“I didn’t hear you come in, Moll. I was only trying to help Hannah with her story.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “Some dads read stories to their little girls; other dads tell their little girls how the story should have been written in the first place. Cinderella, your feets’ too big, that kind of thing.”
Hannah laughed and ran down the hall.
Molly said, “Listen, I like your friends.”
Paul felt a little frisson of anxiety. “Friends? What friends?”
“The ones downstairs. In the lobby. They said they were really happy to meet me and that I should tell Paul—that’s you—to keep out of other people’s business. They said it wasn’t healthy to mess around.” She shifted to the other side of the door, leaning again. “I really liked that ‘healthy’ bit. We chatted for some time about your book. What have you been up to?”
Paul clamped his hands flat against his chest. “Who, me? Nothing. Absolutely nothing!”
“Yes, you have. I know you.” She turned and walked down the hall. She turned back and blew him a kiss.
Ah, Molly!
Could he really leave her in thirty seconds flat if he spotted the heat around the corner? Paul grinned.
Maybe not.
After Molly left, Paul looked at the telephone on his desk. He thought for a moment, and then picked it up and punched in the number. At the other end, a voice floating on a sea of calm said, “The Old Hotel, good evening.”
“I wanted to make a reservation. Tomorrow night?”
“For how many, sir?”
“Two, my wife and me.” He didn’t know why he was moved to tell the Hotel’s personnel who the other person was; it could as easily be “my girlfriend/mistress/trainer.” Was it the Old Hotel’s business? He thought perhaps it might be.
“If you’ll wait a moment, sir, until I check.”
Paul closed his eyes. It was at this point the Old Hotel would say, Sorry.
“Your name?”
“Giverney. Paul.” No, it was at this point. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for rejection: “Sorry, Mr. Giverney, but we’re fully booked until Christmas/New Year’s Day/Easter, whatever.”
“Yes, sir. Would nine o’clock be too late?”
What was going on? He shook the receiver as if to dislodge this false response, this clear lie.
“Uh, yes. Absolutely. Nine o’clock.”
The voice thanked him, told him the Old Hotel would look forward to seeing him.
Slowly, Paul replaced the receiver.
Why? Why was he all of a sudden on the Old Hotel’s anointed list?
“Molly! Come in here for a minute, will you?”
In a little while, Molly appeared in her old, ratty-looking dressing gown. “What’s up?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“It pertains to you? Try me.”
Paul thought maybe it was Molly they were really admitting. But he’d tried to make reservations for the two of them before and failed. He told her about the Old Hotel. “We’re in! Tomorrow night!”
Molly just gave him a patient shake of her pillow-tousled head, turned, and waved his news away. “Oh, that old place.”
He stared after her, mouth open. Then he called after her, “ ‘That old place’ ? What? What?”
Her voice floated back to him. “They’re all crazy there. ’Nighty-night.”
Paul sat, staring through his open door down the hall where she’d gone. Then he yelled, “They are not!” And he wondered why he didn’t want to believe they were all crazy at the Old Hotel. The idea disturbed him greatly. He mumbled something even he didn’t get.
Then Paul swiveled around and looked at his computer screen with the haunted house screen saver. He also had an old Royal portable that he used to type up rough copy because he liked the sound of the keys and because he felt as if he were working harder and more like a real writer. When he made a mistake he would X it out. The page would eventually look like nothing but cross-hatching.
There was a file on casters in which he kept manuscripts and parts of manuscripts. He rolled it over and pulled from it the thick copy of the novel he’d written before Don’t Go There. This was Half a Life and it had sold upward of two million copies. What had been returned to him was the original manuscript he had given to Queeg and Hyde. It had been returned some time after the book had been published, which was standard practice. What he wanted to look at now was the note that had come with it. Here it was, clipped to the manuscript. Paul recognized the handwriting—he had seen it often enough—of that officious little squirt, DeeDee Sunup, who had pompously written:Dear Paul,
We are herewith returning the foul matter of Half a Life.
The first time he had seen this phrase he had laughed until he choked (and Hannah had run in to pound him on the back). But DeeDee Sunup (and others like her) failed to see any sort of humor, irony, or even anything cabalistic in the phrase. “Foul matter”: this was what publishers called all of those original manuscripts, frozen in time, before they had been blue-penciled, red-penciled, edited, reedited, chicken pecked to death. This was the first look at the book, the manuscript out of which they’d tried to suck the marrow, drain the blood, leach the life, while they hammered the book into fame or obscurity, it hardly mattered which.
What had been returned to him was his foul matter. The gunk, the sludge, the muck that preceded all the placement, the sales figures, the ads, the reviews. Yet the original had been the writer’s best effort, the work he was willing to send out into the world and be judged by.
Paul grinned his devilish grin and fed a sheet of paper into the old Royal. He typed:FOUL MATTER
by
Paul Giverney
Damned book would write itself.
Foul Matter Page 31