have to be on his own time. With the magic that he had written, he’d earned this right.
“Let’s dig in,” he said, spearing the chicken with a sharp knife as the buttery juices flowed out.
* * *
AFTER ALICIA AND Bill left, William retreated to his study and listened to Kyle’s message. After it ended, the cell phone slipped from William’s hands, crashing to the floor as the battery fell out. He was trembling, balling his fingers into a fist to stop them from quaking. He’d thought Kyle might be calling because he finally saw the genius in Devil’s Hopyard, its pieces linking together with a greater purpose. Flashes of the thousands upon thousands of hours he spent writing ran through his brain. The solitary days and nights passed entirely in his head. The devotion. Most people would’ve given up long ago after the first sign of difficulty, but he knew a novel must be nurtured, so it could form, and shape, and become more than carefully organized words, so its truth would shine through.
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