The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (73 page)

I retreated to my corner and he stayed in his forever typing, typing, typing, and when I tried to make things better with a tactful smile or an inoffensive remark—even when I came at him with bananas and candy he would get all defensive and slam the laptop shut with that look. He was what you’d have to call vindictive, so after a while I backed off and tried my best to get back to
Deranged All Over Town
which will rival
Bright Lights, Big City
if I can ever get it back on track which, given what happened with the monkey’s novel, gets harder and harder to do.

The little bastard sent it off to an agent without even telling me it was done.

I’d just as soon spare myself the details of what happened next, but since the monkey can’t open bank accounts or deposit checks, not to mention endorsing them convincingly, I’ve benefited a bit. Prada and Gucci everything, as Spud could care less about outfits and frankly, he’s careless about his looks. A specially fitted car seat for trips to public appearances and book signings, where he has generously allowed me to stand in for him. In fact, as far as the world knows it is I, Billy Masterton (that’s the renowned W. B. Masterton, Pulitzer Prize winning author) who did the deed. The monkey has nothing to complain about. He has his very own room in our Brooklyn town house and I bought him three computers loaded with
Storygrinder
in his own special work area that I’ve fitted out so he can write his miserable, best-selling potboilers three at
a time for all I care. Between us, the monkey and I put James Patterson so far behind in the popularity sweepstakes that the man can put his entire staff to work 24/7 and still never catch up on any bestseller list. And if I get the money and the credit?

What Spud doesn’t know, he doesn’t have to know.

The trouble is, this whole mad success up to and including bestsellerdom has me working day and night on the little bastard’s behalf, which means that since it all hit the fan and sprayed money on us, my cherished
Deranged All Over Town
is advancing at the rate of one line a day, and I’m sad to say, the line I finally manage is one I’m so pressured that I don’t get time or space in my head to think it through, which means first thing next morning, I have to delete.

Plus, Spud has me answering every single piece of his fan mail, sending thank-yous for those endless and insultingly expensive gifts and maintaining his pages on MySpace, where he has ten thousand friends, and on Facebook, where he has a mere eight thousand, although my carpals are seriously tunneled just from scrolling through the stuff, never mind the hours I spend virtually sitting in front of W. B. Masterton’s virtual bookstore on Second Life.

And the monkey? I think he just finished this century’s answer to
The Brothers Karamazov
, but with more sex and a lot more guilt. Where does he get off, thinking he knows anything about guilt? He, who smothered my brilliant career like an infant in its crib.

But what’s killing me, if you want to know what kills me, is the blog. I don’t get to see what the monkey writes until he posts it. I sneak looks at his printed works while I’m waiting for his platoons of fans to flood the auditorium where I am speaking, or for booksellers to unbar the doors to let the next wave of frantic admirers in, but that isn’t enough. His work is pretty good, which, frankly, is depressing, but not half as depressing as discovering from one of these gooshy-eyed teenagers or inspired surfer dudes that the son of a bitch has been dissing me on his blog.

If you want to read what Spud says about me, go ahead and read it, you’ll find more than you want to know about our relationship plastered in the pages at:
http://www.wbmastertonauthor.net
.

I only looked the once. After everything I’ve done for Spud, the software and the encouragement and the plush cover for his rotten car seat in the Beemer and the patent leather evening slippers because after he saw mine he wouldn’t stop oook-oooking until I had some especially made for him; in spite of me buying him his very own organ grinder the ungrateful little bastard had the nerve to write this very day:

Those of you who think I know the way to happiness might as well know that success isn’t everything. You may think I am happy because of the American Book Award and all, but as long as I am the prisoner of a shitty writer, happiness is forever and eternally out of reach and if any of you care about me ever, you have to come to my house and
GET ME OUT
.

That to his eight million hits a day, forwarded to all their friends and acquaintances all over the English-speaking world!

OK
, if that’s how it is, that’s how it’s going to be.

Well, if that’s what he thinks of me …

I’ll show him.

The ape’s got four more novels banked in those computers, and even if I can’t crack his passwords, he’s already raking in so much that it’s no skin off my butt if he crashes and bursts into flames, so, cool. I’m fixed for life. I don’t want to hurt the monkey, really, and I won’t hit him with a bill of particulars. I won’t even do the gratifying thing and smash his head in with an ax.

Given the pillow, which I’ve soaked in chloroform, the little fucker won’t feel a thing.

—Asimov’s
SF
, 2010

The Outside Event

I’m supposed to come down and sit in your, like, confession box and spill my … what? Wait! I have to do makeup. So, is this judged more on looks, or is it a performance thing?

All right, all right, this is
not
a contest, but. Really. Gazillion writing samples, audition demos, personal interviews and you only picked twenty of us, how is this not competitive? I am very close to someone who didn’t make it, and believe me, there are feelings … Davy, I love you, think of me as doing it for you!

Hello out there, Audience? Judges? Whatever you are. This is Cynthia LaMott, speaking to you from The Confessional in the re-purposed Gothic chapel on my very first day at Strickfield. What a rush! First I want to thank Dame Hilda for founding the colony in memory of Ralph Strickler, her son, who died. Nobody will say how, but it was awful. Greetings from the great stone castle where many are called but few are, oh, you know.

Mom, they chose me, bad Cynnie, and not Leon, family crown prince and bum playwright, for this expense-paid summer in the castle; if you have to ask you can’t afford it, and fuck you.

Davy was very sweet about it when I got the callback because until last week, he thought we were equals. He’s a poet so it shouldn’t be a problem, but it is. A guy in a white suit hand-carried the invitation up four flights to our front door. By the time Davy and I opened it he was down in the street, getting into a cab. Davy made me jump for the envelope like this was a game, which it definitely is not.

I think.

Mom, it was for me! Time, place and dates engraved, with a note added in that farty, rich-girl handwriting you see in raised silver foil on every Aline Armantout best seller:

Welcome, writer-in-waiting. At Strickfield, you’ll do great things, and this year we’re starting something new! Do come. Your future depends on it.

xxxx A.A.

That’s all.

Aline herself followed up with a phone call, which is how Davy and I knew it wasn’t a joke. I wanted to ask about the
something new
but she said, “Congratulations, you are chosen.” Period. Davy gave me Swarovski crystals to prove he isn’t mad. Real writers don’t have day jobs so Davy maxed out his plastic to cover the rental car plus gas and snacks along the way to keep me sharp so I can sparkle at the Opening Night Banquet. Everybody, it’s black tie!

We drove forever to get here. Strickfield is in the middle of, like, the Black Forest. Who knew it was also shopping hell? No malls anywhere, you can’t even order online. In woods like these, delivery kids get hunted down and eaten by bears, and all the pretty things in their packages ripped to shreds. Riding up here, I could swear I saw wolves running along behind the car. They didn’t peel off until the castle gates opened up and then clanged shut behind Davy’s Zip car like a giant bear trap.

In spite of which this place is beautiful, although there are weird noises coming from the attic and rumors about the Thing in the Lake. Three months, all expenses paid, what could go wrong?

Well, one thing. Nobody warned me
every single dinner is black tie
. If I do this right I’ll be famous, my whole life is at stake and I’m sitting here thinking,
what to wear, what to wear?

See, for dress up, I brought exactly one sexy dress and my Jimmy Choos that I got off a stall, I saw the guy glue in the label himself. Oh, and my present Davy bought to prove he’s
OK
with this—which was big of him, as, whatever the game is, we both know he just lost.

Entre nous
, it’s just as well Strickfield’s just for the chosen, so he’s not allowed to stay. When you’re in love with a guy, the last thing you want is you and him both fighting over the same prize.

I hope Davy gets home all right.

I hope he won’t dump me if I lose.

Unless I’m scared he’ll dump me if I win.

Do I love being a writer more than I love my boyfriend, are we lovers or rivals or what? Not clear. I’m not a poet like he is, so we thought it was
OK
but it isn’t, and that’s just bad.

Which is more important, really, my one-and-only or this thing that I don’t even know what it is, that I have to do? Does wanting something bigger than I am make me a writer or is there more? It’s not like I can make out the size and shape of my ambition, all I know is that I want this, and I want it
BAD
.

Writers work alone but here I am, batched with people who fought, bled
and died to make it here, so what’s that all about? Probably we’d rather hang out than work, so we’re putting off the hard part, where we have to sit down and bash our heads against a wall of words with nobody around to cheer us on. See, at rock bottom what goes on between you and your work is strictly private, in spite of which we cluster in these places, and it scares the crap out of me. Like we’re all in a footrace or a beauty contest, with only one prize.

“We expect great things from you.”
They do. It was on the invitation, but what, exactly, is not written, here or anywhere.

So, are colonies like Strickfield really part of the process? You hear about one person every year when a Strickfield summer ends, and that person starts winning prizes, fame and fortune implied, but what happens to the rest?

I guess you stop hearing about them because the world only wants to hear about winners, right?

Which is why I have to win this thing! No prob. All I have to do is figure out the object of the game—and play the game, but, wait. What if the object of the game is finding out what is the object of the game?

Oooh, camera, I think I know how my novel starts!

Emerging from the dressing room, Stephanie was sweating thumbtacks that penetrated every soft spot in her body. The regulation satin thong gave her a humiliating wedgie. Her heart constricted under the mandated mini-bra. Her perfume stank and her head wobbled under the weight of her towering hair but she had agreed to enter the Miss Universe pageant and now, next-to-naked, she was heading into the blinding light, exposed like this, on the cavernous stage.

Oh, sorry. I was just. Never mind.

It was scary, coming up the walk, like the electrified razor wire on top of the wall was the only thing holding back those monstrous trees. Gnarly bushes loomed like predators crouched to spring. Then Miss Nedobity opened the great front door and everything got worse. Strickfield’s successes publish smarmy thank-you notes to this woman; they dedicate books to her, but she’s famous for being mean and nobody can figure out why sweet Dame Hilda left her in charge.

This pair of heavily armored boobs came out first, closely followed by the lady herself, with her fierce diamond dog collar and her fuck-you smile. She was all, “Welcome, welcome.”

Then she wasn’t.
Wham
, she slammed her clipboard into Davy’s chest. “Not
you,” she said, and ticked my name off. “LaMott. You’re the last. Now, keep this sheet with you at all times.”