Sibella & Sibella

by Joseph Di Prisco

  Then the two men talked on the phone to confirm the understanding, as my publisher related to me.

  “How are sales going, Myron?”

  “Who am I speaking to? Pork or Fig?”

  “Pork, Myron. Of course, it’s Pork.”

  “Great, Pork. Sales are going gangbusters. All the early starred trade reviews were very enthusiastic, and keeping up with the orders is a full-time job around here.”

  Pork said he wished Fig was around to enjoy the success, and he almost sounded like he meant it.

  “I decided, Myron. Let’s go with the and Porphyry.”

  That sounded reasonable, almost gracious on his part.

  “You know, Pork, you might be in jail for a little while, if the police decide you and Cable engaged in any shenanigans. You can’t go around burying the wrong guy and pretending you were ever dead.”

  Pork would take his chances. Cable was going to represent him.

  “Well, then you might be in jail for a long while.”

  “Lissename, Moron, I’s not takin’ kindly to yas sayin’ shit ’bout…”

  Myron hung up as soon as Fig’s Ghost made his appearance on the phone. He had nothing to say to Fig, who was both a dead man and evidently a personality that slitheringly insinuated itself into his brother’s mind at the slightest provocation. In any case, Fig couldn’t help Myron or Hard Rain. He was an inconvenience. And still dead.

  This conversation was followed up by a certified letter, composed and typed by the junior editor. We both felt Myron was within his rights to make the change to with Porphyry, that it fell within the range of his publisher’s discretion, and the house counsel grudgingly approved. Sure, Cable would come after Myron and Hard Rain, but that was the right thing to do. Simply because Pork didn’t have a sure grasp on his identity or identities didn’t mean Myron was off the hook. You make compromises in the book business. Compromise may be the essence of the book business. And you take chances. And you try to do the right thing whenever you can, which is not always possible, as I have learned full well.

  Myron and I discussed another possible tact. What if we went with the story that our author suffered from a rare disorder, that he had multiple personalities, multiple identities? I got the idea and the terminology from my dad’s monographs, and Myron listened attentively. It did have the advantage of seeming to be true, or mostly true, or at least mostly not false, and it did rely upon a sympathetic, nuanced reading of the whole subject of authorship and a sympathetic, nuanced understanding of the man or men who wrote the books. After all, Fig and Pork were one, or two, and together they produced their books. Of course, that move would have been dependent on Pork’s willingness to divulge such sensitive information. But when Myron approached Pork with the idea, he wanted nothing to do with it. He was adamant that he didn’t have any idea what Myron was talking about. He wasn’t sick and he didn’t want people to think so. As far as he was concerned, he wrote the books. And who that he was was not something up for debate.

  Then Myron reached out to Cable and tried to enlist him in persuading Pork to accept this plan. Cable wasn’t interested. “My uncle’s a kook, but he’s not crazy, and he’ll never go for it. You, Myron? You’re crazy. Keep the greenbacks coming.”

  ✴✴✴

  We had no choice. We went public with the news that Fig was dead and held our collective breath. As a kid I used to sit in the back seat as my folks drove under the Carpal Tunnel and I held my breath as long as I could. I never did achieve my goal of holding my breath the entire length of the underwater passage but almost passed out once or twice. When I look back, that experience was a lot like what was about to happen.

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, etc.

  Talk about a hard rain. We needed an umbrella big as the Library of Sexual Congress. The Fontana news stunned the publishing world, which had been gunning for an opportunity to take down our upstart house and its egotistical publisher for years. First came the belated Figgy obits, which were painful to read, and were full of tough questions about Myron and our house, not to mention the whole Fontana family, which had pulled that ruse, and they wanted to know what we all knew and when did we know it, all those other grassy knoll and Watergate type questions. And then the critics scampered out of their rat holes with their sharpened incisors. The early Hurricane reviews had been indeed very positive. The new ones were anything fucking but.

  “Hard Rain’s integrity has to be called into question. Fig Fontana is dead, but they published a book supposedly by him—a book that may not have been written by him. This was information known by the house the whole time. Fontana’s large and loyal following deserves better treatment from….”

  “Whoever wrote this has composed a fraudulent book. We don’t mean in a criminal sense, which may also be the case, but in a literary sense. This talentless author, whoever he is, manages to offend every reader with his thoroughgoing misogyny and misanthropy. His nonsensical vitriol toward the LGBT community amounts to more than a technical failure, it is relentlessly soul-sapping. Readers who get to the last page—and there may be a few ruined souls out there who achieve that Herculean feat—will accomplish it only while zipped up in their Hazmat suits….”

  “Any reader expecting a novel by Fig Fontana will be disappointed by this posthumous publication. This new book, which turns out to have been possibly a collaboration between Fontana and his twin brother, has none of the authenticity and pop of Fig Fontana’s previous efforts. Readers who are naturally mourning the death of an American original will be dismayed by this desultory effort. They will see the seams of an uneasy stitching together of an incoherent plot, and the desperate attempt to meld two incongruent, clashing, clanging voices. One has to wonder what role Hard Rain has played in the public deception that….”

  “Myron Beam’s Hard Rain Publishing should be ashamed….”

  “Embarrassment….”

  “Disaster….”

  “Travesty….”

  We were reeling. Swimming Buck Naked in a Hurricane had become overnight, instead of another hit, an unqualified bust, the by far biggest dud in the history of the house. The returns were filling up the warehouse and they were killing us, in a sense more than the new, scathing reviews. The press had declared open season on Hard Rain, a house they had always wished to take down a peg or ten.

  Porphyry (maybe?) called Myron in tears.

  “What are they talking about? I was the one who wrote the book, and all the previous books, there’s no new author. Nothing’s changed.”

  Myron could not cheer him up because he knew from hearsay and from other publishers if not from past personal experience the vagaries of the book business and the unpredictability and unreliability of reviewing.

  Besides, Myron had bigger problems popping up on the horizon. But he also had some loyalty to Pork, who was sort of one half of the author he had made famous. And I could see why he felt that way, although I had a more radical take. A collaboration between coauthors, which is what Fig and Pork seems to have been, is not a 50-50 proposition, it’s a 100-100 proposition.

  They want to get out of themselves and escape from the man. That is madness: instead of changing into angels, they change into beasts.

  Myron asked Pork if he copped a plea when he admitted that the family made a greedy and stupid and illegal claim on Porphyry’s life insurance.

  “Not yet. I’m mulling. They offered me six months and two years’ probation, but Cable thinks we can do better.”

  Maybe he could penologically do better in the end, but good news was not in abundance anymore for Hard Rain.

  ✴✴✴

  After Myron analyzed the implications of the drastic reception, he canceled publication of the next three Fontana books, and he thus formally notified the Fontanas. And he decided he would eat
the advance. As a side note, Porphyry’s writing career was over, at least at Hard Rain. Maybe he was a good writer and maybe those were good books and maybe they would be published by somebody else someday. It wasn’t Myron’s problem. Let God and The New York Times, if there is a difference between the two, sort it all out.

  “Cable’s probably going to sue me, but he was going to file suit anyway. Besides, he’s been shopping those books already, so his case is going to look weak.”

  Could it get any worse? Yes. This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

  “Sibella, I’m running low on cash, and I may have to take out a loan to make payroll. Keep this between us, all right? I don’t want everybody to go into a panic, that’s the last thing we need. But don’t worry, you all will get paid.” And then he added in this fraught context the scariest word in the book business: “Eventually.”

  “Tell me we can get out of the deal with Calypso.” She had backed off on her insistence upon getting the written contract immediately, and said she was patiently waiting—but would not do so forever.

  “We have an oral contract with her and I like to keep my word.”

  “What fuck the fuck, Myron.”

  Do you believe it had come to this most unlikely pass: that Hard Rain’s future might be lying in the supple, seasoned hands of a Slippery Girl?

  Tender is the Sibella

  One dark and stormless night, shortly after Myron pulled the plug on the whole Fontana enterprise, I forced myself to read the entirety of Junior’s book. It was my self-inflicted act of penitence. I am no guilt-ridden Roman Catholic, or any other sort of Roman Catholic, but contrition seemed to be consistent with the somber mood around the office and, besides, my slow passive play V’s ah V J. R. had gone on long enough. Make a decision, Myron always said. And move on.

  Easier said than done, lentil reader.

  Birds build—but not I build. Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

  Some couples are united by children, some by profession, some even by pets. Junior and I were united by poems, especially the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Kelly, he was a Jesuit priest—Hopkins, not Junior—who insisted that all his poems be incinerated when he died. His executor disobeyed, thank, umm, God. But going back to Junior, he really loved Hopkins and I loved to hear him read aloud those spine-tingling poems, not that we were religious or anything, unless you think poetry is religious, and it might be. But now comes a tough part.

  Here’s what I discovered, fuck. Superfuck. Junior’s book was not half as bad as I had counted on. At the same time, there was something strange about it, something transcendently or maybe eerily different I couldn’t put my finger on. It seemed to be written by a Junior as viewed in a cracked mirror. In the moment I couldn’t explain how I came to this conclusion or what it meant. After all, Junior’s most authentic self was in and of itself kind of a performance, so this could have been exactly his book.

  Then again, maybe there was a much simpler, technical explanation. Maybe it was a matter of a poet who was striving to be a novelist, with predictably mixed psychological results. Horses of a different color, poets and novelists. It’s a pretty rare poet, after all, who can do ordinary prose stuff, like convincingly getting a character into or out of a room or a scrape or a party or a marriage and not do it with plotless nonaplomb.

  I struggled and struggled and stared and stared at the last page of the book until I fell asleep last night, but when I woke up in the morning I was relieved and saddened to find that I had come to a decision. One thing Myron always stressed: You’re going to make mistakes, that’s what the business is all about. Make sure you make the right mistakes. The great Yogi Berra first said that, and that philosopher ought to know. When I got into the office, I made the right mistake, I hoped, and I wrote Junior.

  ✴✴✴

  To: _______________

  From: sibella@hardrain.com

  Subject: Your fiction

  _______:

  My editor in chief and I have had the chance to consider your new novel. It is quite a piece of work. The sentences are almost universally incredible. You write fiction like somebody who invented writing fiction, reminiscent of the way that Keats and Hopkins wrote their poems, as if they practically reinvented the language. I took abundant interest in reading it. You are a special kind of writer.

  And a special kind of asshole. But I have to admit to myself, if not to you, that you can write. And why is there such a high percentage of fine writers who are jerks? It doesn’t seem fair.

  It is with great regret, therefore, that I write to inform you that Hard Rain Publishing is reluctantly going to take a pass. I am sure this treat will be picked up by some big house chosen by your crackerjack agent and you will enjoy yet another literary triumph as you march on inevitably to literary renown and more and bigger prizes. But the truth is, we are a small house and we can take on a limited number of projects, and yours, unfortunately, is not the sort of book our people have enjoyed much success marketing.

  Technically, they have never before been charged with marketing a book by my spineless douche of an ex, who, fuck me sideways, can really write.

  I wish our verdict were otherwise. But thanks for thinking of us, and of me. Let’s definitely meet at Maialino around Christmas.

  When the ducks depart Holden Caulfield’s Central Park and where I buried my heart one winter day when you broke up with me in the vicinity of the carousel, staging by you, which I will forevermore object to on metaphorical if not metaphysical grounds. I mean seriously, Junior? Right out of Catcher in the Fucked-Up Rye?

  Sincerely

  and regretfully

  yours,

  Sibella

  ✴✴✴

  As soon as my email blasted off into cyberspace, I realized where I had gone wrong in my email and in possibly my life. My bitterness clouded judgment. The rejection was more boiler-plate than it should have been, and when editors—or junior editors—take such cover, it shows that they haven’t come to terms with their own feelings about a book. Perhaps it was better than they had the capacity to understand, and as a result they resort to stock language. Had Junior fooled me again? Or had he fooled himself? I was done with him, and after he got my email, he was going to be done with me forever. But then tell me why I felt miserable.

  Then something else also dawned on me, as it had recently dawned on Myron. Even if we’d wanted to publish the thing, Hard Rain couldn’t afford to now.

  ✴✴✴

  “Sibella, sit down, would you? I got an email from your ex’s agent—I didn’t forward you. She was apoplectic. She said her author was crestfallen and furious, but she assured me she was going to sell his fucking book and that I, Myron Beam, was an idiot to take a pass—”

  “His book wasn’t bad, and maybe better than that.”

  “Not high praise. And who cares about his agent? I trust your judgment, that’s why I let you make the final call. I knew you wouldn’t let your feelings about an author, one way or the other, get in the way of your decision-making.”

  He had never granted me such determinative sway ever before. Things were moving faster by the day with my job, and he seemed to consistently remember I was not an intern.

  “I hope I didn’t fuck this up.”

  “Look, I didn’t call you in for that. Life goes on. Hard Rain goes on, for the time being. Don’t worry, I can raise the money to keep us going. Wouldn’t want to take any chances and disappoint that gypsy, would I? Sibella, another subject. A goofy one. Where did Kelly come up with the crackbrain idea that I’m sleeping with you—or anybody?”

  “That girl is awkweird and she must be off her meds, that’s where. Was she chewing gum? People who have a gum-chewing jones need to stay on their OCD drugs.”

  “She told me that you told her you were my mistress
. Why would you do that?”

  “I never said anything like that. For one thing, I would never use the word mistress. Too nineteenth century or Revolutionary Inroads.”

  “That’s one of the problems with her accusation.”

  “I know. Off her meds.”

  “I think I kept Kelly around too long.”

  “Tell her you and I are not an item and she can stay at the company as long as she stops chewing gum.”

  “She chews gum?”

  The things he missed, amazing, huh?

  “It’s like fucking crack to her.”

  “We can stop talking about Kelly. She is going to be immaterial.”

  That sounded ominous. True, I never wanted that masticater around, and call me sentimental, but I hoped she wasn’t going to lose her job after being dumb enough to take me on. But he had a lot more on his mind today.

  “Make sure this all gets in the book. You’ve got a lot to work with, after Fontana and everything. Speaking of which, how’s it going, our book?”

  Ah, that book, the Magnum Dopus. I knew how it was going. I knew where it was going, too. Our book was going nofuckingwhere. I had pretty much decided, as I had initially feared, I wasn’t up to the task. I had too much or not enough insight to go on, and maybe it was both. Not that I didn’t try, I did. I would pstare for hours and hours at the computer monitor and pspew out a pseudo-psentence and then erase it and the unforgiving pscreen would once more go blank blank blank. My psole companion, the cursor, would wink and wink and wink, like a timid pstuttery pstalker pslash flasher on the psubway. I didn’t then, and pstill don’t, believe in the existence of writer’s block, which is nothing but a lame fucking excuse for not meeting a deadline, so that wasn’t it. Was it psimply a case of Myron Block? Someday I had to tell him I was not going to write his book, or our book, but not today.

  “Going great,” I said.

  “Ever want to show me a rough draft?”

  “Sure, when the time’s right.” And when by some miracle somebody else composes a rough draft of our book.