The Hook

by Donald E. Westlake

  The money wasn’t the point, anyway, the writing was the point. He wanted to sit at his computer, the same as ever, unreel the stories, but he didn’t want it to be meaningless, spinning his wheels, a mockery. He didn’t want to be foolish in his own eyes.

  And the other problem, of course, was Lucie Proctorr. He started The Shadowed Other on Monday, but Thursday just kept looming in his mind, distracting him, forcing him to invent scenarios about Lucie Proctorr rather than Jim Gregory, the hero of his novel.

  By Wednesday, he was pacing the apartment more than he was seated at his computer, and Thursday was worse, made even more so by the fact that Susan wasn’t coming home from work. She was going directly to Jill’s place, up on Riverside Drive, and they’d go to dinner from there.

  The invitation to Low Fidelity had come in Tuesday’s mail, and it had said there would be a cocktail buffet following the performance. The opening night would begin an hour earlier than usual, at seven, so Wayne fed himself leftovers out of the refrigerator at six. “There’s good and bad in everybody,” he told himself, as he paced the kitchen. “What’s my grudge against her? That’s the problem.” He felt more and more tense, and had one glass of white wine to calm himself, but was afraid to drink more.

  It was a cool night in early November, not cold enough to need a topcoat. He wore his blazer, a blue shirt, and a red tie, and walked down to Grove Street, arriving at ten to seven, to see the usual cluster of people on the sidewalk out front. He didn’t know any of them, and was the only singleton there. He recognized Lucie at once, from her picture in People. She stood talking and laughing with two other women, all three of them fortyish and very good-looking, in a Don’t Touch The Merchandise way. The other two women were smoking, Lucie was not.

  The only reasons to stand outside were to smoke or chat or wait for friends. Wayne had none of those reasons, so he went on inside and showed his invitation to a girl at a folding table set up just to the right of the door. She checked him off on a list, and gave him his ticket and the program.

  He went on into the auditorium, which was small, under a very high black ceiling, with steeply raked seating up to the right from the entrance, the stage to the left. There was no curtain fronting the stage, and the set was a busy one, a living room and a kitchen and a staircase, lots of furniture and lots of doors. The stage lights were off, so that the set was faintly mysterious and faintly threatening.

  The theater was less than a quarter full, and he saw that in here there were a few other loners like himself. His seat was the last one on the far side, two-thirds of the way up. He crossed between the seats and the stage, aware of people who glanced at him and then away when they didn’t know him. Would it matter, later on, if people remembered he’d been here tonight? No, it couldn’t.

  The program was the off-Broadway version of Playbill, full of chatty news about a world very different from his own. The writers he knew were novelists or short-story writers, or they had moved to California to be screenwriters and would occasionally come back to tell their horror stories. Theater people lived in a parallel universe.

  The Playbill contained the usual pocket biographies, so he read the one about Jack Wagner, the playwright. This was his first play, it seemed. He was a journalist by profession, came from Missouri, had graduated from Antioch, lived near Rhinebeck with his wife, Cindy, and two sons. He had been nominated three times for journalism awards Wayne had never heard of.

  More people came in, the theater filling, and then a cheerful older couple claimed the seats to his left. They wore lots of coats and scarves, and she carried a big black leather clunky purse, so it took them some while to get settled, during which Wayne read the list of individuals and organizations that helped support this theater, and then read the biography of the director, Janet Higgins, a native Floridian, who had directed half a dozen off-Broadway plays Wayne had never heard of and had considerable experience as well in “regional theater.”

  “Good evening.”

  It was the woman to his left. Her husband was next to Wayne, so she had leaned forward to smile past him.

  “Evening,” Wayne said.

  “Isn’t this wonderful for Jack?”

  “From journalism to playwrighting,” Wayne said, with admiration, as though describing some difficult acrobatic performance. “Quite a leap.”

  “No one deserves it more,” she said, which Wayne thought a non sequitur, but he agreed anyway. “You’re right.”

  “Fred Gustav,” the man said. “My wife, Molly.”

  “Wayne Prentice.”

  “Wasn’t the traffic terrible tonight?” Molly asked. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I walked,” Wayne told her. “I live nearby.”

  They both looked at him as though he were an interesting freak of nature. Molly said, “You live in the Village?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, that must be fun,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “We live in Yonkers,” Fred told him. “Our boy Perry went to school with Jack.”

  “At Antioch.”

  “That’s right!”

  Some people a few rows down called to Fred and Molly, who called back, and farther down below Lucie Proctorr came in by herself and took a seat toward the right end of the first row. Her blonde hair glittered like gold shavings in the direct beam of one of the ceiling spotlights. The gray unlit set beyond her looked like a grave.

  Wayne felt a little sick.

  * * *

  He had no idea what the play was about, except doors were slammed a lot, people stood four-square to shout at one another, and there was a great deal of laughter and even some applause from the audience along the way. Wayne was mostly aware of that blonde head down there, picking up light from the stage.

  The odd thing was, he mainly thought about The Shadowed Other. Details about Jim Gregory, the people he would meet when he got to Guatemala, how he would go about his search, all these things ran through his head, which they hadn’t been doing all week.

  Wayne suspected there was more applause at the close tonight than there would be at subsequent performances; everybody here, after all, was connected to somebody involved in the show. The actors got sustained applause, and then “Author!” was called several times, and a beaming bookish man in pebbly brown sports jacket and navy blue turtleneck came out to receive a standing ovation. He had dark-framed eyeglasses that bounced the stage lights at the audience and a neat Vandyke beard. He held his hands together in front of himself as though he were handcuffed, and bobbed his head a lot, and smiled and smiled.

  Then, at what Wayne thought was just the right moment, the man on stage raised his hands for the people to be quiet, and they were, and he said, “None of this could have happened if it wasn’t for our wonderful director, Janet Higgins!” and she came out, and was one of the women Lucie had been talking to in front of the theater. There was another standing ovation, during which Lucie, excitedly jumping in the front row, clasped her hands over her head to let Janet Higgins know she was the champ.

  Janet Higgins gave a brief laudatory speech, and introduced the founder and general manager of the theater, a rumpled man in a sweater, who gave one more laudatory speech, and then invited everybody up on stage for “drinks and goodies.”

  It was strange to be at a cocktail party on a stage set. You were in a living room, and yet you weren’t. People chattered happily, Fred and Molly seated themselves comfortably on the audience-facing sofa, and a number of people sat on the staircase, which didn’t actually go anywhere. The kitchen counter became the bar, complete with tuxedoed bartender, and tuxedoed waiters and waitresses circulated with platters of finger food. Wayne nursed a glass of white wine, wandered between living room and kitchen, and wondered how he was going to meet Lucie Proctorr, who was always in the middle of some conversation.

  At last he saw that Jack Wagner was free, so he went over, stuck his hand out, and said, “Congratulations.”

  “Oh, thank
s,” Wagner said. “Thanks.” He was very bright-eyed, and his hand when he grasped Wayne’s was vibrating. His other hand held a glass of white wine with wavelets in it.

  Wayne said, “I’m Wayne Prentice, I’m the guy Bryce foisted off on you.”

  “Oh, that’s who you are!” His expressions kept swerving, a kaleidoscope of different kinds of joy. “I’m so glad you could make it,” he said.

  “So am I. It’s a terrific play.”

  “Thank you.”

  Looking around, Wayne said, “Bryce’s ex-wife is here someplace, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, Lucie! Sure, she’s a buddy of Janet’s. You don’t know Lucie?”

  “Bryce and I hadn’t seen each other in years, until just recently. I guess he started looking up old friends after the marriage died. Listen, I’d love to meet Lucie Proctorr, but I don’t know how to go about it.”

  “Easiest thing in the world,” Wagner said. “It’s just, I tell you what, we won’t mention you’re a friend of Bryce’s.”

  “Good idea. What if I know you,” Wayne suggested, “because I called you one time to get some background about journalism for a novel I was writing.”

  “Perfect. Come on.”

  Lucie was in the kitchen, in a little cluster of people by the refrigerator, next to a door that had a stub of porch outside it and beyond that the darkness of offstage. Wagner waited his moment, and then said, “Lucie, I want you to meet somebody.”

  She had a bird’s alertness, Wayne noticed, in the way she turned her head, and in the brightness of her eyes. She stepped out of that conversation like stepping out of a tub. “Yes?”

  “Lucie Proctorr, Wayne Prentice.”

  “How do you do?”

  “Wayne’s a novelist, but he’s all right.”

  “Oh, some novelists are all right,” she said, and grinned slightly at Wayne as she said, “Are you a famous novelist, Mr. Prentice?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, “I’m just a door-to-door novelist, I sell books out of the trunk of my car.”

  “You must be a very persuasive salesman.”

  “I try to be.”

  “Sell me,” she said.

  He didn’t follow. “What?”

  “Sell me a book,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” Wagner said, being called away, but neither paid any attention.

  “Sell me your latest book,” she said.

  That would have been too complicated. He said, “No, I’ll make it easy on myself. I’ll sell you my first book.”

  She watched him with amused keenness. “Why is that easier?”

  “I was very enthusiastic then.”

  “Aren’t you enthusiastic now?”

  “Sometimes. My first book was called The Pollux Perspective, and it was about two army men whose job is to safeguard a doomsday machine. One of them decides it’s a manifestation of God, and has to be protected at all costs, and the other decides it’s Armageddon, and its release should not be thwarted. They both think of themselves as the good guy.”

  “Very arty,” she said.

  “Actually,” he said, “I was trying to be very commercial. Blowing everything up, you know.”

  She looked thoughtful. “What did you say that was called?”

  “The Pollux Perspective.”

  “But I’ve read that book!”

  Astonished, he said, “You have?”

  “My husband had it. Ex-husband. Had it, probably still has it. Do you know him?”

  “Your husband?”

  “Ex-husband, or at least eventually. Bryce Proctorr.”

  “Oh, he’s famous,” Wayne said. “I don’t think he sells books out of the trunk of his car.”

  “No, it might be better for him if he did,” she said. “Would you fill my wineglass?”

  “Delighted,” he assured her, and carried it away, and filled both glasses.

  When he got back, she was in a different conversation, but she left it immediately, took her glass, and said, “Thank you. The Pollux Perspective. Why aren’t you famous, Mr. Prentice? You’re as good a writer as my former. Don’t you push yourself ?”

  “Maybe not enough,” he said.

  “Well, you’re never going to get anywhere being a shrinking violet,” she told him. “How many books have you published?”

  “Twelve.”

  “And still among the great unwashed. I think you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “It might not be entirely my fault.”

  “All the losers say that,” she commented.

  He could not let her see him become annoyed. “Have you been around a lot of losers?” he asked her.

  “Not for long. What are you working on now?”

  “A man whose brother disappears, and he goes looking for him. I think it’ll turn out, what he’s searching for is himself.”

  “Arty but commercial again?”

  “Lots of skulduggery,” he said. “South American generals.”

  “Oh, don’t we know all that?”

  “We don’t know my guy and his brother.”

  “I’m not sure we need to know them,” she said. “Sell it to me.”

  “Not here. Too much distraction.”

  Again, that sharp bird look; a bird of prey? “Are you asking me for a date?”

  He hadn’t been. She was so aggressive, so fast, that all he could do was struggle to find immediate answers. Being with her was like being in a tennis match, not having known you’d be expected to play.

  “Sure,” he said, because closer to her was where he would have to be, no matter what happened next. He remembered Bryce warning him that he had fallen in love with this woman once, and mightn’t Wayne do the same? No. He’d said no before because of Susan, but now he could say no because of Lucie; she wasn’t restful enough to fall in love with. You might lust after her, to see if it was possible to pin down with your cock that quicksilver quality, but that wouldn’t be love.

  He said, “Dinner next Monday?”

  “I’m busy Monday. Why not call me Tuesday?”

  “Because I don’t know your number.”

  “Oh, you’re about to know my number,” she said, laughing at him, “and I do believe I’m about to know yours.”

  * * *

  Susan was waiting up when he got home.

  “I met her,” he said, and went to the kitchen for another glass of wine, and found Susan expectant in the living room when he got back. He sat down and said, “Susan, I don’t think I ought to talk about this from now on.”

  “Just tell me,” she said, “did you like her?”

  “She’s interesting but repellent,” he said.

  “Good.”

  He said, “I think, Susan, it’s time for us to go to bed and have a sexual encounter.”

  Amused, she said, “So Lucie turned you on, did she?”

  “She reminded me how much you turn me on,” he said, which was almost the truth.

  And later, after Susan fell asleep, he lay thinking how that kind of woman could be a strong draw for a confident, high-powered personality like Bryce. She’d be a challenge to him, and he would never give up believing he was up to the challenge. But she would be relentless, there would never be any cease-fires with her, there was no way to bring that war to an end.

  Well, one.

  * * *

  Next day, in the mail, came four copies of a contract, between Bryce Proctorr and Tim Fleet, resident at this address. The wording was careful but straightforward. It described exactly the agreement Bryce had offered when they’d met. “I notice,” he told himself, “I get a quarter of any future earnings, subsidiary rights. Movie sales, see that? But that’s okay. This is merely a passage through hell, that’s all, like Jim Gregory’s passage through Guatemala. If The Domino Doublet, or whatever Bryce changes it to, if it makes millions and millions of dollars, so what? Let him have three-quarters, let him have it all. It wouldn’t make a penny, if it didn’t have Bryce’s name on it in the first place. And after all,
one way or another, it isn’t about money anyway, is it?”

  Along with the contract had come a note on Bryce’s small stationery:

  Dear Tim,

  Please sign all copies, keep one, send the other three to me. Send them when you think the time is right, and I’ll carry them with me when I leave for California for a couple of weeks.

  I’m sure this collaboration will be a success for both of us.

  Yours,

  Bryce

  “California for a couple of weeks,” he echoed. “Of course, to be a continent away when it happens.”

  In his office, Wayne had a four-drawer gray metal filing cabinet, man height, beside his desk. He took from its second drawer a fresh unused manila folder and inserted the four copies of the contract and the note into it. Then he took from his wallet the torn-off piece of Playbill on which, last night, Lucie Proctorr had written her name and phone number and address uptown on Broadway. He copied all that onto a card on his Rolodex, and then the Playbill scrap also went into the folder.

  He considered the folder for a while, trying to decide what heading to put on the tab, then at last left it blank. He slid it into the drawer between “LEGAL” and “MAGAZINES.” He’d know where to find it: “LUCIE.”

  Seven

  For a week and a half, Bryce worked contentedly on Two Faces in the Mirror. It wasn’t that he forgot his troubles, merely that they felt far away.

  Structurally, the book was quite good, though there was some time-frame business in the middle that could be plainer; he made it plain. Changing the tone and feel of the book from a Wayne Prentice novel to a Bryce Proctorr novel wasn’t hard; instantly he knew how to phrase Wayne’s thoughts in his own words.

  The third chapter, a very powerful mountainside near-death scene, was now the first chapter, with the rest adapted to fit, which was partly because Bryce thought it read better with that strong opening and partly because, if one of the few people who’d seen the book in its original form were to pick it up and start to read it, the story wouldn’t seem instantly familiar. If it felt familiar later on, that would be all right; most novels remind us of other novels.