Potboiler

by Jesse Kellerman

  Now, however, he saw the entire mess as a nauseating victory of pride over love. He began to shiver. He pulled the dressing gown around himself. It was Bill’s, far too big for him. Carlotta had loaned it to him. He wrapped himself tighter still and rocked in the moonlight, weeping without sound.

  Some time later he stood up, intending to go back to bed. But again he changed his mind. He headed for the office path.

  17.

  Pfefferkorn stood in darkness, listening to the wind gust through the unused portion of the barn and stubbing his feet against the cold tile. He flicked on the light and sat at the desk, opening drawers. The first was empty. The second contained a box of pens of the same brand as those in the jar. The final drawer contained three reams of paper still in their wrappers.

  The wind gusted again.

  Pfefferkorn reached for the neatly piled manuscript. He leaned back in the chair. It let out a loud, rusty bark. He read.

  If he had expected anything different from Bill’s previous work, he was to be disappointed: in both substance and style, the manuscript differed so little from what he’d read on the plane that Pfefferkorn entertained himself with the idea that Carlotta had been mistaken, and that the pages in his hand were not a book-in-progress but the same one on display in airport terminals throughout the world. Three chapters in, he glanced over at the bookcase containing both his and Bill’s life’s work. The disparity amazed him. Even more amazing was that Bill still thought so highly of him. Surely one would expect that decades of uninterrupted commercial success would go to a person’s head. Surely Bill had the right to believe that he, not Pfefferkorn, was the superior writer. And who was to say he wasn’t? Pfefferkorn decided that he had been too harsh. Consistency, productivity, broad appeal—these, too, were writerly virtues, as was the ability to repeatedly vary a theme. By the end of its opening sentence, a William de Vallée novel made its reader feel at home. As a student, Pfefferkorn had railed against mass-market entertainment, decrying it as a weapon of the ruling powers aimed at maintenance of the status quo. He gravitated toward writers who employed alienating styles or unconventional themes, believing that these possessed the power to awaken the reading public to fundamental problems concerning the modern condition. He had striven to write in that mode as well. But these were a young man’s concerns. Pfefferkorn had long ago stopped believing that his stories (or any story, for that matter) would have a measurable effect on the world. Literature did not decrease injustice or increase fairness or cure any of the ills that had plagued mankind from time immemorial. It was sufficient, rather, to make one person, however bourgeois, feel slightly less unhappy for a short period of time. In Bill’s case, the cumulative effect of millions of people made slightly less unhappy for a short period of time had to be reckoned a significant accomplishment. There, at a bare desk in a frigid office in the middle of the night, Pfefferkorn softened his heart toward his dead friend, and to bad but successful writers everywhere.

  18.

  Dawn broke and he still had seventy pages left. He had to hand it to Bill: the man could spin a yarn. The latest installment of Dick Stapp’s adventures began with the murder of a politician’s wife but eventually led to far-off regions, as Stapp pursued a suitcase containing nuclear launch codes. Did they really call it a football? Pfefferkorn did not know. He put down the manuscript and stood, twisting to loosen his back. He knelt by the bookcase and took out his own novel, studying the cover, its blue darker than that of the faded spine. There was his name in yellow letters. There, in white, was a pencil drawing of a tree. The tree had been his idea. At the time it made sense to him but now he saw that it was boring and pretentious. Live and learn, he thought. He opened to the back flap. There was his author photo, taken by his wife on her old camera. In it he was young and thin, staring intensely, chin clutched between thumb and side of forefinger, a pose intended to give him gravitas. Now he decided that he looked like his head had become detached and he was trying to keep it in place.

  He turned to the title page and the inscription.

  Bill

  I’ll catch you one day

  love

  Art

  Had he really written that? Bill must have been embarrassed by the pettiness of it, although Pfefferkorn could not remember him saying anything other than thank you. And such folly. He would never catch Bill, at least not in terms of numbers. That much should have been apparent, even back then.

  Shaking his head, Pfefferkorn opened the book to a random page. What he saw astonished him. The text had been heavily annotated, every sentence asterisked, underlined, boxed, or bracketed, some all four. A dense, Talmudic commentary filled the margins. Diction was analyzed, allusions explicated, scenes dissected for structure. Pfefferkorn riffled the rest of the book and was aghast to discover that it had all been given an identical treatment. The novel’s final paragraph ended in the middle of a page, and below the closing words Bill had written:

  YES

  Pfefferkorn turned to the table of contents—it was clean, which brought him immeasurable relief—then to the acknowledgments. He read that he had thanked his agent, his editor, his wife, and various friends who had provided technical advice. He had not thanked Bill.

  Stricken, he went back to the title page, intending to rip out the inscription in penance. But he could not bring himself to do it. He replaced the book on the shelf.

  He sat for some time in a meditative silence. He thought of his failed novels. He thought of his failed marriage. He thought of Bill, good Bill, kind Bill, bashful Bill, Bill who had ever shown him only generosity, who had admired and studied him, who had loved him and whom he had loved in return. He thought of Bill leaving his mansion to sit in a tiny, ugly room. Bill, typing his two thousand five hundred words, day in and day out. Bill, wishing he had one great book in him. Bill, with his own jealousies, his own regrets. Outside, the birds began to sing. Pfefferkorn looked at the manuscript, seventy pages unread, the rest piled messily and dangling at the edge of the desk, and he thought that Bill never would have been so careless. He thought of Carlotta, the way she had opened herself to him, in punishment and in reward. He thought of his daughter, whose wedding he could not pay for. He thought of his students at the college, none of whom would ever succeed. They had no talent, and talent could not be learned. He thought of life and he thought of death. He thought: I deserve more.

  19.

  Pfefferkorn waited for the rental car shuttle bus to take him to the departure terminal. In order to fit the manuscript into his carry-on he had had to discard several items of clothing, two pairs of socks and two pairs of underwear and one shirt hastily stuffed into the waste bin of a hallway bathroom that, to his eye, had not been recently used, the bar of soap in the sinkside soap dish still wrapped in ribbon and wax paper.

  He stood at the kiosk, waiting for his boarding pass to print.

  He stood at the security checkpoint, waiting to be waved through the metal detector.

  He sat at the gate in a hard plastic chair, waiting for his group to be called.

  Once the plane was in the air and his seatmate asleep, he unzipped his bag, took out the manuscript, and thumbed off the unread portion.

  The novel’s final scenes were full of action. Pfefferkorn read quickly, his tension growing in inverse proportion to the number of pages left. By the time he reached the second-to-last page, he was on the verge of panic. While the nuclear launch codes had been recovered, the villain responsible for their theft was still at large and in possession of a vial containing a virulent strain of influenza in sufficient quantity to wipe out Washington, D.C., and its environs. With a terrible foreboding, Pfefferkorn turned to the last page.

  coming at them like a bullet.

  “Dick!” Gisele screamed. “Dick! I can’t—”

  A deafening roar cut her off as the bomb detonated. Rocks rained down from the roof of the cave. Du
st filled Stapp’s lungs.

  “Dick . . . I can’t breathe. . . .”

  The weakness of her voice chilled Stapp to the marrow.

  “Hang on!” he yelled hoarsely. “I’m almost there.”

  Like a bat out of hell Stapp plunged into the icy water

  That was all.

  Pfefferkorn looked inside his carry-on. Had he missed a page? An entire chapter? But no. Of course the book would end that way. Bill hadn’t finished it yet. Disheartened, he put the incomplete completion away and zipped up his bag. He put his head back, closed his eyes, and slept.

  20.

  Pfefferkorn left his still-packed carry-on beneath the kitchen table and made himself busy. He sorted the mail, he checked the refrigerator, he called his daughter.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked.

  “For a funeral, it wasn’t bad.”

  “How’s Carlotta?”

  “Good. She says hello.”

  “I hope you’ll keep in touch with her.” Then: “Maybe you could visit her again.”

  “That, I don’t know about.”

  “Why not? I think it would be healthy for you.”

  “That’s how people get sick, on airplanes.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Daddy.”

  “Then what do you mean.”

  “You know,” she said.

  “I really don’t.”

  “Call her.”

  “And say what.”

  “Tell her you had a good time. Tell her you want to see her again.”

  He sighed. “Sweetheart—”

  “Please, Daddy. I’m not stupid.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  “What is.”

  “Having someone.”

  He had heard this before, notably when she was in her teens and reading a lot of Victorian novels. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”

  “I have to get to the market before it closes.”

  “Daddy—”

  “I’ll call you soon.”

  Walking down the drizzly avenue, he had to admire how quickly she had deduced the truth. How did they do it, women? It was nothing short of prophecy. He wondered if that might make an interesting premise for a novel.

  He slung a plastic basket in the crook of his elbow and wandered through the aisles, distractedly gathering the bachelor’s staples: milk, cereal, instant noodles. On his way to the register he passed the floral department and was inspired. A token—a warm hand extended—that was all that was necessary, wasn’t it? If Carlotta wanted to speak to him, she could pick up the phone just as easily as he could. He hoped she wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure he could keep calm. After all, it was only a matter of time before she discovered he had taken the manuscript, and when she did, he would have no ready explanation. Indeed, he couldn’t understand it himself. Why would he, of all people, steal an unfinished novel? He had more than enough of those. But of course he had not known it was unfinished. He had taken it thinking it would wrap up nicely. He told himself that he’d merely wanted to finish reading it. But if so, why take the entire thing? Why not just the last seventy pages? What had he been thinking? He blamed fatigue, stress, grief, postcoital delirium. He argued to himself that he had not stolen but borrowed, and he decided that he would return the manuscript as soon as he had the chance. But if that had been his intention all along, why not leave a note? Why cover up his deed, as he had done, placing the old title page atop a pile of blank paper, so that anyone walking into the room would see nothing amiss? These were not the deeds of an innocent man.

  He walked home. He put away the groceries. He avoided looking at the carry-on, which seemed to radiate with the aura of the stolen manuscript. Hoping to ease his nerves, he moved the bag to the back of the coat closet.

  The website provided the option of including a card with his bouquet, but none of the choices seemed suitable. Neat descriptors—bereavement, thanks, love, apology—did not capture the complexity of the circumstances. In the end, he settled for “Just Because.”

  21.

  “They’re lovely, Arthur. Thank you. I’ve put them on my nightstand.”

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  “I’m so glad you stayed.”

  “Me too.”

  “But—you don’t have any regrets, do you? You shouldn’t,” she said, as if he had answered in the affirmative. “If there’s any lesson to be learned from all this, it’s that life is precious. We could both walk out of our houses tomorrow morning and get hit by a bus.”

  “That would be some rotten luck.”

  “Wouldn’t it, though. My point is we’re too old to get hung up. Be happy now, that’s what Bill always said. Well, that’s what I want.”

  “By all means.”

  “That applies to you, too, Arthur.”

  “I am happy,” he said.

  “Happier, then.”

  “Everything in moderation,” he said.

  “Funny man. When can I see you again?”

  “Come anytime,” he said, instantly regretting the invitation. His apartment was unfit for a woman of any class, let alone Carlotta. “There’s a nice hotel a few blocks away,” he said.

  “Really, Arthur. A hotel? Anyway, I hate planes, they’re so dehydrating. No, I insist: you must come here as soon as you possibly can, and I won’t let you argue with me.”

  “Well—”

  “I know it’s a long trip.”

  “I have a job,” he said.

  “Oh, who cares.”

  It frustrated him, her refusal to acknowledge that forgoing work was not an option for most people. “It’s not that simple,” he said.

  “And why not.”

  “Do you know what a round-trip ticket costs?”

  She whooped with laughter. “That’s your excuse? You silly man, I’ll pay for your ticket.”

  The echo of his argument with Bill was unmistakable, and Pfefferkorn fought to suppress his anger and shame. “Absolutely not,” he said.

  “Arthur,” she said, “please. There’s no need to be prideful.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I’ve said the wrong thing, haven’t I?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve insulted you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Carlotta.”

  “You understand what I meant to say.”

  “I understand.”

  “Only for us to be happy. Both of us. That’s all I want.”

  There was a silence.

  “Call when you can,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “And, please—try not to be angry.”

  “I’m not.”

  “All right,” she said. “Good night, Arthur.”

  “Good night.”

  “Thanks again for the flowers.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “They really are lovely.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. But he was thinking that he should have chosen a more expensive bouquet.

  22.

  Pfefferkorn had a system, refined by many years of experience, for classifying his creative writing students. Type one was a nervous, fragile girl whose fiction was in essence a public diary. Commonly explored themes included sexual awakening, eating disorders, emotionally abusive relationships, and suicide. Next there was the ideologue, for whom a story functioned as a soapbox. This student had recently returned from a semester abroad in the Third World, digging wells or monitoring fraudulent elections, and was now determined to give voice to the voiceles
s. A third type was the genre devotee, comprising several subtypes: the science-fiction hobbit, the noirist, and so forth. Last, there was the literary aspirant, dry, sarcastic, and well-read, prone to quote, with a veneer of calm condescension occasionally (and then spectacularly) shattered by an explosion of nastiness. Pfefferkorn himself had once been of this type.

  Although the last three types were predominantly male, a high absolute number of type-ones led to a preponderance of women in Pfefferkorn’s classes.

  There was a fifth type, naturally, so rarely seen as to not merit its own category, and whose nature moreover rendered the act of categorization irrelevant: the true writer. In all his years Pfefferkorn had encountered three of them. One had gone on to publish two novels before becoming a lawyer. The second had grown rich writing for television. The third taught creative writing at a small college in the Middle West. She and Pfefferkorn corresponded once or twice a year. The first two he had lost touch with.

  It was common for professional educators to say that they lived for the rare birds, a sentiment Pfefferkorn found unforgivably self-important. It was only to the vast, mediocre herd that the actual work of teaching applied, and then only to dubious effect. Talented students had no need of the classroom. Teachers liked talented students because talented students made teachers look good while requiring no effort on the part of the teacher.

  One week after his return from California, Pfefferkorn sat in a room with ten untalented students, conducting a workshop. He did not participate in the conversation other than to nod and to offer smiles of encouragement to the fragile young woman whose story was up for dissection. She wore an oversized sweater with a button that said FREE WEST ZLABIA, and as the criticism grew progressively more rancorous, she retreated into her clothes like a turtle protecting itself, first retracting her arms into her sleeves, then pulling the hem of the sweater down over her hugged knees. Another day, Pfefferkorn might have come to her defense, but presently he was absorbed in worry. He had put his conversation with Carlotta on a permanent loop in his brain and was analyzing it for some hint that she knew what he had done. He couldn’t find any, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gone into the office in the last week. She hadn’t called. Was her silence furious? Ambivalent? Embarrassed? He didn’t know, and he worried. He worried further that he had been too quick to take offense at her offer of a plane ticket. He did miss her. On the other hand, if he was too old to get hung up, he was also too old to become a kept man. That he should have to negotiate with himself for these tattered scraps of dignity was itself humiliating.