by Howard Owen
He took me to a quiet table in a restaurant on Mulberry Street, in what I was informed was Little Italy.
He told me he wanted to bring me up to speed.
Neither of us said much on the way over, after I got over my shock and thanked him. His eyes were still red from the tear gas, and he seemed a little shaky. I, strangely enough, felt fine. For the first time in a long time, the fog was gone.
I knew the TV and newspaper people were hot on my trail. A couple of them managed to bribe the cop assigned to guard me in the hospital, and one of the prisoners later showed me a picture that appeared in the Daily News, along with an interview I didn’t even remember giving.
“Jack,” Gerald told me, “there’s going to be an auction. They want to auction off your manuscript to the highest bidder.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d assumed that all the telephone talk that day in Gerald’s office had been just that—talk. There seems to be a lot of that up here. I hadn’t been thinking too much about the future the last few days.
“So,” I said, “it’s going to be published? Even though I’m in jail?”
Gerald laughed.
“That’d probably make it go for more. But I’m not so sure you’re even going to jail. Not for long, anyhow.”
“Kidnaping isn’t against the law up here?”
“I wasn’t kidnaped. You were overwrought. We just had a long and rather heated discussion about the merits of your book. Which, by the way, is much more promising than I’d earlier thought.”
“You mean it doesn’t suck?” I had to smile a little.
“A good editor could probably do some things to make it even better,” he said. When he saw me frown, he added quickly, “But it’s very good. I’m sure we have a best-seller here. I can guarantee you foreign rights, and it’s got movie written all over it.”
We had to stop twice to sign autographs. First, they recognized me. Then, when they realized that it was me and the guy I was holding hostage, we both had to sign napkins and Post-It notes and anything else people could find for us to write on.
We looked at each other after the second wave left, and we both had to laugh.
“You see what I mean?” Gerald said.
I saw what it meant. I saw that it might not have everything to do with my blinding talent or the story itself.
I was not in a position to carp about how fortune had finally come to my door, though. The old man just told me it would come.
When Gerald Prince produced a contract that gave me a $1.5 million advance for Lovelady and the rights to “a non-fiction work describing the process by which the work named above came to be published,” I thought perhaps that my half of the very nice Amarone Gerald ordered had conspired with my pain medication to make me hallucinate.
“Somebody else will offer you more, probably,” Gerald said, putting his briefcase back down beside him. “And you’re welcome to do it. I certainly wouldn’t blame you.”
I’m not a greedy person. What I wanted to tell him, what I’ve tried to tell others since then—convincing no one, by the way—is that I just wanted to get my damn book published.
I signed with Gerald Prince Books right there, over tiramisu and espresso. Gerald steered me to an agent whom he said I could trust, although he told me the city was full of agents, and they’d all want to sign me up. He said the agent he recommended wouldn’t get a cut from the contract for Lovelady itself, just the other rights, and that he’d only take 10 percent.
“We need to get moving on this,” he told me. “You’re very hot right now.”
Meaning, I understood, that I might not be tomorrow.
And so, Gerald Prince and I became partners of a sort. Partners after crime. It wasn’t the kind of arrangement I might have foreseen. He’d disrespected me. I’d held him hostage. We’d had our moments.
When it came to the bottom line, though, I figured I trusted Gerald Prince as much as I trusted anyone else who could “make it happen,” maybe a little more. Gerald Prince at least knew the downside of playing less than fair with me, and I was sure the agent he lined up would be equally cautious.
And Gerald has seemed to change, at least in his dealings with me. We’ve had some fairly frank and open conversations about how we came to be where we are now, about the cruelty of youth and the necessity of trying to get over it. He surprised everyone by agreeing to come down to Richmond with me when I did the big signing at Barnes & Noble. Because of the way it’s all played out, I believe people see Gerald as almost the co-author of Lovelady, a book, I remind him often, in which he saw no value.
The trial was in March. It was, as they say, in all the papers. It lasted less than half a day.
The hostage himself, as my attorney pointed out, wished for Mr. Stone to serve no time, and everyone seemed certain that my actions were the result of some kind of mental or emotional breakdown. Lieutenant Lewandowski testified against me, but even he didn’t seem hell-bent on sending me away. He winked at me as he left the courtroom.
The judge gave me five years, and then, with perfect timing, dropped the punch line: all but three months suspended. And he prescribed anger-management counseling.
“You can’t buy this kind of publicity,” Gerald whispered to me as we left the courtroom, recorded in word and image from all directions.
Three months in prison is not something I would recommend to anyone, but it could have been much worse. I’m not proud that a bunch of white supremacists adopted me as their 90-day poster boy and kept me relatively safe, but I’d have signed up with Hitler if he could have kept me from being alone with some of the characters in there. I couldn’t stay a Teflon-coated novelty for 90 days.
Gerald Prince himself edited my book. He would visit me with many, many suggestions. He really is a damn fine wordsmith. Most of the suggestions, I approved.
And, whenever I got a mite discouraged upon waking to find myself at a lower level of human life than I’d ever known existed, I would remind myself that when I got on that train to New York, I had accepted that death itself was a very real option. I would not have left on my own two feet until Gerald Prince or someone had read my book and conceded its worth.
They let me out June 15. By then, the book was being furiously printed, with a first run of 500,000 copies.
“The bigger the advance, the bigger the first printing,” Gerald explained. And, it turned out, the bigger the hype.
Lovelady came out in July. It was a real rush job, to hook the beach crowd, Gerald told me. I was on talk radio, telling Imus and half a dozen other hosts about my New York adventure. I was on C-SPAN and four other TV shows, did interviews with newspapers all over the country. There was an Associated Press story that went just about everywhere, plus a spot on “All Things Considered” and even a quick feature on “The Today Show.” Matt Lauer asked me if I regretted taking my old high school friend hostage, just to get a book published. I said I would have done just about anything to get my book published, and he could see I meant it.
Gerald or someone at Mayfair Publishing was able to get me special dispensation, and I went on a book tour, which might have been stranger than anything else that’s happened this year.
Accompanied by one of Gerald’s publicists, Beth Spoonour, I went from Boston to Washington to Richmond to Atlanta to Miami to New Orleans to Chicago to Kansas City to Denver to Los Angeles to San Francisco, in 12 days. Sometimes, there would be four events in one day. Sometimes, they’d even have a driver just to get me there on time.
And people ate it up. There were lines running outside the stores and halfway across the parking lots. They put two-book limits on a couple of the signings, meaning that the customers had to buy at least two books to get them signed.
There weren’t any reviews yet, other than what Gerald calls the “pre-pub reviews.” Publishers Weekly gave it a star, which everyone seemed to think was a big deal, but I’ve since gathered that the star is for potential earnings, not quality. A couple of others s
topped short of unstinting praise, but Beth pointed out that it was easy enough to use “a noteworthy debut” as a promotional blurb, even if the entire sentence did start with “Nevertheless,” and end with “for a man who, it has been suggested, is merely the end product of an industry in which the sizzle matters more than the steak.”
Gerald told me Beth was a facilitator, that she was here to smooth my way across America and back. She did, I do admit, find her way into my king-size bed on the concierge floor of a couple of Ritz-Carltons. I was flattered, of course. Beth is a very attractive, talented young Princeton graduate who took me to a couple of places to which I had not previously been. It had been many, many years since I had lain naked with anyone except Gina.
But it meant a hell of a lot more to me than it did to Beth, I’m sure. It’s all about the sizzle. I can see that. When I’m no longer hot, you can be sure Beth Spoonour won’t be either.
The real reviews weren’t that bad. Some of the bigger papers really liked it. The New York Times liked it on Sunday and then didn’t like it on Wednesday.
“Who cares?” Gerald said. “The important thing is that it was reviewed. People won’t remember what some newspaper hack says about the book. They’ll just remember that they saw it mentioned somewhere.”
Gina came up to see me in March, before I went to prison, and she’s been back once since then, out here to Sag Harbor two weeks ago. Shannon came with her this time. She had wanted to come before, but Gina thought it would be too much.
Shannon seems like she’s grown a couple of inches since I left. I didn’t realize how much I had missed her. We both cried, and I tried as hard as I could to explain to her, in one long weekend, why her daddy had lost his mind and gone to New York City with a loaded gun. I did not, of course, mentioned Milo Wainwright or the dispiriting scene in the insurance office that afternoon. I think Gina appreciates that, at least.
The only benediction I can offer my daughter right now is what I told her before she and Gina got back on the commuter flight in Islip: If you find something you know you can do really well, and you stay with it, no matter what, you’ll succeed. She doesn’t get it now, but maybe some of it will stick and be of use to her later.
The Gina situation is trickier. We did sleep together on this trip, and we had some long talks walking around this place that Gerald bought 20 years ago and couldn’t afford now, full of neglected fruit trees and a small village of outbuildings.
But, who knows? She’s admitted that she really is rather fond of Milo. I told her I’d gathered as much, but she said no, it was more than just the sex. Milo, she said, thought she was the most important thing in his life.
At this point, I could have proclaimed in a loud voice that she was the most important thing in my life, too, that I couldn’t live without her. We know each other too well, though. She’s gone along with all my craziness, not knowing if it was mid-life or just how it would be from now on. At some point, though, when I started drifting farther and farther out—and I can see all this more clearly now—she started letting go from her end, too.
She asked me when I was coming home, and I told her I wasn’t sure. I gave the excuse of being on probation in New York, but we both know I probably could find a way around that. Hell, she knows I’ve been on a book tour.
I hugged and kissed Shannon as their flight was called. Maybe you can come see me sometime by yourself, I said, and she frowned and looked at her mother and said maybe.
I took Gina’s hands in mine then, I kissed her and told her I would see her soon.
And then, there’s Brady.
The movie rights, as Gerald predicted, were a lock. If half a million people read your book—and they have gone into a third printing—they’re going to want to see what Lovelady really looks like.
They start work in December. They’re going to shoot it in Arkansas. I’ve met the director and the producer and about 60 other people involved with the making of the movie. When I mentioned that I had a son out in Los Angeles trying to be an actor, the director said perhaps they could find a role for him. Lo and behold, that’s how it worked out. It isn’t a huge role, but it isn’t small, either. Not bad for somebody who was doing Greater Tuna in Richmond last year. He’ll have several lines, I’m assured.
I’ve talked with Brady I guess four times since I got here. He’s very excited, and the movie role has made it possible for him to get other opportunities, he tells me. He’s coming to see me next week. I bought him a round-trip ticket.
So, what to say about the life I’m leading? No shit, it really is lonely at the top. The friends I have here, in the city and out here in what they call the East End, will throw me away like bad meat when this is all over. I know that. I miss Gina and especially Shannon. I miss Mack and Cully and the rest. Hell, sometimes, I even miss Milo. I miss having a town I could call my own, what they call a sense of place. I don’t think it will be that way, ever again.
I’m working on that non-fiction book that’s the other half of my deal with Gerald. That’s what I’ve been doing out here, mostly. He wants it done by October, although it won’t come out until next spring. There will be some bridge-burning in this one, I’m afraid. There won’t be any lies, but there won’t be a whole lot of varnish either. I’m being harder on myself than anyone else, but the people I grew up with aren’t used to reading about themselves in books. They won’t take it well, I’m sure. Milo and Gina might be chagrined.
The day she and Shannon left, I was feeling particularly blue. I thought that, if I just pulled my punches on the second book and then never wrote anything again, I could still go back. I’d even have a little money in my pocket. The fact that I didn’t even know where I would be living after I left Gerald’s made me think harder than I usually do about returning to Speakeasy, Virginia.
That day, I went to the ocean beach. I left the dog behind, accusing and convicting me with her sad eyes.
“You’re supposed to be a watchdog, dammit,” I said to her as I drove past, but still I felt guilty. Sometimes, I take her with me, but this time, for some reason, I didn’t.
The road is narrow and wooded, with a sand shoulder good for nothing but getting stuck. It has plenty of curves, and much of the traffic is weekenders from the city who bring their driving habits and skills with them. There aren’t many good or safe places to stop.
He was almost out on the highway, because there wasn’t anywhere else much for him to stand. But then I recognized him, and I hit the brakes for a brief second, causing the guy behind me to blow his horn. And then I took off again. If I don’t look back, I told myself, all of this can be a midlife crisis, a little breakdown that can yield a lot of funny stories around the grill or at the diner over the years. This can be a diversion instead of a destination. This does not have to be your life.
He had that same white Hefty bag with him. I saw that clearly as I drove past.
A quarter-mile ahead was a rare wide spot in the road, next to a trash bin, a place where you could turn around.
I braked slowly and put on my signal.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Howard Owen
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1212-6
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