Midlisters

by Burke, Kealan Patrick

  I chuckled at that, then caught myself and glanced at my passenger.

  "Well, I'm glad you enjoyed my work."

  "Oh yeah. It was good stuff, man. You done more since the Raw Red one?"

  "One since then. It's in the box. Help yourself."

  "For real?"

  "Sure."

  "That's awesome, man." He slapped his knee as if I'd just cracked a joke. Maybe it was because he had just bought my ego a round, or because we were almost at the hotel, despite the setbacks along the way, but my attitude toward him had thawed considerably.

  "Can I get you to sign them for me?"

  I mulled this over, until I knew he was starting to worry that he'd offended me by adding a request to a free ride and free books.

  He hadn't. I was plotting. "Sure," I said, finally. "But do me a favor?"

  "Yeah, no problem."

  "Ask me again when we're at Kent Gray's table."

  Chapter 7

  I guided the Pontiac into the only space not taken, pleased to see that someone had placed miniature cones around it, and hung a small laminated sign on a chain that read: RESERVED FOR J. TENNANT. Still buoyed a little by Walt the Ex-Druggie's flattery, the parking reservation made me happier than it might otherwise have, and I sat for a moment with the engine off, flirting with childish glee until Walt cleared his throat.

  "Well man, I appreciate the ride, and the books and everything."

  "No sweat."

  "I'm going to take off."

  "Sure. Don't forget you need those books signed."

  Frowning, as if he still couldn't fathom why I had specified the exact location for this to take place, he nodded and scooped up the books—a copy of Black Ribbon 'Round Her Neck and Raw Red Smile, which he'd requested despite his claim that he'd already read it. "I'll see you later, man. Thanks again."

  "Anytime, Walt."

  I watched him hurry through the biting cold to the main entrance of the hotel, where a lanky bespectacled guy in heavy clothing stopped to check his ticket, which Walt produced with a flourish. Satisfied, the ticket master stepped aside and went back to looking officious on probably the only day of the year he was allowed to, a feat made easier by the temperature. His demeanor changed considerably however when flashed the guest ID badge Audrey Vassar had mailed me. His red cheeks almost creaked as they rose to accommodate a yellow-toothed smile, and he shook my hand with a vigor that made my fillings rattle before clipping my ID to a festive-looking chain and looping it around my neck.

  I entered the warmth of the hotel feeling a thousand leagues more confident than I had leaving the house only six hours earlier, until I remembered I'd left the cell phone in the car. And that got me thinking about Kelly again, and whether or not there was any point in calling her. I decided to preserve my burgeoning contentment, at least for a little while, and try again later.

  The lobby of the hotel, not plush and certainly homely, had to be judged by the quality of light, the size of the room, and the ill-glimpsed swatches of pale yellow flocked wallpaper, as the crowd obscured anything that might have impressed. Still standing just inside the door, but off to the side so I could observe with being overtly noticeable, and nestled in a twilight of artificial amber light and winter shadow, I studied the throng of bodies. Despite their number, only a low, almost reverent hum of conversation emanated from the nucleus of costumed folk, who seemed possessed of an animation and purposefulness usually expected of auctioneers at Sotheby's. This energy only served to make the lack of obnoxious chatter all the more incongruous, as if they were waiting for something.

  Dispelling all self-deceptive illusions that I might be a contender for their anticipation, I circumvented the crowd and headed for what I quickly deduced was the great haven of all lost men who have woken up to find themselves among aliens and androids in The Androgynous Zone—the bar.

  "Jason?"

  I had scarcely stepped foot inside, the door still groaning shut behind me, when I found myself being approached with some urgency by an attractive older woman clutching a clipboard. She had pushed away from her place at the long low mahogany bar like a swimmer from a pier, her outstretched hand slicing through the waves of cigarette smoke as she closed the distance between us.

  "Jason Tennant?"

  I nodded somewhat dumbly, and shook her hand. "Yes."

  Her grin widened, now bereft of the slight uncertainty that had been censoring the corners. "Audrey Vassar."

  "Ah, Audrey. Hi," I said, allowing myself to relax. "Good to see you."

  "Good to see you too." She gave me a charming smile and did a quick hair flip I might have taken as flirtation ten years ago when I had more hair and better teeth, but presumed was slight nervousness now.

  For some reason her voice on the phone, which in truth still sounded prerecorded in person, had given me the impression she was in her fifties, overweight, and not particularly attractive, but I was wrong on all counts. She couldn't have been more than forty, and if she was she hid it well. Her light brown suit and cream-colored blouse complemented her hair, which was a lustrous, wavy blonde that fell to her shoulders, where it curled inward in a style that suited her heart-shaped face. She was lightly tanned, and hazel-eyed, with a small mole like a period above her right eyebrow. I couldn't help but wonder if the location of that mole, above rather than below her long thin nose, had kept her from being a model, where it seemed careers were decided based on the position of such things, for she certainly seemed to fit the bill in all other respects.

  If she noticed my longer-than-appropriate appraisal, it didn't show on her face, but I checked myself and scratched my jaw.

  "Sorry I'm late. Car trouble."

  "No problem at all. Would you like a drink?"

  "I'd love one."

  She led the way to the bar, which I saw was occupied by a peculiar mixture of harried looking men and women—regular guests of the hotel (who looked sorry they'd chosen this weekend to check in): the occasional bouncer brooding over a presumably non-alcoholic beverage while practicing the mean look that guaranteed his paycheck, a couple of teenagers made up to look like sexless creatures from some science fiction show of which I was blissfully unaware, a guy or a girl in a remarkably convincing Chewbacca suit, a pair of youths in black pants and T-shirts, who looked like they'd just finished their shift behind the bar, and a duo of middle-aged men in suits conferring over a stack of papers. There were people in the booths lining the walls around us too, but the haze of smoke and poor lighting in the bar reduced the occupants to muttered voices, coughs, and the occasional clink of a glass.

  Audrey leaned over the bar and raised a hand until a morose looking youth with gel-set black hair and an eyebrow pierced with what appeared to be a railway spike from a model train set sighed his way down to us.

  "Vodka tonic," she said in that flat no-nonsense voice, and I added "Beer," when prompted. Then, as the maudlin barman tugged his languid gaze from Audrey's ID badge to mine, and set about the apparently strenuous task of fulfilling our order, I waited for Audrey to sit, then joined her.

  "I expected to see you lugging a box of your books around," she remarked. "Or have you already deposited them in your room?"

  "Nah," I said. "I didn't bring any. Figured anyone who'd be interested would already have them."

  She nodded her understanding, then unclamped a sheet of yellow paper from her clipboard and set it before me. "The weekend schedule," she said. "As I think I mentioned before, you don't have to attend anything. It's all optional, though naturally your fans will expect to see you at some stage."

  "Let's hope they're all drinkers then," I said, and chuckled. She laughed along a moment later, but there was concern on her face, which I quickly alleviated by telling her I was joking. Even though I wasn't yet sure that was the case.

  "We have a panel specifically for horror writers too," she went on, drawing one polished fingernail down the page to Saturday's event schedule. I leaned in close enough to smell her perfume, and
saw what she was indicating. HORROR IN LITERATURE: VIOLENCE AS AN ARTFORM. I tried to restrain a wince. "Given the style of your work," Audrey said. "You'd be perfect for this." She raised her hands. "No pressure, of course, but it is within your field of expertise."

  Coercion through flattery.

  "You've read my books then?"

  "Oh no," she said, with a grimace. "I haven't the stomach for that stuff. My husband does though. He's got all of your titles." She reached into the breast pocket of her jacket and produced a pack of Marlboros, one of which I planned to cadge from her until I realized they were menthols. "Interesting covers though," she finished, with a wink. Oddly enough, the impulse to be offended at her obvious repugnance for my work didn't rise as expected. Maybe it was because she'd qualified it by saying her old man enjoyed it, or because she was distractingly pretty. Then again, whenever people tell me they don't like my books and in the same sentence tell me they've never read them, I find solace in the fact that they're repelled by the preconceived idea of what awaits them. That they're probably right doesn't factor into it. At the end of the day, they're really only criticizing the sub genre, and my lurid covers, not the words within. I don't like your writing stings a lot more.

  "Well, tell your husband he has impeccable taste in literature."

  Cigarette lit and already trailing mint-scented smoke from her mouth, she nodded.

  The barman arrived and deposited our drinks with an expression on his face like he'd just delivered to us his own organs, and Audrey raised her glass in a silent toast.

  "How do you operate a convention while soused?"

  She gasped. "I'm not soused!"

  "I wasn't saying you were, but it's a bit early for vodka, isn't it?"

  "Listen buster," she said, narrowing her eyes, the fake threat offset by her smile. "I'm the only one around here who'll be able to tell when I'm crocked, and for your information, it actually helps to be somewhat out of it at these things."

  "Really?"

  She took a hearty swig from her glass, then cocked her head at the people around us. "Hell, everybody else is."

  Endlessly amused, and more than pleasantly surprised at Audrey's affability, I laughed and took a sip of my beer, my life at home rapidly fading in my mind to a postcard I could set aside to review later, when the company was not so interesting and my head was fogged with alcohol. Let's be clear though, Audrey was certainly attractive, as I have more than made clear, but I had no designs on her, and wouldn't have had even if she'd been single, and interested. In another life, maybe. All right, definitely. But in this one, I was merely enjoying her company, which, considering I'd envisioned a weekend spent floating from room to room enduring the disappointment of fans whose enthusiasm and drunkenness had led them to mistake me for someone else, was certainly a welcome development.

  I watched her blow smoke out one side of her mouth, then abruptly her face fell as she caught sight of something over my shoulder. "Shit." I started to turn, but her hand fell on my knee, sending a jolt of not entirely unpleasant electricity up my inner thigh. (Yeah, I know what I just said about interest, but I'm also a guy, all right?) "Don't look," she murmured, and did her hair flip thing again as her smile returned and she beckoned for me to move closer, ostensibly to consult the schedule with her, but really to avoid having to acknowledge whoever was coming.

  "So, you're leaving Sunday?" she asked, louder than was necessary.

  "That was the plan, yes," I replied, trying to stifle the smile at this sudden charade.

  "Hmm. Well maybe I could put you down for a reading tomorrow evening then, maybe right after the panel, if that's all right." She looked at me and her gaze snapped to the air over my shoulder, then back to me. "It would be the perfect time, I think. Don't you?"

  The urge to laugh was almost painful, and I put a hand over my mouth, watched her lips do a funny dance as she tried not to be infected by the grin.

  "I do," I told her in a wobbly voice, and she might have laughed then, had not the object of her dismay stepped close enough for me to smell his aftershave.

  "Ms. Vassar?" inquired a soft voice, and we both looked up. The man before us was a tall, anemic-looking sort, his wide expanse of brow peppered with dry skin, sallow cheeks bisected by a bulbous nose that looked like a support group for divorced capillaries. A weak chin hung flaccidly beneath a thin-lipped mouth that was crooked by uncertainty, maybe even embarrassment. What little hair he had was badly dyed and combed back, allowing a pair of large jug-handle ears to dominate his skull. His surprisingly sharp and clear green eyes moved from Audrey's face to mine.

  "Hello," he said meekly, and offered his hand, which I shook. It was cold and clammy. He didn't, however, offer his name, but I recognized him as one of the two men who'd been stressing over paperwork at the far end of the bar. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but if I could have a word?" he asked, casting his apologetic glance from me back to Audrey.

  "Well, I'm kind of in the middle of something," she said sweetly. "Perhaps later?"

  "Oh sure, sure," he said, and nodded furiously. "I really didn't mean to interrupt. It's just my room."

  "Your room?" Audrey inquired, and I noticed her hand was still on my knee, then saw our guest notice too, though he tried not to.

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "Well…" He winced, as if he really did not care to be such a bother. "The toilet seems to be broken."

  "Oh." Audrey put a shocked hand to her mouth, but there was a smile behind it. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

  The man smiled. "It's really not a big deal. I shouldn't even have made an issue of it."

  "No, no, you're absolutely right to come to me. I'll have a word with the receptionist and get her to send someone up to take care of it as soon as possible. Room 31, isn't it?"

  "Yes." He did a kind of half-bow, and flashed a set of perfect teeth at us. "That's really very good of you, and I'm sorry again to have intruded."

  "It's no problem," I told him, and Audrey nodded her agreement.

  With another of his bows, as if someone had surreptitiously bestowed knighthoods on Audrey and me, the man headed out of the bar. Before the doors swung shut, I saw a young man stop him in the hall beyond and shove a hardcover book and pen in his face.

  Audrey sighed and went back to her drink. "That's the third time since he's been here that he's complained. Last time it was that someone seemed to have thrown up in the elevator. Turned out to be a bag of fries someone had stepped on"

  "Valid concerns, though."

  "And you wonder why I drink."

  "He seems harmless enough. Who is he?"

  "Maurice Satzenberg."

  "Never heard of him."

  "You wouldn't have. He writes as Kent Gray."

  Chapter 8

  I once met Stephen King at a signing (his, not mine) in New York, and his indifference to me might be why I went off his work in later years. It never occurred to me that he might have been jetlagged, or hung over, or just plain tired of scratching his signature out on the thousands of books that were dumped in front of him, or that he only had so much tolerance for star struck fans who seemed to think, as did I, that he owed them a piece of his soul for all their support over the years. At the time, I figured that since I bought, read and enjoyed his books, I deserved some of his time, forgetting that in writing the book, he'd already given it to me, maybe a year or two, or three, and also forgetting that he wasn't just some magical writing machine impervious to the trivial concerns of human beings. I wouldn't realize any of this until later, until I was on the other side of that table, with fewer fans, but as many troubles.

  What had taken me by surprise, however, was how he looked in real life. On the back of the book clutched in my feverishly trembling hands—The Shining, if I remember correctly—he was dark-haired, heavily bearded, and young. The man hunched over the table in that bookstore was painfully thin, gaunt, and beardless.

  There were resemblances sure, but I couldn't tell how many of them we
re because I was innately aware that they were the same person. Kent Gray looked nothing like the picture I'd seen of him on his website, my Google searches, or on the back of Cyclopean Heart. There he'd been heavier, even slightly pudgy, tanned that dubious George Hamilton shade that seems to come from a squeeze-tube rather than the sun, and which emphasized the whiteness of his immaculate teeth. His eyes had been piercing, alight with intelligence and humor. A full head of jet-black hair had been flattened down and coaxed to the sides, parochial style, and his pose, hands clasped around an Annie Proulx novel, had been one of contentment, making him appear as if the photographer had interrupted him while he was busy being perfectly at ease with the world and everything in it.

  Only discovering that Gray was actually a blind transvestite midget from Cuba would have shocked me more than the revelation that he was in fact the pitiful-looking and socially inept man who'd just slouched out of the bar.

  "You're fucking kidding me."

  Audrey, taken aback by the coarse disbelief in my tone, followed my gaze to the closed door, and frowned. "What?"

  "That was Kent Gray? The Kent Gray?"

  "Yes." A possibility she hadn't considered seemed to dawn on her and she bit her lower lip. "Oh…are you a fan of his? If so, I'm—"

  My laughter was like a gunshot that ripped through the ambiance of the bar and made heads turn. Audrey herself jumped and looked around to see how many people had noticed she was sitting with a loon. I raised a hand in apology, and composed myself, but my smile was an indelible one.

  "I'm not a fan. No. In fact, I'm as far from being a fan of that man's work as you can probably get."

  "Thank God," she said with a shake of her head, and went back to her cigarette.

  The glee abated a little when it dawned on me that all along, my envy and burgeoning hatred had been directed, not at the sad sack that had just left my company, but at the words said sad sack had produced, and while his outer shell may have atrophied noticeably, how likely was it that his talent had? There was Kent Gray, and—