In fact, when she backed away from the screen a little and caught sight of the design of the comment queue, Amy realized they were all part of a single thread which had begun on the third of July, entitled “Chaz Molloy Epic Fail.” The poster was Stabby Appleton, who provided an audio link to the entire KYJ interview. Stabby advised that “The real carnage begins at 26.06.11.” Amy worried at this number, trying to figure out if it was some kind of terrorist code. When she gave up and clicked on the link, she saw it referred to times: Amy had unloaded on Chaz Molloy, feeding him all that baloney about the National Consortium of Novelists, at about the twenty-six-minute mark of the thirty-minute interview. Listening to herself do this was shamefully enjoyable, the ostensive definition of a guilty pleasure.
Amy remembered the first time she had ever heard herself on the radio. She had been fifteen and chosen by Mrs. Gormley to be Longfellow Senior High’s representative on a local radio show. The assigned topic was something like “The Twist: Threat or Menace?” Mrs. Gormley had adored Amy, who had in turn thought Mrs. Gormley a dumb pushover. Even though Amy had zero interest in geopolitics, she had steered the conversation elsewhere—to Cuba and the Peace Corps—since she had never been on a date and couldn’t have cared less about dance crazes. What she really wanted to talk about that day was the Flying Wallendas, a high-wire act that had just endured a catastrophic fall in Detroit. She had that morning stared at a terrifying newspaper picture, snapped at the very moment when, for the Flying Wallendas, everything had come undone after their tightrope pyramid collapsed and all seven became the playthings of gravity. The picture had both thrilled and unhinged her: the thrill, she knew, even at fifteen, especially at fifteen, was wrong, almost dirty. She had wanted to make out the expressions on their faces as they tumbled, and she had wanted even more not to, and was still trying to figure out what this meant as the oleaginous JAB radio host, Leo LaMotte, swooned over her use of the word mesmerizing. Didn’t people have dictionaries? Didn’t they read? Amy dominated that radio conversation without meaning or even registering a word of what she said, so that later on, when she caught the evening rerun of the show, she had recoiled from her own fatuousness. She had sounded like a pretentious child, which, she instantly realized, she actually was. On top of which her voice was at least a half-octave higher than she had ever imagined. There would be no point in asking her parents if she really sounded like that. They would just tell her what she wanted to hear.
Now, listening to herself spar with Molloy, she was more pleased with the pitch of her voice than with what she was actually saying. For women, aging was mostly a process of subtraction, of loss, except that their voices became stronger and deeper. Amy had noticed that men paid more attention to her when she lost her looks and had assumed that was because they were no longer distracted by desire, but it occurred to her now that words spoken in a lower register simply sounded more significant. Surely Mark Antony had not been cursed with a high, piping voice. Perhaps all young girls should receive voice-deepening instruction, as they once had learned how to iron men’s white oxford-cloth shirts and walk with books on their heads.
* * *
The problem with being a smartass was that it only worked in an unfair fight. She had tricked Molloy handily. She had been clever and fast on her feet. But now, listening, she didn’t approve of her own behavior. Once she had settled into his pitiful kingdom, making a fool of Chaz Molloy was no challenge. He was a fool already. According to her blog posters, though, she had been “totally brilliant.” They quoted and misquoted her, providing as evidence for her brilliance her “arty-farty ivory-tower left-wing anti-gun” rant, the vulgarity of which now made her cringe, and the fact that she had called Molloy a colossal ass, which, accurate enough, was hardly witty.
To Amy’s sorrow, at least half of the pro-Amy brigade had misunderstood her. Pro- and anti-Academy splinter groups formed, each arguing on the premise that the Academy was real. Well, it was, in the sense that there really was a community of academics whose literary judgments were taken seriously, at least by that community and its most prominent cadets. But the anti-Academy posters assumed Amy had been championing genre bestsellers, ridiculing works that you had to have an “MBA” to understand, and the rest somehow thought she was skewering mainstream fiction, whereas all she had intended to do—all she had actually done—was lasso a buffoon and smack him around.
As always, Amy responded more positively to negative criticism. A particularly thin splinter group, comprised of 46&Wondering and Ranty Ravingsworth, jabbed at her for taking a gig on KYJ in the first place. 46, who claimed to have read everything Amy had written, seemed grief-stricken over the fact that Amy was “reduced to midget-wrestling.” (It was a tribute of sorts to Amy’s blog that she didn’t attract people inclined to jump all over the word midget.) 46 and Ranty had a good point, so good that Amy decided to respond, posting her own comment below theirs:
I agree with you. Participating in that sort of show is feeding the beast.
Amy started a sentence about her agent pressuring her to do it, then backed over it. It was uncomfortably close to “sharing.” No, it was sharing. Where had that odd impulse come from? Besides, ratting out Maxine in public was just wrong: she owed Maxine a lot more than she did 46 and Ranty. Deciding it was no one’s beeswax why she had fed the beast, Amy hit “publish” on her comment page, closed it out, and began a new story, “True Caller.”
* * *
By now Amy was used to her modestly active new writing life, one in which story ideas actually burgeoned, more often than not, into stories. “True Caller” was apparently going to be about a college dropout living in his parents’ basement who spent his free hours calling radio talk shows. He made enough money at In-N-Out Burger to afford his own Internet connection and some professional-grade voice-changing software. Amy had to do some online research to discover what technology was out there, which turned out to be alarmingly impressive. Voice-changers were Google-flogged as though they were party accessories like karaoke machines: buyers were encouraged to have endless hours of fun with their friends. The non-fun-focused were assured that the software could be used for “business purposes” and for “creating a stimulating conversational ambience,” which, Amy guessed, was the closest the ads could legally come to the essence of a technology allowing phone stalkers to scare the hell out of women in the middle of the night.
Her True Caller, though, whose name eluded her, aspired to drive call-in DJs mad and ultimately to bring down the monstrous rotting structure of radio talk-show culture. He called them all, the right-wingers, conspiracy seers, preachers, celebrity mongers, advice gurus. He created distinct personalities, male and female, each with its own dialect, pitch, and backstory. Typically he would agree with the host, opening with copious, breathless praise, proceeding to share an illustrative story promising to support whatever point the host was making on that particular show, and at some point the story would begin to veer off into the ether. At first, he just made the stories nonsensical: one minute he’d be talking about the damn wetbacks and how his Uncle Delbert couldn’t get a job to save his life and the next he’d be yelling about tarantulas in his hat. Later he tended to stay focused, taking the host’s message on race, Area 51, the Founding Fathers, or whatnot and stretching it out to its darkest imaginable reach, forcing the host either to repudiate what he’d just been saying or go on record as agreeing that we should repeal the nineteenth amendment or perform live autopsies on environmentalists. The story bogged down as Amy wrestled with technicalities, mainly about how the Caller always managed to dupe experienced screeners, and she wasn’t sure it would ever amount to anything, but she enjoyed—actually enjoyed—creating all those personalities and took care to elevate each, however slightly, above its cartoonish beginnings. At the very least, “True Caller” was a great writing exercise.
So when Maxine interrupted with a call, Amy was feeling expansive—expansive enough to pick up the phone when she heard that low r
aspy voice. Expansive enough to hear Maxine out as she spun a most preposterous tale, of Munster and Marzen, of buzz and dish, of Manhattan and round tables. As Maxine droned, Amy grabbed her battered copy of Le Morte d’Arthur and opened to the end, the dog-eared page where Guinevere refuses Launcelot and walls herself off in the nunnery, and Launcelot says, “Sithen ye have taken you to perfection, I must needs take me to perfection of right. For I take record of God, in you I have had mine earthly joy.” She had loved that speech since childhood, the shining steel greatsword of the old language. She had loved it even more than the astonishingly evolved notion of the round table itself, which surely was located somewhere in the British Isles, not the island of Manhattan, and what was Maxine going on about? “The big agencies,” Maxine was saying, “… publishers, journalists, PEN, CNET, the usual suspects. It’s a weekend deal and it will be televised.”
“Okay, well, remind me when it’s on and I’ll watch it.”
“You don’t listen,” said Maxine.
Amy put the book away. “I’m listening,” she said, her good mood evaporating.
“You’re not keynote,” she said, “but you’re important. They’ve got you on at nine p.m. on Friday.”
“On what? Maxine, what are you—”
“Your assigned topic is ‘Whither Publishing—the Writer’s POV.’ Sorry about that. You’re on with Marzen and somebody else, I don’t know who, but believe me, you’ll be the icing.”
Despite her growing alarm, Amy laughed. “That’s the stupidest title I’ve ever heard,” she said. Whither was a silly word except when used by the ancient dead, like Malory. No one could use whither unselfconsciously. Here I am using “whither.” “You of course said no,” she said.
“Basically all you have to do,” said Maxine, “is riff on what you’ve been saying on the radio. The NPR rants are really strong, but you’ll probably also get asked about the Molloy massacre, which isn’t really on point, but remember, they’ll be drinking.”
“Are you talking,” Amy asked, her breath quickening, “about some kind of Skypy thing, with me on a giant screen? You know I don’t have the face for that. I have a radio face. I have a radio body. Tell them no.”
“There’s a business class ticket ready for you, both ways. They’re paying for everything.”
Amy was instantly light-headed, light-bodied, weightless. She didn’t feel safe in her chair. “Give me a second,” she said, navigating to her bed, falling into it like a rickety invalid. She closed her eyes against the spinning. She was as frightened by this physical reaction as she was by what Maxine was saying, and she had to tune her out to understand why. All she had to do was say no. She had been saying no her whole life, half the time to Maxine, who knew better than to even hint at Amy getting on an airplane. Why was she doing this now? “Business class what?”
“You know what,” said Maxine, sounding like the voice of God.
“No,” said Amy faintly.
“I tried to do Amtrak, babe. I’ve been online all morning and on the phone, trying to come up with a way to get you out here in two days, but it ain’t happening.”
“Two days??”
“I told you. You don’t listen. Day after tomorrow, nine o’clock. Well, you’re supposed to get there for dinner, but I already told them you might not make it.”
“Wait a damn minute.” Amy rallied, sitting up in bed, the blood beginning to return to her extremities. “Two days means I’m an afterthought, a last-minute sub. Toni Morrison backed out. Joyce Carol Oates has to wash her hair. They went through ninety names and finally got to mine. Well, tell them to stuff it.”
Maxine coughed and hacked for a solid minute. Anybody can cough. It’s not like a sneeze. Maybe there was nothing wrong with her lungs at all, and she was trying to wheeze Amy onto that plane. Amy waited her out. “Okay, I lied,” Maxine said. “I set this up two weeks ago. I just forgot about booking a train. I’m sorry.” More coughing.
“I don’t believe you,” Amy said, the tension between them suddenly thick, bringing memories of that morning in Boston where they parted ways over uneaten bagels and bitter old coffee. They were right back there again. Max was dying, Amy was turning to stone, and Maxine was about to throw down a napkin and tell her to call when she gave a shit. All Amy had to do was hang up. She listened to the silence and knew Maxine was listening too, and as it lengthened, it changed somehow, took on a perceptible quality, a color. She had read about people tasting sounds and hearing colors and dismissed synesthesia as a rare example of science bumbling out of its proper zone, but now the absence of sound, which had been a black smudge, was lightening into blue. Amy lay back and closed her eyes. “Maxine, what aren’t you telling me?”
Maxine lit a cigarette in response. Amy heard a metal lighter flick open, clang shut. Hearing, she could smell steel and lighter fluid and charred cotton wick.
“Is that the old Zippo?” asked Amy. “The Reddy Kilowatt Zippo?”
“You got a memory,” said Maxine.
“I miss Reddy Kilowatt. Whatever happened to him? The energy crunch, I suppose.” Reddy Kilowatt’s act was encouraging people to light up every room in the house and turn night into day. “At Colby we had a house mother we called Reddy Kilowatt behind her back, because—”
“It might as well be lung cancer,” said Maxine, “but it’s not. Pulmonary shitstorm. I’m not gonna die tomorrow, but I’ll probably miss the Mayan calendar deal.”
“Are you alone?” asked Amy. “Who’s going to help you out?”
“I’m all set,” said Maxine.
There was another long silence between them, paler blue. Alphonse clicked into the bedroom and, in a rare display of fellow feeling, stood next to the bed so that Amy could lay her hand on his great warm head.
“I really did forget about the train,” said Maxine. “I was going to set you up with a sleeper through Chicago, and then stuff happened. I messed up. And then this morning I tried to fix it, but I can’t. You’ll have to fly.”
“I know,” said Amy. What had frightened Amy from the start was that she knew she was going to do it.
Maxine said she’d email instructions about the plane and the hotel and they said good-bye.
Amy lay unmoving until night began to fall. She didn’t think about Maxine, sick and dying, and what that meant. She didn’t think about the plane, the speech, all those goddamn people, the cameras, the plane again. She didn’t think about her own mortality. There would be plenty of time to do all that on the plane. For a while she didn’t think of anything, and then, gradually, she began to puzzle over timelines.
If Maxine had set up the round table thing two weeks ago, then she had known about it since before Amy’s schlep to KYJ. This had to mean that her epic throwdown of Chaz Molloy had nothing to do with the invitation. If her blog comments were at all significant, then the KYJ interview probably increased awareness of her among the Whither people, but they already knew who she was.
Baby steps. That’s why Maxine forced her to go to LA. She had understood that in order to get Amy on a plane she first had to dislodge her from her chair, her house, her town. Having journeyed to that far-off radio station, Amy couldn’t tell herself that travel was out of the question, that she wasn’t that kind of writer, that kind of human being. And of course she had waited to spring the New York trip on Amy at the last minute. Amy didn’t have enough time before boarding to make herself crazy sick. Maxine had planned all of it, and what humbled Amy now was the realization that Maxine actually knew her. Perhaps she had known all her clients this well. Perhaps she knew Henrietta Mant like the back of her hand. Perhaps this was simply a business skill. Amy didn’t take it personally, but it moved her anyway.
* * *
At midnight, when the dishes were done, when she’d sent word to all student writers and Carla about her imminent departure—telling everyone when she’d be back, doing the grown-up thing, as though she believed she would survive the trip—she sat in her darkened parlor waitin
g for Alphonse to pound at the back door. He was barking out there in the yard, which he didn’t often do this late at night, and she might have to go get him in a minute. His bark was basso and, as barks go, easy on the ears, but still her neighbors needed their sleep.
Amy marveled at her own calm. When she was young, she had lived in the future: looking forward to some events her greatest happiness—the anticipation always more thrilling than the thing itself; dreading other events a full-time job. “How about right now?” Max would ask her. “Right now is excellent,” at which she would claim that of course she lived in the present, in the here and now, who the hell didn’t, she just wasn’t zen about it, and eventually she would pretend to concede his point, but she never understood it, or indeed how any sane adult could revel in the moment if there was something serious right around the corner. It was a preposterous notion, like setting up camp in the mouth of a bear cave, because “Right now, they’re hibernating.” But here she was, at peace, and in less than forty-eight hours she would be locked into a whining metal coffin, and she would just deal with it then. She was profoundly incurious about how ineptly she would do this. When she was young, she would have driven herself mad rehearsing.
His bark was getting louder, even deeper, outraged. Something was infuriating him and he was not about to let it go. Amy stood on the back steps and peered out onto the raised garden, where she could just make out his shape in the discreet light of a waxing crescent moon. He was standing his ground there, tossing something big into the air, grabbing it again after it landed with a thump, over and over, growling and barking continuously, berating it. Alphonse never killed things—he wasn’t bred to, and it wasn’t in his nature anyway, so the object couldn’t be an animal. When Amy got closer she could see it was the giant beef bone from Ralph’s. “What’s your problem?” she asked him. He threw down the bone and barked at it full-throated, rhythmically, his whole body shuddering with each bark. One bark per second; you could set your watch. Amy shined her flashlight on the bone. “Look,” she started to say, “it’s your own damn bone, for Pete’s sake,” and then she saw it was covered with tiny black grease ants, swirling about its surface from top to bottom in smoothly shifting patterns. It looked like they were trying to spell out a rude message. No wonder he was angry. Any other dog would have shrugged it off, but not Alphonse. Alphonse had the attention span of Boris Spassky, and he never forgave an insult.
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