Corkscrew

by Donald E. Westlake

  He'd been hiding all these doubts from himself, but now that Joe had said those wonderful words — 'Well, Bryce, it's terrific' — he could let all those goblins out of their cupboard, let them all fly away out of his head and into the air as he beamed into the phone and said, 'I'm glad to hear it, Joe.'

  'And this has some of the best writing in it you've ever done.'

  Bryce's beam faded slightly. 'Thanks, Joe,' he said.

  'As always, you know, I've got to pick a few nits.'

  'Oh, sure, I'm ready,' Bryce said. 'I trust your nits, Joe, you know that.'

  'Thanks. You've got the manuscript there? We could go over a few points, I don't need answers now, we could do lunch later in the week, or whenever you're ready.'

  'Sure, wait a second, just pulling it out of the drawer here, okay.'

  For ten minutes, they discussed the story and the characters and the pacing, with smallish problems that Bryce could usually fix right away, over the phone. But then Joe said, 'Here on page three twelve, Henry lashes out at Eleanor and storms out of the diner. Later on, here, page three forty-seven, they seem to be back together again, no problem. I suppose we could figure out what happened in between, but I just felt as though you might have left a scene out there that we could use.'

  In fact, Bryce had added a scene, Henry's departure from the diner. In Wayne's version of the book, Henry's rebellion against Eleanor had been all internal, not turning into action at all, and Bryce had found that just too undramatic, particularly in a section of the book where not much else was moving forward. He'd thought the reader would understand that a gesture of independence from Henry at that point would be no more than a gesture, and wouldn't need to be told why Henry was still under Eleanor's thumb the next time they appeared. Leaving out Wayne's original version, he tried to explain his approach to Joe, but Joe just didn't see it.

  'Henry was building toward something all along through there,' Joe said. 'I could sense it. So when he finally spoke up, I really expected some sort of follow-through. I mean, he can wind up at the status quo ante, that's fine, in fact he has to for what happens later in the book, but I just need to see the step that turned him around again. You know, if on three twelve he didn't explode, if he kept it all internalized, then I could see that that's where the fuse is getting wet, the spark is going out, and Henry's stuck forever.'

  Wayne's version, in other words. 'I felt,' Bryce said, 'we needed something dramatic at that point in the book.'

  'Oh, I agree with you on that,' Joe told him. 'I'd hate to lose that little moment of rebellion. But then you've got to bring him back down again, I think, show us how it fizzled out. If it doesn't fizzle out before he makes his move, then it has to happen afterward.'

  Joe was right, and Bryce knew it, but he couldn't help resisting, because he also knew that only one reader in a thousand would ever even notice the problem. Henry wasn't the hero of the book, he and Eleanor didn't constitute the main story. 'I felt,' he said, 'that we would know why he was back with Eleanor, that even when he was leaving, the reader would say to himself, 'He'll be back.''

  'Yes, but that just makes Henry a joke then,' Joe said, 'if we don't see the process of the turnaround, and he's too important later on to turn him into a joke at this point.'

  'Joe, I'm gonna have to think about that one.'

  'Fine, fine. Let's move along.'

  They had another five minutes or so, Bryce taking notes, continuing to do the smaller changes immediately, and then he hung up and spent the rest of the day trying his damnedest not to think about Henry and Eleanor.

  The fact is, he didn't know how Henry had managed to succeed with his rebellion, even briefly. The way the man was written, he'd do what Wayne had suggested in his version of the book, he'd plan to escape and then he'd fail. When Bryce had changed that, his own motives had been plot-driven, not character-driven, and damn Joe Katz was good enough to have picked up the glitch.

  How had Wayne worked it? Bryce had thrown away the original manuscript, not wanting anything around here that would suggest the true origin of this novel, but now he wished he'd held on to it a while longer. But it was gone, and all he had was his own version, and it was a connect-the-dots spot where the dots simply refused to connect.

  Well, he was supposed to call Wayne anyway, so at four that afternoon he did, saying, 'I just heard from Joe Katz.'

  'I just about gave up for today,' Wayne said. 'I figured you'd hear from him tomorrow.'

  'I think Joe had editorial conferences most of the day,' Bryce said, feeling vaguely guilty for not having phoned Wayne immediately, this morning. 'Anyway, he thinks the book is terrific. That's the word he used.' He didn't see any reason to mention the 'some of your best writing' remark.

  'That's nice,' Wayne said. 'That's a real relief. You don't know what a help this is.'

  'Well, I think we helped each other,' Bryce said, because it seemed to him that somehow Wayne was leaving out the other part of their collaboration.

  'I know we did,' Wayne agreed, 'and I'm glad we could, you know?'

  'I do know,' Bryce said. He wanted to say, How could you have done it, Wayne? But that was the one question that would never be asked. 'Well,' he said, instead, 'we've got this book to think about now, and I need to ask you something about it.'

  Sounding surprised, Wayne said, 'Sure. Go ahead.'

  'Joe had some little problems,' Bryce said, suddenly awkward, because he was going to have to admit this one lumpish revision he'd made in the book, 'and we dealt with all but one of them, but on that one I'm kind of snagged.'

  'Something I got wrong?'

  'No, as it turns out,' Bryce said, 'something you got right, and I got wrong.'

  'Oh. Some change you made.'

  'You know where Billy almost leaves Janice?' Using the names from Wayne's version of the book.

  'In the diner? Yeah, sure.'

  'Well, I felt we needed a dramatic scene there, more—'

  'Oh, no, you didn't. You had him walk out?'

  'Yeah.'

  'He wouldn't do that!'

  'I thought he could have this one little moment—'

  'No, no, Bryce, that's the whole point with Billy, that's how I use him later on, with him it's all internal, he never translates it into real-world action, that's not who he is.'

  'Well, I made the change,' Bryce said, 'and Joe caught it that it was a glitch—'

  'Of course he did.' Wayne sounded very upset over this.

  'But now, the problem is,' Bryce said, 'he agrees with both of us. He agrees with me that we need more drama at that point, an event, but then he feels we have to have a scene to show Billy go back to what he was before.'

  'You mean, he violates character, then notices it, then rushes back.'

  'I guess so. Anyway, that turnaround scene is what Joe feels it needs. The book needs.'

  'You can't just put it back the way it was?'

  'You can't take a dramatic scene out of a book after the editor's seen it.'

  'Shit. Goddam it, Bryce, I wish you'd talked to me about that move. Are there other things like that?'

  'I made little changes, you know I did, but that's the only one Joe had problems with.'

  'So you've got this internal guy suddenly makes an external act, and then what? I mean, the way you have it.'

  'Then the next time we see them, they're back together. Like you had it.'

  'No explanation.'

  'No.'

  'Jesus, Bryce, what are you gonna do?'

  'I don't know, I was hoping you'd have an idea.'

  'I had an idea. You replaced it.'

  'I just can't think of a scene,' Bryce admitted, 'where Billy undoes it.'

  'Neither can I,' Wayne told him. 'I can't imagine Billy outside that diner, alone.'

  'Let's,' Bryce said, 'both sleep on it, and I'll call you again tomorrow.'

  'Okay,' Wayne said, but he sounded doubtful.

  •

  That evening, eating dinner at Gaylor
d's with Isabelle, Bryce said, 'I was thinking, once the editing of Two Faces in the Mirror is done, I'd like to leave town for a while, leave my whole life for a while.'

  She looked at him with some amusement. 'Leave your whole life?'

  'All except you,' he assured her. 'In fact, what I was thinking about, what if you and I moved to Spain for a couple of years?'

  She reacted with astonishment, but not, he thought, with pleasure. 'Spain! For God's sake, why?'

  'It's a beautiful country,' he said. 'I could set my next novel there. I don't like the city right now, the reminders, or Connecticut either. Just to take a break from all this. And maybe I could help you to get your children back, it might make a difference if you were there.'

  She turned very cold at that. 'I think we leave that to my father,' she said. 'I don't believe I should mess in it, and I don't think you should get into things you don't understand.'

  'Okay, okay,' he said. 'So you don't want to go to Spain.'

  'I left Spain,' she said. 'I like New York.'

  'Fine,' he said.

  'And you know, Bryce,' she went on, 'this would not be a good time for you to leave the country, don't you realize that?'

  He had no idea what she was driving at. 'No. Realize what?'

  'You're a suspect!'

  'What? You mean in—'

  'I mean,' she said, 'the husband is always the main suspect, and you were in the middle of a very bitter divorce, and wasn't it a nice coincidence you just happened to be in Los Angeles when Lucie was murdered?'

  'But I was there.'

  'You're a rich man,' she told him. 'You could have hired somebody. Don't you think the police are investigating that? To see if you spent any extra money recently, if you had any meetings with strange people.'

  'Well, I didn't,' he said. 'Neither of those.'

  'If you try to leave the country,' she said, 'they will be sure you paid to have Lucie murdered, and they will harass you unmercifully.'

  'The point is,' Bryce said, not at all wanting to think about what she was telling him, 'you don't want to go back to Spain.'

  'Not for one minute.'

  'Fine. We'll stay here.'

  And, irrelevantly, he thought, this is where Henry got up and left Eleanor. Wayne was right, and I was wrong.

  •

  In the morning, he called Wayne, but Wayne had no suggestion for him on how to smooth over the glitch in the story. Bryce said, 'Normally, if I have a problem like this, I go in and do a head-banging session with Joe, and we'd come up with something, but this time, I just don't think that's gonna work. I'm realizing, those people are yours more than they're mine. You can tap into them, keep them consistent.'

  'Not once Billy is off the rails, Bryce, I'm sorry.'

  'I had a brainstorm this morning,' Bryce said. 'You could meet with Joe, the three of us meet, I know for sure we'd work it out.'

  'Me? How could I meet with your editor?'

  'I have a story I can tell him,' Bryce said. 'You and I knew each other years ago, you were a successful novelist, he's probably heard of your name, but then it all kind of dried up for you. I was having a hell of a time with the book, couldn't concentrate on it, because of the divorce, and then we ran into each other again, and I hired you to be my editorial consultant.'

  'Editorial consultant. That's what it says in that contract.'

  'Exactly. I'll tell Joe, I want to keep it quiet, because it could be publicly humiliating if there was any suggestion I couldn't do my own books all by myself.'

  'Jerzy Kosinski,' Wayne said.

  'That's just precisely it,' Bryce said. 'Kosinski never got his reputation back, not completely, after all those rumors that other people wrote his books.'

  'So I'm your undercover editorial consultant,' Wayne said. He sounded a little insulted. 'How does that get me into a meeting with your editor?'

  'You understand these characters,' Bryce told him. 'Better than I do myself sometimes. And in fact, and I'll explain this to Joe, when I was working on that part of the book, you argued against Billy walking out of the diner. You can tell Joe all that internalizing stuff you told me, I couldn't tell that to Joe and get it right.'

  Wayne said, 'But haven't you switched the book around since I saw it? Changed the character names, moved some chapters, all that? How could I talk about the book?'

  'I'll messenger a copy of the manuscript down to you this morning.'

  'Messenger. That's nice. Who are Billy and Janice now?'

  'Henry and Eleanor.'

  'Henry and Eleanor,' Wayne echoed, as though tasting the names on his tongue. 'Sure. Why not?'

  'You'll see when you get the manuscript, I tried to keep your ideas, not do a Frankenstein's monster here, I think this is the only real glitch.'

  'Fine. So I'll read it, and you'll set up this appointment, and I'll go in with you as your sort of pre-editor editor—'

  'The guy who helped me through the bad patch caused by the divorce.'

  'I certainly did. But then the three of us all sit around and solve the… Henry problem, and then I go back into the shadows, like the Phantom of the Opera.'

  Bryce was reluctant to say this, but he thought he had to: 'If you and Joe get along,' he said, 'and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't, you might pitch him a story idea of your own.'

  'Oh.' A short word, but quick with interest.

  'Not right away,' Bryce said. 'When we get this book put to bed, then take your shot.'

  'I will,' Wayne said. 'Thank you, Bryce.'

  14

  It was very strange to read your own book after it had been taken over by somebody else. It wasn't even a matter of whether Wayne thought the changes made the book better or worse, it was simply the otherness of it. Like a dream in which you're in your own house, but the details are all wrong, the furniture's different or in the wrong place and the doors lead to rooms you don't know. Disorienting, disturbing, almost frightening; and yet fascinating. A parallel universe.

  He had to read it through twice before he could see it clearly; the first time had been just too through-the-looking-glass. With the second run-through, though, he saw that this was a valuable learning experience, a wake-up call for some sloppy habits he'd developed over the years. Also, some of Bryce's changes struck him as brilliant. Moving the third chapter up to begin the book was just exactly the right thing to do, for instance. Other changes Bryce had made, though, struck him as pointless. What was wrong with 'winced'?

  Susan read Two Faces in the Mirror as well, and insisted she liked the original better, which he knew was more loyalty the critical comment. She did agree with Wayne that the Henry-Eleanor scene was a mistake, but had no more idea than he did how to solve the problem.

  Susan had always been his first reader, and had been valuable to him just because she was not a literary or artistic type, but was a solid realist. She didn't admire good writing or clever plotting for themselves, but enjoyed his books for their approximation to the truth. Whenever she did find fault with his work, it was because some striving for effect had left plausibility behind. A more artistic type, say another writer or a painter, would have forgiven such flaws or not even seen them, but Susan needed to feel solid ground beneath her feet, and he'd come to rely on her judgment to give his work ballast.

  They joked sometimes about opposites attracting and absolute opposites attracting absolutely, but they knew it was true. They were devoted to one another and dependent on one another because they were so foreign to one another, so close together because they were so far apart. It was the very depth of their differences that made her his perfect reader; she admired his ability to create entire worlds out of the merest air, and he admired her ability to find the real world not boring.

  The appointment with Bryce's editor, Joe Katz, had been set for ten-thirty Thursday morning. Bryce's publisher, Pegasus-Regent, was one of those who'd moved their offices down to the Madison Square Park area in the early eighties, when midtown office rents went throug
h the roof. The firm had most of an old building now, on Twenty-sixth Street off Park, with a ground-floor luncheonette as the only other tenant. It was an easy walk from Wayne's apartment, though the early December day was cold and windy and overcast. But Wayne liked the weather, it gave him the impression of having a little struggle on the way to victory.

  That other struggle, last month, he seldom thought about any more, though during the half-hour walk across and uptown the scene did keep coming into his mind; probably because this meeting was one more result of it. But these days, when he remembered that night in Lucie's apartment, it wasn't as though it had been anything he himself had done, but more like a scene from a particularly grisly movie. He remembered the experience the way you remember something you've seen, not something you participated in. It was as though, in his memory, he were three or four feet behind the attacker, observing from up close, but not a participant. However, like a scene from a particularly powerful movie, the memory did stay with him.

  The entrance to Pegasus-Regent was unprepossessing; the loss of elaborate office-building lobbies was one of the trade-offs when the publishers moved south. A glassed door with the firm's name on it stood to the right of the luncheonette. Inside were a narrow hall with an old mosaic-tile floor, a steep metal staircase leading back and up, and two elevators.

  Editorial was on six, the top floor, the closest hope to a view in this neighborhood. Wayne rode up, and when the elevator door opened he might as well have been in midtown after all. Editorial had a very modern, very elaborate large reception area with two separate clusters of sofas and magazine-laden coffee tables to left and right, and a receptionist at a broad multimedia desk straight out of Star Trek.

  Wayne was two or three minutes early, but Bryce was already there, reading a recent Economist on a sofa to the right. He jumped up when Wayne walked in, waved to him, and called to the receptionist, 'Okay! Tell Joe we're ready.' Then, as she turned to her control panels, he came over toward Wayne, hand out, smiling, saying, 'Good to see you, Wayne.'

  He looks feverish, was Wayne's first thought. Then Bryce was shaking his hand, and Wayne felt electric tension in Bryce's hand, and saw that the feverishness was deep in Bryce's eyes. And he's lost weight, Wayne thought.