My daggers were dulled to the point of producing absolutely zero effect on her, because Ashlay’s self-esteem was off the charts and she was conned-genitally immune to my or anybody’s censure. As for self-esteem, porn stars may come by this character trait naturally, and which may account for their supreme lack of self-consciousness before the unforgiveable, drooling, High Def cameras. She may not have noticed my presence at all. In any event, we had all defiled into Myron’s car.
YGB was going to do the driving. He wanted to make up for the dumb book tour suggestion involving the publisher and me. Myron let him knock himself out, but he would store his lousy driving for later ammunition against the editor in chief.
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. Or so I recall Hawthorne’s and YGB’s walk-on-the-wild-side tale. I would bide my time and pour lye on the lie of the manuscript of that O’Kelly witch and save some for Oh Kelly Editor if she came at me with a weapon or a Groupon coupon. For grating upon me was the high probability that super facial Kelly would ultimately love the O’Kelly manuscript. With any luck that gum chomper would never get her mitts on it and man nipulate Myron to her advantage.
According to the flight plan we filed with nobody at the TSA, we would arrive at the Fontana Ponderosa before noon, stay for a disrespectable span of hours and, with cooperating traffic, get back to the city at nightfall with Figgy’s manuscripts and the last vestiges of Myron’s self-respect in tow. Myron could cast the determination to go there in terms of demonstrating deference and concern, but of course he was merely protecting his investment. After all, Figgy had cashed the check for the advance, as Myron may have mentioned to me once or a hundred times before and which infuriated Myron to perseveratingly contemplate. (My dad taught me “perseverate,” a juicy word for a shrink to use with his budding perseverating child, don’t you think?) Book rights belonged to Myron, not Figgy, and Moron de Figgy intended to take possession pronto before any more madness or any Tuesdays with Figgy could be dreamed up by some rogue marketing intern, whom we did not have.
YGB ticked off his self-surfing road-trip check list.
“Lattes?” Check.
“Water?” Check.
“Organic apples?” Check. (Yes, YGB could be bothersome, but wasn’t that sweet of him to remember my go-to article of produce?)
“Anna Karenina?” Check. (But there he goes again, typical guy. With this literary name-drop he was trying to score points with Ashlay. Myron mentioned to his new author that the editor in chief was a fool, but her raccoonologically Green Dayish mascara’d eyes indicated she didn’t need to be informed.)
“Oreos?” Check.
“Triage Doritos?” Check.
“Drive the goddamn car,” Myron said.
✴✴✴
I observed something about YGB I had never expected before, although upon consideration I should have. He drove like a high school honors student who had completed Virtual Driver’s Ed online. He was white-knuckling his way, ten and twenty miles below the speed limit, scrunched over the steering wheel like the quarterback over center in a slow-motion football game, continually earning the fist-shaking wrath and splenetic honking of many a fellow traveler, often a teenage girl in a red convertible Mustang or Minnie Cooperage who breezily flipped him off as she sped past.
Ashlay was alongside Myron in the back seat, and she was diligently absorbed in her reading of—yes, what else?—Anna Karenina.
“Oh Em Gee, this is better than War and Peace,” she testified with some ardor, and I wondered if she herself had composed a Russian door-stopper she would have suggested putting an airline-size-bottle of vodka inside the covers.
Marketers. Are all of them frauds?
I was riding shotgun, and I took Ashlay’s testimonial as my cue to insert earbuds and listen to my signature mix of funk and reggae and girl band music. Every now and then I kind of dorkily shimmied to the beat, which was to Myron’s elderly, world-weary point of view, he would later confess, the six-six height of cute and the depths of his encroaching decrepitude. Manhattan prep school credentialed and later MFAd nearby, offspring of doctorates who resided on the Upper West Side, I myself had smugly never troubled to learn how to operate a motor vehicle. And about those creative writing degrees, I am afraid you wouldn’t want to get Myron started. But if you had recklessly done that, he would want to be told what’s the point of learning how to write like everybody else or your second- or third-tier writer slash professor whose manuscripts of experimental prose stylings would be rejected post-haste? In any case, I was, to him, miraculously untainted by my grad school indoctrination. I myself was not always convinced.
Before giving me my book assignment on the Wonders of Himself, Myron unjustifiably flattered me, saying I had cultivated an original editorial talent that might one day lead to my penning (old-school term or what?) my own book, and in the future attaining the position of senior editor. Sky’s the limit, who knows? Oh, to be twenty-six again, he ruminated to me, though I was, as I said, twenty-five. But as he said, if he slipped by chance into a time machine that managed this neat trick, he would have wished that somebody please shoot him. Youth would be wasted all over again on the member of the member of this member of the geriatric set. He felt confident that if he had to do it all over again he would make the very same old mistakes.
It would have been easy to rationalize not taking me along for the ride to the Fontana homestead (important for somebody to mind the store, etc.), but Kelly and Caprice stayed put along with Murmechka, who would have some extra time to hone her paroemiographical skills. (God, I love the OED, and Kelly, the OED is this huge shelf-long book, a library you might say, where you can look up the meaning of words, but helpfully for you, the words appear in alphabetical order. Now you know your ABZ’s, won’t you come and sting with me?) Besides, he could defend my presence in the interest of presenting to the Fontana Family a united and significant and very tall front on behalf of the venerated author’s loyal press—not to mention, I was trying out for publisher’s non-amanuensis, which nobody else knew at the time. None of which contributed to the point of his bamboozling the ever-fetching, feckless, in my view, and once professionally fecking for all to see and then some, Ashlay to Commingle along as well.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. (Eschewed is going to give you a ton of trouble, Kelly, but let me help with Job, which is not pronounced as the second syllable of that specialty practiced professionally by Ashlay.)
YGB appeared downcast that my music appreciation inhibited him from regaling me with tales of his editorial and (by implication) sexual prowess (following a logic that might be born in the tempest of his handsome brain). Poor YGB: taking a job working for Myron, the boy must have had an insatiable appetite for disappointment. One night in the imminent future I would personally look into altering that pattern of dashed and dashing expectation. Consider yourself forewarned, forereader.
Myron used to say he never regretted hiring me as an intern, but he rued the inevitable day I would waltz into his office, ducking as not to hit my head on the lintel, wearing a carelessly studied hoodie and dark glasses, and advise him that I got an offer at some New York house. He would have no alternative but to match and rely on his personal charm to seduce me to stay onboard and not scurry back to the Upper West Side clutches of my folks and all of Danny Meyer’s thousand-and-counting city-wide dining establishments.
The false Figgish rumors were retracted, so this was the time to get right in the man’s stubbled mug. (As for stubble, Myron said his mug was itching like from marching fire ants, but he was going to cultivate a beard, because if not now, what was he waiting for?) After all, his was the Notorious B.I.G. little publishing house scrambling to hang onto its prized author. He would have liked to say
that he was keeping reasonably restrained his high hopes, but if history was a predictor, those new books were going to follow the dum da dum da dum DUM conga line of his previous works (and the promising, forthcoming Swimming Buck Naked in the Hurricane) and dance right out the bookstore doors—or wherever it is fine books are sold these days. His spirits were soaring higher with each passing and depressing mile of California country roads, each passing biker gang member, and each passing RV whose dust we ate.
At some point, a pack of said sad bikers decided to have some fun at the ex Spence of YGB and the rest of us. Two rumbling, varooming hog Harleys negotiated point position in front of our car, slowing us down to about thirty, and two behind, and one to the side, nearest Ashlay Commingle’s window. Those wacky Hells Angels, right? Funmeisters or what? Imagine what they must do for Secret Santas and Easter egg hunts. I have to say, their showfuckingboating was meant to intimidate. But they inspired Ashlay. She stood up in the back seat (remember: she was knee-high to a cocker spaniel), opened the window, unzipped, and flashed her impressive breasts for the denimed gentleman riding there, looking cocky as a country squire on a fox hunt, which this turned out to be. He looked pleased. Wait till he doesn’t read her book.
“That was fun,” said Ashlay, as the gang roared off into racketeering oblivion.
I didn’t need to be a sibyl in the wings waiting to know what was not going through the minds of the two males in my car who would have sweet mammary memories.
✴✴✴
So yes, indeed, Ashlay had a gift for disorienting the male species that rivaled her considerable prose skills. She wasn’t alone in that regard when it came to disorienting Myron. Because what I wouldn’t have expected was what he told me later he was thinking after that flashpoint in the car: once all the Figgish fresh streams of revenues were accounted for, he would hardly have to come deep out of pocket for the detestable, to me, ooo ver of Calypso O’Kelly, who would become, if he had his fragged way, his next Figgy Fontana.
As Myron said a thousand times, “I am a genius.” You know, sometimes, I believe he believed that. And to tell the truth, so did I.
Somewhere along the journey, I turned to see that Ashlay’s head fell softly as a cloud upon Myron’s shoulder and she probably snored ever so demurely. Perhaps she was enraptured by Muscovite Ducky dreams. Myron himself was resolving to get a new car, equipped with something called navigation. He wasn’t up on the latest car technology (or any other technology), so he was hoping the automobile business had advanced to the Jetson or Sergey Brin point of mass-producing, computer-guided, driverless vehicles. Anything to extricate the likes of YGB from the equation.
Around eleven, we arrived at the wished-for destination, the home base of the estimably not-dead-yet Mr. Figgy Fontana. There was his house number on the spooky mailbox, a mailbox that listed on the dirt road like a punch-drunk fighter. But the mailbox was in and of itself odd. We were so far off the beaten path that it was hard to imagine that the receptacle had ever been used as intended by the USPS or that anybody but a latter-day Lewis or a Clark would deliver any Amazon boxes—or Myron’s fat royalty checks. Our car rumbled over the beaten-down earth.
“You sure this is the place, Myron?” YGB reasonably inquired, considering the sight before our eyes. I am surmising he was asking as much because my earbuds were fixed, and so I assumed he was addressing me in a faint voice. I shouted, “What!?” And yes, I could exclaim and uptalk simultaneously, and with a little practice and adequate emotional desperation so can you.
“That’s what the map said,” Myron said.
Again, wild Keatsian surmise silent on a peak of Figgian.
“WHAT!?” I shouted once more.
Car stopped, YGB pointed with both hands in the direction of my ears. I petulantly removed the earbuds. It was a good song I was going to miss.
“Oh?” I said. “Oh my God?” I shuddered with awe.
For we had driven onto the set of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There were three rusted-out, de-tired, and de-engined pickup trucks tenuously propped hood-up on cinder blocks. The trees—there were maybe five of them—looked to have been put out of their misery by a serial killer arborist. They were deader than dead. They were wilted and twisted like symbols of the Jack Londonian Collapse of Nature. Chained, unseen dogs that I imagined to be black and antelope-size barked vehemently from some dungeon. The house sagged off its evidently marshmallow-undergirded foundations and cried out for paint the way a dying man begs speechlessly for hydration in the Sahara. Parched ant-nest mounds of dirt served for landscaping. Window shutters drooped from their disconsolate hinges. On a bent flagpole proudly waved a tattered American flag that must have been used for target practice. All the scene was missing was a big epileptically flashing neon sign: V_C_NCY. Whatever Figgy had done with the money Myron said he had sent him, he had plainly not invested in property maintenance. I looked hard, but I didn’t suss out a pink CONDEMNED tag or a banner declaring Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.
My eyes widened into histrionic search lights after I oonched my head in the direction of Myron. That is because the high sun bounced off my nose ring and glinted upon Ashlay’s exposed, prodigious nipple, brown and shaped like a Milk Dud and seen by millions of movie-buffs and Internet-goers, but never before today by me, and now twice. I wished I was hallucinating, but I was not. My life had stood a loaded gun. No, really, it did. Watch what happened.
A double-barreled shotgun was pointed at Myron’s bald pate, not to be confused, Kelly, with pâté, an objectionable food item because it is French. A weapon being pointed at him was, Myron would later testify, a unique experience, which in itself may come as a minor surprise as it pertains to somebody like him who has pissed off more than his fair share of disgruntled writers and madly invoicing tradespeople.
“Git off mah property,” a woman declared. She was burly as an old brown bear and dressed in an unseasonably heavy wool house coat. “Git right now, or I will fill you all up with buckshot.”
Slowly, very slowly, Myron lowered his window.
“I am Figgy’s book publisher, he’s expecting us.” Not technically true, of course, but show me a publisher who doesn’t on rare occasions strategically exaggerate morning, noon, and night.
His self-identification seemed to lift the gun moll’s mood. Clearly she had not read the tweets about him and his company. “’Bout time,” she said. She lowered the shotgun and smiled with her immense butter-colored teeth: “I was counting on you mighta brung my husband’s money, Figgy Fontana’s Publisher, which you owed.”
What? That was a thought he did not voice. He was always fucking current with Figgy.
Ashlay roused herself awake. Noticing the shotgun, she gave signs that she was about to scream, but Myron swiftly covered her mouth, which for all anybody knows may have been the first time a man performed such an act upon her.
“Shut yer traps!” the big little Mrs. yelled, not at us but at the enthusiastically yapping unseen dogs. “Talkin’ to Figgy Fontana’s Publisher!” They must have been cowed because they obeyed.
Was it worth risking my life in order for Myron to claim his Fontanas? Sure, YGB’s Myron would risk his in a heartbeat, but mine, his favorite supposed intern? Can you possibly be in the dark as to what chances he would take? Myron is a fucking publisher.
Sibella’s Ashes
It was over a hundred degrees under the sagging shaded porch of the dilapidated house, and Mrs. Fontana handed each of us a free mason murky jar containing, she testified, lemonade. It looked more like a lab sample, cloudy and flecked. It didn’t come with one of those little umbrellas like in Miami Beach or the Bahamas, just so you know. Citrus supposedly is victorious in its battle with scurvy, but despite not being technically a pirate and not having been recently vaccinated for tropical diseases, I was not curious enough to access the medicinal properties supposedly contained in the alleged refreshment beverage.<
br />
The four of us had been consigned to a rickety bench—presumably the stockade had a waiting list—and I positioned myself between Myron and YGB. My eyes darted toward the Mrs. shotgun, propped against an unreliable-looking rail, in case she got any ideas to stand her ground again. Ashlay situated herself to the side, yawning like a sleepy kitten after her long car ride, somehow not perspiring in the sauna-like air. Perhaps the klieg lights of her famous photo spreads had preconditioned her for such extremes.
As for Myron, he looked more of a mess than he did after spending the whole night reading Calypso. He would tell me that his head seemed to be swimming from the shock of the heat (or perhaps from the sight of the multiple-legged beetle that executed an expert water landing in his reputed potion), and he could not summon up the energy to remove his trusty blue blazer.
“You can see Figgy when he’s done working,” the wife stipulated. “He’s back in his cabin.” She pointed to some vague destination far, far on the distant moonscape, and the four of us peered dejectedly in that forlorn direction. I visualized the bones of the search party who had perished or resorted to cannibalism.
Fortunately or not, it wasn’t long before my feverish fantasy life receded. That’s because a menacing, shiny black SUV, tinted windows and oversized tires, rumbled onto the property, churning up a small cyclone of dust. At least it didn’t turn out to be an advance Secret Service team scouting the surroundings in anticipation of a presidential powwow. Yet this arrival would cause a much, much more than momentary distraction, and it certainly would not prove fortunate in the slightest.
Out of the vehicle tumbled a dashing young man dressed in designer black duds, a man who looked to be a bit older than YGB. His sidekick was a woman, disgorged from the predatory vehicle and decked out in a fire engine red silk suit. They adopted a solemn gait as they reproached.
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