Sibella & Sibella

by Joseph Di Prisco

  “For a change.” Too easy, I know, I know. Beneath Myron, yes.

  Cue eye roll. “To tell you the truth, Myron, that might not be the worst thing in the world. But all right, I’ll quash for now and we will let sleeping dogs lie. Keep sending the royalty checks.”

  It was Mrs. Fontana who was probably entitled to the Fontana moolah in a community property state, unless the deceased had made other fancy legal provisions with regard to those sleeping dogs—and along with you, I was forevermore wondering whatever happened to those invisible non-sleeping barking dogs at Fontana’s. Myron didn’t explicitly state that Pork wasn’t getting a dime till it was all sorted out, because technically it was none of Cable or Pork’s business.

  “I’ll show you the will when the time’s right. I’m an IP lawyer, you think I would let this hippo slip through the cracks? Too bad Suzi Generous will be leaving us. She always lifted way up my, my spirit.”

  “One last thing. Sorry about your dad, Cable.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” I don’t think he was in any of those famous stages of grief.

  We had determined what was the grift in his and Caitlin’s scheme all along. But at least Myron was mourning the loss of the man even if his creepy son was not.

  “Take care of Uncle Pork. He needs psychological help.”

  “We all do, don’t we?” The law of averages dictated the guy had to be right about one thing someday.

  “And tell Calypso I will be in touch.”

  “Who is this goddamn Calypso?”

  “I have no idea, but she’s right under your nose.”

  I was pleased Caitlin was playing Cable. Those two deserved each other.

  ✴✴✴

  Meanwhile, other manuscripts were coming in over our legendary fucking transom, as per normal. Cozies and thrillers and sex memoirs and alternative history novels and those relentless books of verse. The poesy was dismissed forthwith, because we still didn’t do poetry. This serial rebuff distressed me, as if I were rejecting at the pound a cute floppy-eared puppy or a rehabilitated pit bull that needed a good home. At the same time, Hurricane orders were nicely piling up. And Ashlay Commingle’s Slippery Girl advance review copies were stacked all over the office and getting ready to be mailed out to every reviewer and bookstore owner along with all the X-rated purveyors in the country. In case you don’t know how many so-called adult stores and websites exist in this freedom-loving land of ours, this was by a factor of five the largest ARC print run the house had ever produced. Predictably, German and French publishers had gobbled up rights to the novel already, and the rest of the Eurolemmings were gathering up right on schedule on the shores. We might be on pace for a monster year.

  But you know what? Myron and I weren’t feeling it.

  It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry.

  Life that day in the house called Hard Rain Publishing: normal as normal could be. Normal, that is, if you characterized as normal what we had discovered yesterday: namely that Fig was dead and Pork was alive and that these three manuscripts probably had been written by both of them in some sort of bizarre collaboration, as had perhaps all of the other Figgies.

  I had another question. Should we inform the police or somebody? Porphyry Fontana was not deceased, Newton Fontana was—maybe. It sounded to me that something like a crime may have been committed, but to my dismay it was yet another burning topic never covered in any of those million ripped-from-the-headlines episodes of Law & Order, my dependable go-to source on the subject of criminal justice. This story was not yet a good candidate for headlines to be ripped from, but I feared it wouldn’t stay that way indefinitely.

  Myron sequestered himself in his office, not answering his fucking phone as usual, waiting for the other shoe to drop, whoever’s shoe that may have been. The three Fontanas were piled neatly on his desk, which he had cleared of every other distraction, but he was regarding these pages warily, as if they might rise up and bite.

  ✴✴✴

  On the romantic front, YGB decided we should keep our love affair private, no need for anybody in this small office to know yet. Myron knew, of course, but he was not the type to gossip, if he remembered—besides, he had more serious matters at hand. One day, YGB said, the time would be right for us to disclose. I concurred with his persuasive tongue in my mouth. I would have agreed to anything he asked, including wearing those pink socks of his to work if he wanted, and I was hoping one day he would want things like that from me.

  He and I had conspiratorially timed our entrance into work that morning as not to arouse anybody’s suspicions. We left my bedroom together this morning but staggered our arrivals into work and vowed not to acknowledge each other all day. This delayed gratification in itself would constitute a major turn-on for later delight.

  Our stratagem brilliantly succeeded before it dreadfully failed.

  Kelly was there first and I could tell she could tell something was up. First, she cornered YGB and they had a heated whispery exchange off in the distance. He told me in bed last night she had been pissed off with him about some trivial publishing issue, he could barely remember what it was, but it was nothing worth talking about and didn’t we have better things to do, which we did.

  Kelly glared at me from far across the office with enough heat in her eyes to roast me like a fucking s’more. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that s’more. Then again, everybody seems hardwired to sense when people are responding to their evolutionary dictates. We might reference pheromones, those mists of alleged airborne chemicals that signal the recent riot of sexuality, and that would have been a definite marker in my case and his. Murmechka, who may be the one human being who does not know the first thing about pheromones or human nature or Dean Martin or book publishing, for that matter, was holding forth.

  “Good trip, Sibella?” she inquired, not quite accusatorily.

  I told her it would probably bear fruit someday.

  “Yes, the bear finds honey in the secret, hidden places and the wind is a guide to the falcon as the falcon is a guide to the wind.”

  This made me speculate that she did know more indeed than I gave her credit for. Or maybe she was feeling irritated after being left back during our field trip to the zoo that was Fontanaland.

  Oh what can all thee, Knight at arms, alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the Lake and no birds sing! I didn’t know what to do with my enraptured self, and I should stop tracking YGB’s every move, otherwise Kelly would scope me out, so I composed the email to Junior I had been putting off long enough.

  ✴✴✴

  To: _______________

  From: sibella@hardrain.com

  Subject: Your fiction

  _______:

  Apologies for the slow reply. I have been away on a business trip.

  To an insane asylum.

  Thanks for sending your manuscript. I have read the first hundred pages of The Dream Calculus with great interest.

  In between sleeping with my editor in chief and ferrying Myron over the roiling shores of pending collective dementia and trying like hell to avoid the shoals of criminal prosecution. TMI, but let’s face it, you had it coming.

  This will be a brief email

  Not that I’ll ever tell you in so many words, but you broke my heart.

  because

  I can’t believe you had the balls.

  I would like to share your ms with my editor in chief

  With whom I recently shared a fantastic multiply orgasmic experience.

  and he may be better equipped

  And no doubt about it, he is way better equipped in many crucial respects.

  to respond to your book. He and I will certainly communicate with each other and get back to you asap with our decision.

  Along abou
t the time the Mets and Yankees play once more in the World Series or when hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

  In the meantime, it’s clear to me you have written a story that may possibly have broad appeal

  Although not to this broad.

  so give us a little bit of time to go through our internal processes. For now, I cannot help but be curious. In the publishing business, such curiosity produces what we call story questions.

  You know, like what the fuck I ever saw in you in the first place and why I bothered to rewrite your now-illustrious poems.

  I usually don’t respond before reading the whole manuscript but I am making an exception in your case. Considering our past, I thought you deserved it.

  Along with a Sonny-Corleone/James-Caan beatdown on the city street in our favorite movie The Godfather.

  Your protagonist, Chas, has chiseled movie-star features and the body of an Adonis. Nice, but a stretch. He also has a “needy” girlfriend named “Susana” who played college “volleyball” and stands maybe six foot four. You might want to check the ms. Sometimes she is six two, sometimes six three. She attended “Packer Collegiate” (my old Spence rival) and grew up in New York (in a brownstone oddly reminiscent of my parents’ home), and she pressures Chas to get a tattoo below his waist and above, umm, you know, that says Muse, to better guide her handiwork in case she gets lost in his eyes or his words or his whatever. That’s about when I began to lose your train of thought. Then I go completely off the rails when I read that “Susana” has lots of face metal and ink and an apparently insatiable sexual appetite that borders on sex addiction for this Chas fellow—for reasons that are not easy to follow.

  Or that anybody who isn’t a sixteen-year-old boy would find credible.

  One falls under the author’s captivating spell, as it becomes all but certain that Chas harbors massive self-delusions of which he is barely conscious.

  Strangely enough, much like the author himself.

  In any case, Chas, as a result, finds himself needing what the narrator deftly, originally terms “personal space.” At this point he oozes into the doll-like arms of a Munchkin-size heiress to the fortune of a Texas oil company. As I read your fiction

  Which is one word for your complete and utter failure of imagination.

  I was wondering if the average reader would feel as I do. Namely, that Chas is a doofus and a jerk, and that breaking up with his extraordinary and athletic and loyal and absolutely sympathetic girlfriend indicates that he had no clue about who “Susana” truly was or is. Betraying her would be the worst mistake he would ever make in his entire pathetic life. Only a dolt would do that. More on this later.

  A lot more a lot later.

  I wonder where your novel will finally go with the story of Chas and “Susana.” Who knows? The Dream Calculus may end up being more the story of the estimable and big-hearted “Susana” than her disloyal, narcissistic beau. And someday “Susana” will find somebody more worthy of her.

  Like an amorous and sensitive editor in chief, though in truth more worthy candidates for her abound on every single dating website in captivity, including probably the weird Christian and skateboard ones.

  There is a remote chance Chas will become a more palatable character after he is chastened by inevitable, harsh experience that awaits any young man. Perhaps his heiress girlfriend gets bitten by a psychotic squirrel in Prospect Park and dies a very agonizing death from, let’s say, rabies. Or she chokes to death at Eataly on a pizza crust because Chas was too busy writing poems to take CPR classes. Or their flashy new BMW explodes and she dies in a fireball somewhere in, I don’t know, let’s say Greenpoint, while he scampers to safety and, I don’t know, big poetry prizes. But I’m spitballing what reading pleasures await me and the rest of your adoring public. All to say, you have aroused my attention!

  And prompted me to anticipate the pleasure of kneecapping you.

  Congratulations on all the good things that have come your way. And all that you richly deserve that will come your way in the future.

  And, yes, I am loving California.

  As I would love any place three thousand miles away from you.

  Yours,

  No fucking way.

  Sibella

  ✴✴✴

  I pressed send and yelped. Not because my email server was the functional equivalent of a pin in a voodoo doll of me, but because Kelly was looming over me like a figure out of Wagner’s Valkyries, only chewing gum. For how long she had been there I have no idea, so lost was I in concentration, which state of mind I would have vigorously recommended Kelly attempt to achieve someday.

  “Does the editor in chief, your boss, know you are sleeping with his boss, the publisher? And that’s why Myron took you and not me on the trip and why you and he spent the night in bed together there?”

  Chomp chomp, chew chew.

  What a delicious fucking development. See, if it is indeed possible to pick up on a young woman’s ecstatic experience of a vigorous sex life, it may not be necessarily delectable who’s her lucky partner in crime, which you supposedly shouldn’t commit if you can’t do the time, and I liked all my time with him and I wanted more more more, including more time. I should check on the latest brain research with my social scientist mom for confirmation of my scientific hypothesis.

  “No, honest, he has no idea I am sleeping with Myron, Kelly.”

  “Would you like me to keep this scandalous intra-office news between us girls?”

  Chomp chomp, chew chew.

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Of course, she had tough choices to make. Would Kelly confront YGB, her editor in chief boss, with her take on the salacious truth, or would she go straight to Myron the publisher to lodge her concerns? I vicariously ventured into the arid wind-swept if not blown-dry wilderness of her thought process. If she went to YGB, her objective might be to piss him off enough to make him envious of me and therefore make my life difficult. Then what would he do? He might laugh in her face and tell her to mind her own business. On the other hand, if she went to Myron, she might try to get him to fire me on account of the publisher’s compromising the pseudo-professional workplace environment. What would he do? He would laugh for a while and then might fire her for being unprofessional and reckless. Either intercourse she adopted would have been juicy fruit by me. I could tell she was working out her plan, which, if you knew anything about Kelly’s strategic capacities, probably made her head hurt, and whatever her plan came to be, it was destined to be the wrong one. Then again, I could have been overfuckingthinking it. My money was on her kicking what she construed to be the whorenets’ nest. That is, she might approach YGB and Myron both, gum blazing. As I came to conclude later about her plotting to subvert me, after other facts came to light, I understood why she might have never suspected YGB and me, poor thing.

  “I could see why me keeping this to myself would work for you.”

  “Thanks, Kelly.”

  “Well, I have two words for you: dream on, bitch.”

  “That’s three words, and you once used to be such a good fucking counter, too. You got an extra stick of gum?”

  Chomp chomp, chew chew.

  The Princess Sibellissima

  Poor, sick, schizzy Porphyry Fontana, scum-bucket son of a bitch. If I may be so bold. To verify if a man could be simultaneously ill and despicable, let’s check in with Junior—although I hasten to remind you there is no vaccine on the horizon for his herpes syndrome.

  Myron figured out what he needed to do. I typed, as usual, the email he wanted to be sent to Pork in which he outlined the plan. Pork may have been mentally unstable or possibly deranged, but Pork had to inform the authorities of his identity, namely that he was not Fig Fontana, and that it was Fig Fontana himself who was six feet under. This plan assumed Pork actually realized that he wasn’t Fig, of course, o
r that he was not Fig around the clock. Law enforcement could work out those legal and psychological niceties, that wasn’t a lowly publisher’s job. If Pork cooperated, perhaps Hard Rain would do the third printing, in which printing Myron would post an updated author’s name on Hurricane.

  Myron presented two alternatives to Pork, or maybe I should say Pork/Fig or Fig/Pork or Newton/Porphyry or Porphyry/Newton:

  Fig Fontana

  and Porphyry Fontana

  Fig Fontana & Porphyry Fontana

  One thing it was not going to be was Fig Fontana. Myron could make a case for change of authorship, and though he was conceivably opening himself up to possible financial exposure, he opted to take the high road—or a slightly more elevated road. The money he would otherwise make would feel dirty. Admittedly, the concept of dirty money as opposed to the other kind was a fresh one for Myron, along with his reluctance to acquire it. But now the new-fangled concept captivated him. Besides, big picture, if Pork hadn’t been obliging, Myron wouldn’t have in his possession those three new books stationed upon his otherwise cleared-off-by-me desk. Mostly, Myron felt he couldn’t go on pretending nothing had happened, because something definitely had happened—although what it was, he wasn’t sure. The original Hurricane contract with Mr. Fig Fontana was possibly legally enforceable by his estate, but it didn’t seem morally enforceable. Needless to say, Myron was no intellectual property lawyer. Then again, if he had to be somebody like Cable to qualify for that distinction, he would take a pass.

  “By God,” exclaimed Sancho, “your grace has taken a great load off my mind and made everything as clear as can be!”

  The other thing the authorship was not going to be was “Porphyry Fontana,” or “Porphyry with Fig Fontana.” Clearly logic was doing hand-to-hand battle with mystification and confusion. We would work through the complications of the next three books’ authorship, as that big advance had already gone out. Maybe we would stay with the new formula, maybe the author would one day be Porphyry Fontana. We would cross that rope bridge over the gorge when we came to it.