Trance

by Christopher Sorrentino

  “OK.”

  “The third reason is that our undisguised motivation is profit. We actually make money on the bleeding newsstands. No Pulitzers for us. We have the space aliens and we have Satan. For all their glistening Pulitzers, has the bloody New York Times ever had space aliens and Satan? I think not.”

  Guy hangs up the phone.

  Adventure No. 1

  After waiting in a glum chamber filled with books from the prestigious house’s current list and decorated with a bronze wall relief depicting the publisher’s famed Irish setter mascot, Red, Guy is ushered into a meeting at Stumpf requested by Borden Cratty, a managing editor still riding high from his stewardship onto the national bestseller lists of Party Games* (*for adults only), a book that, according to insider gossip, single-handedly rescued the marshmallow and whipped topping sectors of the processed food market from unprofitability in the third and fourth quarters of 1972. Cratty, an apparent dwarf, wears hand-painted ties and smokes cheroots and grabs Guy’s hand in both of his, drawing him into his office and seating him across from a man he introduces as Standolph “Libby” Tinsby. “Libby” is Stumpf’s “longsuffrin corprate counsel,” and he’s “got a lil ol Q ‘n’ A for yall.” Guy settles into his chair.

  “In light of the recent Clifford Irving hoax that turned out so unfortunately for our colleagues at McGraw-Hill, we would like to make absolutely certain that you are indeed in authorized possession of, or, alternatively, soon to be in authorized possession of, a legitimate manuscript written or cowritten in substantial measure by ac— tual representatives of the apparent breakaway state of Symbionia.”

  “I actually don’t believe it’s a nationalistic-type sobriquet—”

  “Well praps they alld like that.”

  “Accordingly, we have taken the liberty of drafting a set of affidavits, a representative sample of which I hold in my right hand, that in pertinent part affirm that each individual signing thereto is a citizen or denizen of Symbionia maintaining an active role in the events described in the proposed Narrative.”

  “Aint this just the silliest damn thang but you know we gotta cross the tees and dot th ahs—”

  “In addition, there is one supplementary affidavit, to be executed by the individual presently d/b/a Tania, affirming that indeed she is, or at any rate was, Miss Alice Daniels Galton.”

  “Yall can understan that. I know it.”

  “Incidentally, these affidavits and any other legally binding documents that set forth terms or an understanding of any nature between Stumpf and the Symbionese are understood to be governed by the laws of the United States of America. That is, such documents do not recognize Symbionese authority, such as it is. Ha-ha.”

  “Oh, Libby. Haw.”

  “Naturally, the signatures that the Symbionese attach to these af–fidavits will need to be witnessed by a notary public certified by the state or commonwealth in which each Symbionese currently maintains his or her principal domicile.”

  “Jest a precautionry measure. A mere formaldehyde, as they say befoe any undahtakin.”

  “Then and only then can Edgar E. Stumpf & Co., in consultation with its parent company, Gulf & Western, take under consideration the possibility of contracting to put into published form the proposed Narrative authored by Guy Mock, Junior, and the Symbionese.”

  Guy simply rises and walks out of this one, bringing Cratty scurrying at his heels.

  “Guy! What can I say? They are havin evry one of us fo breakfiss since Irvin fucked it up for evrybody with that fuck-ass Howd Hughes book. Fake it! I don care. You are goin to have a Irish settah rampant across your spine! The spine of your book, that is! I swear it!”

  “We seem to be experiencing a bugger of a connectivity problem,” says Hume. “Occurs each and every time I ring you up, it does.”

  “Maybe you should talk to the transatlantic operator.”

  “Ho!” says Hume, delighted. “I’m in South Florida, I am. Let me relate a thing or two about me life in this earthly paradise. At this very moment I’m watching a bloke wrestling this absolutely smashing marlin onto the dock of the marina whilst seated in a plastic chaise longue. He’s seated, that is. I’m on me feet, riveted, steaming up one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows here in me bleeding breakfast nook, a glass of fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice from concentrate in me hand. The brute must weigh twenty stone. He’s a real brute, he is. Soon I’ll step out onto the deck to rub coconut oil on me pale British flesh, submit it to the blandishments of the tropical sun. This is far in excess of what I dared imagine for meself, for me future, as a small lad growing up in a gloomy scheme, it is. Far, far indeed.”

  “Try the operator,” says Guy. He hangs up.

  Adventure No. 2

  Small & Grey asks for the book. But there is no book. “I have got to have something to give to sales,” says the editorial director, Jane Pancake. “If I don’t have something to give to sales, they’ll laugh me out of their tiny, windowless offices. Loud eruptions of braying laughter accompanied by derogatory comments about the way my legs look in sheer hose, which really is nothing I can control. When I was at Wellesley, we weren’t even allowed to say ‘hose’ except during Punt Hill Week. There’s nothing to be done about these men. So, no, gaga as I may be over the concept, I simply can’t go to the salespeople on this one empty-handed. Though I think it’s got all the makings of a sure winner.”

  The next day the phone rings. “I was caught between floors in the elevator with a large, lupine specimen of our sales staff, and he smacked his lips with loathsome satisfaction as he advised me that he’d heard that I’d rejected what promised to be one of the Blockbuster Books of ‘76. I’m not sure which book he meant. Perhaps it was yours. ‘Pack up your desk, piano legs.’ That’s what he said, nice as you please. So do you think you could dash off something that I could cringingly tender to the sales oafs and messenger it over here? One colorfully descriptive page, single-spaced, ought to do the trick.” Phone rings. “Try as I might, I simply can’t see those chattering rifles, that flaming tumbledown bungalow, those writhing wounded, those oppressed masses—though surely I would like to. Really, how can you ask me to put myself on the line with those storm troopers in the dimly lit realm of sales? They call me ‘Chain Pantsuit,’ did you know? Everyone knows. I’ve devoted my adult life to the kind of quality literature that possesses a strong potential for a mass-market paperback sale, but they don’t care. Look up scumbag in the dictionary and there’s a group photo of our crack sales staff. A bunch of chauvinists who can’t stand the fact that a young woman from Larchmont with big feet and several small but nonetheless persistent obstacles in her path has managed to rise very near if not actually to the top in a man’s game. According to them, I should have gone into educational television programming, if you can believe it.”

  A letter arrives the next day telling Guy to meet Pancake at her office off Union Square. “Look out the window. See those junkies down there in the park? One of them is actually Ed Sforenza, ‘our’ sales manager. How does a man like this come to represent the interests of the old buttoned-down gentlemanly house of Small & Grey? A house with its origins in the decorous wards of Boston’s Back Bay? If I dared to show my face wearing a soiled overcoat like that I’d never be invited to another book party again. These men don’t care about book parties. They loosen their ties and drink canned beer out of paper bags right on the sidewalk. This is what I’m up against. This is a fact many people are aware of. Even if they are afraid to say a single word. What have you got for me?”

  She sits on the edge of her desk and pulls the typewritten proposal from the envelope, breathing, “Onionskin,” disenchantedly, before settling in to read, fidgeting and slapping the empty envelope against her thigh. She looks up abruptly.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to hurry out of my office and down the stairs if you please. If anyone spots you, tell them that you work in maintenance or that you’re simply a mugger lying in wait for
a slow-moving elderly person ironically taking the stairs for his health. Don’t mention my name under any circumstances. Honestly, if you haven’t yet come up with something that I can deliver to the sales staff without ducking, I don’t think we’ll be playing music together, that’s the phrase?”

  Guy shrugs.

  “They’ll be Xeroxing dirty pictures of my private parts on interoffice memo paper again. Drawings, I mean; highly exaggerated and inaccurate drawings. Hurry now. Get out.”

  That afternoon the telephone rings. “I don’t know why you stormed out the way you did. Can you resubmit? Give me back that glorious and promising proposal, and I promise we’ll have a competitive offer on the table by tomorrow afternoon.”

  The next afternoon the receptionist at Small & Grey advises him that Jane Pancake has left the company to become a literary agent.

  Guy picks up the ringing phone.

  “Mock, mate.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “It’s the other way round, mate. It’s I who can be helping you if the rabbit and pork is on the up and up. You get me?”

  “What?”

  “Talk, mate. Talk. Rabbit and pork is talk. Ach, how I yearn to get back to that sodden land where the women are women and the men are named Nigel.”

  “What’s the talk?”

  “Can’t say explicit like. Ah, bollocks. Who’m I fooling? No wiretaps on little old Roy Hume’s telephone. It’s not like I represent the bloody New York Times and their shining phalanx of bleeding Pulitzer Prizes. It’s not like I’m a revered national correspondent with the soi-disant Paper of Record, now is it then?”

  Guy looks out the window. The bricks on the other side of the airshaft face him, textured in the morning sunlight. He sees a curtain move in the window above him and to his left, and then a woman’s arm, heavy and pale, emerges from the open window to overturn a full ashtray into the alley below, sending up a cloud of ash and cinders.

  “Right,” says Hume. “What I want to know is whether there’s any truth to what I’ve been told about you and a certain young lady from the Coast who’s gone missing. That you are involved.”

  Guy hangs up.

  Adventure No. 3

  BACCHUS

  A DIVISION OF SEGAL & SOWER

  12th Floor

  30 Rockefeller Center

  New York, NY 10020

  Richard Detective

  Senior Editor

  Dear Guy,

  We’re more than merely interested in your proposal—we’re ready to clear the decks right now. Your project is poised to join the group of exciting books we currently have planned. We’ve acquired a California novel, Radical Desire, that has its thumb right on the frantically beating pulse of that bellwether state, and this dovetails ingeniously with our forthcoming The Black Panther Sex Manual, which—like the sort of long black Christmas stocking it’s intended to stuff—is packed with one sensuous surprise after another. A book exploring the lives, loves and unusual lifestyles of some of our most famous revolutionaries seems the perfect complement to these two arousing titles.

  I wonder if you’d submit to a few probing questions, first. My thrust is, your proposal was a little on the dry side, a trifle too focused on politics, revolution, etc. Of course those of us who’ve paid close attention have been interested in those aspects of the story, yet one area of the case that demands to be deeply penetrated deals with the private lives of those who would assassinate our leaders, bring down our institutions, destroy our way of life, and so on: How, in short, do such people “get it on”? You promise to deliver a “candid account” of the underground life of the S.L.A., but I think it would be much better if we were all clear on this: Of what, exactly, does such candor consist?

  So if it’s all right with you, I’d like a few explicit lines on the extent to which your project intends to directly address the erotic life underground. I think readers would like to know who is “doing” whom, and how often, and by what means. Are there S.L.A. orgies? Is there much “forbidden” sex involving mixing of the races? Is it true that some members of the S.L.A. are or were or will be lesbians? Do photographs exist? These are the sort of questions that we would need to find the answers to in a book we chose to publish concerning the S.L.A., or anyone else for that matter.

  Anticipating your rapid response.

  All good wishes,

  Dick

  “What we have here, is failure to communicate,” says Hume, in a fair approximation of an American accent. He continues, “I have to admit I had been looking forward to the prospect of working with you. I can’t say I’m seeking full reciprocity. In me profession that’s a dangerous, dangerous folly. We maintain strict boundaries with all, be he source, informant, or stooge as the case may be. On Fleet Street we lived by a saying. Me first boss, Pobjoy, liked to drill it into me, he did. In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s the saying?”

  “Oh. ‘Y’haven’t got any friends.’ Some such. Years ago, it was. I’ve toiled many a day since, under the glowing tan and worldly manner still just an ink-stained wretch in a naff suit of clothes, I am. Still haven’t a friend in this slithery world either, I’m quite happy to say. Now. We were about to speak of your involvement with a certain Miss X.”

  “What sort of involvement?”

  “I would be lying, mate, if I didn’t admit that it would be to me advantage if the involvement were romantic in nature. The betrothed heiress in the arms of the bolshie jock. However, we do not invent the news. We create it when necessary, but we do not invent what isn’t there. I’m fully prepared to take what I can get, I am. Toward that end I have been authorized to extend a very generous offer in your direction. That’s right, checkbook journalism. A dirty word to the bloody New York Times, but not to the humble Eye and Ear, moiling away to serve the needs of the silent majority. Sometimes you have to put aside your high-mindedness and get down in it. And there’s a certain beauty to it, there is. What I have in mind requires absolutely no face-to-face meetings, no divulging of confidences. All I require is a token from the young lady in question. Say a soiled pair of knickers, a chicken bone from her dinner plate, or a used shell casing.”

  “What for?”

  “We secure the item in a bank vault, an event to which our solicitor, a chartered accountant, and meself bear eyewitness. Then we poll our far-ranging network of paranormal adepts: What exactly is this highly personal memento? What state of mind does it bespeak? Have at it, fork benders! Their correct answers shall make for a very nice spread and of course enhance the value of our offer to you.”

  “So what if they don’t identify it correctly?”

  “Well then of course it wouldn’t be worth quite as much, now would it then?”

  Guy very gently puts down the telephone. He leans on his hands on the windowsill, peering down the airshaft at the dark alley below. Directly beneath the window across the way there is a small mound of ash and butts that has accumulated over many a day.

  Adventure No. 4

  Guy takes the subway downtown and climbs out at Twenty-third Street, leaving the deep, long rolling rumble of the train behind him. He strolls past the residence for the blind, who feel their way into the noontime traffic on the avenues, tap tap. Guy knows how they feel. Twenty-five thousand miles on the road, and here’s where he ends up, still chasing a decent advance.

  Well, not quite here. The restaurant is near Madison Square. (Next time a cab.) Outside, workers from nearby insurance companies walk the streets carefully, conscious of the grim actuarial promises latent in every sight and sound. Haverford Dodd meets Guy at the bar, though “his” table is unoccupied and awaits him. At Dodd’s signal, the headwaiter moves forward to seat the two himself, moving the table aside so that they can settle into a plush banquette of deep red and then handing them menus in leather covers. The staff moves silently, with darting grace, like a school of rare tropical fish.

  Guy has gotten Dodd’s name from a friend, a journalist whose two
books had been edited by Dodd, one of which had done rather well on the basis of an ultimately empty and insubstantial rumor that it was to be well reviewed in the Times. The rumor alone had lent a kind of strength and momentum to the book, and Dodd had presided over it all as the book went into a second printing and sold to paperback even before its pub date, as if shoppers wanted possession of the book prior to its event, wanted themselves to be at the nexus of that event, a celebration of prescient consumerism that validated its standing as our primary avant-garde.

  How depressing. No wonder Dodd would be interested in a book that discusses how much its authors wish to destroy him: it’ll never happen. This restaurant, these waiters, the chef will not permit the revolution to come to pass. The waiters wear fucking brocaded jackets. He’ll bet that no one in the SLA could make a decent basic white sauce if their lives depended on it. It’s all a joke. Guy feels a wave of cynical ennui, familiar from the last several days, wash over him.

  Guy notes that Dodd appears cultivatedly weary, as if he were making a slow but spirited recovery from devastating intestinal illness. Guy can’t decide whether Dodd would look more at home on a horse or bundled up in an Adirondack chair on the porch of some puritan sanatorium. He has graying blond hair, watery blue eyes, and a deeply cleft chin. Guy can’t tell if he’s thirty–five or sixty.

  “So,” he says, “are you enjoying spring in the city?”

  “Oh, nice,” says Guy.

  “I was out on the Island again this weekend. The solace of the off–season: no guests. Just a little time alone with the muse. You and your wife will have to come out sometime. The beach is fringed by magnificently precarious houses and token stands of the woods destroyed toward their fabrication. One such house is my mother’s, weathered and rotting in a prosperous seaside way, like a rich old woman.”