Pocket Kings

by Ted Heller

Lying rat bastard. I knew it was him and not Vance!

  But two weeks later I e-mailed him:

  rmmbr me? yale babbo anti-antioch williamsburg greenpoint subfuscus? long story short i signed w/other agency. the carpenter group? their interest was genuine, solid, enthusiastic. the book was sold. $350,000, which is about $349,999 more than I thought i’d get. it drops in april. movie deal also done. $1,900,000. sorry, dude. maybe next book? peace.

  joey k.

  On Christmas Day, right after we opened our presents, I told Wifey of my plan to go to London alone for three weeks and work nonstop on the American Nightmare Trilogy. I was going to throw myself into this, I told her; every second of every day was going to be about writing and I was going to tap every creative cell and tissue in my body even if I had to turn myself inside out. “You don’t want to be there,” I warned her. “It could possibly get very ugly.” I said that after this nonvacation vacation, I would definitely need a rest and threw out Tahiti as a possibility. As I’d suspected it would, her face lit up when she heard that and she told me she would think about it.

  “I hope this is okay,” I said. The floor was covered with wrapping paper, opened boxes, mink-lined leather gloves, and a new pair of size six Jimmy Choos, and Celine Dion was wailing “Oh Holy Night” and the only thing glistening brighter than Cynthia’s green eyes was the electric Baby Jesus teetering on His side on the treetop.

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “Tahiti sounds great!”

  I knew she’d see it that way.

  I was so touched by her excitement and her urge to be with me that I wanted to drop London and head to Tahiti with her that night.

  “So where will you be staying?” she asked.

  Now, thanks to poker, I could afford an expensive hotel in London. But I didn’t want her to know where I would be, just in case she decided to pull the surprise of a lifetime and drop in on me (and Artsy). Also, as unbelievable as this may sound, I wanted a place where I couldn’t get access the Internet so easily . . . or at all. For not only would I be there with Artsy but I really was going to London to write. To ensure this, I decided I wasn’t going to bring my laptop, which had become such an integral part of me that it was like leaving my liver at home. I would just bring pens and pads and the Trilogy.

  I’d be kicking it Old School.

  “I was thinking of the Connaught,” I answered. “It’s a very writerly place.”

  The next day I called a respectable three-star hotel off Brompton Road in Knightsbridge. It certainly wasn’t the Connaught but it wasn’t a youth hostel either.

  “Do the rooms have free broadband access?” I asked the reservations clerk on the phone.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid we don’t.”

  “Well, how much would it cost per day?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid this hotel does not have it. We do have modem ports though. They’re rather dreadfully slow.”

  “Perfect. I’ll take it.”

  I booked a single room for one week, then a double room for me and APG for two weeks. Three weeks. No laptop. No poker. A huge part of me would be dead. For a while. In the pit of my stomach I felt Dostoyevsky’s firing squad line up and take aim.

  “I’m not going to bring my laptop either,” Artsy e-mailed me the day after Christmas.

  (Although holidays drastically reduce the number of people who play poker online, there still can be found plenty of sorry losers playing on Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, Yom Kippur, New Years Day. I had noticed this because I was one of them.)

  After I booked a flight that left for London on February 15th I unleashed the second wave of my attack; fifteen more editors and agents got e-mails from me. Of those fifteen, only five wanted to read DOA, and of those five, three told me it just wasn’t right for them; the remaining two never returned my e-mails or calls. I didn’t understand that: couldn’t they even write me one single sentence telling me they hated it? Wasn’t rejecting people—people who’d spent years writing their books—and reducing them to tears one of the grand perks of the job?!

  Years ago, after writing the first three hundred pages of Book 2 of the Trilogy, my flight from London back to New York was an hour in the air when I realized—panicking out of my wits—that I’d accidentally left my carry-on bag, with the five legal pads it was written on, on the security conveyor belt back at Heathrow. But it didn’t matter. Back in New York I sat down, tuned in, and hammered it out of me, every page and every word, right into my Commodore Amiga. Two months later British Airways returned my carry-on bag to me: there inside were my five legal-size pads, as well as some unused Durexes. Comparing what I’d written in London to what I’d tried to remember, I saw that they were virtually identical. Absolute magic.

  So I wasn’t worried when I could not find, despite turning my apartment upside down, the keys to the storage closet where all my past writings were kept. Yes, I could go to the storage facility and show them my driver’s license and prove that I was really me, but I knew that once I wrote the words “Things were very bad then but still we carried on,” the rest would pour out of me like blood spurting out of a severed artery. (If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in a labor camp could commit to memory entire novels that he hadn’t ever typed, then I could do the same to novels I had typed not in a labor camp.) It would be just as it was the first time: I’d sit down at the library, take out my pad and pen, and let it flow. And I’d hone and polish it as it came back to me. Just as Michelangelo said that within a hunk of marble there was a statue waiting to be carved out, on the empty lines of those yellow pads lived my masterpiece, waiting, in Van Morrison’s lovely words, to be born again.

  “I’m with you in London now,” Artsy IM’ed me a few days before my flight. “We’re in our hotel room and it’s cold outside but my head is on your chest and we’re damp and naked. Far from the madding crowd, baby, we are with each other at last. At last.”

  Soon we would be eating food cooked by Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay and walking arm in arm down Regent Street, loaded down with shopping bags, the smoke on our breath entwining in the air. I had seen her in a bathing suit at the Nirvana and soon I would see her all bundled up in a shearling, scarf, and fur hat, and I’d see her in nothing at all.

  A few days before my flight I was playing poker and winning a lot, trouncing everyone—it was the day I went over $320,000 (only $80K more to go before I’d stop playing for good)—when my Love: A Horror Story Amazon ranking flashed in front of me. I had gone, I saw, over the one-million mark. Not a million books sold, but somehow there where 1,000,251 books higher ranked than mine.

  Who knew that so many books had ever been written? But they had been, and they were all kicking my book’s ass.

  Then I saw I had a new e-mail. I didn’t recognize the sender’s e-mail address at first—jtall@bhb.com—but a few seconds later it came back to me: Jim Tallman, Bedlington House Books. Bedlington was a boutique publishing house (that is, they paid their authors very little, nobody who worked there made much money, and hardly anybody read the books they published) and I’d sent him three queries about six weeks before. When he didn’t reply I’d called him and gotten him on the phone and listened to him squirm while I asked why he hadn’t replied. “Okay!” he caved. “I’ll read your book!” I e-mailed him DOA a minute after that, and then he never got back to me. No longer the shy, retiring, pussyfooting type, I began sending him e-mail. “So?” went the first one. “Read it yet?” went the second. “Well, did you finish it and if so, what are your thoughts?” was the third. “Come on!” one of the last ones said. “Talk to me, Jimbo!”

  I opened up his e-mail now and tried to make sense of it.

  Toby:

  Can’t believe you ever actually worked with that pest. In a word: UGH.

  Jim

  P.S.: I’ll let you know when I’m free. It’s busy here.

  I scrolled down to the e-mail from Toby Kwimper to Jim that Jim thought he was replying to.

  Jim:

  If I wer
e you I’d just e-mail him back a nice brief note saying that the book wasn’t for you. After that, you could relocate to a city far away and change your name and profession. BTW, you’re not the only one. At least three other editors have told me about his irritating behavior in the last few weeks.

  Toby

  P.S. Yes, a lunch is in order. Just tell me where and when.

  It made sense now. Jim Tallman was looking to Toby Kwimper, my former editor, for counsel. Below Toby’s e-mail was Jim’s initial e-mail to him about me, which had started it all.

  Toby:

  Toby, hello. I’m writing you because I’m in a bit of a predicament. Frank W. Dixon has badgered and harangued and begged and beaten me into submission so that I’ll read his new novel. I don’t know if you are good friends with him or not but, frankly, he made a massive nuisance of himself.

  I cannot read the novel. I gave it to my assistant but she said she was so turned off by the first ten pages that it viscerally upset her.

  He keeps e-mailing. He seems like someone who longs to hear the word NO, but I just do not want to be the one to do it.

  HELP! and let’s have lunch sometime.

  Jim Tallman

  Bedlington House Books

  Jim thought he was replying to Toby but he had the thought of me—the pest, the irritant, the massive nuisance—so much on his mind that he’d sent it to me instead.

  That correspondence hurt but not as much as it should have. I don’t remember the exact date, but a long time ago I gave up on being loved by everyone.

  I didn’t mind being a private nuisance, and I certainly didn’t mind viscerally upsetting anyone, but one day I discovered I was also a public nuisance. I was scrolling down through gawker.com one day when I came across:

  Don’t you just hate it when you haven’t written the Great American Novel but you think you have? Doesn’t it disgust you when your first book gets a lot of undeserved publicity but doesn’t sell and then your next book gets even less publicity and sells—oh, at last count, what was it—zero copies? What to do? You write a third book and when even your own agent shreds it, you shop it around yourself. We kind of like it that you harass every tweedy, bespectacled, martini-swilling, self-loathing editor on Grub Street. God knows, they have it coming. But now they’re getting so riled up . . .

  continue reading »

  I didn’t continue reading. I was humiliated, I had brought it on myself, I had it coming, but that didn’t make it any better, and besides, all those editors deserved what they got, too.

  My jihad was over. The original idea, years ago, had been to establish a reputation with three minor books, then get the American Nightmare Trilogy published. Now I was going to turn that on its head. The Trilogy would get Dead on Arrival published and the rest would be history. I wouldn’t harass any editors anymore. Not for a while at least.

  Now I knew what it was like to be a door-to-door vacuum salesman, the guy that barges in, dumps a handful of dust on the floor, then sucks it all up and makes the sale to the housewife. But I was selling myself and it hadn’t worked. No, I wasn’t the vacuum salesman, I wasn’t the vacuum. I was the dust.

  On the morning of February 15, I kissed Cynthia good-bye when she left for work. She wished me luck, told me to call often. I told her I would . . . though I didn’t let on I’d be calling just to make sure she was in New York and not in London.

  When we parted, once again I felt all the warmth sucked out of me at once.

  I spent the rest of the day—never taking a break—playing poker. It was like an alcoholic going on a binge the day before checking himself into rehab. I lost, lost some more, lost more than that, climbed back up, struggled and fought and wound up $10 ahead. Ten hours for ten dollars—a mockery of the minimum wage. The walls of my apartment faded out, I wasn’t really sitting on a chair at a desk in the Western Hemisphere on Planet Earth . . . I was light-years away, floating semi-comatose in an opalescent nebula of real-time gambling space.

  I had to be at the airport in two hours and decided to eavesdrop.

  I saw History Babe and Wolverine Mommy and Second Gunman at a table yukking it up. Cookie joined them and played a bit. Then Hist left and got a private table with Hands Brinker and he told her how much he wanted to lick her all over. I saw Bjorn 2 Win win four grand from a table full of irate Spaniards. Bjorn was, of course, a sore loser but an even worse winner and really rubbed it in. “I hate this game,” one of the Spaniards said, “but I hate you even more, puta!” A few minutes later I saw Kiss My Ace and Boca Barbie talking in cutesy little poems to each other. It was like watching two kids feeding each other cotton candy.

  In ten minutes the Town Car would be downstairs, ready to whisk me away to JFK Airport and to London, to the small library in Kensington where the Muses would sing to me and I could pour out all my soul’s honey and fire, and into the arms of Artsy Painter Gal.

  I was just about to leave when I came upon Pest Control and Bubbly Brit Bird.

  Pest Control: oh god no. i wasn’t ignoring you! i wasn’t.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: well? please. talk 2 me. what’s wrong then?

  Pest Control: it’s not good. i’m haven’t been home for a few weeks, georgy. not good.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: where are you then?

  Pest Control: in hospital. and i’m not getting out.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: oh god, i’m sorry, phil. my sweet philly.

  Pest Control: emphysema. very very bad. i’m on oxygen. a tube most of the time into my throat but it’s no use, georgy. it’s very bad.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: why didn’t you tell me this? you know how much I care about you. all the times I couldn’t find you here i thought you wuz avoiding me.

  Pest Control: i just didn’t want you to know. don’t want u 2 feel sorry 4 me.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: but i care! oh, i feel so bad for you, philly. are you in pain now?

  Pest Control: pls don’t feel bad for me. i’ve had good life. and i got to know u at the end. you made me so very happy, okay? :-))) not much pain. just v. tough breathing.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: is there anything i can do? u have no idea how much u mean 2 me. i can fly over and see you. i know your wife is around but maybe you could sneak me in?? just for 1 sec? i want to see u!

  Pest Control: my sweet georgy. not enough time for that. not much time left at all.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: oh my phil. i miss you. i miss you. pls don’t go.

  Pest Control: i’m sorry. i wasn’t avoiding you. never would do that. just v. sick, that’s all.

  Bubbly Brit Bird: pls, phil. tell me if there’s anything I can do. anything at all.

  Pest Control: just play a few hands with me now. that’s all i want. we’ll play. okay?

  14

  Ice Cold

  Arriving in London on a cold and gusty Friday morning, I took a taxi to the unspectacular five-floor Royal Brompton Hotel where my drearily appointed room looked onto a narrow sidestreet on which stood an Indian restaurant, a fish and chips joint, a French bakery and launderette.

  I permitted myself that day and the weekend to take in the city. The plan was: three days of tourist stuff; then five days of solid nonstop writing; then Artsy would arrive.

  I stuck to my draconian diet, having only white rice for dinner the first night. During the day I walked about fifteen miles, all in a frigid wind. As I walked, small scraps and then whole sections of Book I of the Trilogy came back to me, word by word, paragraph by paragraph.

  I didn’t miss poker at all.

  Saturday it got colder, but I went to three museums and ate a half a scone in the morning and more white rice at night. I was hungry but resisted the impulse to eat, even with the curry, croissant, and fish and chip aromas drifting in from across the street. The second day I walked nineteen miles and on Sunday I did it again. By evening my lips were chapped and my back and calves throbbed with an invigorating agony.

  I would stop now and then at shops, cafés, etc. (Every once in a while a
n Internet café would pop up but I walked by; I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where one click could bring me to a table.) All the bookstores, I’d noticed, had this one particular book in the windows; it was written by a writer I’d never heard of before, Gerald Waverly, and was called Nuts. I must have seen a hundred copies before it dawned on me I was looking at the same book each time. It had a picture of a hand of poker on the cover . . . yet even then I didn’t think of poker.

  By Sunday night I must have walked fifty miles, and I took a bath so hot I thought it might set off the hotel’s sprinkler system. Was it my imagination or were my corduroy pants hanging looser? The last thing I saw before going to bed was the snow starting to fall, slashing down on the empty street and the awnings below.

  I woke up Monday and trudged two miles through the falling snow and the two feet of already fallen snow to the library in Kensington. The whitened city was turning whiter, but I couldn’t wait to sit down and get started, and it was if the decades had never passed and I’d been sitting in the library only the day before, forging my groundbreaking masterpiece.

  CLOSED TODAY DUE TO BLIZZARD, a sign on the library door said.

  I began another long walk and bought a heavy-duty parka and tundra-strength winter boots on Oxford Street. At twilight the snow stopped falling, and the layer on the ground, with the light dying on it, turned toothpaste blue. Icicles formed on Westminster Abbey and the Victoria Albert Museum and by late evening the snow was dark gray. I stopped into an Internet café on King’s Road, but not to play poker. There was only one e-mail of note; it was Beverly Martin telling me to contact Susan Jessup, the young authoress who idolized me.

  That evening I called Greg Nolan of Norwich Cairn and left a message on his voicemail, asking him if he’d set up a reading for me and if so where and when.

  On the way to the library the next morning I stopped into a bookshop that was just opening up. I picked up a copy of Nuts: How I Bluffed, Deceived, Scammed, and Defrauded Strangers, Enemies and Very Good Friends and Lied to Just About Everybody and Won £2 Million Playing Poker. Below the title was the phonetic pronunciation of the word “nuts” and three definitions—it was styled like a dictionary entry. The first definition read “in poker, the very best hand possible.” The second was “testicles, bollocks.” The third definition was one word only: “insane.” I read the jacket and discovered that this Gerald Waverly had written a “searing, scathing, scalding and hilarious” memoir about online poker. To protect his identity, his face was not revealed in the jacket photo: the tall stacks of pounds, euros, yen, and dollars in his hands cleverly concealed his face.