by Janice Law
“Look, Audrey, not that I don’t appreciate, but I write literate contemporary novels. I don’t want a reputation for swords and fantasy.”
Audrey gave a smile that marred rather than enhanced her fine, clean features. Nature, Marvin thought, had had a grand design in mind with Audrey and then, at the last moment, smashed it. “Your last novels earned mid four figure advances,” she said. “You can’t live on that. Think of this as work to support your serious writing. Also, I can assure you, Marv, dear, that your name will never be mentioned. Will never be, must never be; that is a most important condition.”
Interesting! Marvin racked his brain to think of who could command serious advances on the basis of rough outlines. The only possibilities were names big enough to scare him just a little. It was one thing to dismiss certain popular works; it was quite another to invent the same sort of audience pleasing junk. “How much?”
“The whole package is 2.5 million. I am authorized to give you a partial advance of $50,000 on signing. On completion of each novel, you and the writer whose name will appear on the jacket split the profits, advance, royalties, everything, fifty-fifty.”
The sum was a shock, almost a physical shock, and it took Marvin a moment to digest the possibilities of repairing the Datsun, paying off his credit cards, leaving the Sun ‘n Surf apartments.
“Are you on?” Audrey asked.
He could feel a little bubble of exhilaration growing around his heart, but he didn’t quite trust himself to decide yet.
“I know you can do it,” Audrey said, “and I think you can do it quickly.”
“How fast and how long?”
“I need a manuscript of no less than 600 pages; a little longer would be better, but 600 would do.”
“Whew!” said Marvin.
“We have a full year. I was able to get an extension,” Audrey added a trifle grimly, “on the grounds of ill health.”
“And are we sick?” Marvin asked.
“We are drunk, if you must know.” Audrey’s tone was dryly sarcastic. “We have developed multiple addictions and responsibility issues and a damn bad attitude! I need you to do this, Marv, dear,” she said in a different tone. “You and I will earn every penny, but it’s a pretty penny, and having invested twenty years of work in— our author— I’m not about to lose the best contract I’ve ever negotiated.”
“All right,” said Marvin, “but I’d better have a look at the outline and I’d better read some of the other books— there are others, right?”
“The proverbial five foot book shelf.”
Audrey levered herself to her feet, grabbed her cane and limped to the nearest bookcase. She came back with a handful of novels which she laid face down on her desk.
“There will be a confidentiality statement for you to sign,” Audrey said. “All the usual. Basically, you promise never to reveal your authorship.”
“As if I’d want to,” said Marvin.
“But understand, Marv, dear, only your best work will do for this project.”
“My best work, my heart and soul.” Marvin could already feel himself adjusting to prosperity.
Audrey produced a thick folder of legal documents. She offered the confidentiality statement first, “in case, Marv dear, you should change your mind.” This document was as near to ironclad as dozens of “to whits,” “whatsoevers,” and “to whomevers” could make it.
Marvin signed with a flourish, then turned over the first novel in the stack on the desk. Ah,” he said in surprise; he had read some of Hilaire LaDoux’s novels and liked them. “I thought LaDoux did sci-fi.”
“All the work is on the border of the genres,” Audrey said. “Alternate worlds, alternate futures— same old human nature.”
“Here’s to human nature,” Marvin said and held out his hand for the contract.
“You’re sure?” Audrey asked. “Please be sure Marv, dear, because there won’t be time to get another writer if you change your mind.”
“Worry not, sweet Audrey!” He flipped to the end of the document and signed his name. “I’m your ghost.”
He left with a stack of LaDoux’s novels in a Burdine’s shopping bag and stopped at his local liquor store on the way home for some really good beer and a bottle of vintage bordeaux. I’m going to be rich, if not famous, he told himself, and, better by far to be at least one or the other.
Marvin sat down on his minuscule balcony, poured a Bellhaven, and opened The Cave of the Winds, the first novel in LaDoux’s Galatan Trilogy. He read for three hours, making notes occasionally on a yellow pad as he picked out favorite vocabulary, sentence structures, the little tricks like adjectives grouped in threes and a fondness— a weakness in Marvin’s eyes— for beginning with participial phrases.
After dinner, he checked the outline for Dragon in the Sun. It was, as Audrey had promised, thoroughly detailed. Ten single spaced pages outlined an epic and dynastic struggle which he found intimidatingly inventive until he realized that most of the events had been lifted from the Hundred Years War in France and the English Wars of the Roses. Okay!
Marvin made a note to himself to begin some serious historical reading— the Borgias should be good for a plot or two, and the Russians, for a series. He was sure that the various Ivans and Peters, not to mention the licentious Great Catherine, could help flesh out the skimpy notes for Dragon II and III
Though Marvin normally worked in fits and starts as inspiration took him, he was at his desk early the next morning. He had a year to produce six hundred pages, which meant, he calculated, roughly two pages a day, the other two months left over for the inevitable mishaps which afflict manuscripts as well as man. He was slightly daunted at the prospect of working up scenes and characters which were not his own, and he dawdled, as he usually did, straightening his desk and hopping up to water the plants and take out the garbage. It was on this latter errand that Marvin had the happy inspiration of imaging, not the novel, but Hilaire LaDoux.
He sat down at his computer and told himself that this new book would be the contrivance of an invented character, a best selling novelist of considerable talent and an unerring popular touch named Hilaire LaDoux. His LaDoux invariably started early in the morning, well before time for the first drink of the day, and tapped out exactly two— no, better make it four, pages a day as good genre writers were known for their productivity.
Hilaire LaDoux would work to something ancient, Marvin decided, and he rejected several possibilities before selecting Monteverdi, his Orpheus by preference. Unlike Marvin, who liked to write sitting on his balcony, LaDoux would keep the shades drawn and would wear something elegant and unusual, something Marvin would have to acquire. But for now, semi-darkness and Orpheus would have to be good enough. He slid the CD into his computer, heard the chords, exotic with the everlasting strangeness of genius, and began typing: “Trotting along the long, weary, dry road into Balson, Lord Ostrucht saw clouds black as serpents darkening the horizon and laid his hand on the Blade of Zermain. He was alone now, he was the only one left . . .”
Although Marvin took some time to settle into this routine, so different from his own, novelty proved potent. Day after day, Lord Ostrucht struggled with warriors and wizards, with dragons and other chimeras of the mind, searching always for the Lady Fermaine. At first, Marvin stayed close to the original design, but very soon Ostrucht began to develop some new and interesting habits.
Marvin knew that he was really on his way when he discovered one morning that the cliche dragon of one of the planned set pieces had evolved into a yellow tinged mist, so faint as to be almost subliminal. This scarcely noticed alteration in the atmosphere gradually disturbed perception, causing its victims to see the world as horror, as such unrelieved and dreadful ugliness, as to be driven to despair.
“That’s very good,” Audrey said, looking up from the latest installment of the manuscript. “That’s very good, indeed.” Like all authors, Marvin needed complements and reassurance, particularly durin
g composition, and she had learned the right way to do this: praise only the book and never, by so much as a syllable, hint that he had a genuine flair for this sort of thing. In fact, Audrey was convinced that Marvin was writing better than ever, that a sort of literate action was his true metier. Instead, she said, “very LaDoux. Hyper LaDoux.”
Marvin smiled. “The creation of the character was the key thing— and unexpectedly inspiring.”
“Lord Ostrucht,” Audrey said.
“No, no, he’s quite an interesting fellow, but I meant Hilaire LaDoux.”
Audrey looked at him. Yes, now that he mentioned it, she could see some changes, which she had registered without attaching importance to them. An expensive haircut and good clothes were only to be expected from sudden prosperity, but she would not have expected Marvin’s choices: a cerise silk shirt, and an Italian silk and wool sweater patterned in mustard, lavender, and sienna, worn with khakis and sandals. Marvin had always been a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy who owned a blue suit for good. He’d added a pair of tinted glasses, too, which shadowed his eyes and made him look subtly different, enough like the real LaDoux to give Audrey a little frisson, because no image of Hilaire LaDoux had been published for years. Well, she wasn’t going to worry about that! Whatever works, she thought, and congratulated herself on spotting Marv’s potential. “We’ll have no problem completing the book,” she said.
“No problem at all, and, Audrey, I’m getting so many ideas for volumes two and three. I’ve started to plant material for future books. Now this scene,” he turned the pile of manuscript around and ruffled through the pages. “Here, in chapter sixteen where I’ve introduced Ranoch, the squire . . .”
“I like Ranoch,” said Audrey.
“I’m glad you do, because I see an important role for him in the second volume.”
She pulled out a yellow pad and began making notes. When they were finished, she assured Marvin that the publisher would be thrilled, then shook his hand and saw him out of the office herself, as Cindy, who was apparently not privy to the arrangement with Mr. LaDoux, had been sent on an errand.
Marvin supposed that was only prudent, though in his own mind, Hilaire LaDoux came into existence when he put on the very handsome silk jacket that Hilaire wrote in, added the blue tinted spectacles, and slid the Monteverdi Orpheus into the CD player. During the less and less frequent days when Marvin took off, wore his own clothes, listened to Talking Heads, drank beer, and loafed on the beach, Hilaire LaDoux, esquire, simply ceased to exist, leaving Marvin to enjoy the fruits of his labor and of LaDoux’s reputation.
And after the first volume was published to acclaim and profit, there seemed no reason why Marvin couldn’t continue writing about Lord Ostrucht and the Lady Fermaine and their ilk virtually forever. The second volume was finished and Marvin was well into the third before the first cloud appeared.
He was in Audrey’s office for one of their now routine private meetings. The latest chapters of The Dragon’s Child lay on the desk between them, and Audrey was running her delicate fingers nervously over the pages.
“Quite brilliant,” she said, tapping the manuscript, “everyone agrees, and you know Marv, dear, I’d be the first to tell you if the books weren’t up to par.”
He did know that.
“So you’ll know this is none of my doing. I’m thoroughly satisfied, and so is everybody at the publishing house.”
“What’s the matter?” Marvin asked, sensing a problem without really being troubled by it. He had money to sort out problems and people like Audrey to sort them out for him. Since the great success of the Dragon books, their relationship had undergone a sea change: now she waited for his calls and arranged her schedule to suit him. Now it was her plans and her strategy which came under scrutiny as much as his manuscripts.
“Well, it’s Hilaire, of course. Jealousy, I’m sure. If I’d thought, Marv, dear, I’d never have let Dragon be nominated for any award whatsoever. Never.”
“Hilaire?” It took Marvin a moment to remember that there was such a person with volition of his own, a real person whose desires could not be altered by a few lines of type. “He’s unhappy? Fifteen weeks on the best seller list, foreign rights, a pot of found money— what more does he want?”
“He’s feeling creative again. He feels, well, Marv dear, he feels he doesn’t need you any more.”
Marvin’s first reaction was fury modulating into shock. “He can go to hell! I’ve got another three novels plotted out, plus some terrific new characters!” It was illogical, inconceivable, grotesquely and monstrously unfair. And besides, he’d been counting on the money.
“He’s got an ironclad contract. Look, Marv, dear, I’ve tried to talk to him, but he claims he’s inspired. And more serious, he’s determined to cut back on the drinking.”
“Great for him. All right, let him write. I still have three good plots and half a dozen new characters.”
“His characters,” she said. “All his. You know that, Marv.”
“So I change the names and we’re still in business.”
“And who are you?” she asked. “Do you think I can get as good a contract as you can get from selling the outlines to Hilaire? Be real.”
Marvin swore there must be some way to indicate that he was the writer behind LaDoux’s latest best seller, but Audrey raised the confidentiality agreement and promised to hold LaDoux up for plenty. “I think even a credit isn’t out of the question. Something along the lines of ‘based on a story by’ which will do you good later, Marv. Besides, you can get back to your own writing now, and with what you’ll make from the plot outlines . . .”
Marvin was furious, but though he had a lawyer friend go over the contract not once but twice, there was no way out. LaDoux had all rights to the books. As far as the publishing world went, it was Marvin, not Hilaire LaDoux who was an imaginary character, or, rather, what was worse, a middling author with no real prospects.
For consolation, he had a good whack of money for the work he’d done on The Dragon’s Child, but he absolutely refused to sell anything more, causing Audrey to roll her eyes and to wonder aloud why she hadn’t taken to representing sensible people like stunt men and professional wrestlers. Then she sighed and told Marv that he might perhaps change his mind.
“After all,” she added, accurately, but somewhat unkindly, “now you have what you’ve always said you wanted: time and money to do your own writing.”
So he got busy. He opened his old notebooks and took up a plot he’d begun then set aside, a story about a talented man down on his luck in paradise: a.k.a. South Florida. Marvin struggled with it for several months, but the story was dead in the water. Oh, the writing was good; Marvin had an easy style that rolled from one paragraph to the next without the slightest a hitch but also without the oddity and flare that can illuminate old stories and make familiar characters fresh.
The very smoothness that had rendered Lord Ostrucht, the Lady Fermaine, and a host of supernatural entities plausible worked against Marvin’s contemporary characters. They were just a little bit boring, and, realizing that, he began to find new and creative ways to delay his stints at the computer. When he got fed up with procrastination, he’d throw on his swim trunks and head for the beach: as far as writing went, Marvin was stymied.
Then, one depressing morning, just as an experiment, he got up early, put on Hillaire’s silk writing jacket, and dropped Orpheus on the CD player. When he sat down to work at the keyboard, Lord Ostrucht was waiting for him, sitting melancholy on the back of his black charger, reading a farewell letter from the Lady Fermaine. Marvin almost wept with joy.
Two days later, when he’d at last obtained LaDoux’s address from an unwary new editorial publicist, Marvin was surprised to find that the novelist lived not more than five miles away, along a swanky stretch between the inland waterway and the ocean. Marvin drove out that same night, burdened with a bottle of expensive white French burgundy and uncertain intentions.
LaDoux’s house was of an older, less ostentatious, vintage, well screened by live oaks, bamboos, and a variety of large and thriving palms— my kind of place, Marvin thought. The flat roofed building was coated with a scabbed and cracked rust colored stucco, vaguely Mexican in inspiration and adjoined by a massive screen made of blocks interwoven with a bright climbing vine. Several soft yellow lights, perhaps candles, glimmered behind this screen, and a weak bulb illuminated the weathered front door. Otherwise, the house, which was handsome in conception, but clearly neglected, remained in darkness.
Marvin stepped out to the sound of surf and of cars and motorcycles passing. He rang the intercom buzzer on the gate several times, and he was ready to give up when a voice, quite loud and very close to him, asked what he was doing and what the hell he wanted. Marvin gave a start. Someone about his own height and weight was standing half hidden by the dappled purple and ocher leaves of a rampant ornamental shrub. The man wore a white shirt and an ascot like a country house extra in an English movie, but what sent the evening lurching in a direction Marvin had not expected was the man’s appearance. Marvin immediately recognized their surprising resemblance. “I was hoping to see Hilaire LaDoux,” Marvin said. “I’m a big fan of his books.”
