“Foodstuffs have been done,” he said. “Cooking’s been done. ‘The Cat Who’ has been done, days of the week have been done to death. Seven deadly sins.”
“Subway stops.”
“Maybe,” said Anders. “But probably not snappy enough for H. H. You can’t woo a girl with subway stops, Koss.”
“I’m not trying to woo anybody,” said Kossweiller.
“Maybe start with a name. Something foreign but without too many consonants packed together. Nothing Eastern European or Finnish. Those goddamn Finns. Swedish?”
“All right,” said Kossweiller. “Why not?”
“Bjorn?” said Anders. “Like the tennis player? Last name has to end in son. Son says Swede better than anything.”
“Swenson?”
“Too common, too American. Verenson. Bjorn Verenson. I like it.”
“Is Verenson even a legitimate Swedish name?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Anders. “Nobody cares about that.”
“I care about that.”
“You got to stop caring, then. Remember: the three b’s. So, a Swedish detective, phlegmatic but friendly, someone people can relate to and at the same time laugh at. A slight but pleasant accent. Now titles,” said Anders. He looked up at the ceiling. “Swedes.”
“Swedes?”
“Sure,” said Anders. “Titles like Swede Eater.”
“Swede Eater? What the hell does that even mean?”
“Like weed eater, but with Swede in it. It’s clever. But maybe that one’s too clever. We’ll leave that one for late in the series. How about Blue Swede Shoes?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Have you looked at mystery titles lately? Blue Swede Shoes is good for at least fifteen thousand sales. With good marketing, a lot more. Now and Sven.”
Kossweiller groaned.
“First Bjorn Child. Now they’re really solid, Koss. Rebjorn. No, make that Bjorn Again. And how about Bjorn Free? Detective’s named Bjorn too, maybe even pass it off as Bjorn Verenson’s own experiences: ‘Based on a True Story.’ I see a TV movie, movies plural. Not Bjorn Yesterday. Bjorn Under a Wandering Star. Stillbjorn. Maybe a travel one called Bjorneo. They’re coming a mile a minute,” said Anders. “Are you writing these down?”
“You have to stop.”
Anders took out his pen, scribbled on the back of a coaster. “Now we hire some hack out of New Jersey, give him the titles and have him write the fuckers.”
“Some Swedish guy?”
Anders shrugged. “Doesn’t make any difference. Your job is saved, Koss,” he said, “and all it cost you was brunch. I’m a genius. Get the bill.”
III.
It was a process that, once begun, Kossweiller didn’t know how to stop. Suddenly he was the editor of a fake Swedish mystery series. He and Anders met with Cinchy and H. H., who were instantly very excited. There was even talk of doing graphic-novelizations under the moniker “A Bjornographic Book.” Anders came to this meeting with the name of the person who would write them, a sixty-eight-year-old Jewish lady living in Jersey City whom he’d used in the past—for The Secret Life of Housewives, among other things. Cinchy, boss of the people, shook Koss’s hand.
“I didn’t think you could pull it off, Karse,” said Cinchy. “But you did. You’ve turned over a new leaf. You must be very proud.”
Kossweiller, as quickly as he decently could, took his hand back and left the room.
Anders had been right. The first Verenson book (First Bjorn Child) was a hit, and the second (Bjorn Again), published six months later, was even bigger. The most disturbing thing, Kossweiller felt, was that two men could sit down over drinks and in a few moments create a best-selling series. It didn’t matter who wrote it, it didn’t really matter how good it was; all that mattered was concept. Or maybe it did matter that it wasn’t too good. And he could tell from the calls he got from editors at other houses that any of them would have been happy to have Bjorn Verenson on their list, even the editors he had considered literary. It was depressing to think about.
True, it wouldn’t have been possible without H. H. and Cinchy to pump money into the books, but they got back a lot more than they had pumped in.
There was the matter, too, of H. H. Anders kept coming by to remind him he had promised her dinner.
“Actually, it was you that promised her dinner,” said Kossweiller.
“But on your behalf, Koss. It was all for you. You don’t want to go?”
“It just seems awkward,” he said.
“Ah,” said Anders. “It’ll be fine.”
But it was not fine. When he finally went, Kossweiller felt that they had nothing to say to each other. Or rather he had nothing to say to her. She spent more than an hour talking about book packaging, Kossweiller nodding and making brief noncommittal sounds. And then, suddenly, at the end of the date she managed somehow to coax him out of the car and up to her door and then pinned him between the door and her torso. It was all he could do to extricate himself, and it was clear the next day that listening to herself talk about packaging was her idea of a wonderful time, that she wanted to see him again as soon as possible.
I hate my life, he thought.
Before, editing had been his life. He had had his small Chelsea apartment to go home to, alone. A few friends he saw, sometimes sexually, and occasional distractions. It had been enough. Now, editing had become a problem, and, in addition, he had no life.
The sixty-eight-year-old Jerseyite writing the Verenson books liked to call him on the telephone and talk in a deep voice with a fake Swedish accent. She wasn’t very good at it. It drove him crazy. The third Verenson book, Bjorn Free, he could barely stand to read, let alone edit. It was published and was a tremendous success. I have no soul, he kept thinking.
With the fourth Verenson book, he went to Cinchy, asking him if he could do something literary for a change.
“Literary?” asked Cinchy. “Why would you want to do something like that?”
He tried to explain in a way that Cinchy would accept. It was not that he didn’t want to do the Bjorn books, just that now that he had the cake he wanted to put the icing on it.
“What cake?” said Cinchy. “What icing? What are you talking about?”
“But,” said Kossweiller, “that’s what you said, the icing, literature.”
“Karse,” he said. “Why can’t you be happy with what you have? Why are you always trying to ruin yourself?” He took him by the shoulders, led him to the door. “I can’t have my best mystery editor slumming in lit now, can I?”
He was on his way home when it started to rain. At first it wasn’t bad, a light drizzle, but soon he was the only one still walking on the street, everyone else huddling under awnings. Soon he was freezing cold. Perfect, he thought. He left the street, went into the first coffee shop he saw.
He shook off in the entryway, then ordered a large coffee at the counter. He held it with both hands to warm them. Looking around for a place to sit, he spied Ralph Bubber. The man was staring at him but immediately looked away when he saw Kossweiller had noticed.
Kossweiller went over to his table, stood above him.
“Bubber,” he said.
“Kossweiller,” said Bubber. “What a pleasure to see you.”
“I have a bone to pick with you,” said Kossweiller, and sat down. He shrugged his coat off his shoulders. He took a drink of his coffee. Bubber watched him apprehensively, saying nothing. “Dolls?” Kossweiller finally said. “Why me?”
“I guess I do owe you an apology,” said Bubber.
“Why did you do it?” asked Kossweiller.
“You’d never bought anything from me before,” he said, “never treated me with anything but contempt, and suddenly you expect me to do you a favor?” Bubber shrugged. “That, and I hate Darba. Mostly that, actually. Besides, it doesn’t seem to have worked out too badly for you.”
“My life is hell. Why do you hate Darba?”
�
��Ninety over ninety,” said Bubber. “He threatened me with that after the doll incident.”
“He threatened me with that too,” said Kossweiller. “What does it mean?”
“You don’t want to find out,” said Bubber. “It’s different for everybody. That’s the way Darba thinks, a very specific torture. I don’t know what it would mean for you. For me, I was told that to keep my job I had to eat ninety eggs over the course of ninety minutes and hold them all down. I hate eggs. He knew I hated eggs. Nobody can eat ninety eggs in ninety minutes. Cool Hand Luke could only do fifty. He fired me, but I managed to work it to get him fired as well. And there was the doll incident.” He gave a big, peeling smile. “Look at me now. All that did something to me. That was at MacMaster & Bates. I was his first ninety over ninety. No, second: Daniel Sherman, remember him?”
“Think so.”
“Mine was easy and quick. Darba told Danny he had to accept ninety books over a ninety-day period. Danny took it seriously, read like a madman, got the best work he could get, thinking his job depended on not only doing it but doing it right. He did it, too, came to Darba on day ninety with ninety drawn contracts ready for his signature. Darba tore up every one of those contracts, one by one, in front of him. You know what that can do to a man?”
“What happened to Sherman?”
“Dead now. Won’t go into that.”
“What about the doll incident?”
Bubber looked at him hard, then reached out and took his arm. Kossweiller flinched. “You still haven’t bought anything from me,” he said. “Not one fucking book. You don’t really like me. You’re not my friend. I told you my ninety over ninety, I don’t owe you anything. I don’t talk about my ninety over ninety with anyone. And besides, the doll incident would sound trivial to you. The only person it’s not trivial to is Darba.”
“He’s called Cinchy now,” said Kossweiller.
Bubber nodded. “Boss of the people. I hate him. If I could get away with killing him, I would.”
“Ninety over ninety?”
“Ninety over fucking ninety. Goddamn right.”
An article was published on the Verenson phenomenon; foreign rights were sold, even back to Sweden, where, apparently, English was common enough that it wasn’t a shock that a Swedish writer might actually choose that language to write in. Kossweiller could hardly stand to see Anders in the hall, though he knew Anders was simply as he was, perhaps not unreasonably so, and was not to be blamed. The problem was with him, Kossweiller.
After a few more nervous impasses at H. H.’s door, the end of one of them leading to Kossweiller’s waking in H. H.’s apartment at three in the morning and trying to put on his clothes without awakening her, he stopped returning her calls. She seemed to take this in stride, had perhaps never expected more of him, though she would still sometimes corral him in his office, leaning one hip against his door while she explained a further development in the marketing of prepublication copies.
“You have to market prepublication copies?”
“That’s the most important marketing you can do,” she claimed, and kept on.
By the appearance of the fifth Verenson book, the amnesic Not Bjorn Yesterday, Kossweiller had had enough. The title didn’t even make sense: if Bjorn had lost his memory, he would be Bjorn yesterday, just not Bjorn today. The joke had overwhelmed any sense of meaning the title might have. He wanted out.
•
He showed up in Cinchy’s office to find the man staring at a box on his desk.
“Karse,” he said, not taking his eyes off the box. “Who do you think this is from?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Kossweiller. “Cinchy, I mean.”
“Cinchy’s right,” he said. “Boss of the people. Read the return address for me, K-man.”
K-man? He swiveled his head, looked at the box. “There’s no return address,” he said.
“That’s what I thought too,” said Cinchy. “A bad sign, no? Koss?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to do me a favor,” he said, turning to face the wall. “I want you to open the box and see what’s inside it. If there’s a doll inside, I don’t want to know. No dolls.”
Kossweiller carefully opened the box, peered in. There was indeed a doll inside, a cloth doll, handmade. It had button eyes, its lips drawn with Magic Marker. Its hair was made of yellow yarn. Its fingers were not fully articulated, simply indicated by sewn strands of black thread. The words “Love from B” were written on a card pinned to its chest.
“Is there a doll?” asked Cinchy.
“Um,” said Kossweiller.
“Don’t tell me,” said Cinchy. “If there’s a doll, I don’t want to know.” He waited for a long moment. “Is there a doll?” he finally asked again.
“No?” said Kossweiller, closing the box.
“Good,” said Cinchy. He turned around, very slowly. “Right answer. No dolls. Never any dolls. Take that empty box away and burn it, Karsewelder.”
“I have something I need to say,” said Kossweiller.
“Not yet,” said Cinchy, looking nervously at the box. “Take the box and hold it outside the door.”
Kossweiller went to the doorway, stood with his hand outside of it.
“Farther,” said Cinchy, “farther,” until Kossweiller had only his face inside Cinchy’s office. “Good,” Cinchy finally said. “What is it?”
“I’m quitting,” said Kossweiller.
“Quitting?” said Cinchy. “You can’t quit.”
“I’m not happy.”
“What’s happy?” said Cinchy. “You’re not allowed to quit. You’re running one of the most popular mystery series going and you want to quit? You’re not trying to take Verenson to another house, are you?”
“I want to do literary books,” said Kossweiller. “En Masse. I want to do En Masse.”
“No literary books,” said Cinchy. “No en fucking masse. We know how you get once you start doing literary books, don’t we? And no quitting. You’re not a quitter, Koss. I won’t let you quit.”
“But—”
Cinchy raised his hand. “I don’t want to hear it, Koss. You’ll work for me or you won’t work. And no literature. It’s bad for you. It rots the teeth and then you don’t eat the rest of your meal.”
Kossweiller stared at him.
“No arguments,” said Cinchy. “I may be the boss of the people but I’m still the boss.”
Not knowing what else to do, Kossweiller brought the box back into the room. Cinchy, he saw, immediately began to sweat.
“What are you doing, Koss?” he said.
“I quit,” said Kossweiller.
“You can’t quit,” said Cinchy. “And don’t threaten me with that empty box.”
Kossweiller began to open the box, giving Cinchy a glimpse of the doll’s hand. Cinchy let out a terrified shout, his features shivering like water, and then crouched behind the desk. It was a horrible thing to watch. Kossweiller quickly tucked the hand away.
“Is it gone?” Cinchy asked.
“It’s gone,” said Kossweiller.
“Is it outside?”
Kossweiller turned around and put the box outside the door. “It’s outside,” he said.
“All right,” said Cinchy. He stood up, smoothing his shirt with his hands. “I’ll let you go. You can find yourself another house and I won’t do anything to interfere. But first you have to do two things for me, Koss. Otherwise I’ll ruin you. You’ll never work in publishing again.”
“What things?”
“First, take that box out and burn it.”
“All right,” said Kossweiller.
“Second,” said Cinchy—and here he seemed to regain his usual bearings—“ninety over ninety. Do that and you’re free to go.”
IV
All right, he had said, ninety over ninety. How bad could it be? He would steel himself and do it, prepared for anything to happen. If he was steeled, how bad could it be?
But it quickly became clear how bad it could be. Kossweiller’s ninety over ninety was to put together an anthology of work by ninety people over the age of ninety, and to continue with the Verenson project and other things in the meantime. Literary quality didn’t matter, Cinchy said. All that mattered is that the contributors were all over ninety and that there were ninety of them. “And I want proof,” said Cinchy. “Driver’s licenses, nursing-home records, birth certificates.”
“This is crazy,” said Kossweiller.
“It’s your price,” said Cinchy. “Your ninety over ninety, if you ever want to work in publishing again.”
So he set out. He started with assisted-living facilities, found very few people over ninety, then went to nursing homes and hospices. When he was allowed in, he occasionally found someone ninety or above who was still, loosely speaking, coherent and who could give him something: a dirty joke, a recipe, a story from an episode of their life. Some of them even had poems. The poems were awful, things that made him wince, but what did it matter, what did he care? It was the price of his freedom.
By the time he finished with the nursing homes close to Manhattan, more than a month had passed. He had only twenty-three entries, not a literary moment among them. He scanned newspapers for notices of birthdays, spent a week in Boston, trying nursing homes there, gained a few more names.
Back in New York, people in the office, realizing he was on his way out, stopped talking to him. Even Anders offered him only a scattered and occasional word. H. H. refused to have anything to do with him face-to-face, sending him designs and marketing information for the next Verenson book by interoffice courier. He responded in kind. Only Cinchy went out of his way to talk to him, needling him about the progress of his ninety over ninety.
He went door-to-door in the older neighborhoods. Out of the smattering of the eligible geezers he finally met, only a small fraction could do him any good. He took sick leave and flew to the retirement communities in Florida, was dismayed to find that while nearly everyone was over sixty, very few were over ninety. Here and there, he gained a few more names. One woman actually died while she was talking to him, suddenly fluttering her eyes and stopping speaking. He wrote the rest of her entry—on a rural Nebraskan childhood—himself, culling heavily from Willa Cather.
Fugue State Page 12