Midlisters

by Burke, Kealan Patrick

  Dear Jason, thank you for…blah, blah, blah…We found your story very…blah, blah, blah…and would like to run it in our October issue. Please find enclosed a check…

  No bills were paid; no celebrations ensued. I stayed in, put the check on the wall, and sat down at my piece of crap Olivetti typewriter to write some more. More rejections than acceptances followed over the coming months, but that didn't matter. The first acceptance had proved to me that the voice in my head—the one that coexisted with the muse but was decidedly less supportive, created as it was in some dank laboratory from the limbs of my father's cynicism and the flesh of my own self-doubt and insecurity—hadn't been a crazy one, destined to guide me to failure, poverty, and probably suicide.

  I worked, I came home, I wrote. My father's ghost stopped visiting me.

  A year and a half after that, on the subway, I first met the woman I would marry.

  A month later saw the release of my first novel, Cutters Inc. The check for that one isn't on my wall. I saved it for a while, then used it to buy the engagement ring and to finance a down payment on a house. Nothing fancy, or remarkable, just a place that didn't have a bathroom we'd have to share with flatulent neighbors, and where two people could co-exist without killing one another.

  For the first time since that childhood time spent lost in the worlds of long-dead writers, I was truly happy.

  Then I discovered Kent Gray, and paranoid insecurity, and my life went to pieces all over again.

  Chapter 4

  My wife was at work when I got the call.

  It was winter. We were long enough moved into our house to feel comfortable there, but not long enough to know where everything was, or to be sure the movers hadn't busted and stashed anything. Some of my books and clothes were still in boxes, but there was no hurry. Nobody was going anywhere.

  Or so I thought.

  Kelly was a schoolteacher at the local elementary. I wasn't quite able to support us both on my income, though sales figures for my third novel, Black Ribbon 'Round Her Neck, were good enough that it might be possible soon. Nevertheless, if we'd had to, we could have scraped by, but Kelly didn't work because she had to. She enjoyed the kids, whereas I didn't even enjoy hearing about them. Give me ten minutes in a classroom with a bunch of shrieking hyperactive third graders and I'm liable to rupture something, or someone. But I played the part of the husband well, seemed to have a surprising aptitude for it, as a matter of fact. Plus I loved her, so listening and faking interest while she enthusiastically regaled me with details of her charges' exploits became a necessary ritual, and one I knew was important to her, just as boring her to death with details of my work and the business surrounding it was something I needed her to hear, needed to tell her, even if logic suggested there was no valid reason why she should care about any of it.

  Heavy snow made a staticky TV screen of my office window, the white world out there bland enough not to distract me from the task at hand—the seventh chapter of my newest novel A Time of Good Shear. The words were coming hard and fast and murder was proving easy when the phone rang. Cursing at the interruption, I forced the end of a sentence that up until the shrill intrusive sound hadn't required conscious thought. I was "in the zone" as those nauseating fitness gurus like to say. With a sigh I pushed myself away from my world, away from the desk and trudged to the phone, which sat like a fat black cat atop the back of the leather couch, waiting for someone to mount it on the wall where it belonged.

  I collapsed onto the cushions, and reached behind me to snatch up the receiver, then pinned it between my jaw and shoulder while I reached for the paperback spreadeagled on the floor beside me.

  The cover was slick, tasteful. All white, with the silhouette of a naked woman in cobalt blue on the right, a man's sparkling eye superimposed on her back. On the left, a cerulean alien sunrise. Above the artwork, in large blocky raised lettering, was the author's name: KENT GRAY, and beneath, in smaller similar font, the title: CYCLOPEAN HEART.

  "Hello?" said a woman's voice into my ear.

  "Yeah, sorry. Hi."

  "Is this Mr. Tennant?"

  "It is."

  The book wasn't mine, rather something Kelly had picked up on her last trip to the store. She was an avid reader, thank God, or we'd never have tolerated one another, but her taste in material was pretty awful, to me, anyway. But then, it would have been.

  "Sorry to bother you, Mr. Tennant."

  "You're not."

  "My name is Audrey Vassar. We exchanged some emails recently?"

  I looked from the book to the wall and narrowed my eyes. After a moment, it came to me. "Aureoles, right?"

  "Aurora," she corrected. "The New England Aurora Convention."

  "That's right. I'm sorry."

  "I'm calling to ask if you'd be interested in attending this year's convention as a guest of honor?"

  I set the paperback down on my chest, and blinked. "Guest of honor?"

  "Yes. We've already booked George R.R. Martin, Kent Gray, and a number of other prominent writers in the science fiction field."

  I picked up the paperback again, inspected it a little more carefully this time.

  "This year," Audrey continued, "In response to some criticism from attendees, we've decided to branch out a little and include some horror writers in our lineup. You know, to see how it goes, with a view to making it a permanent thing."

  "Right." Nothing like being made to feel special. Funny thing is though, I did. I'd watched people I considered lesser writers appear at conventions all over the place for so long I was starting to develop a complex, and here at last I was being offered a piece of the pie. Not that it meant a whole lot at the end of the day, and it certainly wasn't going to do my career a lick of good, but what you learn after as many years as I've spent in this business is that the little things count. They count as good things when everything else is deep-fried diarrhea in a basket. Things weren't that bad at the time, weren't bad at all, but my pride and vanity could be pretty high maintenance at times.

  It didn't take long for that tiny malformed butterfly of excitement in my stomach to morph into a dollar sign. Not that I was expecting much in the way of compensation. What worried me was our already shaky bank account. Our heels hadn't even cooled in the new house yet, and I wasn't sure I could spring for a trip to Baltimore, so I asked, "And what does this entail exactly, expense-wise?"

  "Free room and board for the weekend. Your meals will be covered, and we can offer you $300 toward your flight."

  Fuck the flight, I thought immediately. I'll take the money and drive my ass up there. And then: But I bet they offered Martin and Gray a hell of a lot more than that. Maybe even a first-class ride on an air-o-plane built for two.

  "Go on," I urged, and she did.

  "We would of course issue free weekend passes to the convention itself for you and a guest, and though we encourage participation in at least one panel, you're certainly not under obligation."

  No kidding, I thought. "So when is this?"

  "The last weekend of this month."

  "This month. That's not much notice." I made it sound as if I was mulling it over, when really I was looking around the room and wondering why the hell I'd agreed to let Kelly paint my office sky blue. Blue. Maybe a cobalt blue woman with a peeper in her back would break the monotony of it. I made a mental note to ask Kent Gray's opinion if I met him at the convention, the name of which I'd forgotten already.

  "Mr. Tennant?"

  "Yes, sorry, I was just checking my schedule."

  "If it doesn't work for you, I'll underst—"

  "No, it does," I said, maybe a little too hastily. "And if it turns out I have a conflict, I'll put the other thing off. But for now, yes, pencil me in." Maybe I went a little too far there, but hell, it wasn't like I was accustomed to this sort of thing. At that time, rained-out book-signings at Waldenbooks and apologetic glances from store clerks who mispronounced my name Tenn-ant like it was the opening couple of beats of
the Pink Panther theme song was about all I'd had to deal with.

  "Great, I'll put you down, and email you the rest of the information, if that's okay."

  "Sure. Thanks."

  "Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you there."

  She hung up, and so did I, but then immediately dialed my wife's work number to inform her of the news.

  The school receptionist answered with her usual fly-in-a-megaphone drone. "Halliwell Elementary School. Linda speak—"

  Excitement drove me to interrupt and penetrate the purple-rinse beehive of a haircut my imagination conjured up for "Linda" with my request sooner rather than later, or before her sonorous voice knocked me unconscious. "I need to speak to Kelly Tennant please. It's an emergency."

  What I wasn't expecting to hear was: "I'm sorry. Mrs. Tennant isn't here."

  "Isn't . . ? Then where is she?"

  "At lunch."

  I checked my watch. It was lunchtime all right. A half-hour in.

  "Do you know where she's having lunch?"

  "I'm not allowed to—"

  "Sorry, what I meant to say is: Is she having lunch at the school? In the cafeteria, or wherever it is you people eat."

  "No, she's not on the premises, but I'm not allowed to say where—"

  "This is her husband."

  "I understand, sir, but school policy—"

  I hung up. Dialed Kelly's cell. I wasn't mad, wasn't frustrated, just impatient to share news few people would or could appreciate. In truth, my wife probably wouldn't either, not like I did. All it would mean to her was that it meant something to me, and that would be enough. It was one of the many reasons I loved her. I felt a rush of excitement at the same time the dial tone ended and her voice, slightly distorted by static, came on the line. "Hey you."

  "Hey," I said. "You at lunch?"

  "I am. I was just going to call you."

  "Good timing. Hey, where are you? Maybe I can get my fat ass down there before you're back in class."

  She laughed, my favorite sound in the world. "That would be a little odd, wouldn't it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The kids, sitting around us while we canoodle in the cafeteria. I'd never hear the end of it."

  My heart became the school bell, rung a single time, the vibrations traveling through me, as if I'd fallen asleep on a bus with my head against the glass. "You're in the cafeteria?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  "I just called the school. They said you were out."

  Silence for the briefest of moments, but it may as well have been an hour because it shouldn't have been necessary. There was no need for a pause for thought, which I suspected had been just long enough to compose a quick lie. I held the phone away from my ear for a moment, not entirely sure why I was doing it, but it felt like the appropriate action, as if her untruth might deafen me, and looked around the room through eyes that seemed to take a split-second longer than usual sending the images to my brain. All I could think was: We're married six months. We moved here from nowhere. We're happy. She loves me. She's not the type. She wouldn't do this. You're being a moron. But forget ye not that for many years I had dated girls I didn't pay attention to, and treated their duplicity with indifference because I had no emotional investment in them, so I knew it when I saw it, or heard it, or didn't hear it. The difference here was that I did care about Kelly, and didn't like one bit the cold feeling that was worming its way through my guts in the vacuum of her momentary pause.

  "I was out," she said. "I just got back."

  "From where?"

  She scoffed, and the hole she was digging breached the water table. "Marco's. With a few of the teachers."

  "Which ones?"

  "Why the third degree?"

  "Just taking an interest."

  She sighed, and it rumbled over the phone. "If you're having a tough day at the keyboard—"

  "I'm not. I just called because I had news."

  "Yeah? What is it?"

  I know it sounds childish, but the taut, defensive tone of her voice in the wake of my inquisition left me unwilling to tell her. My enthusiasm was gone, the butterfly flutter of excitement pounded down into dust. I'm a natural skeptic, a natural cynic (in case that hasn't been made obvious) but I'm also reasonable. I try not to jump to conclusions, and really, in the short space of time I'd been on the phone with my wife, there were any number of them I could have jumped to before the worst one. But I didn't, maybe because everything had been going a little too well and I half-expected something to go wrong.

  "Forget it," I told her, sourly. "I'll tell you when you get home."

  "Are you all right?"

  Peachy. "I'm fine. Talk to you later."

  "Okay. Love you."

  "Yeah. Me too."

  She should have pushed, insisted on hearing the news I'd called to tell her. That she didn't only added to the crawling feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, that our union, which I had been content to let sail along as it was, had, without my realizing it, entered choppy waters.

  * * *

  Her next mistake was in coming home right on time after school, something she never did. In doing so now, she only proved to me that whatever ordinarily delayed her, it wasn't anything that couldn't wait. Which meant, she stayed late by choice, or for some other reason I wasn't privy to.

  She entered the house bundled up in a thick dark brown coat with light brown fur collars and cuffs. The former hue matched her hair, the latter, her skin. I was where I usually am—at my desk, if not writing, then perusing various online message boards, or doing research (all right, I added that last part to make me sound more interesting. I don't do research. If I come upon something I don't know enough about, I make it up).

  "Hey," she said, stamping snow from her boots.

  "Hey." I didn't look away from the screen. Instead I clicked onto a message board I knew was dark, so I could watch her reflection.

  "You eat yet?"

  "No."

  "Hungry?"

  "A little."

  "I'll make us something then."

  "How was your day?"

  "Good. Yours?"

  Jesus, we were like office workers with adjoining cubicles instead of husband and wife, exchanging niceties and spinning preamble, all in the hope that this simple perfunctory conversation would delay the inevitable argument.

  "It was all right."

  I heard the rustle of her hanging up her coat on the stand in the hall, saw in the reflection, her sweater ride up to expose a margin of flesh that despite myself, sent a thrum from my groin up to my sternum. She grew bigger in the screen as she came to stand at the door, arms folded. "Jase?"

  "What?" I clicked on a message link, pretended to be interested in what was there to be read.

  "Jason."

  "What?"

  "Look at me."

  With a dramatic sigh that made it clear she was asking a lot, I swiveled round in my chair, and folded my arms.

  She was smiling slightly, looking absolutely like the beautiful woman I'd met on the subway back in New York, the woman who I'd caught staring at the book in my hands, her head tilted slightly, eyes narrowed as she tried to make out the title. I can't even remember what that book was, and after two seconds of looking at her, I think I might have dropped it. In a bold, uncharacteristic move, I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink. She turned me down. Quelle surprise—I'm no Kent Gray—but she did promise to attend the next signing I had in New York. To me, that was as gracious a rejection as I had any right to expect, but a month or so later, at a signing in some crummy side street store in Brooklyn, there she was, with a smile and a copy of Cutters Inc. in hand. She later confessed she'd never read anything of mine and harbored a suspicion it wouldn't be to her taste. Coming from anyone else, at any other time, I'd have been disappointed, maybe even a little insulted, but instead her confession encouraged me. After all, if she had no interest in my work, what other reason did she have for being there if not to
see me? After the signing we went for dinner, then a drink, then I went back to my ramshackle apartment alone and she returned to the house she shared with her husband. She left him six weeks later, and despite the nagging desire to call her and offer my comforting shoulder and anything else she might need, I held off, exercising previously untapped levels of patience. Three more weeks passed. I buried myself in my work, forcing myself not to think about Kelly, or how much writing time I'd wasted imagining the impossible.

  The first weekend of the following month, she called.

  Then she came over.

  Then we made love for the first time.

  Life was good.

  "Is that a smile?" she asked, tugging me from thoughts of better times, and I cursed myself for letting it possess me, however briefly.

  "Why'd you get so angry today when I asked you where'd you been?"

  She shrugged. "I didn't get angry. I just didn't like the sound of the question."

  "And how should it have sounded?"

  "Like it didn't come from my ex-husband."

  I started to say something hurtful in response to that, but trapped it behind my teeth. Instead, I shook my head, and turned back to the screen.

  "That didn't come out right," she said, frustrated. "All I meant was that Alex was the suspicious type. I couldn't drive to the grocery store without him asking me who I spoke to, and why I was gone so long."

  "And why were you?" I kept my eyes on her reflection, my hand on the mouse, clicking on links that could have been for gopher porn for all I knew.

  "Why was I what?"

  "Gone so long."

  "To be away from him, I guess."

  "That why you're doing it now? To be away from me?"

  Her reflection suddenly filled the screen. She was right there behind me, her hands on my shoulders. "Can you please look at me when I'm talking to you?"