Fugue State

by Brian Evenson

  Bubber was fat and pale, his hair greased back. He had a way of lasciviously squeezing his interlocutor’s arm, which made Kossweiller extremely uncomfortable. When he finally figured out that Kossweiller wasn’t after literature and that he worked for Cinchy, he looked up toward the ceiling and, grabbing Kossweiller’s arm, said:

  “Picture this. The History of Raggedy Ann.”

  “The doll.”

  “Sure,” said Bubber. “Kind of a picture book. Dolls galore. And there’s a natural follow-up,” he said, lifting his index fingers for quotations marks. “The History of Raggedy Andy.”

  “Have they changed a lot over the years?”

  “Have they changed?” Bubber shrugged. “Not really. It just depends on what your perspective is.”

  “And what’s the book’s perspective?”

  “It can have any perspective you like,” Bubber said. “It hasn’t been written yet.”

  “It’s not written?”

  “Sure. But there’s any number of great, really first-rate writers I have at my fingertips who could crank the sucker out in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  “See,” said Bubber, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and leaning forward to take Kossweiller’s arm again with the other. “A book like that has only three or four thousand words of text anyway. What you got is all pictures. Maybe ninety pictures over ninety pages. Dolls, dolls, dolls. Dolls on crackback chairs, dolls in barns, dolls on beds, dolls on swings, dolls with plants, maybe even dolls with dogs. Yes, definitely dolls with dogs. A natural.”

  “You think it will be a blockbuster?”

  “Who doesn’t like dolls?” asked Bubber.

  II.

  Morning found Kossweiller sitting in the conference room, staring at the wall. He was the first to have arrived. He had been more or less persuaded to try Bubber’s Raggedy Ann book—what did he have to lose?—but then late the night before he’d started to read West’s En Masse again. It seemed even better this time, and reading it made him feel very ashamed. How could he pass on it in favor of a coffee-table book?

  People had begun to trickle in, editors and marketers and assistants from all over Entwinkle House. Soon everybody was there except for Cinchy.

  “Did you hear about MacMaster & Bates?” Justice Turko was saying to an assistant next to her. “The author dump?”

  “The author dump?” asked Kossweiller.

  “Dropped over half their authors in a single afternoon,” said Ted Billner, drawing a finger across his throat. “Yesterday. Ought to be done here.”

  “Orders straight from the top,” said Turko. “Maybe it will be.”

  “Maybe it will be what?” asked Kossweiller.

  “Done here.”

  “Here’s an idea,” said Helen Harman, the pseudo-attractive unnatural-blond marketing director who went by H. H. She swept her hand in front of her face in a wipe. “HarperCollins,” she said, “and Tom Collins together at last. Free books with cocktails and vice versa.”

  “Good one, H. H.,” said Turko.

  “Why haven’t they thought of it yet?” asked Billner.

  Kossweiller just stared.

  “Finally here,” said Cinchy, striding in. “Just been on the phone with somebody big, can’t say who, couldn’t be ignored. Treat the stars like the stars they are. Got to, got to.” He sat down. “All right, then,” he said. “Go, go, go.”

  They started at his right, working their way around the table. Paul Musswen had on the docket a book by a conservative and inflammatory U.S. Congressman about how his transvestite brother was dying of AIDS because he had gone against the will of God. Cinchy looked at H. H. and when she nodded, he nodded. Turko had four nearly identical memoirs of public figures whose fathers had “incested” them but who had not only “survived” but “conquered.” Again the nod passed from the marketing director to the boss of the people, like a tic. John Barnum Gotta had a photohistory of dresses belonging to J. Edgar Hoover and John Wayne (“Great!” yelled Cinchy. “Great!”). Duff McQuaid had persuaded the country’s best-known professor of African American Studies to compile a cultural dictionary called Afro-Americana! “And the best part,” said Duffy, “is his students are doing the work for college credit, so nobody has to pay them.” H. H.’s nod was long in coming, but it finally came, and Cinchy’s soon followed. Belva Adair had purchased three memoirs, one in which a female rock musician spoke out about her decision not to have children, another in which a woman poet spoke about her decision not to have children, another in which a woman novelist spoke about her decision, at age forty-five, to have a child (H. H. actually deigned to speak for this one: “Good coverage!” she said). Ted Billner just said, “Three different fetishes, three simple words, three simple titles: Rubber, Leather, Silk.

  “Super!” said Cinchy. “Crackerjack!”

  He turned to Kossweiller, who felt his throat go dry and tight as if he were in grade school again. Kossweiller opened his mouth.

  “I’ve got a novel,” he said quickly. “One of the best I’ve ever read. Albert West. En Masse. It’s worthy of Faulkner or Joyce. I really think we should go with this one, sir.”

  An expression of mild hatred was on Cinchy’s face. “Not sir, “ he said. “Cinchy.”

  “Cinchy.”

  Cinchy stared at him quietly. “Karsewelder,” he said. “Karsewelder, I thought we had a talk. You should be ashamed.”

  Ashamed? Kossweiller wondered.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Cinchy asked, half to himself.

  H. H., Kossweiller noticed, was raising her hand. Eventually Cinchy noticed as well.

  “Yes, H. H.?” he asked.

  “Perhaps Koss has a marketing plan, Cinchy? Perhaps it isn’t as hopeless as it looks?”

  Cinchy brightened just a little. “That right, Karse? Do you mind if I call you Karse?”

  Koss shook his head. “It’s actually—” he started to say, but then, catching Tal Anders’s eye, stopped. “No, sir,” he said. “I mean, no, Cinchy. I don’t mind at all.”

  “So let’s hear it,” said Cinchy. “What do you have up your sleeve, Karse?”

  “Up my sleeve?”

  “What’s your strategy for making En Masse a blockbuster?”

  “Change the title for starters,” said H. H.

  “So you’d change the title,” said Cinchy to him. “And what else?”

  “It’s very good,” said Kossweiller. “It’s really a good book.”

  “But who’s your target audience?” said Cinchy.

  “My target audience?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Incoherent marketing strategy,” H. H. finally said. “I can’t work with it, Cinchy.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry, Koss. Don’t take it personally.”

  “That’s it, then,” said Cinchy. “You heard her, Karse. It won’t work. No go. Strike one. Two more and you’re out. What else you got?”

  “What else?”

  “You mean you don’t have anything else?” asked Cinchy, his voice rising. “I thought we had a talk. Did we or did we not have a talk?”

  Kossweiller shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well,” he said. “There was one other thing.”

  Cinchy leered at him. “Something literary?” he said. “It better not be something literary, I swear to God.”

  “It isn’t,” said Kossweiller. “Picture this,” he said, trying his best to imitate H. H.’s wipe. “The History of Raggedy Ann. For the coffee table.”

  He was prepared to go on. He had for this one at least the rudiments of a marketing strategy. Who doesn’t like dolls? It probably wasn’t the best idea of the day, but certainly it wasn’t the worst. It could go through. Which was why he was surprised, when he looked up, to find Cinchy red-faced and shaking.

  “Who put you up to this, Kossweiller?” he asked, apparently forgetting, in his anger, to call him by the wrong name.

  “I,” said Koss. “But I—”


  “The doll incident,” whispered Anders, from beside him. “Don’t you know about the doll incident?”

  “No dolls,” said Cinchy. “Never any dolls. Because of the incident.”

  “What was the incident?” asked Koss, but Anders was already interrupting him—”You don’t ask about the incident,” Anders was saying.

  “You don’t ask about the incident,” said Cinchy, who seemed to be calming down now. “You just accept it. Ten years of therapy. No dolls. Never any dolls.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Koss.

  “Dolls are creepy,” said Cinchy. “Horrible things. You’re fired.”

  The room was silent. Kossweiller felt stunned. Nobody would meet his eye. He looked at his pad in front of him a moment, then, gathering the pad and pencil, stood up to go.

  “Perhaps he really didn’t know,” said H. H.

  “I know Koss,” said Anders. “He doesn’t have a malicious bone anywhere in his body. He didn’t mean anything by it, Cinchy.”

  “Maybe not,” said Cinchy.

  “A boss of the people might give someone a second chance,” said Anders.

  Cinchy scrutinized Kossweiller carefully. “All right,” he said. “The boss of the people unfires you. Strike two. You get one more. But I swear to you, Karse, screw this one up, I’ll not only fire you, I’ll make you miserable. Ninety over ninety, I swear to God. And you,” he said, turning and pointing at Anders, “you help him. You make sure he doesn’t waste my time again. I want the two of you in my office in two days with something that nails all three b’s right through the fucking skull.”

  •

  It was Anders, knocking on his office door as he came in. “Dolls, Koss?” he was saying. “Whose idea was that?”

  “I didn’t know about the doll incident,” said Kossweiller. “I swear to God.”

  “That was a close one. You should thank God Cinchy’s a boss of the people.”

  “It was Bubber. He recommended it to me.”

  “Bubber? The agent? He hates Cinchy. Koss, you should know that.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He and Cinchy worked together at MacMaster & Bates until Cinchy fired him. Don’t you know anything? I’m amazed you’ve managed to survive in this business as long as you have.”

  “What was the doll incident?” asked Kossweiller. He opened his center desk drawer, looked in. He closed it, opened a left-hand drawer, kept opening and closing drawers.

  “How do I know, Koss? Ten years of therapy, no dolls, never any dolls, that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows. It’s some deeply Freudian, fucked-up thing.” Anders sat on the edge of Kossweiller’s desk. “It’d probably make a good book,” he said thoughtfully, “and a small-scale indie movie. Maybe Bubber knows. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out how long it’ll take me to pack.”

  Anders stood up. “Oh no, you don’t,” he said. “You can’t expect the editor of such bestsellers as The Secret Lives of Housewives and Darned but Not Forgotten to let you give up now, can you? You’re an editor, Koss, that’s your so-called métier. Go home and think of something, and we’ll hash it out tomorrow. I have faith in you. Besides, you heard Cinchy: my fate’s wrapped up in your own now. I can’t let you quit.”

  “I just can’t do it, Tal. It’s not me.”

  “What’s ‘me’ mean? There’s no me to be found in team. Well, actually there is a me in team if you rearrange the letters, but you get my point. Ninety over ninety, Koss. He won’t let you quit. He’ll make your life hell.”

  “Ninety over ninety. What does that even mean?”

  “If I were you,” said Anders. “I would do every goddamn thing I could not to find out.”

  •

  Early the next morning, a few minutes after Kossweiller was in, Anders sent an intern by with a note. Coffee in ten, keep the ideas flowing. Eight minutes later, Anders was knocking on his door, tie carefully knotted, looking impeccable.

  “Ready, Koss?” he asked. “Thinking blockbuster?”

  They took the elevator down to the ground floor, walked out of the building and down the street one building farther, ducked into Sal’s.

  “Drinks, gentlemen?” the waiter asked.

  “Water,” said Kossweiller.

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Anders. “It’s almost ten, Koss,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a drink this late in the day. Gets the creative juices flowing.”

  “It’s only twenty-five of nine,” said Kossweiller.

  “Right,” said Anders. “Ten if you round up.”

  “Coffee, then,” said Kossweiller.

  “Irish coffee for him,” said Anders, pointing. “Whiskey for me.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” said Anders. “Without a few drinks, we won’t get anywhere. We’ve tried it your way and you see where that got us. Now we try it my way.”

  Three Irish coffees in and Kossweiller found himself comfortably warm, loosened up enough to allow Anders to switch him over to vodka. A pure drink, as Anders had described it.

  “So,” asked Anders. “What you got?”

  “I got nothing,” said Kossweiller.

  “Not good, Koss, not good.” He looked at Kossweiller’s glass. “The problem with you,” he said, “is that you think your glass is half-empty when it’s really half-full.”

  “It looks completely full to me,” said Kossweiller. “I only had a little sip.”

  “Not that glass, Koss,” said Anders. “The glass in your head.”

  “What glass in my head?”

  “Metaphor. Focus, Koss. Give me a ghost of an idea, just one, something to work with.”

  Kossweiller leaned forward, stared into his glass. “Well,” he said, “not dolls.”

  “Never any dolls.”

  “Never any dolls.”

  “What about something about history? Something historical.”

  “History? There were a half-dozen books on Lincoln this season alone. Queer Lincoln has already been done. Communist Washington has already been done. Battles of World War II have all been done to death. Only the real buffs give a shit about anything outside of the big wars and the founding fathers. You don’t know the first thing about history and neither do I, and we wouldn’t know who to turn to. It sells, some of it, but those guys work on books for years at a time. They’re gluttons for punishment, and they’re months late for deadlines. History’s out.”

  “No history, no dolls.”

  Anders nodded.

  Kossweiller stared into his drink, thought. He looked at his watch. “It’s only quarter after ten,” he said, “and I’m already drunk.”

  “Right,” said Anders. “Let’s go with that, but spin it. How about ‘It’s already tea time in Edinburgh and I’m only just getting drunk’?”

  “That’s an idea for a book?”

  “Just a general attitude adjustment, Koss. Just a new way of seeing the world. Though it could be the first line for a book. Something a little Irvine Welsh-y, if you changed getting drunk to shooting up.”

  “But I’m not in Edinburgh.”

  Anders took a long sip, raised his glass to the light. “Ah, Edinburgh,” he said, and took another sip.

  “But—”

  “—give in to it, Koss,” said Anders.

  Kossweiller, shaking his head, took a drink.

  “Maybe a minority writer?”

  “Who, you?” asked Anders.

  “Sure,” said Kossweiller. “Why not?”

  “Koss, you don’t know the first thing about publishing a multicultural writer.”

  “I don’t? But I’ve published minorities,” Kossweiller said, and began to tick off a list.

  “Yeah,” said Anders. “And some of your best friends are black, I bet. For starters, you can stop calling them minorities and call them multicultural. Maybe that’s out now, too. Koss, you approach the problem that way and you’ll just end up publishing another literary book and pissing
Cinchy off.” He moved his glass around on its coaster.

  “Well, what then?”

  “H. H. just came in,” said Anders, looking toward the register. “Let’s ask her.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “I’ll ask her, then,” said Anders. “You stay here. Just wave when we look over, and look sexy. H. H. likes you.”

  “What do you mean H. H. likes me?”

  “She gave you another chance, didn’t she? The world’s like grade school, Koss, nothing but crushes. You may have to sleep with her before this is all over. Are you straight, Koss? I’ve never asked and one can’t always tell.”

  “But—”

  But Anders was already up. He had taken H. H. softly by the shoulder, was speaking smoothly into her ear. After a moment, he pointed over to the booth, and H. H. looked over. Kossweiller waved half-heartedly. She waved back, smiled.

  After a few minutes, she went off to join a friend. Anders slid back into the booth.

  “Well?” said Kossweiller.

  “You’re having dinner with her,” said Anders. “Vaguely. I didn’t set anything specific up, but you probably shouldn’t wait more than a week.”

  “Anders…,” said Koss.

  “Mysteries,” said Anders.

  “Mysteries?”

  “A mystery series. A brand-new name she can pump money and publicity into. H. H. has been wanting a new mystery series to play with for a while, she says. She thinks it’ll be fun. If the books are even passable, she can make it work. She’s pleased, ergo the boss of the people will be pleased. Mysteries.”

  “But I don’t read mysteries,” said Koss. “Did you actually say ergo?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Koss. We’re doing this high-concept. We’re not going to go looking in the slush pile, we’re not putting out a call for manuscripts. We’re building this baby from the ground up. Like the Monkees. Except mysteries. Let’s order some lunch.”

  “But it’s not even eleven.”

  “Brunch, then,” said Anders. “Waiter!”

  By the time they’d worked through the dizzying combination of blintzes and burgers that Anders insisted on calling brunch, it was mostly figured out. We need a snappy title, Anders had begun with, something that sticks in the head and keeps coming back.