Dead Men Don't Blog: A John Ray Mystery - Chapter 2

I needed to kill some time and clear my head before starting on her piece. Yeah, I agreed to do it, but I wouldn't take any money from her -- a half-assed technicality that I imagined still allowed me to cling to my foul rag-and-bone-shop scruples. My only stipulation was that I retain the rights. Sure, she could have the byline for now, but if at any time I wanted to publish or include any part of it in something else, the rights were mine. Not that I ever would. But she agreed.

I closed up the office and headed over to Harry's Chop House. I figured I'd try to make time with a rare piece of meat and a half-bottle of vino while I waited for night to fall. I can't do any creative writing in the daylight hours. I need to have darkness closing around me, the little universe within that cone of light from my desk lamp, the quiet that comes when this city full of suckers and losers and lonelyhearts is fast asleep in front of the television. Once I got back to that place, that realm, that little make-believe forge, I knew things would start to flow pretty easily. Yeah, it had been a while for me, but I had enough experience with that part of the whole racket that I knew what to expect and how to deal with it.

And this was a one-off deal; I didn't have to worry about inspiration for the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. I was going to do this one good deed, and that was it for me. John Ray, the writer as do-gooder. That's almost funny.

And sure, it might be fun. I might feel that throb or two of aesthetic satisfaction. But I wasn't going to let the great storytelling bitch-Muse get her hooks in me again. No sir.

I was just about to cut into one of the most beautifully bloody 12 ounces of Angus beef that I'd ever laid eyes on when two university mugs came galumphing through the front door, on their way to the bar. Great, I thought, just what I needed to get me in the right frame of mind. Poets. Don't get me started. Nothing will put a man off his feed quite so quickly as poets.

"Well, if it isn't Coleridge and Wordsworth," I said as they paused, unbidden, by my table to give me the stink-eye on their way past. "What brings you boys out on a night like tonight? Looking for material? I hear there's a new 24-hour joint down on Penn that sells second-hand moonbeams and gossamer, if you fellas are running low."

The big one -- I forget his name; I call these guys so many different things I can't keep it straight anymore -- just gave me his squinty professorial sneer. His buddy, a little guy with tenure and flannel elbow patches, just gave me the cheesy yellow grin he probably bestowed on countless hapless undergraduates just before he ripped their assignments to shreds.

"Hey there, it's Jack Ray," he said. "How's it going, Jackie Boy? Gee, I saw you didn't make the short list for the Pulitzer, again. Guess they're still not taking those fine software manuals you write seriously yet. A damn shame."

"Aw, don't worry about me, Tennyson. They've got their hands full trying to figure out why you boys still can't master meter. So what are you two doing out of your garret? Did your buddy Longfellow here drop his rhyming dictionary in the dishwater again? Or did somebody mishandle another one of his poems and break all the delicate insights?"

The big one made like he was going to lunge, but the short one held him back.

"Funny, Jackie Boy, very funny. You're a real cut-up. I'll bet you've got 'em rolling in their cubicles over those standard operating procedures you're writing these days."

"Well, it's true, I haven't mastered doggerel like you and your buddy Pushkin here. No, just the well-paying world of plain English. The kind that buys you a nice steak once in a while. But I'm sure you boys have acquired a real taste for that box macaroni-and-cheese by now."

"Well, that's not what I hear, Jackie Boy. Word on the street is that you're ghosting these days. For bloggers. Can't say I blame you, though; anything with your byline's gotta be the kiss of death, huh? Hey, maybe if the gigs really start rolling in, you can get yourself a partner. I hear James Frey's looking for work."

"Byron, your information is as reliable as your scansion. Now if you don't mind, I think I'm going to eat my dinner before your loquacious friend here starts to compose an ode to it."

"Sure, Jack, sure. Enjoy your dinner. I'm sure I'll run into you online sometime. Choose your words carefully, Jack. Or somebody's."

"Keep your chin up, Pindar. Hallmark may still call."

They minced off wearing those wry, knowing poets' smiles that made me want to knock them around Harry's like a couple of pin balls until they couldn't scratch a simple couplet.

They'd completely put me off my perfectly glorious slab of cow, and I wasn't happy. What had they heard? And how could they have heard anything? I know my precious Eustacia Vye had asked some questions and shopped around a bit. But I couldn't imagine how Goethe and Rilke could have gotten wind of it, wrapped up in their little university press world, scratching out Billy Collins knock-offs and spending 12 hours a day feeling misunderstood.

I paid a call down at the Gazette to an old acquaintance of mine, Page Reid, the book editor. I knew he'd be working late, pruning reviews to fit into his measly allotment of column inches for the next day's edition. He didn't look happy to see me, and I might have felt bad about that if he still didn't owe me money for a grant application I'd helped him write a few years ago.

"I've got a deadline, Jack."

"Who doesn't, Page?"

"I mean, I don't have time to sit around and reminisce."

"Glad to hear it, Page. I don't know how many more times I can listen to you tell the same anecdote about Edmund Wilson accidentally dropping a mayonnaised shrimp in Edith Sitwell's coiffure."

"Damned book reviewers," he muttered. "Even the writers can't write anymore. What's the world coming to?"

"It's all abbreviations and icons, Page. We better get used to it. No one has time for full sentences. Language is just squiggly lines these days. You know anything about a woman who goes by the name Eustacia Vye?"

He gave me a sort of fisheye, then turned his attention back to his CRT.

"Sure," he said. "Thomas Hardy told me about her. And then Holden Caufield."

"Funny," I said. "I don't know how they manage to hold onto a talent like you at this rag."

"It's honest work," he said.

"Unlax yourself, Page. I didn't want any money for that grant application work, but you insisted, and then you stiffed me. Correct me if I misremember those crucial details. Just help me out here and we'll call it square."

He got a little red around the temples, so I knew I'd touched a nerve. He never got the grant, by the way, but I could have told him that. It wasn't my work on his application that was the problem. It was his writing sample that nixed the deal. I made a lot of edits, tightened up his spastic prose, and that's what didn't sit right with him. Yeah, I knew better than to edit a friend, but he swore he could deal with it, and I believed him. You live and learn in this rummy business.

"Her real name is Elinor Dashwood," he said.

"Come on, Page, gimme a break."

"It's true, I checked it out. She's got an MFA from Barnard, runs her own literary agency, and has been out courting investors to start a new literary mag. And something online too, I think."

"You give her my name?" I said.

"Not exactly."

"What's that mean?"

 "We talked," said Page. "Your name came up."

"How'd that happen? I'm not investor material."

"Jesus, you've seen the dame, Jack. I wouldn't mind watching her diagram a sentence, would you?  I was just trying to keep the conversation going. Maybe... maybe impress her a bit. I ain't dead, ya know?"

"Yeah," I said. "I know." She was a bona fide blowtorch and Page, at his age and still stuck in print journalism, was just a pile of kindling to a woman like that.

"What'dya tell her?" I said.

"That you were the best non-writing fiction writer she'd ever run across. The voice of our generation, gone mute. The Man with the Golden Transition."

I ignored this. I didn't trust Page, and I knew he had an ugly streak of Dale Peck in him. Besides, that world didn't exist anymore and I didn't like to be reminded of it.

"What do you know about Gather dot com?" I said.

"Never heard of it," said Page. He turned back to his computer screen and started tapping away. He was lying.

"Don't go online much, huh?"

"That scrivener's hell? I prefer not to," he said with too much superciliousness to be convincing. "Anymore questions, because the fact that I have a deadline has not changed in the last ten minutes, pal? Are we square?"

I stared at him for a few seconds and didn't say anything, but he wouldn't look at me.

"Yeah, Page, sure. We're square. All accounts are settled. You go back to your book reviews."

"It's just... this deadline. You know?"

I knew.

Stay tuned for Chapter 3: The Intruder