After I sent the e-mail, I used the telephone in the café, and called American Express, Visa, and MasterCard. Each of the three companies confirmed that I had a zero balance on each of the cards (having taken Sandy’s advice several weeks earlier and used the last of my checking account to clear all credit debts). Each of the three companies tried to convince me otherwise when I said that I wished to close my accounts down (“But there’s no need, Mr. Armitage,” the woman at American Express told me. “We so hate to lose such a wonderful customer like you”). But I didn’t budge from my position: cancel all accounts effective immediately . . . and send me the necessary forms to sign at my new address in Meredith.
Before leaving the café, I stopped by the main counter and asked if they had a pair of scissors. They did. I borrowed them, and cut all three of my Gold credit cards into quarter pieces. The guy behind the till watched me:
“Been upgraded to Platinum or something?” he asked me.
I laughed and dumped the dismembered cards in his hands. Then I headed out.
On my way back south to Meredith, I did some quick addition in my head. Seventeen hundred bucks in my bank account. Three thousand six hundred bucks cash in my pocket. A five-hundred-dollar check en route from the insurance guy. Five months’ maintenance paid off. Five more months of free rent at Willard’s cottage . . . and if I got lucky, he might decide to stay on even longer in London (but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead). I had no debts. I had no bills outstanding—especially as Alison (bless her) insisted on using her commission from the novelization to cover Matthew Sims’s tab (she said that she’d made so damn much from me during my two lucrative years, the least she could do was cover my shrink bill). My medical insurance was paid up for nine more months. I needed no clothes, no books, no fancy fountain pens, no compact discs, no videos, no personal trainers, no $75 haircuts, no teeth-bleaching sessions at the dentist (cost: $2,000 per annum), no $8,000 holidays in a charming little beachfront boutique hotel at the tip of Baja . . . in short, none of the costly paraphernalia that once crowded my life. My net worth was $5,800. Utilities in the cottage were no more than $30 a week, and I hardly used the phone. Between food, a couple of bottles of modest wine, a few six-packs of beer, and the occasional trip to the local multiplex cinema, I could easily keep to my $200 per week budget. Which, in turn, meant that the next twenty-six weeks were paid for.
It was a curious feeling, having reduced everything down to this level. Not exactly liberating in that bullshit zen way . . . but definitely far less complex. The numbness that hit me the day Alison told me about McCall’s last column continued to hold sway over me. I often felt as if I was just going through the motions and making decisions on autopilot. Like cutting up all my credit cards. Or selling my laptop. Or walking into Books and Company on Meredith Main Street and asking for a job.
Books and Company was that rare thing: a small independent bookshop, still managing to function in a world of big monocultural chain stores. It was the sort of shop that reeked of polished wood and had exposed timber beams and a parquet floor, and that stocked the usual mix of upmarket literary fiction, popular blockbusters, cookery books, and a nice-size children’s section. There had been a note in the window for the past weeks, informing the good citizens of Meredith that the shop needed a full-time salesperson—and all interested parties should apply to the owner.
Les Pearson was a man in his late fifties: bearded, bespectacled, wearing a blue denim shirt and blue Levis. I imagined him haunting the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, or once having been the proud owner of a pair of bongo drums. Now, however, he exuded settled middle-agedness . . . as befitted the owner of a small bookstore in a small exclusive beachfront town.
He was standing behind the counter when I entered the shop. I’d been in before, so his first question was:
“Can I find you anything?”
“In fact, I’ve come about the job.”
“Oh, really?” he said, now looking me over with care. “You ever work in a bookshop before?”
“Do you know Book Soup in Los Angeles?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Well, I was there for thirteen years.”
“But you live here now. Because I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah, I’m staying at Willard Stevens’s place.”
“Oh right—heard that someone was down at his cottage. How do you know Willard?”
“We used to share the same agent.”
“You’re a writer?”
“Used to be.”
“Well, I’m Les.”
“And I’m David Armitage.”
“How do I know that name?”
I shrugged.
“And you’re really interested in the job here?”
“I like bookshops. I know my stuff.”
“It’s a forty-hour week: Wednesday through Sunday, eleven to seven, with an hour off for lunch. And being a small independent bookshop, I can’t really afford to pay more than seven dollars an hour—around two eighty a week. There are no medical benefits, I’m afraid, or any perks like that . . . except bottomless free coffee and fifty percent off anything you want to buy. Does two eighty a week sound okay to you?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“And if I wanted a couple of references . . . ?”
I took a notepad and pen out of my jacket pocket and wrote the name of Andy Barron, the Book Soup manager (who I knew would be discreet enough not to blab to the world that I was trying to find work in a bookstore). I also gave him Alison’s number.
“Andy used to employ me, Alison used to represent me,” I said. “And if you want to get in touch with me . . .”
“I’ve got Willard’s number in my address book.” He proffered his hand. “I’ll be in touch, okay?”
Later that afternoon, the phone rang at the cottage.
“What the hell are you doing, getting a job in a fucking bookshop?” Alison asked me.
“Hello, Alison. And how’s life in Los Angeles?”
“Smoggy. Please answer the question. Because this Les Pearson guy rang me, saying he was considering you for a job in his shop.”
“Did you give me a good reference?”
“What do you think? But why the hell are you doing this?”
“I need to work, Alison.”
“And why the hell haven’t you answered any of my e-mails of the past couple of days?”
“Because I got rid of my computer.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, David, why?”
“Because I’m not in the writing game anymore, that’s why.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Look, I’m sure that, with a little looking around, we could find you . . .”
“What? A rewrite job on a Serbian soap opera? A quick polish on a Mexican vampire film? Face it, if I can’t keep a novelization gig—because the publisher is too ashamed to be associated with me, even when I’m working under a pseudonym—then who the hell is going to hire me? The answer is no one.”
“Not immediately, perhaps. But . . .”
“When? Remember that Washington Post reporter who had the Pulitzer stripped from her after it turned out she made up an entire story? You know what she’s doing, ten years after her little transgression? Selling cosmetics in some department store. That’s what happens when you’re exposed as a literary cheat: you end up in retail.”
“But compared to that journalist, you didn’t do anything that serious.”
“Theo McCall managed to convince the world otherwise . . . and now my writing career is over.”
“David, I don’t like the fact that you sound so damn calm.”
“But I am calm. And very content.”
“You’re not on Prozac, are you?”
“Not even St. John’s Wort.”
“Look, why don’t I come visit you?”
“Give it a few weeks, please. To quote Ms. Garbo: I vant to be al
one right now.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Never been better.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said.
Around an hour later, the phone rang again. This time it was Les Pearson.
“Well, you certainly got a glowing reference from Andy Barron and from your agent. When do you want to start?”
“Tomorrow’s fine by me.”
“See you at ten then. Oh . . . one small thing: I really was sorry to learn about all the stuff you’ve been through.”
“Thanks.”
So, as agreed, I started work the next day. It was a straightforward job—between Wednesday and Sunday, I single-handedly ran the show at the bookshop. I was the guy behind the counter, helping customers. I was the guy in the back office, dealing with orders and inventory. I was the guy who swept the place and ran a duster across the shelves and cleaned the toilet, and counted the cash and made a deposit every night in the local bank and even had time every day to spend an hour or two behind the cash register, reading.
It was easy stuff—especially during the weekdays, when only the occasional local wandered in. The weekends were a bit busier—especially with all the Angelinos who flocked to town. But the work wasn’t exactly taxing. I never knew if any of the Meredith regulars had found out who I was. I never inquired. Nor, to their credit, did anyone ever make a comment or shoot me a knowing look. In Meredith, there was an unspoken rule that you maintained a polite distance from everyone else. Which suited me just fine. And when the Angelinos came to town on Friday night, I never saw anyone from “the industry” because, with the absentee exception of Willard Stevens, Meredith attracted a weekend crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists. To them, I was just the guy in the bookshop . . . and one who, in a matter of weeks, began to change in appearance.
To begin with, I dropped around 15 pounds, bringing me down to a super-thin weight of 162. Stress initially had something to do with this. So too did reducing all alcohol intake to a beer or a glass of wine a day. And my diet was simple and low in crap. I also started jogging on the beach every day. At the same time, I decided to dispense with my morning shave. My hair also started to grow in. By the end of my second month in the bookshop, I looked like some emaciated holdover from the sixties. But neither Les nor anyone in Meredith commented on this new Haight-Ashbury look. I did my job. I did it well. I was diligent and straightforward and always polite. And things ticked over nicely.
Les, in turn, was an easy employer. He only worked Mondays and Tuesdays (the two days I had off). Otherwise, he spent his time sailing and playing the stock market on the Internet, hinting (in our occasional conversations) that a bit of family money came his way around ten years earlier, allowing him to open this bookshop (an old dream of his, during the many years that he was an ad man in Seattle) and to maintain a pleasant lifestyle on this corner of the Pacific Coast Highway. He once said that he was divorced and that his two children were grown and living in the Bay Area. And when I mentioned on the day I started work that I needed to call my daughter every other night at seven, Les insisted that I use the bookshop phone. When I offered to pay for this regular fifteen-minute call, he wouldn’t hear of it.
“Call it a perk of the job,” he said.
Lucy still wouldn’t speak with me. After two months, I finally called Walter Dickerson and asked if there was any way he could try to negotiate some sort of proper face-to-face access with Caitlin.
“If Lucy wants it supervised, I’m agreeable to that,” I said. “I’m just desperate to see my daughter.”
But after a few days, Dickerson called me back.
“It’s a no-change situation, David. According to her legal guy, your ex-wife is still ‘uncertain’ about the idea of physical access. The good news, however, is that (according to the lawyer) Caitlin is really pushing her mother on this issue—demanding to know why she can’t see her daddy. And the other good news is that, after some to-ing and fro-ing, I have managed to increase your phone access to one phone call a day.”
“That is good news.”
“Give it a little more time, David. Be on your best behavior. Sooner or later, Lucy will have to give way on this one.”
“Thanks for getting me the extra phone calls. You know where to send the bill?”
“Let’s call this one on the house.”
By my third month at Books and Company, life had settled into a pleasant, compartmentalized routine. I jogged. I went to work. I closed up the shop at seven. I had my daily phone call with Caitlin. I went home. I read or watched a movie. On my days off, I often drove up the coast. Or I’d spend the evening at the local multiplex and maybe eat in a modest Mexican joint in Santa Barbara. I tried not to think what would happen eight weeks from now when I had to pay another $11,000 in alimony. I tried not to think about how I would deal with the FRT and Warner Brothers’ paybacks—both of which were pending. And I also tried not to think about what would happen to me when Willard Stevens returned from London . . . which, according to Alison, would happen in three months’ time.
For the moment, I decided to deal with things on a day-to-day basis. Because I knew that if I started really pondering the future, I’d slip into hyper-anxiety again.
Alison continued to call me weekly. She had no news to report, no pending prospects for work, no flurry of royalty payments or new syndication rights . . . because, of course, I lost all that when I lost my contract with FRT. But she still phoned me every Saturday morning, just to see how I was dealing with the world. I would tell her I was fine.
“You know, I’d really be much happier if you would tell me that things are genuinely shitty,” she said.
“But they’re not shitty.”
“And I think you’re having a world-class case of denial,” she said, “which, one day, will come crashing down on top of you like King Kong.”
“So far, so good,” I said.
“And another thing, David—one of these days you might just surprise the shit out of me by dropping a dime and giving me a call.”
Two weeks later, I did just that. It was ten in the morning. I had just opened the shop. There were no customers, so after making myself a coffee and sorting through the mail, I decided to give the LA Times a quick glance (I had finally started to read newspapers again). And there, in a sidebar within the Arts and Entertainment section, was the following item:
Reclusive multibillionaire Philip Fleck has decided to return to the director’s chair, a full five years after his first, self-financed feature film—the $40 million turkey The Last Chance—was laughed off the few screens upon which it was released. Now Fleck announces that he’s going relatively mainstream with a quirky new action-comedy, We Three Grunts. The plot concerns a pair of ageing Chicago Vietnam vets who, having hit bad times, develop a lucrative sideline by robbing banks. Once again, Fleck will be self-financing the film—which he also wrote himself—and that he says contains much of the same skewed humor which so characterized the great Robert Altman films of the 1970s. Fleck also promises some real surprises in the casting—to be announced shortly. Let’s hope that Fleck—whose current net worth hovers around the $20 billion mark—won’t try to turn this alleged comedy into some arty Swedish essay on angst. Existential angst never plays well against the Chicago skyline.
I put the paper down. I picked it up again, brimming with disbelief. My eyes singled out one specific sentence: Once again, Fleck will be self-financing the film—which he also wrote himself.
The bastard. The slimy, talentless bastard. Not only had he stolen my script again. This time, he had the audacity to keep the original title.
I picked up the phone. I dialed Los Angeles.
“Alison?” I said.
“I was about to call you.”
“You saw it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I saw it.”
“He can’t be serious.”
“He’s worth twenty billion. He can be as serious as he fucking likes.”
DON’T WORRY ABOUT this,” Alison said.
“How can I not worry about this?” I said. “He’s stolen my script. I mean, it’s the greatest dumb irony on earth. I lose everything because of a couple of misappropriated lines . . . and Mr. Billionaire then puts his name to an entire one-hundred-eight-page script that I wrote.”
“He won’t get away with it.”
“Damn right he won’t,” I said.
“And I’ll tell you why. Because you registered it with SATWA when you wrote it back in the mid-nineties. One quick call to them will confirm you are the legal author of We Three Grunts. Then another quick call to my lawyer will send a tomahawk of a writ in the direction of Mr. Fleck. Remember how he offered you two-point-five million for the script all those months ago? That’s the price he’s going to pay now . . . if he doesn’t want his theft plastered over every front page from here to Tierra del Fuego.”
“I want you to stick it to this asshole. I mean, his pockets are virtually bottomless, so two-point-five million will be like a pack of Juicy Fruit to this guy. More to the point is the moral bankruptcy involved in trying to fuck me over when I’m down and out.”
Alison let out one of her tobacco-cured laughs.
“Nice to hear you in such good form,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The last couple of months, you went all zen and centered on me. I put it down to you reliving the Book of Job and finally succumbing to shock. But it’s good to hear you back in tough-guy mode.”
“Well, what do you expect? This is so beyond everything I’ve been subjected to . . .”
“Fear not,” Alison said. “The shit will pay.”
She didn’t call me the next day. She didn’t call me the day after. I rang her on the third day, but her assistant said that she was out but would definitely be getting back to me tomorrow. But the call never came. Then it was the weekend. I must have left her three messages on her home phone, but she failed to return my calls. Monday came and went. Finally, on Tuesday morning, she rang me at the cottage.
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2 Page 26
