by Ann Hood
Roger retrieved the package with the manuscript and rejection letter inside, then excused himself to take a shower. When he came out forty-five minutes later, Beresford had left. Tenpenny poured himself another brandy, then sat back and listened to the loud, happy drunks stumbling back to campus.
* * *
Tenpenny was buying smokes at a Cumberland Farms convenience store a few nights later when in walked Beresford. He hadn’t shaved since Tenpenny had last seen him and it appeared he hadn’t slept much either.
“Charlie Horse!”
Beresford lifted his sickly gaze to him and grunted. The fluorescent lighting danced on the bags beneath his eyes.
“Jeez, it’s good to see you, rascal. What’s going on?”
“Nothing much,” he sighed. “I didn’t get into Brown.”
Tenpenny stepped back, stunned and relieved. Two horribly blemished coeds walked past them.
“What? But . . . that’s crazy. You’re nineteen and you wrote an entire book—that alone should’ve gotten you in.”
“Not if the book is a piece of shit.”
“Hey, hey—I don’t want to hear you talk that way. You wrote a book—that’s a huge accomplishment. Huge.”
Beresford looked up with a glimmer of hope.
“On the other hand, I admire you for being honest with yourself. That’s the only way you’re going to grow as a human being.”
The young Brit looked away. “I’m quitting writing and returning home.”
Tenpenny didn’t speak or move, for fear of betraying the jig that was happening inside of him. Then: “What? No. You can’t be serious, Charlie. Of course you’re serious. Oh, man. Wow. Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but I can’t say I blame you. It’s a tough road to hoe, writing is. Very, very, very few people make it, and those who do can hardly earn a decent living at it. So when are you getting out of here?”
“I have no idea.”
This took some of the cha-cha from Tenpenny’s step. “What do you mean? What’s keeping you here? Why not go now?”
“Money. Soon as I have enough to buy a plane ticket, I’m out of this hole forever.”
Tenpenny delivered him to the airport the next day.
They hugged out front, Charlie thanking him over and over for purchasing the coach ticket.
“Stop it,” Tenpenny said, “you sound like a low-class bum. I know you’d do the same for me.”
When Charlie entered the terminal, Tenpenny emitted a short, involuntary gasp and welled up, for he knew that now he could finally go home.
* * *
Writing success has a way of shining a rosy light on life’s failures. If you run for public office and lose, or get drunk on national TV and make an ass of yourself, or stab your wife with a penknife, you’re considered a failure. But if you do all those things and you write well, you’re Norman Mailer.
The Newport establishment welcomed Tenpenny home with open arms at a publishing fete high atop the Clarke Cooke House. Oysters, little necks, and lobster rolls were washed down with buckets of champagne, and though Tenpenny’s name and likeness were noticeably absent from the oversized book jackets hanging everywhere, the Knopf people made it very clear who the star of the evening was. He was the shiny-jawed fellow whose arrival was preceded by the sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers singing over the clippety-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones. A nineteenth-century carriage pulled up to the entrance and out piled Tenpenny and several long-lost friends, an invisible pot mist swirling about them. Photographers from the Boston and Providence papers captured the happy moment when Five-Oh, the Cooke House’s iconic bartender, greeted Tenpenny at the door with his first of the evening’s many Dark ’n’ Stormies.
Roger bowed to Five-Oh, then paid his respects to barkeeps Dennis and Kenny, before making his way up top to the blue blazer–dotted Sky Bar. All the regulars were waiting with cheek-taps and handshakes, as well as some of the New York society crowd who had come north for the event. They laughed and drank and talked and shared one-hitters on the back deck. Late in the evening, a pack of local writers Tenpenny had never heard of arrived and made themselves quickly known. When introduced to the most obvious of the group, a poet, Roger had a difficult time concealing his disdain. Tenpenny viewed poets as overly-doted-upon children who’d never gotten the dressing down they deserved. There was a reason no poet had ever died rich—because nobody gave a shit! The guy who invented the toilet plunger, he died rich. “Melancholy ruled the trees” and “a bouquet of swan necks”—how was that going to make the world a better place?
As if being a poet and drinking sherry wasn’t disgusting enough, the fucker was actually wearing a beret. Tenpenny noticed the man’s poor wife standing off to the side, drinking a Perrier and looking unsure of herself. The woman had long legs, but not the good kind. They were too long and she was slightly off-kilter and ass-less, like Gumby. His heart immediately took pity and he decided he would fuck her. This was the kind of self-destructive behavior that defined Tenpenny. Though any number of attractive and available women would have happily serviced him that evening, he wanted the morose, crooked one whose husband stood eight feet away.
“Would you like some champagne?” Tenpenny asked.
Her perfume was sweet and childish, something like Pez candies. “I wasn’t going to drink tonight, but now I’m thinking maybe I should,” she said.
“Go for it! It’s the first few brain cells you kill that feel the best.”
She smiled and he popped open a bottle of Cristal and they passed it back and forth. Like he, she was a novelist and was just beginning a new book.
“Sometimes the toughest part for me is deciding on a good name for my protagonist,” she said. “I like Lily, but . . . it’s kind of common now.”
“How about Governor?” said Tenpenny.
“Governor Jones,” she said, giggling. Then: “I love the name Mabel.”
“Very old-fashioned.”
The poet’s wife was surprised that the man of the hour would waste his precious time talking to the lanky married woman, and she liked him for this, despite what she’d heard. “What do you think of Summer?” she asked.
“Cute.”
“I think so, but my husband says it’s a stripper name. He should talk—he likes Lu-Lu.”
Tenpenny tapped his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
“What?”
“Cocksucker name,” he said.
She started to laugh, but caught herself. “What do you mean?”
“Lu-Lus—they like to suck the cock.”
The line had been crossed and she was still smiling. “That’s his sister’s name,” she said.
“Well, am I right?” He held the woman’s gaze until her face flushed.
“Sort of.”
“Wanna get out of here?” he said.
“Out of where?”
“Here. You and me. Let’s boogaloo. Now.”
“But you’re the man of the hour.”
“So?” He had a good buzz going and his smile didn’t break.
“And go where?”
“Wherever. We can go to my room at the Viking. I have a horse and carriage waiting outside.”
She looked around. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
When she looked back into his eyes, he saw the lights flick off. “Are you for real?”
“Do you want me to be?” he said, his grin losing air on one side.
Thankfully, someone grabbed him and told him he had a phone call at the hostess station.
* * *
Tenpenny got a pit in his stomach the moment he heard his editor on the line. Scholl sounded different. Roger could have sworn he felt the presence of the Beresford brat beside him.
“New York. First thing in the morning. Be here,” Scholl said curtly.
“Tomorrow morning? Jeez, Paul, I’ve already had more drinks than the Pacific Northwest has serial killers—how about the day after?”
“I wan
t you on the seven a.m. shuttle, do you hear me?”
“Um, okay, will there be a ticket waiting for me at the—”
“Buy your own ticket.” With that, his editor hung up.
Tenpenny walked straight out and up the hill to the Viking Hotel without saying goodbye to anyone. He lay in bed with a drink on his chest. He watched the vodka pulse, confirming that he was alive. He tried to convince himself he was overreacting to the phone call. Maybe Scholl meant he’d reimburse him for the plane ticket later. If stellar reviews were pouring in, perhaps his editor just wanted to read them to him in person.
There was a knock on his door. He opened it to find the poet’s wife tilting there like a human Tower of Pisa.
“Hi,” she said.
He glanced down the hall, then back at her. “What?”
“Uh, you invited me here.”
“Yeah, but . . . maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“I’ll let you do anything you want to me.”
Tenpenny looked her over. “Yeah, okay, come in.”
* * *
When he flew to the city the next morning, Roger Tenpenny knew exactly what he was going to say. He’d stick to his guns, laugh at the accusations, work his way to outrage later. It was his word against the kid’s. He would not vacillate. He even popped an Inderal in case a lie detector was requested. They would not steal this from him.
He arrived at Knopf just after nine thirty. The lobby was decorated with poinsettias, the fruitcake of plants. His editor led him into his office where they were joined by another very businesslike-looking man. Beresford was not present. The man introduced himself as Jack Sheehan, FBI, shook Tenpenny’s hand, offered him a seat. Stick to your guns, Roger thought. When the fed switched on a small tape recorder, Tenpenny looked to the grim Scholl for an explanation, but his glance was averted.
“Mr. Tenpenny,” Sheehan began, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Tenpenny said. “Enough.”
“Would you like to consult a lawyer, sir?” the man asked, enunciating as if he was teaching at a school for the deaf.
“What are you talking about? For what reason? What is this all about?”
Sheehan and Scholl looked at one another.
“Mr. Tenpenny—”
“Please, call me Roger.”
“Mr. Tenpenny,” Agent Sheehan repeated, “did you write the book that you have titled The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
This is where Tenpenny had planned to bark out a laugh, but, perhaps because of the Inderal, nothing came out. “Can you please say that again?”
“I repeat: Did you write The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
“Of course I did and I resent the implication.”
A curious smirk spread across Sheehan’s face. “Mr. Tenpenny, you are stating here that you and you alone are the author of the book that you call The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
“I cannot wait to find out what this is all about. Yes, I and I alone wrote the book—now, what’s going on here?”
Scholl ran his fingers through his hair and, standing abruptly, shouted, “Tenpenny, you fuck!”
Roger made a mental note that however this thing resolved itself, Scholl was out.
Sheehan opened a briefcase and took out a book with a German title. “Does this look familiar?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s the German version of your book.”
Tenpenny glared at Scholl. “What?! I specifically told you I did not want it released in Europe!”
“Though the words are the same,” continued Sheehan, “the German title is The Flawed God.”
“Nice,” Tenpenny said bitterly. “No one ran that one by me either.”
Sheehan folded his arms and appraised Tenpenny. “You still claim to have written it?”
Tenpenny sucked up every ounce of push-back he had left. “Mr. FBI man, let me explain something to you. Writing is about one thing and one thing only: telling the truth. That’s what a good writer does. He tells the truth. So for you to stand there and question whether I am the author of my own work is about as insulting as it gets.”
“This book was published in 1952.”
“Yeah, I had help.”
* * *
Roger Tenpenny knew enough to end the conversation and immediately ask for a lawyer. That afternoon he was arraigned in US District Court for the Southern District of New York and was unable to post bail.
Over the course of several days, Tenpenny told his version of events to his attorney, who relayed bits and pieces to the authorities in the hope that his bail would be reduced. When this didn’t happen, Tenpenny requested another face-to-face with Sheehan and Scholl. Because the evidence against him was so overwhelming, and because his lawyer believed his story, Tenpenny was advised to tell them everything, show humility, and plead for mercy.
They met again in a small room at FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan. On a chalkboard someone had jotted down a crude outline of the story Tenpenny had told his lawyer. At the bottom, Roger could see that B.S. had been written and then erased. Despite the media beating he’d taken over the past week—and it had been harsh—Tenpenny was still mostly convinced of his innocence, and was comforted by the fact that he truly hadn’t known the work was plagiarized.
“What I’m going to tell you is the truth, so help me God,” he began.
“Okay,” Sheehan said. “That’s a good start.”
“This was not my idea. The English kid came to me about nine months ago with the book and asked if I would pretend it was mine—you know, to help him out.”
“Help him out?” Scholl sneered.
“Right,” said Tenpenny.
Sheehan said, “So this would be around . . . September?”
“September/October, somewhere in there. I remember because PC had just started back up. But he wasn’t a student, he was just hanging around.”
“And you’re sure this was last fall?”
“Positive. Could I please have some coffee?”
“They’re out,” Scholl said, rather childishly.
“Look,” Tenpenny said, addressing Sheehan, “I did not steal this book—the Beresford kid did. If you just follow the numbers, it’ll all make sense.”
“Excellent,” Sheehan said. “That’s going to make my life a lot easier. So tell me how does you pretending the book was yours make sense?”
“Well . . . I liked the kid. You would too. He was fun, he was sweet, he said he needed my help. So I was like, Sure, I’ll put my name on the damn thing—with the understanding that once it took off we were going to make a big announcement.”
“And what would this big announcement be?” asked Scholl.
“That he was the writer, not me.”
“And why would anyone care?” Again from Scholl.
“Well . . . he’s young, and I’m not. So . . . so it would be fascinating that a guy that young could write something that good.”
“I’m sorry,” Sheehan interjected, “explain that again. It’s not like you were Updike and people bought the book thinking it was from a master, only to find out later that it was written by some brilliant unknown kid. You were unknown too, correct?”
“That’s what I said. It seemed silly. But he thought that if he went to New York and everyone saw what a hick he was, it’d queer the deal.”
“A British hick?” said Scholl.
“I mean, in the sense that he was rough around the edges, like one of those Johnny Rotten guys, only with dreadlocks. How do you send someone like that out on a book tour? The kid wasn’t exactly Tom Snyder material, you know?”
“You mean like you?” Scholl said, chuckling. “Let me tell you something: that would’ve made it way more interesting. Having a middle-age man write it—that’s not interesting. A twenty-year-old punk-rocker Bret Easton Ellis—that’s interesting.”
“Look,” Tenpenny replied softl
y, “I was just trying to help the kid out.”
“By getting paid for the work that he did?”
“Yeah, well . . . that was going to be worked out later.”
“And again, this was this past fall?” said Sheehan.
“Yes.”
“I only ask because your old neighbor,” Sheehan checked his notes, “a Miss Eleanor Morehouse, she told us that you were talking about this book the previous spring when she lived in your building.”
“That’s a lie.”
“She swore to it.”
“No, I mean it was a lie. I told her a lie.” Tenpenny leaned forward. “Look, I was just trying to get . . . in there, you know? And she was a little . . . precious. So I told her I wrote a book.” He squinted sheepishly.
Sheehan raised his chin. “And then a few months later, a boy you’d never met shows up at your door with an actual book that you took on as your own?”
“Yes.”
“Wow, what a nice coincidence. For you.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence. They’d met in Europe, on a gondola or something, and she told him I was a writer and that’s why he came. Trust me, guys, if you just follow the numbers, it’ll all make sense.”
“Actually,” Sheehan said, “we have been following the numbers. Like the number of times Eleanor Morehouse has been to Europe. Zero.”
“That’s im— Well . . . who said . . . ? Well . . . maybe she met him somewhere else?”
“She never met a Charlie Beresford, or anyone fitting his description.”
Tenpenny shifted in his seat. “Well . . . did you check with the Y—they’ll know him, that’s where he stayed.”
“No one fitting that description has been there since . . . well, ever.”
Tenpenny’s lawyer finally offered up a couple questions: “What about the Rusty Scupper—he worked there . . . ?”
“Nope.”
The lawyer sighed. “Did you check with Brown admissions?”
“He never applied.”
Roger started feeling a darkness rise up inside him. “His airline ticket?” he asked.