If I didn’t hate narrative flashbacks (fucking corny or what?), here’s where I would stick them, tugging on my own if not your heartstrings, and what is a heartstring anyway? The dark side would come out, too, if I had a shred of integrity left. I would play back my memories of Myron saying X and realizing in retrospect he should have said Y.
All the multiple takes on the central theme of Myron the Pretender. Myron playing me.
Myron playing everybody.
Myron being the con man.
I thought Porphyry Fontana was a con? He had nothing on Myron, and perhaps that’s why Pork struck a sympathetic cord in him. Myron was the best kind of confidence man you would never want to run across in the world. And you know why? Myron believed his own bullshit, and the one he deceived the most was himself.
At the same time, I missed him and mourned him. Explain that one to me when you figure it out.
I asked for a little time, though I knew what I was going to do.
“Absolutely, you’re the boss, Sibella.”
Like it or not, I guessed somebody had to be.
Bright Lights, Big Sibella
Before I knew it, I was inundated by the invoices and the demands and the summary judgments and the right-to-cure letters from unpaid authors. Our legal bills were mounting by the day, too. Every time I opened a new drawer or looked behind a shelf in Myron’s office, there was more trouble, more creditors lurking. It was going to take a lot of work, and a lot of luck, to keep the business afloat. We had a few months, tops, to get a grip. It was going to take a lot of cash, too, and where was that going to come from? Sure, units had been moving, but the distributors and the book stores soon smelled blood in the water and began to make their returns. And we were having trouble with our warehouse, and the printer needed to be paid. Yes, we had turned a big profit on Slippery Girl, and the movie option and foreign rights cash were helpful, but the money only trickled in, dribs and drabs. And the tide of debts was rising by the day, by the hour, sending the next late royalty statement and uncovered bill onto our shore.
I stopped paying myself and I couldn’t keep paying the senior editors or anybody else on staff, so I gave them the choice: hang in there if you can and I promise that if we survive I will start paying you again. Otherwise, thanks for your dedicated service. Most of them packed it in. I could not blame them. Honestly, I was almost relieved to clear the decks, but it was sad to see Murmechka go. She appeared upset when she said she had no alternative, she had to support her sickly aged mother and she needed to make money. I wished her luck finding a new job. After she cleared out her desk, she said she was going to come back later, she had something she wanted to give me.
“That’s not necessary,” I said, assuming she meant a farewell gift. Then I got paranoid, and feared she was going to serve papers on me. Take a number, you and Mr. Coyote, I bitterly said to myself.
Caprice was the only one who stayed on, which, after her eulogy, I was hoping, and she was a steadying, clear-eyed influence. And when she talked about using social media to work for us in these trying times, she suddenly made sense, and I allowed her carte blanche. She was going to do all she could to build public support to keep Hard Rain alive. Her personal financial circumstances were such that, well… Caprice, baby, just so you know, I don’t think every single person or publicist with a trust fund should be consigned to a dungeon. As they drawl in Alabama, bless her heart.
Ashlay was coming in every day to lend moral support and she was applying her considerable entrepreneurial smarts in addressing the problems and coming up with ingenious solutions. But I feared that between us we didn’t have enough will power and enough cash and never would.
Word got out on the street that we were sinking fast, and then the creditors started screaming louder, and the lawyers started sending new demands to pay up or face a lawsuit. We desperately needed a white knight. Unfortunately, that was what we did not get. In fact, we got the opposite. The darkest hour took place when Cable and Caitlin sauntered in without an appointment.
“Sibella, you got problems,” saith the jerkoff.
“You fucking think?”
“I’d like to help, because I’m your man.”
“I must have missed when you became my man. Say, been wondering, is Pork out of jail yet?”
“Long time ago, he is on probation.”
“How did you keep your sorry ass out of jail?”
“I couldn’t believe it when he made a claim on the life insurance, my dumb uncle. I could say I know what I am doing, but that must be obvious to you, so let’s change the subject to something more pressing.”
“Caitlin got you some penicillin for your newest STD?”
“How’d you…wait, listen to me. You should sell me Hard Rain Publishing.”
I wasn’t surprised. He was one with the guys who specialize in foreclosures and fire sales, buzzards in spread-collar shirts and sporting surreptitious spanx.
“For a dollar,” he said, expansively.
“High roller.”
“But I’ll assume all the debt, which, if what I hear is accurate, amounts to being a great deal for you. You can lose all the headaches and”—big buildup—“I would have you stay on as my editor in chief.”
“Because you would be the publisher?”
“Yes, moi. I think that would be fun.”
“Toi have no idea.”
“You can teach me the ropes around here, and we can publish books together, and before long it’ll be like old times with my dad at Hard Rain. I know the first book we’ll bring out, too.”
“Of course you do.”
“The Life and Times of Calypso O’Kelly.”
Cable and his three-way fucking fantasies.
“You read Caitlin’s book?”
That’s when she piped up: “He couldn’t put it down. All he changed was the title.”
“Yes, great, because that’s essentially all a publisher does. He sits around changing titles and eating bon bons.”
We talked for a while, and I hoped somebody would put Cable, if not the book, down, but I heard him out, and took notes for my Royal Canadian Mounting billable-hours lawyer.
Don’t be upset with me, Myron, wherever you are, because if anybody knew what deep shit we were in, you would appreciate what I said to Cable.
“I’ll get back to you.”
“You may not know this, Sibella, but somebody can also theoretically organize creditors to sue to force an involuntary bankruptcy. Theoretically.”
“Good to know.” Al ass, I resisted: this guy could be my boss someday.
“Take your time. How’s forty-eight hours sound?”
“Thanks, Caleb.”
✴✴✴
Note to the Hollywood sharpster who lunches daily at the Chateau Marmont and who is considering taking out the movie option on this book of mine, or who is contemplating buying the rights to fictionalize the story:
Here’s your big chance to spice things up. This is the moment where you plug in Sibella’s vampires, who grant her the very sexy eternity she has always deserved, and please let those vampires be gorgeous, and not Chippenclydesdale cartoon handsome steroidilized bodybuilders. Keep away any zombies, however, which have a tendency to creep me the fuck out. Or you could go in a whole other direction—and take your lunch at the Ivy instead. But what I am driving at is this: here’s where Sibella finally acquires her supernatural powers. Now she can break down LeBron. Now she can acquire and market great books in her dreams. Now she can make her washing machine and dryer function. Now she can straighten her hair and wear the page boy cut. Now she can permanently vanquish her uptalk. Most of all, now she can ride to the rescue of Hard Rain Publishing, which, as was becoming all too obvious, would require nothing less than powers that were superfuckingnatural.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasur
e dome decree: where Ralph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man.
✴✴✴
As I have said more than once, publishing brings out the asshole in everybody, and in would-be publishers like Cable Fontana, although as anybody could tell he was an asshole well before he contemplated becoming a publisher and hiring me as editor in chief, where I would probably survive a few weeks till he determined he could run the house without me. I may be naïve, but I instinctively knew the subway lines and the exhibitionists to avoid.
I wasn’t concerned about the two-day deadline. For one thing, Cable was going to have to generate a binding Letter of Intent that I would have to sign off on and that would entitle him to do all the due dillydallygence, to get into the spreadsheets and nose around in everything and agree to a nondisclosure, so even if I despaired and finally had no alternative but to do a deal with that sluggola, nothing was going to happen overnight.
Meanwhile, I had another piece of business, personal business, to clean up.
✴✴✴
I called Junior and said, yes, you can stay with me for a while till the dust settles in your life. Was I fantasizing reconsillyiation? Not consciously, and I am being as honest with you as I am capable. Taking over the oars of this seemingly ruined publishing house had wearied me, and I—TMI alert—desired some affection, some human attention, some person who cared for and about me, even as the sharks were circling my little skiff taking on water. Was Junior throwing me a lifeline, saving me and sending my way a little bit of salvation, or was he another anchor taking me down? I didn’t know, but I was prepared to temporarily risk my apartment key and self-esteem with him. I understood saying yes to him amounted almost certainly to a doomed idea, that once a snake always a snake, but sometimes hopeless ideas are the only kind you have at your disposal. He told me he was very happy to hear my acceptance of his self-invitation, and that he would get back to me with travel dates, and in the process I thereby squandered the last vestigilations of any respect you ever tentatively held for yours truly. But I did hold the line on one matter.
“You’re not divorced,” I reminded him.
“It’s merely a matter of time,” he said, maybe a little too quickly.
“That means we’re not sleeping together. We clear?”
I myself wasn’t so clear about that last part, but it felt empowering to set a boundary. Hey, a self-respecting girl needs to stand on principles, and so do I.
Click, click, bye-bye, and you’ll never guess who called a minute later.
Try, because you can.
YGB, you’re right.
All my exes are from Plexedupus. His was destined to be a truncated call. In the whirlwind, I wasn’t feeling warm and frizzy today. Besides, a girl can only take so much of nostalgia and bubble bathing, neither of which I ever liked much. I don’t know why I phrase it like that, but the two notions connected in my mind, perhaps memories of childhood, like those Monsieur Proust should have written about instead of all that French pastry architecture, which is supposedly a grand achievement of his. Anyway, YGB told me he was getting out of the publishing business. He didn’t have the stomach for it, not after The Dream Calculus fiasco, for which he took all the heat, and he couldn’t walk down an office hallway without getting stared down by Mal Occhio and the rest of the higher-ups. He was going to go into…he told me the color of his new parachute.
I didn’t care.
I had used up all my caring resources after Myron died and left me this mess. And then there was this bit of news: YGB left Kelly, too. He was moving back to San Francisco, he hated New York… And what, and what were the chances he and I could…
There was none chance, I indicated.
YGB was clueless and only in passing did he mention Myron’s demise. And therefore I didn’t let on what was happening now with Hard Rain and self-involved me. I don’t know how Myron grasped this truth, Ruth, from the jump, but from the time he christened his editor in chief Young Goodman Brown, he envisioned how the boy’s life would play out, like it did in Hawthorne’s story of Young Goodman Brown, who took that late night walk into the dark woods and saw or imagined terrible things and would never be the same and would die miserable and alone without Faith, which was the name of his wife, and without faith, as well. Man, if you are testosterone- or faith-deficient, the publishing business is not for you. For the first condition, you can take some pills, but for the other, there is no course of treatment that will do.
You won’t believe this, but Cruella DeSibella chillingly materialized, and she said, “Just before you called, I was talking to your once-upon-a-time star author. Weird, huh? Anyway, he’s gonna be staying with me in my studio apartment—remember my little place? the one bed?—when he comes into town. Any messages you want me to relay on your behalf?”
YGB did, he really did. To tell the truth, Kelly left him after the company fired her. Many heads had to roll after Junior’s crash and burn, and hers was a particularly pretty candidate. You’ll never surmise this about Kelly. Of course you will. After YGB, she had already hooked up with…
“Eat pray tell,” I said, and he did.
I heard him out, hung up, and immediately dialed Junior.
“Harry,” I said.
“Hey, Sib, good to hear your voice again, what’s it been, like ten minutes? We don’t talk for years, and then all of a sudden, we—”
“Been thinking about your visiting me.”
“Me too, looking forward. It’ll be our chance to—”
“Hold on. Are you listening very, very carefully, Harry?”
“I hang on your every word, baby.”
“Great. Here’s two you can hang yourself on: ____ ___.”
If you cannot correctly fill in the spaces accommodatingly provided above with the two soul-satisfying words I uttered, my work has been in vain. I am aware that it may have been in vain, but as any two-bit juniorish editor would tell you, that’s the risk every self-lacerating writer or editor must take.
Best worst click in my life. Here’s when I should drop the mic, turn my back to the crowd, and walk offstage to thunderous applause. Some complications: no mic, no stage, no applause, just me, alone, head in my hands.
Wolf, I quit.
✴✴✴
Who’s there?
Note to Kelly, in case you’re reading my book because you stole an Advanced Review Copy and temporarily have a lot of time on your hands, what with your professional high ate us. Too bad you lost your job—no, truly, I am sort of kind of almost sorry. I don’t take an inordinate amount of pleasure in your misery, though I could, given that you hooked up with both of the heightist giraffe girl’s exes, one on the sheets and one on the other kind of sheets, and then the other one on the real sheets, too. In the interests of good sportsgirlship, you should know that Who’s there? is not the beginning of that famous old Abbot and Costello baseball routine (which is very funny and you could probably use a good chuckle). No, that’s the very first line in Hamlet, which was written by a certain Mister William Shakespeare a long time ago, like before you started kindergarten, and it’s the overriding question that informs the entire play, my favorite Shakespeare. If you ever go to a Hamlet performance with your two-faced boyfriend on-the-double-rebound with whom you can share a Tale of Sibella or two, if, that is, he hasn’t yet scampered back to his wife, which is what he will do when you least expect it, may I make a recommendation? I hope you’ll enjoy the play, which concludes with a fucking blood bath, like your New York publishing experience. And keep in mind, in the theater, no photos, no phones, no gum chewing allowed.
Maybe I am being harsh. Whoever you may be, you have to be a better person than I am. What I’d say to you is, don’t bother worrying about Kelly. If history has taught me and Michael Corleone in The Godfather anything, you can kill anybody. History has also taught us that the Kellys of the world always manag
e to survive. She would pull up her pant suits one leg at a time and find another and better job, I had no doubt.
Like Michael in The Godfather, that was the day I took care of all the family business.
All that was left was taking care of the business business.
As for Hamlet and Hard Rain Publishing, I was there, that’s who. And Gentle Penal Reader, I married the company.
If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.
Like a number of marriages, this one started out rocky.
✴✴✴
Of which I am more than confident, unless your reading comprehension parallels that of a certain senior editor, you have some inkling.
Then out of nowhere and when I had all but lost hope, auspicious things started to happen. First off, I discovered an unopened bottle of Midleton’s Irish Very Rare Whiskey tucked away in a file drawer. I’m usually not one for the hard stuff, and I prefer my beer, but once on my way out the door at the end of work, on Myron’s last day on earth as it happened, he poured me a shot, in no time making this bottle one battle-scarred dead soldier. “Try some, Sibella. Alcohol has been the ruination of lots of writers, but trust me, this great Irish whiskey is the editor in chief and publisher’s best friend.” He had a point. The Midleton’s was a revelation. It was velvety and lilting, as if you could drink the pipes, the pipes are calling strains resounding far off in a distant green glade. It was the last valuable lesson he ever taught me. “Confusion to our enemies,” he toasted, words to live by, and our glasses clicked, and I left, and a few hours later he would be gone.
Then, I found some cash, though not in any file drawer, and I searched and destroyed, believe me. My folks offered to lend me some money, that is, to tide me and the company over for a while. Amazing how useful an influx of cash and Irish whiskey can be. It wasn’t a lot of money in absolute terms, considering the company debts, but it was real money with five zeroes.
Sibella & Sibella Page 24
