‘You know the answer to that one, kiddo.’
Debra laughed. ”You’ll have to read the book to find out, Josephine,” she said. ‘Right?’
‘Yessum.’
‘Well, keep it coming. Your pals at Putnam are crazy about the way you’re taking it to the next level.’
I said goodbye, I hung up the telephone, and then I laughed wildly for about ten minutes.
Laughed until I was crying. That’s me, though. Always taking it to the next level.
During this period I also agreed to do a phone interview with a Newsweek writer who was putting together a piece on The New American Gothic (whatever that was, other than a phrase which might sell a few magazines), and to sit for a Publishers Weekly interview which would appear just before publication of Helen’s Promise. I agreed to these because they both sounded softball, the sort of interviews you could do over the phone while you read your mail. And Debra was delighted because I ordinarily say no to all the publicity. I hate that part of the job and always have,
especially the hell of the live TV chat-show, where nobody’s ever read your goddam book and the first question is always ‘Where in the world do you get those wacky ideas?’ The publicity process is like going to a sushi bar where you’re the sushi, and it was great to get past it this time with the feeling that I’d been able to give Debra some good news she could take to her bosses. ‘Yes,’ she could say, ‘he’s still being a booger about publicity, but I got him to do a couple of things.’
All through this my dreams of Sara Laughs were going on — not every night but every second or third night, with me never thinking of them in the daytime. I did my crosswords, I bought myself an acoustic steel guitar and started learning how to play it (I was never going to be invited to tour with Patty Loveless or Alan Jackson, however), I scanned each day’s bloated obituaries in the Derry News for names that I knew. I was pretty much dozing on my feet, in other words.
What brought all this to an end was a call from Harold Oblowski not more than three days after Debra’s book-club call. It was storming out-side — a vicious snow-changing-over-to-sleet event that proved to be the last and biggest blast of the winter. By mid-evening the power would be off all over Derry, but when Harold called at five P.M., things were just getting cranked up.
‘I just had a very good conversation with your editor,’ Harold said. ‘A very enlightening, very energizing conversation. Just got off the in fact.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh indeed. There’s a feeling at Putnam, Michael, that this latest of yours may have a positive effect on your sales position in the market. It’s very strong.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m taking it to the next level.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m just blabbing, Harold. Go on.’
‘Well . . . Helen Nearing’s a great lead character, and Skate is your best villain ever.’
I said nothing.
‘Debra raised the possibility of making Helen’s Promise the opener of a three-book contract. A very lucrative three-book contract. All without prompting from me. Three is one more than any publisher has wanted to commit to ’til now. I mentioned nine million dollars, three per book, in other words, expecting her to laugh . . . but an agent has to start somewhere, and I always choose the highest ground I can find. I think I must have Roman military officers somewhere back in my family tree.’
Ethiopian rug-merchants, more like it, I thought, but didn’t say. I felt the way you do when the dentist has gone a little heavy on the Novocain and flooded your lips and tongue as well as your bad tooth and the patch of gum surrounding it. If I tried to talk, I’d probably only flap and spread spit. Harold was almost purring. A three-book contract for the new mature Michael Noonan. Tall tickets, baby.
This time I didn’t feel like laughing. This time I felt like screaming. Harold went on, happy and oblivious. Harold didn’t know the bookberry-tree had died. Harold didn’t know the new Mike Noonan had cataclysmic shortness of breath and projectile-vomiting fits every time he tried to write.
‘You want to hear how she came back to me, Michael?’
‘Lay it on me.’
‘Well, nine’s obviously high, but it’s as good a place to start as any. We feel this new book is a big step forward for him.’ This is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Now, I haven’t given anything away, wanted to talk to you first, of course, but I think we’re looking at seven-point-five, minimum.
In fact — ‘
‘No.’
He paused a moment. Long enough for me to realize I was gripping the phone so hard it hurt my hand. I had to make a conscious effort to relax my grip. ‘Mike, if you’ll just hear me out — ‘
‘I don’t need to hear you out. I don’t want to talk about a new contract.’
‘Pardon me for disagreeing, but there’ll never be a better time. Think about it, for Christ’s sake.
We’re talking top dollar here. If you wait until after Helen’s Promise is published, I can’t guarantee that the same offer — ‘
‘I know you can’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t want guarantees, I don’t want offers, I don’t want to talk contract.’
‘You don’t need to shout, Mike, I can hear you.’
Had I been shouting? Yes, I suppose I had been.
‘Are you dissatisfied with Putnam’s? I think Debra would be very distressed to hear that. I also think Phyllis Grann would do damned near anything to address any concerns you might have.’
Are you sleeping with Debra, Harold? I thought, and all at once it seemed like the most logical idea in the world — that dumpy, fiftyish, balding little Harold Oblowski was making it with my blonde, aristocratic, Smith-educated editor. Are you sleeping with her, do you talk about my future while you’re lying in bed together in a room at the Plaza? Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get out of this tired old goose before you finally wring its neck and turn it into pâté? Is that what you’re up to?
‘Harold, I can’t talk about this now, and I won’t talk about this now.’
‘What’s wrong? Why are you so upset? I thought you’d be pleased. Hell, I thought you’d be over the fucking moon.’
‘There’s nothing wrong. It’s just a bad time for me to talk long-term contract. You’ll have to pardon me, Harold. I have something coming out of the oven.’
‘Can we at least discuss this next w — ‘
‘No,’ I said, and hung up. I think it was the first time in my adult life I’d hung up on someone who wasn’t a telephone salesman.
I had nothing coming out of the oven, of course, and I was too upset to think about putting something in. I went into the living room instead, poured myself a short whiskey, and sat down in front of the TV I sat there for almost four hours, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Outside, the storm continued cranking up. Tomorrow there would be trees down all over Derry and the world would look like an ice sculpture.
At quarter past nine the power went out, came back on for thirty seconds or so, then went out and stayed out. I took this as a suggestion to stop thinking about Harold’s useless contract and how Jo would have chortled the idea of nine million dollars. I got up, unplugged the blacked-out TV so it wouldn’t come blaring on at two in the morning (I needn’t have worried; the power was off in Derry for nearly two days), and went upstairs. I dropped my clothes at the foot of the bed, crawled in without even bothering to brush my teeth, and was asleep in less than five minutes. I don’t how long after that it was that the nightmare came.
It was the last dream I had in what I now think of as my ‘Manderley series,’ the culminating dream.
It was made even worse, I suppose, by unrelievable blackness to which I awoke.
It started like the others. I’m walking up the lane, listening to the crickets and the loons, looking mostly at the darkening slot of sky overhead. I reach the driveway, and here something has changed; someone has put a little sticker on the SARA LAUGHS sign. I lean closer and see it’s a radio station sticker. WBLM, it says. 102.9, PORTLAND’S ROCK AND ROLL BLIMP.
From the sticker I look back up into the sky, and there is Venus. I wish her as I always do, I wish for Johanna with the dank and vaguely smell of the lake in my nose.