Moonstruck

by Aleksandr Voinov

  “Oh God.”

  Anthony chuckled. “And I’m not going to take half of it. It’s still your book. It’s only fair.”

  “I’m going to wake up any moment now, aren’t I?”

  “Well, I’m awake, and since I’m talking to you, you probably are too. Relax. Breathe. It’ll feel strange for a while, but eventually your brain will settle in.”

  “Does it get any easier? I mean, writing? Leanne wants another one.”

  “First you’ll do eight and nine with me. And no, it doesn’t. I think the more experience you have, the more aware you get about what can go wrong.”

  “I’ll never sleep again.”

  “I’ll help wear you out.”

  Now, that sounded like a plan.

  Samir cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. “Really want to see you as soon as I can.”

  “Maybe take Friday off, come over to my place? I’ll spend the time looking at the manuscripts and making a plan for restructuring them. I have printouts all over the library at the moment.”

  “Okay, I’ll be over Friday around noon. If they’ll let me go.” Now, that would be ironic, if the day job got in the way of the other job, the one that could liberate him from debt and day jobs forever.

  “Good luck. I’ll text you before that. And congratulations. Do reward yourself with something nice.”

  “That’ll have to wait until Friday.”

  Anthony laughed. “Fair enough. I’ll see you then. Don’t crash your car or fall down stairs in that daze, okay?”

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  “You don’t want to mess with Leanne. And she’d be upset.”

  Samir managed to laugh. “Point taken. I’ll have to get back to my desk. See you Friday.”

  The call ended, and he looked around, feeling suddenly alone and bereft. The corporation had its fair share of geeks and gamers, and a few developers had quit after one of their simple indie games had reached thirty-million sales on Steam. But he was staring down a two-million-dollar barrel and couldn’t talk about it, and couldn’t even rely on it until the ink was dry or the money was actually in his bank account. Suddenly, the whole place seemed as alien and hostile as a postapocalyptic horror game, where a million invisible things scurried in the darkness and you had to preserve ammo to make it through even on “casual.”

  This was not how he’d imagined coming to terms with this first book deal.

  Maybe he just needed time to get used to the idea. And if he was smart, he’d spend that time at his desk so he didn’t get fired before he’d even signed the contract.

  He returned to his desk, and when he pulled up his personal email, there it was: the agency agreement.

  Holy fuck-sticks. This is real.

  He glanced around, making sure no one was watching over his shoulder. He was in tight with the IT guys, so if they were monitoring him and saw that he was engaging in “extracurricular activities” on the clock, they’d turn a blind eye as long as it wasn’t porn. And if it was porn, they’d probably watch it themselves, then report him.

  No porn, though. Just pages and pages and pages of legalese. In his seminauseated freak-out mode, none of it made any sense. Far too many big words like “the” and “it.” All he saw was “blah blah blah Samir Daoud blah blah blah pseudonym to be determined blah blah blah Triple Moon blah blah blah.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put them back on and read the first paragraph again. And again. And again.

  Finally, he sent Leanne a quick email.

  Do you mind if I go over this tonight and send it back to you tomorrow?

  Thanks,

  Samir

  He knew enough about the industry to know this kind of thing tended to happen slowly. It wasn’t unusual for people to spend weeks deciphering and comparing offers from various agencies before signing. Then again, they weren’t usually signing on to an already late addition to an existing blockbuster series. Hopefully twenty-four hours wasn’t too much to ask.

  Either that, or tomorrow’s headline would be Idiot Who Doesn’t Know Opportunity When It Falls Out of the Sky Into His Outstretched Hands Loses $2M Deal Because He ‘Wanted to Think About It.’

  “Sammy?” Carol’s voice scared the bejeezus out of him.

  “Huh?” He looked up to see her peering over the cube wall. “Sorry, what?”

  “You okay, sweetie? You’ve been tapping your nails so hard, it sounds like a machine gun over there.”

  He glanced down and realized he had in fact been tapping nervously. “Oh. Uh.” He folded his hands beneath the desk. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. But what’s up?”

  “N-nothing.” He waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She watched him for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”

  “Yep. Right here in the same cellblock.”

  She laughed and disappeared into her own cube. He faced his screen again. Cellblock was right. And that contract in front of him was his ticket out.

  His ticket out, which handcuffed him to Anthony for the foreseeable future. Because he wasn’t already panicking about letting Anthony sleep in while he went to work this morning. As if he was going to come home and find Anthony stirring a pot with one hand and using the other to peruse engagement rings and honeymoon destination websites on his phone.

  Or, worse, telling him to get lost because ... space. Shit. How was this going to affect things between them? To what degree was Samir encroaching on Anthony’s space excusable because of the work they had to do, and how would the work affect—

  Maybe I should have followed my therapist’s advice about taking Xanax.

  Hell, maybe I should’ve kept seeing that therapist ...

  Is it five o’clock yet?

  Oh craptastic. Now I get to face my writing group while I’m sitting on an offer that’s basically the wet dream of every one of them, minus the parts about collaborating, fan fiction, genre fiction, and commercial appeal.

  Awesome.

  ***

  Five o’clock came and went, and Samir never did manage to make sense of that contract or the programming he was supposed to be working on. And of course, the longer he tried to work and kept getting distracted, the guiltier he felt because he was being paid to do that shit, but had suddenly regressed to the programming competence of a tree squirrel.

  He finally left and headed over to the coffee shop. Out of habit, he nearly ordered his usual—that amazing Black Forest cherry hot mocha—but the last thing he needed was caffeine, sugar, or an oral reminder of anything Anthony. Today seemed like a damned good day to get in the habit of drinking something less stimulating. Decaf was a criminal offense in Seattle, so he opted for water, and then took a seat at the empty table that would soon be commandeered by his friends.

  Tawny arrived first. Her beret was perfectly centered—off-center was how everyone else wore it—and she carried a bottle of some bizarre green substance that she and her boyfriend had decided was the fountain of youth. In spite of the No Outside Food or Drink sign, the owners didn’t really mind when she brought her own drink. She’d started doing that a few weeks ago, and it had seriously cut down on the collective anxiety of the staff, so everyone agreed it was cool. She set her sludge down beside Samir’s water bottle, and after she’d hugged him hello, she plopped onto a chair and pulled out her spiral notebook.

  Maxwell arrived next, after having expended fifteen feet of arm-thick bicycle chain to secure his bike. He’d recently paid a fortune to have his bike customized into a lighter, meaner version, and was currently eyeing a carbon fiber–reinforced bamboo frame as a secondary bike—but the effect was somewhat ruined by needing a fifteen-pound chain to secure his wheeled treasure.

  Maxwell was one of the MFAs and was currently working on a history of Scott’s Antarctic expedition—in verse. As bizarre as the project was, he did have an amazing ear for sounds and rhythms
and was actually the one who’d taught Samir to read his writing out loud when he self-edited. He was also the kind of person to point out that in darker scenes, using darker vowels like o and u had a subtle effect on the mood of a piece. Samir had used more u’s and o’s in Axis Mundi’s dark moment than in the rest of the book combined. Or that was what it had felt like after doing fifty rounds of edits on it to optimize vowels.

  And last was Jennifer, who was so chilled she made a dead cod look like a frantic workaholic. She was working on a cycle of ten literary novellas, each following one millennial from school into the vagaries of higher education, unwanted pregnancy, job search, unemployment, an investment bank, environmental activism, terrorism (she’d asked Samir some questions on Islam for that), gay marriage, terminal cancer and battling the health-care system, and finally suicide. They weren’t the most cheerful things Samir had ever read, but he found it astonishing how visceral and powerful the writing was. His only issue with them was that they ended seemingly right in the middle, before anything was resolved, even before any plot had shown up. The effect was one of existential dread, like watching unedited Big Brother footage. They were clearly people, and it was clearly their lives, but the stories didn’t go anywhere, the characters didn’t change, and nobody escaped into any kind of resolution. Even the wannabe terrorist didn’t manage to blow herself up.

  One day, he wanted to write like that, but with plot. And, well, hope. And possibly a sex scene or two.

  Both Maxwell and Jennifer went off to get some coffee while Samir dug into his papers. He didn’t have anything. Axis Mundi was eating his life and had done so for the last eight months. Trying to write or discuss anything else was definitely a lost cause right now, though he wanted the distraction, considering that the alternative was to sit at home and freak out over the contract.

  When Maxwell and Jennifer came back, Tawny opened her primeval-algae-slime bottle and gently stirred it with a wooden stick. Probably waking up the plankton before it was devoured. It struck Samir as somewhat cruel.

  “So, how’s it going, guys?” Tawny herself was between projects—the last one was a Bertolt Brecht–style stage play about an eighteenth-century peasants’ revolt in France as seen through a Marxist-feminist filter. Samir wasn’t entirely sure how legit it was to move women’s suffrage two hundred years further into the past, but he sure as hell wouldn’t get involved in a dispute on Marx. She could quote whole pages of The Capital—in German. That said, maybe he just didn’t get it. One of the local theater groups had actually licensed the play and, according to Tawny, the actors would be wearing Anonymous masks while the setting would be transported to Wall Street. Which did sound kind of cool.

  Maxwell tapped his pen on his notebook. “Jenn, weren’t you doing some querying?”

  Jennifer scowled. “I did, and I’ve gotten a big fat no from everyone so far.” She huffed sharply and rolled her eyes. “Apparently nobody does novellas anymore.”

  Tawny laughed bitterly. “Not unless you’re already in with a publisher, anyway.”

  “Doesn’t that apply to pretty much everything?” Maxwell sat back, lacing his hands behind his head. “Isn’t even much point in trying anymore, you know?”

  Jennifer took a breath, and Samir braced himself for one of her lengthy tirades about the publishing industry—her thoughts on it barely stopped short of including the Illuminati and a set of crystal skulls—but then she waved her hand. “Eh, I don’t want to talk about that tonight. I just ... no.” She turned and looked right at him. “What about you? You haven’t had much new to read recently.”

  And suddenly all eyes were on him.

  Samir gulped. “Uh, well.” He’d fantasized a few times about sauntering in here with a multimillion dollar contract in his hand, celebrating because one of them had scored a victory over the gatekeepers of publishing and broken down the walls for the whole group.

  But now that he had that contract essentially in his back pocket, he hesitated. When Jenn had gotten a nibble from an agent last year, Tawny and Maxwell had suddenly been her sunshine and roses best buddies ever and totally supported her shot at breaking into New York. He liked all of them, but he had wondered if they bought so deeply into “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” that they were willing to grab on to any available coattails to get to the top.

  He didn’t want to believe they’d do that, but maybe it was better to ease them into his situation. Find out what they thought of it before the news broke that he’d gotten an agent, a book deal, a bestselling coauthor, and an advance that he still couldn’t comprehend. Or that it really had been who he knew that got him through the door.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, uh, I kind of have a confession.”

  All three of them leaned closer, eyes wide.

  He drummed his fingers beside his water bottle. “So, um, I’ve been writing recently. A lot, actually.” He took a deep breath. “In fact, I’ve finished a novel.”

  Maxwell’s jaw dropped. Tawny jumped so sharply, her beret tumbled into her lap. Jennifer just stared.

  “You finished something?” Maxwell asked. “Dude, why haven’t you been sharing? I thought you had perma-writer’s block!”

  “No, not quite.”

  Jennifer touched his arm. “So what is it? Why haven’t you said anything?”

  “Yeah, seriously.” Tawny smirked as she replaced her beret. “What’d you do? Start writing romance?”

  “Not romance. It’s ...” Here goes. “It’s fan fiction.”

  All three of them blinked in unison, and Samir actually felt his credibility in the group hit the floor.

  “I ... what.” Jennifer pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sammy. Love. Seriously?” She dropped her hand. “With all your talent, you’re wasting your time fucking around with someone else’s half-drawn characters?”

  Maxwell groaned and stared into his coffee cup.

  Tawny scowled, then took a long drink of her plankton sludge, as if it tasted better than her sudden disdain for him.

  “Look, it’s just something I’ve done for fun.” Samir played with the cap on his water bottle. “I was really into the books, and the characters were speaking to me, so I thought I’d play around with them.”

  Maxwell snorted. “Playing around doesn’t turn into a novel.”

  “Yeah, well.” Samir looked him in the eye and shrugged. “This one did. And my friends who are into fandom think it’s good.” And so does someone with the clout to write multimillion-dollar checks.

  “Of course they think it’s good!” Tawny threw up her hands. “They’re comparing it to other fan fiction. That’s like an elementary school lunch lady saying McDonald’s is amazing because it’s better than the slop she serves every day.”

  Samir gritted his teeth. “Have you ever read this stuff? Some of the writers really are good.”

  Jennifer eyed him. “If they were that good, they’d be writing their own characters.”

  “Or they’re just having a good time,” Samir said. “That’s what I was doing. I still want to write some original fic, and I will.”

  “And that’s awesome.” Maxwell leaned forward, eyebrows pulling together. “But think how much time and energy you’ve put into this novel. If you’d put that into something original, you could do something with it. I mean, what are you going to have to show for this one?”

  Samir couldn’t stop a laugh from bursting out of him. “Actually ...”

  Again, they all leaned closer, eyes wide.

  He quickly schooled his expression and coughed. “Okay, so probably nothing tangible, I guess. But, I don’t know, I figured I should fess up about what I’ve been doing all this time. And yes, I’m going to keep working on it.”

  Tawny rolled her eyes. “Such a waste of talent.”

  Maxwell studied Samir for a moment. “Out of curiosity, what fanfic? I mean, Star Trek? Supernatural?”

  Tawny groaned. “Baby, please tell me it’s not that god-awful werewolf thin
g you insist on reading.”

  “How do you know it’s awful?” Samir raised an eyebrow. “You refuse to read it.”

  “I don’t have to read it to know it’s dreck.”

  “Do you hear yourself? You of all people are letting your opinion be swayed by what the masses say?”

  She laughed humorlessly. “The masses are eating it up. The intellectuals and people I respect are the ones deconstructing it into the horseshit it really is.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Samir stroked his chin. “And you’re accepting what they tell you without actually investigating it for yourself.”

  She fidgeted uncomfortably.

  Maxwell smirked. “He’s got a point.”

  Tawny glared at him. “At least the author is writing something original. Can’t imagine he’d think too highly of someone ripping off his plot and characters, though.”

  Actually, he loves it. He loves— Uh. Reverse gear.

  “Well, obviously he’s not allowed to read fan fiction because of possible lawsuits, but he’s pretty close to his fans.”

  Did everything have to turn into some kind of internal innuendo now?

  “Yeah, well, you don’t piss fandom off. You’re all consumers.” Tawny said it like she’d pronounce scum-sucking parasite.

  The idea of Anthony as a maniacal tyrant producing soylent green for the masses was so far from the truth Samir was less angry and more incredulous. If anybody cared about the series and the characters, commercialism be damned, it was Anthony. Leanne, too, actually. He had no idea how New York treated “the property,” but even his editor seemed to love the books. But that was hard to explain to somebody who chose to be the greatest cynic Samir had ever encountered. She was smart and passionate about things, but she also saw Evil Exploitative Powers at work everywhere.

  “For all the fun we’ve had with it, I think it’s only fair he makes a living. And at least people want to read the books. I mean, he has translations all around the world,” Samir said.

  Maxwell frowned thoughtfully. “You could maybe just change some things, like, I don’t know, turn the werewolves into vampires or ghosts or something and then sell it. After all, it is your work—at least all the words are. And the series isn’t that original anyway. It’s a small town paranormal with a detective. That’s like X-Files crossed with a couple of other nineties shows. File off the serial numbers.” Maxwell was clearly starting to like the idea. “I mean, that Englishwoman made a killing ripping off Twilight and adding lots of sex.”