Pocket Kings

by Ted Heller

  Yes, it’s that bad.

  (I’m not only jealous of other writers, I’ll have you know. I’m jealous of anyone successful in any field. I also resent Caravaggio, Mariah Carey, Warren Buffett, LeBron James, Niels Bohr, Charlie Parker, Lionel Messi, Julia Child, Thomas Edison, and Erwin Rommel.)

  Beverly has had two novels published: the first got good reviews and was on the Times best-seller list for four weeks, which is exactly four weeks more than either of my books was on it; the second, to my delight, got very bad reviews. (“Loved it!” was what I e-mailed Beverly about the first book. “Couldn’t put it down!” was what I e-mailed her about the second. The truth was, I’d never even opened either one.) Her first novel was about the struggles of a wealthy Boston family dealing with false rumors of child abuse, the second was about the struggles of a writer dealing with her family after she’d written a book about a family dealing with false rumors of child abuse. The same old story: hardly any imagination in the first book, a lot less in the next.

  Had Bev’s second book done well, I suspect she would have stopped acknowledging me completely. But as of now she can’t: she’s just one more failed novel away from being me.

  I walked past a Starbucks and saw her inside, firing away at a laptop. She tapped on the window, beckoned for me to come in. She can spend all day writing and reading now: her first book was just then being made into a movie, so she has the money and the time. No more office jobs for her. She kissed me on the cheek (she’s my height and thin and has a nose too aquiline for an eagle) and asked me to sit down, which I didn’t. There’s something a little insane about her eyes, and she takes books and writing much too seriously, more seriously than terminally ill patients take their own diseases. More than once I’ve had to say to her: “Bev, calm down . . . they’re just books for Christ sake!”

  “So? Writing anything?” she asked me after being gracious enough to not mention my newly minted double chin. (I had put on about five pounds since discovering online poker.)

  Has someone told her, I wondered, that I’m not writing anything and she just wants to hear me say it aloud? Conversations between two writers are like two dogs casually sniffing each other’s rear ends and then, ten seconds later, gouging out each other’s throats.

  “No,” I said to her, “I think I’m through.”

  “But your first book was so great!”

  Did you catch that? Did you hear what she just said? My first book was so great. Implicit in this is: the second one sucked. I could have said the exact same thing to her, but she was the one holding the hot coffee.

  Obviously she, like billions of others in this world, never read the second book. She probably never even read the first.

  “Hey,” she said, “this is so weird seeing you. A friend of mine . . .”

  A friend of hers, she went on, named Jill Conway had a first novel coming out soon; the galleys had just been printed and Jill needed it blurbed. Quickly. Beverly had read it and it was “very promising and funnyish and quite brilliant” and “sure to make a huge splash.” This Jill Conway, who’s only twenty-seven, “absolutely adored” Plague Boy and “practically has whole chapters of it memorized.” Knowing that Bev knew me, Jill had asked her to ask me to read it and give it a nice line or two. “I was just about to call you, Frank,” she said to me. She reached into her handbag and pulled out the galleys to Joltin’ Jill’s novel.

  The name of the book, I saw, was Saucier: A Bitch in the Kitchen. Jill, Bev told me, was a graduate of the Cornell College of Wine and Cheese and Reduction Sauces, or whatever it’s called, and this was a roman à chef about toiling in upscale New York restaurants, the kind of places where they spend weeks training svelte, vapid girls how to not answer the phone. The book, Beverly said, “is going to do to restaurants what Plague Boy did to fatal epidemics.”

  “Is it pronounced ‘saucier,’ ” I said to Bev, rhyming the word with mossier, “or ‘saucier’?” rhyming it with flossy hay.

  “That’s the thing!” she said, dark eyes twinkling neurotically. “You pronounce it the way you want to!”

  Uh-huh.

  The book, coming in at a slim 198 pages, was placed in my hands, and the smell of a book in galleys quickly vanquished the aroma of lattes, macchiatos, frappuccinos, and the nearby bathroom’s suspect plumbing. It’s a truly terrific smell, but only when it’s your own book. If it’s someone else’s, it’s like changing the diapers of somebody else’s baby.

  I promised Beverly, who’s never done one single thing wrong to me other than have the gall to be more successful, that I would take a look at it. I’ve got, I said, nothing else to do.

  “You’re really not working on anything?”

  “Well, I have a book out there now. You know, making the rounds.”

  I told her that Glenn Tyler at Lakeland & Barker had turned it down but called me a Master of the Suburban Mimetic and compared it to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, and she was pretty impressed. (I left out that my book had given him a kind of spiritual rash.) I said I’d e-mail her a copy.

  “You know,” she said, “Deke Rivers is a friend of mine. He runs Last Resort Press . . . they’re the most prominent self-publishing house in New York. You could—”

  “Nope. Let’s drop that idea right away please.”

  After being paid money for my first book, after being paid a lot less for my second, paying someone to print my third was doing a face plant on rock bottom and was out of the question. I once worked at a Friendly’s and would prefer going back to wearing a hairnet and making Fribbles.

  I knew she was just trying to be helpful and I thanked her.

  “And the Plague Boy movie?” she asked.

  “Nothing new on that. The script’s been written. Pacer Burton is still going to direct.”

  “So what do you do with your time then?”

  Do I dare fess up? Should I keep this to myself? Ah, why not . . .

  “Well, Bev, I play poker online, to tell you the truth.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  My lack of words, expression, and movement indicated to her that, no, I wasn’t kidding.

  “So, uh, do you win at least?” she asked.

  “I’ve won over twenty thousand dollars. I won three grand just before I ran into you. In about twenty minutes as a matter of fact.” Shaving off twenty minutes just to make her ill.

  I watched her calculate: Hmm, it takes me two months to write a short story. . . . if the short story gets published I maybe get two thousand dollars for it. . . . this untalented lug who takes his next lunch more seriously than literature wins more than that in less than an hour???

  Fifteen minutes later I was home playing poker. On the wall over my desk hung a post-Impressionist self-portrait of a young, hopeful, homesick man in Paris suffering a headache; on the wall behind me was a smaller fauvist still-life of a pear in a bowl. (These two paintings were mysteries to all who looked at them.) I sat out of a hand (Foldin’ Caulfield had just thrashed my two Jacks with his three Jacks, which he slow-played to perfection) and opened up Saucier.

  This is how it begins:

  An hour late to work I’m riding the D train in a short tight black BCBG skirt and not only do I feel Seth the Sommelier dribbling down my right thigh but I also see some of Antonio the Busboy sticking to my left calf.

  Okay, this might be just my kind of book. Food, sex, New York City, food, depravity, and more food. Maybe I’ll actually read it. Maybe I’ll even like it. I hadn’t read a book since I’d handed my new one to Clint Reno and have, in fact, had tremendous difficulties buying any other authors’ books since the Times, Time and The Boston Globe demolished Plague Boy. No, I couldn’t even pick up another person’s book—sudoku included—until my own was sold.

  I gave Saucier a shot though. I read fifteen pages of it, about the same length as a New Yorker article about the history of the Ipswich clam or an Adam Gopnik essay about how well-read Adam Gopnik is. By page fifteen Janie Carter—J
ill Conway’s Ivy League–educated, sauce-stirrin’, scallop-peelin’, busboy-bangin’ protagonist—had already had sex with four men, two of them in a restaurant kitchen and one near the day-boat scallops section of the Hunts Point Fish Market, and had purposely placed a booger, a heaping teaspoon of her own saliva, and a pubic hair in a Béarnaise sauce, an order of cassoulet, and a side of sautéed squid, respectively. Ten more pages of this and I’d never eat anything but a homecooked meal again.

  Three days later I e-mailed Beverly:

  Read the book. Loved it! Couldn’t put it down! Here’s the blurb:

  “Pungent, rich, and delicious, Jill Conway’s exquisitely prepared Saucier lingers on the palate like a well-remembered ten-course tasting meal. It is the most mouth-watering first novel I’ve read in quite some time and will leave the reader ravenous for more.”

  Hope she likes it.

  In the tit-for-tat world of Big Time Literature, I tried to think of some sautéed squid quo pro I could possibly extract from Bev for this. After all, what if the book wound up stinking and sinking, like the aftermath of a well-remembered ten-course tasting meal? If so, I had quite possibly endangered my own good (but rapidly plummeting) name by associating it with this novel. What back-scratching could I get from Bev for the risk I was taking?

  A week later—a nice week in which I called in sick two days and won three-thousand dollars online—your bootlicking memoirist e-mailed Beverly:

  Darling Bev . . . need a favor and it’s a small one. Can you e-mail Clint Reno and pls tell him you adored “Dead on Arrival”? Pretty please? It might light a fire under his butt. I haven’t heard from him for a while. Thanks. He’s at: creno@renobroslitagency.com.

  Oh yes, attached is the book itself! Hope you do like it!

  And that was the tit that I’d get for the tat. Five days later (it had taken me three days to read Saucier and get back to Bev—even though I’d never really read it—but it took her five days to read my e-mail?!), she wrote me back, telling me she’d e-mail Clint first thing and that she couldn’t wait to read DOA. “Soooo excited,” she said, “to see the Master of the Suburban Mimetic in action! And don’t forget, if all else fails, there’s Deke Rivers at Last Resort Press.”

  Grrrrrr.

  There is rarely a time of day when Cali Wondergal and Wolverine Mommy aren’t logged on to the Galaxy. They’ve become best friends and know everything about each other. Whether I log on at 8 a.m. or 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. (a cyberstalker’s dream, the site tells you which of your buddies are on and then helps you locate them), they are usually online. They may not always be playing or chatting, but they’re on. Even when Cali, her husband, and kids went to Paris for a week, she was still playing poker. While her family was out taking in the town, she was in her hotel room with her laptop, trying to take away people’s money and talking to Wolve.

  People became friends and sometimes more than just friends.

  Another person who seemed to always be on the site was a terminally effervescent player named Bubbly Brit Bird, aka Bubb, Bubbly, or just BBB. She lived in some windy, wet town in Cornwall, was in her early forties, had never married. She was chatty and loved to laugh and was logged on to the Galaxy at times when it was impossible for her to be playing: 10 p.m. my time, which was 3 a.m. time her time. But there she was. Playing. It seemed she never slept. Often she’d be at a table with a player called Pest Control. Bubbly’s usual avatar is the Blowsy Housewife, a once milfy but now gone-to-seed woman in her forties, and Pest usually played as the leathery-skinned, flinty-eyed, ten-gallon-hatted Cowboy character. Whenever I’d scroll down the screen of tables to see who was playing where and with whom, BBB was with Pest, who had made a ton of money in the extermination business in Edmonton before retiring at fifty-five. Pest was married and a father of three.

  It’s a common practice for players to create private tables (or “PTs”) in the Galaxy; all it takes is a few clicks. These tables can be for two or for ten; the main thing is that the person who “built” the table decides who to let in and who to keep out. A virtual velvet rope of one’s own.

  Private tables are the No-Tell Motels of the Galaxy although the walls, ceilings, and bed sheets are all transparent.

  Bubbly’s round-the-clock perkiness was alarming. Not only was she always awake, not only was she always logged on, but she was always in a great mood; she loved everyone and effused joy the way that George W. Bush did befuddlement. Other than a few flirty remarks, Bubbly and Pest just seemed to be friends, friends who’d never met or spoken to each other.

  I was playing for—and losing—real money in Medium one afternoon when Second Gunman appeared. He didn’t fully click in to play; he just sat at the table (and watched me quickly dump another five hundred).

  “At the hotel now,” he told me. “YLO.”

  (He was informing me his Yellow Light was On; he could talk now but at any moment his boss might show up. GLO meant the coast was clear and he could chat; RLO meant he couldn’t.)

  The river card was dealt and I lost $300 to two sixes.

  “Chip, you have to come to a FMT in L straight away!” Second said. (A Fake Money Table in Low—Low being the very cheapest tables.)

  “Why? I’d much rather lose real money here,” I said. And I wasn’t kidding. Somehow, losing a load of real money is a more fulfilling experience than winning a little bit of fake money.

  “It’s Bubbly and Pest! They’ve got a PT. It’s just them! You gotta suss this out ASAP!”

  Second Gunman vanished and, after losing $200 with another hand of pure squadoosh, I vanished, too.

  It only took a few clicks to find Bubbly Brit Bird’s PT. She was playing as the sultry Dragon Lady in the red cheongsam, and Pest was the Cowboy, aka Tex, Hoss, or Clint. They had no idea I was watching. Or that Second Gunman was watching. Or that perhaps 25,000 other people around the world may also have been spying on them.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: positively sopping wet right now 4u.

  Pest Control: you’re wearing blk?

  Bubbly Brit Bird: blk bra, baby, and blk knickers. nothing else, phil.

  Bubb’s real name was Georgette. Pest’s was Phil.

  Pest Control: georgy my georgy. my sweet georgy. r u touching it?

  Bubbly Brit Bird: y. but w/what? guess.

  Pest Control: your fingers? pocket rocket, lover?

  Bubbly Brit Bird: n. a /toothbrush. the bristly end. where the paste goes. :)

  Bubbly Brit Bird wins $80 with two 7s and two 2s.

  Something suddenly popped up . . . it was a dialogue box on the lower right of my screen. Second Gunman was IM’ing me beyond the earshot of Bubbly and Pest.

  Second Gunman: Can you feckin believe this, Chip?

  Chip Zero: This is amazing! I didn’t know Pest had it in him. I really didn’t.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: what would u do 2 me if u wuz here w/me, baby?

  Pest Control: i’d turn you over and start massaging your neck. slowly. v slowly.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: oooh. can feel your strong hands all over my back. mmmm.

  Pest Control: now I’m going lower with my hands. lower, lower, lower.

  Second Gunman: Any lower, Chip, and he’ll be in bloody France!

  They continued playing cards and playing with each other. She unbuckled his trousers and he massaged her. While he kissed her and she moaned, she won the hand with a heart flush. After dropping $300, Pest turned her over and showed her how aroused he was, which in turn aroused her further. He was sexually multi­tasking all over her body, massaging her back while playing with her nipples and fingering her. Unless he was an octopus, it was physically impossible but they were enjoying it . . . and so were Second Gunman and I.

  Chip Zero: Second, I don’t claim to be any kinda of expert at these sort of things but I daresay I think these two are going to shag!

  The following then popped up on my screen for five seconds:

  Plague Boy by Frank W. Dixon

  Amazon.com Sales Rank: #590,949 in
Books

  Yesterday: #584,253 in Books

  And then:

  Love: A Horror Story by Frank W. Dixon

  Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,158 in Books

  Yesterday: #672,273 in Books

  Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:

  The Missing Chums The Hidden Harbor Mystery Freedom

  Bubbly cut the foreplay short; while he was busy telling her how he was licking her ears, she informed him that he was already inside her. As soon as he said that, all the massaging and licking stopped, though they did continue to play poker.

  Bubbly British Bird: still rubbing self w/bristles. getting close, baby. u feel so good 2 me. go slow, go slow. want 2 feel u deep inside me. mmmmmm. o yeah. o yeah.

  Second Gunman: This is getting too hot, Chipper. I may sneak off for a wank in one of the hotel’s linen closets. GLO btw.

  Bubbly British Bird wins the hand with three 3s.

  Bubbly British Bird: ohhh baby i’m so close now. so close. o yeah o yeah o yeah. yes. yes. your [sic] getting close. cum w/me, lover. cum w/me!

  Hoss and the Dragon Lady stayed still. They didn’t bet, fold, or say anything. Other than some loud panting I stayed silent. The silence lasted a minute. It was like a scene out of Ovid: almighty Zeus and some supple demigoddess were going at it deep in the woods of Arcadia, and all the mortals and fauns in the world had stopped what they were doing to peep in on it from behind the bushes.

  Pest Control, you must act or you will be disconnected. Either call, raise or fold. You have 30 seconds!

  Pest Control: oh god. i just came. whew. jesus. wow.

  Bubbly British Bird: me 2, lover. :) w/my toothbrush. LOL.

  Pest Control: really? you really did? promise?

  Bubbly British Bird: yes, phil. promise.