by Carol Rose
Mr. Personality
By
Carol Rose
Copyright Carol Rose 2012
Cover image courtesy of - & Dreamstime.com
Cover by Joleene Naylor
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, “fair use” in teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpt), without written permission from the publisher.
CHAPTER ONE
He was screwed. So fucking screwed.
Slamming his agents' reception door, Max Tucker slouched through the door into Ruth's office
“Max!” Ruth jumped in her desk chair. “You startled me. Did I leave the door unlocked again?”
“Yes.” He lowered himself into the seat in front of her desk. He didn’t know why he was here this morning.
Neither his agent, Ruth, nor his editor, Cynthia could do anymore to help him than they already were doing. But he’d been up since four this morning, obsessing about his imminent failure, and he didn’t know where else to go.
“You really ought to keep the door bolted when you’re here alone, you know.”
Ruth ignored this, looking at him with concern in her dark eyes. “Have you been sleeping okay? Cynthia and I are worried about you.”
“Kind, but unnecessary.” What did it matter if he ever slept again? If he couldn’t get himself back on track, he’d have hours and eons to sleep. Now, after thirty-two years of living in the stories that flowed through him, he was bone dry. Empty.
Writer’s block.
The term seemed so inane. How often had he scoffed at others’ invoking that excuse for their own inadequacies? To him words were no different than oxygen, stringing them together had become almost as automatic as the biological processes of his flesh.
He hadn’t felt so completely at a loss for words since…hell, he didn’t know when.
For some reason, a long-dormant memory flashed in his brain. He didn’t often think about his childhood, but this snippet seemed particularly appropriate. Possibly the only other time he’d been so completely unable to express himself was thirty years ago while driving in the car with his father who was taking Max to the tutor’s because his mother had been home with his sick younger brother, Pete.
The silence in the 1969 Ford Fairmont had been excruciating to a more sensitive Max. He’d struggled in vain to find conversation that might interest his aloof father. At the age of three, it was understandable that he couldn’t form the words to initiate interaction with his usually-gregarious father. For some reason, Max’s memory of that moment was vivid. Richard Tucker drove as if he were alone in the car that day, his small son sitting beside him, merely a package to deliver.
Had Max felt even then that his parents’ investments in him were in the nature of socking away money and prestige for their early retirement?
With the habit of years, Max turned his mind away from his past. “How many typist-drones is the employment agency sending me to pick from? Did you tell them I won’t tolerate chatty typists? Or ones who try and fix me up with their daughters?”
Ruth sighed. “Max, your typists always dislike you. You ignore their existence except when you hand them more work. Why would they want their daughters to date you?”
He lifted a sardonic brow. “Think about it a minute. There are certain financial considerations that make even my personality tolerable. Remember the one with the orange hair, six maybe seven months ago?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“She offered not one daughter, but two. It was never clear if our involvement was to be singular or some other, more kinky variation.”
“Hmmm.” Ruth gazed at him pensively.
“And, no, I didn’t take her up on the offer.” He’d never really shared the typical male fantasy of two women at once, but lately there were nights when he desperately craved to be touched physically. No matter how much he told himself it didn’t matter, that he wouldn’t be a slave to his flesh, he longed sometimes to feel a woman’s warm, appreciative hands on his skin. But there was no time now for idle dalliance. When this manuscript was turned in, he’d find a woman who was into sexual companionship without strings.
Ruth shuffled some papers on her desk. “Who you sleep with is your own business. Right now, I’m concerned with getting those legal pads of yours transcribed. Your deadline is getting really close. And, by the way, I think we have a leak at the publisher. Just yesterday, a reporter called me and ask if it were true that you’d missed two previous deadlines.”
“Did you tell him to shove it up his ass? Those damn reporters can pester me all they want, I still think they’re the lowest form of—“
“Actually, I declined to comment.” Frowning, Ruth watched him across the desk. “Are you all right?”
Max lifted his head. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know.” His agent shrugged. “You just seem tense.”
“I’m always tense.”
He didn’t want to worry her more than he could help. Ruth had already requested two deadline extensions and the next delivery date loomed in front of him.
He couldn’t ask Cynthia to stall for him again.
In all his years of writing, he’d never before missed a deadline by more than a day…until this time.
Ruth shrugged again. “You’re not usually this tense. But I guess it’s natural. This typist fiasco can’t be fun for you, either.”
“Nothing to do with typists is ever fun for me. Don’t they have anyone as Haskell Publishing who can do some typing?”
“No. They’re short-handed as it is and Cynthia told me last time she’d never again let you harass her staff into quitting. They tried giving you someone to type for you, remember, and you wouldn’t work with any of them.”
Looking at her with a wry smile on his face, Max didn’t try to defend himself.
“Couldn’t you try typing the book yourself?” Ruth suggested for the twentieth time. “It wouldn’t have to be clean.”
Since his earliest inklings, Max had written on legal pads with a Pilot, fine point, black pen. Nothing else could satisfy him, but the feel of those words flowing beneath his hand, the scratching sound of the pen against paper. Hell, how could he tell Ruth and Cynthia that this was the only way it worked for him? More than anyone knew, he hated having to depend on others to put his books into a format accepted by the publishing world.
He hated needing them. Need in human relationships always led to compromises he felt he couldn’t make.
But the process only happened one way. He had to write, then had to edit, by hand. It was the only way. Like a baseball player who put his clothes on in the exact order before each game, this was his superstition.
“No. I can’t try typing the book myself.”
Ruth sighed, looking at him with worried eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to try again to give me the pages you’ve handwritten. I can get them transcribed and bring the text back to you?”
It was Max’s turn to sigh roughly. “You know what happened last time we tried that. No one can read my damned handwriting. I need to be in the vicinity when the typing is being done.”
“That’s the problem. You don’t like your typists and they then prefer not to be in the ‘vicinity’ where you are.”
After a momentary pause, he said suddenly, “You, Ruth. You could do it.”
“Max, I can’t be your typist. I have a job, a family. Clients, believe it or not, who aren’t you. I cannot be your typist. Besides, I can’t read your writing, either!”
His gaze dropped from hers in silent acknowledgment of her point.
His joy ha
d always come from his words, from the pure, clean crafting of sentence after sentence. He also enjoyed running through the park, drinking endless cups of strong coffee and, of course, having sex with women. There were pleasant moments to be had in this life, but his greatest peace came when falling asleep after a day of upending his visions onto paper.
Ruth shuffled through a stack of phone messages. “Oh. Pete called yesterday after I left.”
It had always seemed ironic to Max that he and his brother shared the same literary agent. As writers, they were most divergent in their work. Actually, the two were divergent in every significant way, and always had been.
They hadn’t spoken in several years. He wished he could miss him, but how could he miss a brother with whom he’d never really connected?
Not once in the last five years had his brother called him, but who would expect him to, considering everything. Still, there was that unshakeable sense of loss that made no sense to Max. He and Pete had never been particularly close.
“Have you talked to him lately?” Ruth asked.
“What?”
“Your brother. Have you talked to him recently?”
The concern in her voice sandpapered a tender spot he’d long avoided.
“What an interesting question,” he said gently. “What do you think?”
Ruth was slow in answering. “I think you’re too isolated, Max. You’re great with my family, and Cynthia’s. Won’t you, at least, try connecting to your own? This feud between you and Pete has gone on long enough. He is your only family, after all.”
Max’s laugh clanked in his own ears, the bone-deep sound of a harsh, cold pain. “I should have remembered that little point, shouldn’t I, Ruth?”
“People make mistakes.”
Her voice was matter-of-fact. If she’d offered him sympathy, he’d have succumbed to the urge to snap back at her. But there was no vestige of pity in her words. Ruth knew him too well after all these years.
“Yeah. Mistakes.” Max kept his own words dry and bored. “One of these days I’ll send Pete a greeting card and mention that.”
“His latest book is doing well. Some people really care about pampering African Violets.”
Max swallowed at the tightness in his throat. “Well, I’m glad. Pete has to eat. It’s good for you, too. More than one string to your bow.”
“Don’t you think Pete misses you, too?”
“I think not.” He turning the conversation back to his principle concern. “How many typist imbeciles to interview tomorrow?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ve arranged for job candidates from two different agencies to come by in the morning. But you better find someone you can tolerate, Max. We’re running out of options and, most importantly, out of time.”
“Yes.” His anxiety conjured up the hallucinations that kept him pacing the nights away. Failure. No manuscript to turn in to Cynthia. No words. No world all his own to engulf him, wrap him securely in its silken web.
Max moved to get up. “Well, I’ll be leaving and let you get on with returning your phone calls.”
“Wait.” Ruth looked at him, indecision in her face. “You know Pete has been divorced for almost four years. You ought to call him.”
Max turned toward the door. “I’ll be expecting the typists at ten this morning.”
He didn’t need this now, the reminder of Pete. While he wrestled with the blank space in his head, his random demons—particularly the godawful mess he’d made of things with his brother—could only confuse matters. Now wasn’t the time to think about Pete.
“He’s raising Ryan by himself, you know,” Ruth persisted.
His hand clenched on the door, Max fought the image that sprung up in his head. The anger on Pete’s face, quickly replaced by bitterness. It was still so fresh in his mind. Damn his visual memory. It was his penance.
“It’s not like my brother wants my help in raising his son. My guess is he doesn’t want my help with anything less than a kidney. Let me know if he needs one.”
“I know you care about your brother.” Ruth was obviously picking her words carefully. “You and Pete are all you’ve got. With both your parents dead….”
Max glanced back over his shoulder, his smile feeling crooked on his face. “Thanks, Ruth. You’re terrific. I’ll try and pick a typist I can live with…,for your sake, if nothing else.”
“I appreciate it. Remember! Dinner tomorrow night. Don’t disappoint the boys by canceling again.”
“No…. I’ll be there.”
Max walked down the hall to the elevator.
Ruth and Cynthia were necessary to get his books out to the public. He liked them both and they were surprisingly tolerant of him. They were pivotal parts of his professional life and, between the two of them and their families, they constituted the only social circle he wanted.
For their sakes, as well as for his own, he had to get his shit together and start writing again.
* * *
“I’m going to make Max Tucker drop his lawsuit. I’m here in Manhattan until he sees me,” Nicole Miller said into the phone.
“That could be a long time,” her friend, Claire, warned.
“I don’t think so,” she disagreed, feeling confidant. “I’m going to inform him about this situation, one way or the other.”
“If you carried a handgun, I’d be worried. Are you sure this isn’t becoming a tad too personal?”
“Yes, I’m sure it’s not personal,” Nicole responded. “This is about my dad not having to face financial devastation in his declining years. Max Tucker just doesn’t have all the facts.”
“How are you going to convince him of that? Tucker is one of the biggest authors in this decade. I read an article on him in People. He’s had bestseller after bestseller. He won a Pulitzer when he was eighteen, for God’s sake. His latest three books have held the New York Times list hostage for months. The man has to be worth millions. People wait in lines to get his books when they first come out. How are you going to get him to ignore your father’s mistake?”
“Dad did plagiarize some of his work, even if we are only talking about a few hundred copies of a ‘business manual’ Dad got my cousin to put on the internet. But we didn’t really get any money out of it and a lawsuit is insane.”
“Your dad can get a lawyer to write him a letter explaining Alton’s situation and promising he’ll desist—“
“I already wrote that letter,” Nicole told her, exasperated. “Remember I showed you their reply? Just more crap about how Dad ‘infringed on Maxwell Tucker’s rights’ and how there has to be some kind of ‘recompense’.”
In the month since the first letter from Tucker’s lawyers, she’d had no luck in making them see reason. Their threats had only escalated.
“Right. Well, the only thing else I can say is--don't buy a handgun. Sometimes you can get too determined.”
* * *
Nicole leaned against Maxwell Tucker’s building as the morning sun rose over the tall, jagged skyline. Even now, heat seemed to rise from the concrete as if the city were a baking stone that held its warmth all night. On the other side of the street, a scruffy-looking guy with cameras festooning his body kept eyeing her.
Trying to look casual while projecting the jaded, confidant attitude of a city dweller, she glanced idly at nothing. With Claire’s stalker-warnings ringing in her ears, she was acutely aware this was the third morning she’d waited outside Tucker’s building. In this big city, however, no one really looked at anyone else. Surely, she wasn’t so conspicuous as to be remembered.
Basically, she was just hoping the doorman didn’t call the cops. If he did, she’d have to use every ounce of her feminine charm to avoid getting hauled away.
The scruffy photographer, still looking her way, crossed the street.
Ignoring him, she hooked her fingers in the belt loops of her pants. This was ridiculous. She was damned tired of sitting out here waiting to pounce on Max Tucker.
A small gathering of people outside the building attracted Nicole’s attention. Three women stood waiting as the doorman swept the rug in front of the door.
Without any active plan, Nicole drew closer, barely conscious of the photographer who now stood only an arms length away from her.
“Hey,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you get a picture of Max Tucker when you go in for the job interview.”
“What?” Nicole moved away from him, nearly bumping into one of the women who waited at the doorway.
“During the interview the agency sent you here for. A hundred bucks,” the photographer hissed, holding a tiny camera out for her. “Just snap a few frames when he’s distracted.”
“No.” She turned away from him. The doorman was motioning the women into the building.
It all happened in a blurred moment. Nicole pulling back from the sleazy photographer, the cluster of women moving toward the door.
Realization burst upon her.
The women waiting at the door were here to apply for a job with Max Tucker!
This was it! She could join the group. The photographer had already assumed she was with the others! Her chance to get in again, to see Tucker again and reason with him. If she could just talk to him face-to-face, she could convince him to drop the lawsuit. Hadn’t she talked herself around way worse situations?
Before she knew it, she was inside the building’s foyer, the skulking photographer on the other side of the heavy glass door.