Providence Noir

by Ann Hood

  Beresford phoned that evening. “You’re going to be receiving my novel Danke, Dolores in the mail,” he said.

  “Believe I already have.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “Can’t promise I’ll get to it for a while, though, kiddo. Kind of busy these days.”

  “No, no, you don’t have to read it. I just had to mail it to someone for copyright purposes because I still haven’t found a permanent flat yet.”

  “Oh.” Then: “How’s that?”

  “See, I don’t have enough money to be ladling it out to the Library of Congress when I can get an official copyright simply by mailing it to myself. Long as it’s not opened, the postmark is a valid copyright, so I saved myself ten bucks.”

  “You shrewd bastard.”

  Beresford chuckled. “One other thing. When I sent the book out I had to give the publishing house a phone number, and the Y said I’m not allowed to receive calls here, so I gave them yours. Hope you don’t mind, sir?”

  Tenpenny smirked at Beresford’s youthful optimism. “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll man the fort when the calls start streaming in.”

  There’s an old saying in non-WASP circles (radioactively leaked to Tenpenny by his outgoing third wife) that the reason trust funders are so cheap is because if they ever did lose their money, they wouldn’t have a clue how to get it back. Of all the mean things #3 said to him, this one hurt the most, because it was the truest, and every broke day that Roger suffered through was a victory for the cheating bitch and a defeat for him. Roger had had a few interesting business ideas over the years—a combination toilet paper/baby wipe dispenser for adults who liked extra cleanliness; a nonalcoholic tequila; a fake bumble bee on a stick that you could scare your friends with, etc.—but what he had in creativity he lacked in follow-through. After the initial excitement over the concept, his only avenue was to find a successful CEO who could do the heavy lifting and split everything 50/50 with him, which of course is not how commerce works.

  As the fall progressed and money grew scarce, time seemed to speed up for Tenpenny. This was an illusion, of course, caused by sleeping fourteen hours a day and being foggy-brained for most of the waking ones. Suddenly the Christmas season was at Tenpenny’s throat—seemingly leapfrogging over a couple other holidays—and with it came the vestigial pain that Jesus’s birthday brings to the downtrodden.

  Roger sat picking at a tin of sardines with crispless crackers at four o’clock on a darkening afternoon. It was his first meal of the day. His adrenals, shot from stress and worry, had not permitted three cups of yesterday’s coffee to register, so when his phone rang all he could do was stare. The machine picked up, informing the caller that everyone at the “Providence branch” of Guardian Angel Associates was either on another line or out to lunch.

  “Hello,” a man said, tentatively. “This is Paul Scholl calling from Alfred A. Knopf in New York. Could you please ask Charles Beresford to call me regarding his novel Danke, Dolores—”

  Tenpenny grabbed for the phone. “G-A-A,” he trilled in a high, officious voice, “How can I direct your call?”

  “Yes, um, I’m not certain I have the right place. Is there a Charles Beresford at this number? I’m calling about a manuscript he sent us.”

  “You must be looking for Mr. Tenpenny. He’s our resident scribe.” Tenpenny tried to sound jovial. “I’ll connect you.”

  He tapped a couple numbers on the phone and then in his own voice said, “Roger here, what’s shakin’?”

  “Hello,” the man said. “I’m calling from Knopf Publishing in New York and I’m looking for a Mr. Charles Beresford.”

  “That’s me. Well, I’m him. That is, Charles Beresford is my nom de . . . whichimicallit. Is this about my book?”

  “Well, yes it is, Mr. . . .”

  “Tenpenny.”

  “My name is Paul Scholl and I have rather quite good news for you. We loved your novel and want very much to publish it.”

  Rather quite seemed rather quite wordy for an editor, and for a millisecond Tenpenny wondered if this was the right publishing house for him, but then he glanced at the sardine can and said, “Fantastic! That’s wonderful news!”

  After a little more back-patting and some small talk, the editor asked if Tenpenny could find a gap in his schedule to come to the city for a few days. Roger beamed. “How does tomorrow sound?”

  * * *

  A puffy-eyed Tenpenny was leaving his apartment early the next morning when he heard a shout and saw Beresford bounding up his front steps.

  “Monsieur Ro-jay!”

  “Hey. How’s it going?” Tenpenny bustled past him toward the sidewalk. The city had sustained an overnight dumping and the trees were shaking off the snow, their limbs animate and noisy.

  “Great,” Beresford said. “I’ve been meaning to stop by and pick up my novel.”

  Which was inside the briefcase Tenpenny was toting to New York.

  “Really shitty timing, buddy-boy. Gotta catch a flight and running late—mind grabbing it some other time?”

  Tenpenny trudged briskly to his car. Beresford had to hop every third step to keep up.

  “Really? Can’t you just run inside? It’ll take a sec.”

  “Problem is, if I open my apartment I’ll have to reset the burglar alarm and the little fucker’s as fickle as my third wife.” Tenpenny chuckled. “What a twat she was!”

  “Oh. Okay. No big deal. So . . . where are you off to?”

  “New York. Business.” Tenpenny brushed snow off the windshield with his coat sleeve. “By the way, have you thought about what we talked about?”

  “What’d we talk about?”

  “You know, about publishing houses being the kiss of death for writers, and you going home to England?”

  “When did you say anything about me going back to Britain?”

  “Okay, what about the other thing?”

  “You mean about not being published? I thought you were just talking about you.”

  “Not just.”

  “But you said you were having nightmares about it, right?”

  “All the time. It was eating me alive—you know, I didn’t want to be a sell-out.”

  Beresford spit out a laugh. “You crack me up, Roger. Yeah, I don’t get that—I’m fine with being published.”

  Tenpenny forced a smile. “Good. Then you should. Be published.”

  As Roger climbed into his car, Beresford blurted out, “Hey, I don’t suppose . . . ? Ah, never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Not important. Bad idea.”

  “Come on, what is it?”

  “Well, it’s just, I was going to say, being that you’re going to be in New York . . . But you’ve already done way too much for me.”

  “For Christ’s sake, spit it out. I have a plane to catch.”

  “Would it be possible for you to pop your head into Knopf and see how my book’s doing?”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Really? You don’t mind? You could do it?”

  “Charlie horse, you have my word.”

  * * *

  Manhattan is a gracious town when one is there by invitation. The Knopf people treated Tenpenny like a king. His editor, Paul Scholl, called him a once-in-a-lifetime find. He said his characters breathed, his plotting was seamless, and his style harkened to a more literate era. His was a new voice with an old sound, and they were anxious to get it out there. Incredibly, Tenpenny discovered, there are publishing seasons, and in a highly unusual move, and assuming they could quickly reach an agreement, his book was being fast-tracked to the summer season. What’s more, they were going to make Danke, Dolores their tentpole release. Roger Tenpenny was about to become a household name.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Roger said. “Household name? Uh, no, that would be the kiss of death for someone like me. I need to fade into the shrubbery to do what I do. That’s why I wrote it under a pen name.”

  “I didn’t literally mean a household name,�
� Scholl said. “I just meant, you’ll be well known in literary circles.”

  “But I don’t want to be famous in any circle, I just want to be able to do what I do in privacy . . . but be well-compensated.”

  Scholl’s droopy-faced assistant Phyllis laughed, though it hadn’t been meant as a joke. (Bell’s palsy, it had been explained—tick bite.) “I do like what he’s saying, shough,” she slurred. “I shink people will be drawn to that kind of humility.”

  “Okay,” Scholl agreed. “We’ll go by your pseudonym.”

  “Right. Good. Excellent. But I’d prefer something different than Charles Beresford—it has such a stuffy ring to it.”

  “Really?” Scholl said. “I kind of like it. Beresford’s a solid name.”

  “But a little pretentious, no? I was thinking of something like . . . Thames Bannister?”

  Scholl couldn’t tell if he was kidding. Phyllis chuckled uneasily.

  “What?” said Tenpenny. “It’s kind of strong-sounding and memorable and it’s—”

  “Weird,” said Scholl. “It sounds like a soap opera villain.”

  Eventually they agreed on the name Charlie Pettygrove.

  Tenpenny was put up at the Hotel Elysee, and that evening Scholl and a flashy editor named Gary took him to dinner at Nell’s, then to the Limelight where Tenpenny charmed them with ex-wife stories until four a.m. A happy, comedic light suddenly shimmered on all the bad things that had happened in Roger’s life, because everything had led him to this moment. He told them about Wife #1 buying her father a seaplane without telling him; how he knew the second one was over when his brand-new wife air-kissed him on the altar to protect her makeup; the time he came home to find #1 and #2 rifling through his financial records while the soon-to-be ex-#3 served them wine spritzers. Though often showcasing his own character weaknesses, his detached, it-is-what-it-is delivery charmed the editors. Even when he came across in the worst light—as when he drunkenly lit his Telluride property on fire with Wife #3 inside pounding her lesbian lover (it went out on its own)—his honesty was his redemption. Scholl and Gary recognized that Roger Tenpenny had had his ass kicked in a big way, and those were the dues one paid to become, if not a great man, well, certainly a great writer.

  When the topic turned to his novel and what had inspired it, Tenpenny pleaded the artist’s Fifth: his motivation didn’t matter, it was how they were inspired by it that counted. He had speed-read through the 450-page manuscript the night before, but the prose was dense and not much had stuck. He knew that it had something to do with an old man named Fritz and a young ghost named Dolores, so he satisfied them by recounting the time he and a friend had reached out to the other side.

  It happened in St. Croix soon after his prep school friend Wellsy’s death. “He had died just a couple weeks earlier under less than ideal circumstances,” Tenpenny said, without elaborating about the contentious land deal. “Poor guy’s pump blew doing blow. So we figured if anyone would be hanging around it would be Wellsy. He was kind of clueless and wouldn’t even know he was dead. We lit candles and meditated on him for a while, asking him to give us some kind of sign—a flicker of light, a cool breeze. When nothing happened, we turned on a tape recorder and asked again, this time out loud, and we also opened up the floor to any random spirits that were floating around, just so long as they were good-natured. Anyway, it didn’t seem like anything was happening but we decided to play the tape back anyway.”

  “And . . . ?” Gary asked.

  “Nothin’. It was a big waste of time and we felt more than a little stupid for spending the last couple hours talking to the air. Then, just as my friend was about to leave, he said, Hey, I wonder what would happen if we rolled the tape backward. So we did.”

  The editors leaned in anxiously and Tenpenny milked the moment. Then . . .

  “Still nothin’.”

  As the men laughed, Tenpenny wished that Beresford could be witnessing this from some detached, egoless parallel universe where the benefits of Tenpenny taking the reigns would be as evident to him as it was to the rest of the world. Certainly Beresford deserved props for writing the songs, but Tenpenny was Roger Daltrey to his Pete Townshend—an infinitely better front man—and the main reason the book would ever reach a wide audience. Even in this happy state, though—perhaps because of it—Tenpenny recognized that humans are tragically tethered to their egos and thus he was forced to plan accordingly.

  * * *

  The next afternoon Tenpenny stopped by Scholl’s office and dropped a couple bombshells.

  “I don’t want the book released in Europe,” he announced.

  “What are you talking about? Why not?”

  “I just don’t think they’ll get it.”

  “Of course they’ll get it—it takes place in London.”

  “Right,” Tenpenny said, “but it has a particularly American POV.”

  “Shat’s silly,” the palsied Phyllis added, unnecessarily.

  Scholl offered, “Roger, you’re being too hard on yourself. I don’t think you know what you have here. This is a book for the world. The entire world.”

  This was true, Roger knew, and for a brief moment he hated Beresford for making him keep it from the French and Germans and those newly freed Russians. But what could he do? If he allowed it to be read everywhere, it was only a matter of time before it seeped into England, which is where he planned for Beresford to be residing again soon.

  “And I want the title changed.”

  “A new title too?” said Scholl, exasperated.

  “Yes. I want to call it The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what I want to call it.”

  “The Saturday Night Before . . . ?”

  “Easter Sunday.”

  Scholl looked at Phyllis, who was wearing a kind of half poker face.

  “But that doesn’t mean anything,” said Scholl. “What does it even mean?”

  “Well, um . . . it means, uh . . . it means, uh . . . well, it means nothing. The Saturday night before Easter Sunday doesn’t stand for anything, it’s a nothing date. It’s not like New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve—it’s just . . . the Saturday night before Easter Sunday. It sounds good, but it really means zilch. And that’s . . . that’s really . . . The point is, it’s the emptiness of these people, and their world . . . and the disappointment, and, you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t know,” Scholl said. “It’s a terrible title, and the original title was great.”

  “Look, that’s my title. Sometimes titles are terrible.”

  “Sometimes titles are terrible?”

  “I mean, not every title has to mean something. Look at Blood Simple, that was, uh . . . or Dog Day Afternoon—there were no dogs in that, but it gave you a feeling, and the Saturday night before Easter Sunday is the feeling I want people to get when they pick up my book.”

  “You just said the Saturday night before Easter Sunday means nothing, so what’s the feeling?”

  Tenpenny thought about this. “I want them to come in neutral.”

  * * *

  Before leaving, Roger requested two pieces of Knopf stationery, ostensibly on which to inform his mother of the wonderful news. On his way back to the hotel, he stopped and made copies of the manuscript he’d brought with him. That evening a typewriter was delivered to his suite and, on the Knopf stationery, he tapped out a letter to young Beresford.

  Tenpenny awoke early the next morning and enjoyed a breakfast of caviar, soft-boiled eggs, and garlic potatoes with a split of Moët. At nine o’clock he rode to the post office and mailed a copy of the book to the Library of Congress, in his name, not scrimping on the ten-dollar fee. Another copy he mailed to his apartment, addressed to Beresford. That envelope also contained the letter he’d composed the night before:

  Dear Mr. Berisford:

  What I’m about to say may offend you, but I’m hoping that my candor will save you much time, energy, and di
sappointment later in life. You are not a writer. While I give you kudos for completing an entire novel—quite an accomplishment, no matter the result!—your work fails on myriad levels and is not something that any publishing house in existence would deem printable. Your style is hackneyed, your characters are all too familiar, and your plotting is, well, not good.

  You seem like an intelligent man—i.e., your grasp of the language is serviceable—but not every intelligent person can write. For instance, the ghost in your story is about as scary as “boo,” which is what I did after finally getting to the end. Again, I say this not to denigrate you, but to propel you into a vocation that you are more suited to. Simply put, being a writer is a gift. You either are one or you’re not, and like 99.9 percent of the world, you are not. At least you’re in good company!

  Sorry that I couldn’t bring you more cheerful news but I trust that one day, when you’re off conquering a different sort of industry, you’ll see the wisdom in my words and think fondly of me.

  Happy New Year!

  Yours,

  Paul Scholl

  Editor in Chief

  A week later, Beresford finally stopped by Tenpenny’s apartment. It was nearing midnight on a Saturday night.

  “Sorry to pop in this late, Roger, but I had to work until eleven.”

  “Think nothing of it, kid—you’re welcome anytime. You still at the Scuzzy Rubber?”

  “No, they said I needed a Social Security number, so now I’m working at a pizza place on the East Side.” He shrugged. “It’s a job.”

  “And jobs build character.”

  Roger offered Beresford a small snifter of Hennessey’s, and after much beating around the bush, the Brit inquired if he’d had a chance to stop by Knopf.

  “Did I say I would?” Tenpenny asked innocently.

  “Well, you said if you had any extra time.”

  “Then I did. Charlie, I make extra time for my friends. I can’t say they were too hospitable, though. In fact, the guy I spoke with was a complete ass. I was tempted to tell the jerk to get off his high horse, but I didn’t want to jeopardize your career so I kept my trap shut.” Tenpenny downed his drink. “Oh, incidentally, when I returned home I found this for you.”