Kyle entered the café with the manuscript tucked under his arm. Immediately, William didn’t like the way Kyle was holding it, as if the manuscript was a nuisance, a dead weight. He’d imagined Kyle walking in with it pressed against his heart, since he loved it so much that he wanted to keep it close, for fear another editor might snatch it away.
Kyle waved and then headed to the counter first to order, which William found rude. If Devil’s Hopyard had been so amazing, Kyle wouldn’t even be thinking about coffee. Earlier, William had a shred of hope that Kyle didn’t tell Sierra about the manuscript because it was so fantastic he wanted to keep it under wraps. But now William knew the truth. It was nothing more than a submission quickly shuttled to the rejection pile. He gnawed at a scone that tasted like Styrofoam, and Kyle finally came over.
“Hey, William,” Kyle said, extending his hand to shake. William complied and the two battled it out for a second, each one gripping hard, until Kyle slid his hand away. William was satisfied that he hadn’t given in first.
Kyle sat and placed Devil’s Hopyard on the table between them.
“So I’ve written more,” William said.
“You should keep writing,” Kyle said. “Don’t be waiting on me.”
William took another bite of the scone, practically chipping a tooth. “I’m not.”
“I heard you ran into Jamie by her office and saw her showroom.”
“I did.”
“It seems like you’ve been running into us by accident a lot this week,” Kyle said.
William could sense frustration in Kyle’s tone. “They say Manhattan is like a small town.”
“Who says that?”
William placed his hand on top of his manuscript and lovingly caressed the cover. Doing so made him feel bolder, more self-assured.
“I worry that you’ve misinterpreted my intention with this book.”
“I think the issue is that I don’t understand your intention at all.”
Kyle glanced out the window; William could tell he was avoiding him. A blond girl had removed her bike from against a tree. Seeing this made William’s bones ache, as if death grew nearer. This young girl and Kyle still had an endless future ahead of them; William knew his would be limited.
“Are you all right?” Kyle asked, looking directly at William now.
William wondered if he’d been the one staring obsessively at the young blond girl instead of Kyle. Sometimes his mind played tricks. More and more that was happening.
“Don’t you believe that the publishing industry needs a wake-up call?” William asked, spearing his tongue with his fang tooth and swallowing a drop of blood. “Look at your bestseller lists—you’re fifty shades of who the fuck cares? Fiction used to be daring and prose used to be meaty. Hemingway would weep at what is marketed as a novel today.”
“Hemingway was probably certifiable,” Kyle said.
“Maybe that’s what it takes.”
“To do what?”
“To reach such great heights,” William said. His tongue was still bleeding, the taste metallic and comforting. He patted the manuscript. “That’s what I’m after.”
“William,” Kyle began, in a tone that William already found condescending, “I think it’s a little early to talk about Hemingway comparisons. Your prose couldn’t be more different. Hemingway was precise; he never wasted a word.”
“Forget Hemingway,” William said with a flick of his wrist.
“Your prose is loose, disjointed, and angry. Really, really angry, like you’re writing about something terrible you’ve experienced before.”
William sat back and linked his hands behind his head with a grin. “So you believed it?”
Kyle took a sip of coffee. “I don’t know what I believe.”
“Are you a Bret Easton Ellis fan?”
“Yeah, love the guy…” Kyle stopped himself, realizing the point William was trying to make.
“Would you ever question Ellis’s sanity after reading American Psycho?” William was getting amped up. “Did you believe that he wanted to chop people up like Patrick Bateman? But see, that’s what I’m going for—writing so real that the reader might wonder if the author is letting fact bleed into fiction. That’s the hook!”
William could see the young girl out the window getting on her bike. On her T-shirt was a design of a small rainbow situated over her heart.
“Like Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs,” William said, snapping his fingers. “You read that in a senior seminar with me.”
“I’ve never been a Burroughs fan.”
“But you don’t think he should’ve been locked up, do you? Even though no one can argue he had a depraved mind. In the 1966 trial that cleared the book of obscenity, Norman Mailer argued, ‘Just as Hieronymus Bosch set down the most diabolical and blood-curdling details with a delicacy of line and a Puckish humor that left one with a sense of the mansions of horror attendant upon Hell, so, too, does Burroughs leave you with an intimate, detailed vision of what Hell might be like, a Hell which may be waiting as the culmination, the final product, of the scientific revolution.’”
“So you’re aiming to show us hell on earth with Devil’s Hopyard?”
William shook his head. “No, I’m aiming for so much more. And an audience will see it someday, whether or not you want to be a part of it, Kyle.”
“It sounds like I don’t have an exclusive anymore.”
“That’s entirely up to you. All I want is a chance. Pretend you don’t know me. Pretend that manuscript showed up at your door without a clue who wrote it.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten past the first few pages then.”
“So I should be honored you made it to page forty? Or did you even make it that far?”
William could see Kyle was losing patience from the way he squirmed in his seat.
“What was the last part you read?” William asked, sneering. He could feel the heat spilling from his nostrils as he breathed in and out.
“The professor is carrying on about eating the unnamed girl’s heart,” Kyle said, raising his voice. An older couple at the next table glanced over.
“See,” William said, clapping his hands. “That’s proves you didn’t read that far. She has a name, Kyle, even before page forty.”
“Fine, maybe it was page thirty that I got to. I don’t know, William. But that’s my point. Your pages aren’t distinct from one another. The whole thing is the same insanity over and over. What’s the obsession with this girl’s heart?”
“You’ll have to reach the end to find out,” William said with a wink.
“All right, fine. I’ll read every page you gave me. But if I do, I’m gonna be brutally honest with what I thought.”
“Because you’re sugarcoating so much right now…”
“In my MFA program, they said that three percent of us will actually publish and go on to successful careers.”
“I will be part of that three percent.”
Kyle murmured something under his breath that William couldn’t hear.
“You would make a poor professor, Kyle,” William said, and sighed. “You don’t know how to build people up.”
“I build up talent. That’s what a good editor does. That was how I discovered Sierra Raven when no one else was bothering to look.”
“Yeah, Sierra Raven. What a surprise that someone young and pretty caught your eye.”
“And speaking of Sierra,” Kyle said, getting more heated. William could sense the blood boiling in the boy’s veins. “Why would you tell Jamie about me having cozy drinks with her? Are you trying to fuck up my relationship?”
“Are you?”
“Am I…?” Kyle stammered. “Of course not. Sierra is purely business.”
“You can keep telling yourself that—”
Kyle grabbed his coffee in an attempt to leave. “I don’t know what you’re after, William.”
“You were always so sensitive, even at school. Calm down.”
/> “Your book is on another kind of level of fucked-up-ness and you are sick if you think it’s actually written well and has meaning.”
William began cackling, softly at first, and then building in intensity.
“But it evoked a response in you. Don’t you see that gives it merit? Love me or hate me, it’s still an obsession.”
“I’m not obsessed!”
Kyle’s cheeks were flushed and he was breathing heavily. He was clutching his cup of coffee so hard it looked as if was about to crush it.
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up,” William said. “I’m not a psychologist, but this does seem like displaced anger. Or did you always feel this way toward me?”
Kyle simmered down, trying to regain his cool. He took a long, slow sip of coffee.
“You know that isn’t true,” he replied, as if he was suddenly ashamed of his behavior.
“You have a funny way of showing it. Back at Bentley, you were a lot more thankful.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“But then years passed without so much as a word,” William said. “I wrote that recommendation letter for you to get into Wisconsin, and then poof, never an e-mail telling me how the program went, or that you became an editor in New York City.”
Kyle picked at a sugar packet. He crumpled it in his fist. “Maybe I didn’t want to relive my time at Bentley.”
At this, William gave a stern nod. “Do I represent those dark times for you?”
Kyle stared to the ceiling. “I haven’t thought about back then … in a long, long time.”
“I wasn’t responsible for the choices you made,” William said in a soothing, hypnotic tone, one he had practiced, which often subdued the other party.
“I know,” Kyle whispered.
“I was the one who saw your potential and rescued you from a life of drugs and crime…”
“Not so loud, William.”
William locked eyes with the elderly couple at the next table. They both looked away, alarmed.
“I helped you when you needed it most,” William said. “And now I ask that you help me.”
“I can’t just publish your book, it doesn’t work like that. I have to present it at the editorial meeting, and then it’s ultimately up to Carter Burke…”
William pushed Devil’s Hopyard across the table.
“Finish the manuscript before you give up on it.”
“It’s never gonna be accepted.” Kyle took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, I am. Truly.”
William stood and leaned over Kyle. He felt like a giant looming over a lesser creature. He got in Kyle’s face.
“Devil’s Hopyard will be published.”
“Not by us.”
William pushed the manuscript until it fell with a thud into Kyle’s lap. “That’s very troubling to hear. That could bring about a lot of trouble.”
Kyle flinched. “Are you … threatening me?”
“Don’t look at this as a punishment. Look at this as an opportunity. This will take your career into the stratosphere. Trust me.”
Before Kyle had a chance to respond, William headed out of the café. He believed he was a soothsayer and had made a prophecy. Kyle would be stupid not to listen. The future would have both of their names flashing in lights. It would occur whether or not Kyle was complicit in making it happen. Otherwise, William would just have to do all of the legwork on his own for both of them.
William felt his heart swell. He finally had that extra jaunt in his step he’d been waiting for.
11
SUNDAY PASSED IN a haze for Kyle. He didn’t want to bother Jamie, since she’d be preparing the showroom for her new investor. He decided to get stoned and see if that might help him unlock whatever potential existed in Devil’s Hopyard. Pot had been the heaviest thing he’d ingested since Bentley, and only occasionally. He’d returned from coffee yesterday with William a little shaken, not knowing how much of a threat had been made. William couldn’t be so crazy to assume that Kyle had any pull at Burke & Burke with a stinker of a novel. If this round of pages didn’t hold his interest, he’d tell William once and for all to let the manuscript die.
Halfway through a blunt, he took out William’s opus. The pages had begun to fray, as if it’d been well read. He flipped to a passage later in the novel.
This story I tell is a reminder of how far a soul will go to accomplish what it desires. For me, I crave infamy, my name in lights. Her HEART will take me there. We will be talked about for some time, anointed in history. She has no idea about the part she plays. Reality and fiction WILL combine in a delicious …
A piece of lit ash fell from Kyle’s blunt, igniting page 279. If he wasn’t so stoned he would’ve caught it earlier, but his clogged mind was a few seconds behind. A small flame, about twenty pages deep, ate through the manuscript. When he finally fanned it out, it had created a hole. He took this as a sign and placed Devil’s Hopyard in a drawer, where he vowed to leave it for good, and then he smoked some more and watched two of his favorite movies, Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder, figuring he deserved the rest of the night off.
* * *
ON MONDAY MORNING, Kyle was getting ready for work when he noticed Devil’s Hopyard on the bedside table. He could’ve sworn he’d shoved it in a drawer, but he was so stoned last night that either he had imagined doing so, or he’d taken the manuscript out again right before bed. Capone scratched at the window, and he let the cat inside and left it some food. Capone wasn’t satisfied by the leftover Chinese and hissed, darting back into the bedroom. Kyle found the cat seated on top of the manuscript, his eyes judging Kyle, seemingly for not giving the book one last chance. So he grabbed it to show Carter. This way he could at least use the excuse that he tried everything he could. His boss also had such a twisted sense of humor that he might even be amused by the story behind Devil’s Hopyard.
Sitting in Carter’s office later, Kyle wished he hadn’t smoked so much last night. Pot was a rare release for him, mostly because it made him spacey the next day. Bourbon always seemed to make him just right.
“So I got through that Dead submission over the weekend,” Carter said, chewing on the earpiece of his glasses. Kyle already knew that action didn’t bode well for what was to come. He’d seen Carter slay other editors while chewing on his earpiece.
“Shane has a great voice,” Kyle said, already in defense mode. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been snapped up.”
Carter put his glasses back on, letting them rest on the beak of his nose. “First off, how is Sierra Raven coming along with her book?”
“Well, she’s been slower with the next few chapters than the earlier ones.”
“Slower?” Carter shook his head. “We’re not paying half a million dollars to a turtle.”
“I think the size of the deal is messing with her.”
“That’s a bullshit problem if I ever heard one. Should we take the money back so I can see some pages?”
Carter stood and stretched. He patted his breast pocket and removed a crushed pack of Gauloises.
“Don’t tell my wife or I’ll have you hunted down like that poor schmuck in the ex–hit man tale.”
They heard a knock on the door.
“Fuck, is that Corrine having me followed?” Carter laughed, striking a match and lighting his cigarette. Brett peeked his head through the crack.
“Oh, good, Brett, come in.”
“Sir,” Brett said, snagging the seat next to Kyle.
“So Brett had a look-see at The Dead Can’t Hunt You Down too and we agreed on making an offer. We’ll change the title, of course, it’s too much of a tongue twister.”
“That’s great,” Kyle said.
“But we agreed for me to take it on,” Carter said, a cloud of smoke obscuring his face. “Between Sierra Raven and Tucker Noley, you have your plate full right now.”
Brett cosigned the decision w
ith a sharp nod.
“But I discovered Shane.”
Carter’s face emerged from the smoke, dissatisfied. “That’s not how we speak of our authors here.”
“Burke & Burke discovered Shane Matthews,” Brett chimed in. “Just like Burke & Burke discovered Sierra Raven, not you.”
Kyle told himself not to object, even though he wanted to punch Brett right between the eyes.
“Now, you said you had something else to show me?” Carter said, snapping his fingers.
Kyle removed Devil’s Hopyard from his leather bag.
“What the fuck happened to this?” Carter said, flipping to the middle where a hole the size of a half-dollar had burned through.
“This is your old professor’s book?” Brett asked.
“Is it any good?” Carter asked, meaning, Is this even worth discussing if it’s a pile of shit?
“It’s unlike anything I’ve read before,” Kyle said, as Carter and Brett looked up excitedly. “But not in a good way,” he added.
Kyle proceeded to tell them the highlights of what had transpired with William over the course of the week. How the guy had been his mentor, a brilliant professor, but that his book was the most shocking pile of garbage ever put to paper. And worse, that William had become stalkerish and even threatening when Kyle wouldn’t agree to publish the manuscript.
“So what do you want me to do with this turd?” Carter asked.
“I need to know if it’s as terrible as I think it is,” Kyle said. “He’s so convinced he’s written the next Great American Novel.”
Carter and Brett exchanged wary looks.
“What if it’s stupendous?” Brett asked, rubbing at a stain on his tie. “Should we call your ability as an editor into question?”
“I brought in Shane Matthews,” Kyle said. “And Sierra too. I’m having a pretty good month, aren’t I, Brett?”
The Mentor Page 9
