***
With our next meeting, for the first time I was the one to initiate contact. I don't know what compelled me to take the lead, but something seemed different and I just picked up the phone and dialed. He answered, and again in the background there droned noises that I couldn't identify. I realized I had never gotten an explanation for the vacuum cleaner I heard the last time he called. Hazel the Maid, or even Alice the Maid, he certainly wasn't.
"Hey, you dropped some papers on your way out of Mullen's the other day. Want them back?"
"Was there...a letter from Columbia Press?"
"Yeah."
"Uh, did you read it?"
"Yeah, of course I did. So, are congratulations in order?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Sure. I was coming into town anyway. Where to meet?"
"Well, I don't even have a buck-fifty for coffee, so how about the cafeteria?"
He grunted in agreement and hung up.
The cafeteria in the Union basement was the last refuge of the penniless. Penniless students, that is; the poor or homeless, had they even dared to appear, would have been immediately driven away by security, back to wherever they lived. Probably to the other side of University Avenue, to those ragged neighborhoods between campus and the interstate that people like me glimpsed only briefly but were forgotten just as quickly.
One could sit in the cafeteria for hours and never be rousted out, as long as the look was right—backward baseball cap, unbuttoned flannel shirt and torn jeans, and a stack of textbooks just tall enough to make the idler look busy. Whatever it took to pass as a student. When I had nowhere else to be but didn't feel like going home, sometimes I would come here.
With a backpack, tattered Shakespeare paperback and highlighter, I could pretend to study whenever the security guard came around. Though Shakespeare didn't interest me much, I hoped that reading the Bard blared "I'm in summer school retaking English 150 to wipe out that Incomplete" and that I belonged there. If I had an hour to spare, when all was safe the Shakespeare would be set aside for something I actually wanted to read, Sinclair Lewis or Jack London or—heaven help me in those days—P.J. O'Rourke.
But the cafeteria's drab atmosphere—dated decor, ugly artwork, stiff chairs and the endless rattling of the conveyor belt that took the dirty dishes away—meant I rarely remained for long. The coffee was crap, too, as it seemed to be in most cafeterias—pale, watery, nearly tasteless, nowhere near the standards of The Grind or any other coffeehouse, or even the convenience stores. So though addicted to coffee, I avoided the cafeteria's weak version, opting instead for the free tap water from the wall dispenser at the back of the room.
I was sitting at a table, water glass three-quarters full before me, when Wheatyard—late again—suddenly appeared. Even while standing over me, his modest height failed to impress or intimidate, his too-big trenchcoat scraping the floor at the hem. The oddity of wearing a trench in July was something else I never got around to asking about. Between the wrinkled, drooping lapels I could see a bright blue Dell Publishing t-shirt. Perfectly tongue-in-cheek and ironic, and years before irony became hip.
I handed over his Columbia Press letter, and though the situation begged the question, he said nothing.
"Well...are you going to tell me about it, or do I have to beat it out of you?" I finally joked. "And don't think I couldn't. I may look scrawny, but I could easily take you. You ain't exactly Hagler."
"True. I'd probably even get pasted by the flyweights."
"So?"
"So, you read the letter. You've figured it out already. Columbia Press—not Columbia University, but an independent—is interested in publishing Longing Dissolute Midnight. On their terms, of course. They probably want heavy editing, to get their dirty philistine mitts all over it."
"Great news. This would be your first publication, right?"
"Right, first publication. Book, short story, ranting essay, whatever."
"But is getting published worth letting some editor leave his fingerprints all over your book?"
"Now you sound like me," he smiled. "I really don't know how things stand. I haven't talked to the editor yet, so I don't know how hands-on he is. Some editors are so into ego gratification that they won't publish a book unless they get to tear it apart, so they can 'leave their mark' on it or whatever. And then there are other editors who only tweak here and there. Those editors absolutely, positively love your work, and don't want to change it much. But I haven't found any editors like that yet—just the other kind, the ones who think they can show their glorious brilliance by ripping apart your writing and making it 'coherent.' Which is why I haven't been published yet."
That seemed generous, I thought. Surely his attitude had as much to do with not being published as the preferences of editors he had encountered. I wondered how many editors had tried working with him, only to give up in frustration before his stubborn will. The English Building again came to mind.
"Why'd you rush out of Mullen's the other day? Have a hot date?"
"Hot date? Oh, sure," he said with a laugh, gesturing with a sweep of his hand for me to take in his entire physical presence, from his unkempt hair to his scraggly whiskers to his rumpled trenchcoat. And implicitly to his wallet, which was undoubtedly empty. "Yeah, I have a lot of hot dates. I can hardly keep track of them all."
"So you went to the English Building?"
"Yes. Ivy-covered academia," he intoned with mock solemnity. "Moss-covered ivory towers. Highly respected professors who have never worked a day in their lives. Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls."
He paused and fished a piece of Bazooka bubble gum from the depths of his coat pocket. Opening the wrapper, he unpeeled the comic inside, reading it with a thoughtful look as he popped the gum into his mouth and began to chew. He grinned to himself, some idea clearly having occurred to him, and carefully tucked the comic back into his pocket. I immediately wondered if some future story of his would include Bazooka Joe as a character.
"Ivy-covered professors," I repeated him. "Tom Lehrer, gotcha. You surprised me there, running off to the English Building."
"Actually, it's not that bad. I'm not bowing to their official authority. I don't have any use for most of them. But there's one literature prof that I like. He's published quite a bit, both fiction and nonfiction, so he's been useful to me. On top of that, he drinks like a fish, which of course appeals to me, and when he's drunk he always buys, and tells good stories about co-eds he's bagged over the years."
"'Co-eds'? You talk like my dad."
"His word, not mine—one of those words that's never spoken out loud but only used in print. He's an older guy, late fifties or early sixties, and he was a young professor during what he calls 'the glorious days of free love.' And had tenure, which gave him plenty of latitude in, heh, tutoring his female students."
"Or proctoring," I snickered.
"Yeah, proctoring. That's better, especially since it sounds like doctor, playing doctor, which is pretty much what he was doing in all those evening 'student conferences' he held in his office, over a bottle of wine."
"I've wondered how much of that actually went on back then. You always hear rumors."
"More than just rumors—back in those free-love days it was almost an everyday thing. Anyway, this professor, Mitch Hanratty. He's dealt with a lot of New York publishers, both big houses and independents, and he knows the editor at Columbia though he hasn't worked with him directly."
Hanratty. Had to remember that name. Hanratty.
"Hanratty says the editor's a decent guy, not as big an ego as the others there. But he didn't have a good feel for how much slicing and dicing he'd want to do to my manuscript. Hanratty says he knows about some books the guy ripped to shreds, but also others that he mostly left alone."
Hanratty. Handy and ratty. Helen Reddy. Maybe the professor could fill me in on Wheatyard. Sounds like they had a few drinking bi
nges together. I hoped Hanratty held his liquor well enough to remember some of the things Wheatyard told him.
"Hey, are you listening?" he demanded.
"Uh, yeah," I said, snapping back to attention. "Sure I am."
"Thought I lost you for a minute there. Hanratty wasn't much help with this editor, but the visit wasn't a total waste—I got to see him leer at a student who stopped in, looking for another professor. She was a real looker, and he practically drooled while gawking at her. He probably didn't have a chance with her, but thirty years ago, in that other era, he probably would have scored. He's a charmer."
"So what do you do now?" I said, easing away from the professor and back to the book.
"I guess I'll finally call the editor. I wanted to talk to Hanratty first and figure out what my position is, so now I guess I'll go ahead and call. The guy's probably wondering what happened to me."
"Why, when—" I began, glancing at the date of the letter which still laid before us. "What the hell! July 7th? You've been sitting on this for a month now?"
"Three weeks and four days."
"Aren't you worried he'll change his mind, not hearing from you? The letter sounds like he has some reservations—it's almost a conditional acceptance."
"Oh, it's definitely a conditional acceptance. Conditional on bowing to an editor. There will definitely be some editing—it's just a question of how much."
"If you already figured all that, why didn't you call sooner?"
"For one thing, I didn't read the entire letter for almost a week. Seeing that opening paragraph, I thought it was just another rejection letter."
Just as I thought.
"I let it simmer in my mind for a while, then finally read it through. I realized they'd demand some editing, and I've been debating whether or not this book means enough to me to submit it to that kind of abuse. After all, I write a new manuscript every month or two, so I could just let this one go and move onto the next."
"Does this story mean that much to you?"
"To some extent, yes it does. It's not perfect, so I could see him editing it a fair amount. But it's already good enough that if he wants to totally tear it apart, it wouldn't really be my book any more, and I'd tell him to go scratch. But I won't know anything until I talk to him. So for now I'm mildly optimistic."
"That's encouraging, I guess."
I wanted to prod him further, get him to talk more about himself or his past writing efforts. But he turned his thought process on a dime, deftly reverting to the exact point where we left off, from the last time we met.
"At Mullen's we were talking about giving yourself a chance to be a writer. From guitar to writing, remember? You really owe it to yourself to at least try. Maybe there's a writer in you, or maybe there isn't. Maybe you're destined, or condemned, to a mountain of rejection letters and the rare publication, or maybe you're only meant to crunch numbers and babysit other number-crunchers in some huge inhuman corporation. Either way, you need to find out."
I nodded, realizing it was true. As that long summer dragged on, I had grown steadily less enamored with the prospect of the corporate life which he described with such surprising accuracy. Maybe I should explore a bit, and see if I was meant for something else.
"The key to writing is being a good observer—see as much of the world around you as you can, both big things and tiny details, listen to the way people talk, understand what they're saying and what they're not saying, watch their mannerisms. After you've absorbed all of that, if you're like me you'll get this overpowering urge to interpret it, put it all in context, talk about it."
He blanched for a moment, raised his fingers to his lips and spit out his gum. He reached under the table, which trembled gently as he plastered the gray wad underneath.
"Think about how you'd describe it to someone," he continued, ignoring my disapproving look. "Then sit down with a pen and notebook and pour out every single word you can think of to say. You'll freak out when you first read it, because it won't make any sense or meet the high standards of the masters you admire. But that's okay—if you think about it, most of your conversations wouldn't make much sense in print either. From there you refine that mess of words into a coherent narrative. Or you might find that none of it was worth saying after all, so then trash it and write about something else."
As I listened, I eyed a security guard as he ambled through the room, circling the perimeter and looking warily for straggling intruders. I certainly qualified, and Wheatyard even more so. Though my Shakespeare wasn't out, I hoped we passed for two graduate students eagerly discussing the glories of literary life. Wheatyard, ragged as always, looked even more like a grad student than me, and I had actually been one just two months before. Plenty of grad students dressed even worse than him, and even several well-paid professors.
The guard came closer and our eyes met. I had never been good at lying or even striking a fake pose, and my guilty glance probably gave me away. Fortunately for me, whether from laconic disinterest from the withering heat outside or just general career indifference, the guard snorted, broke eye contact and continued on.
"We dodged a bullet there," Wheatyard said with a sudden whisper. I looked at him for a moment as he smirked, before we both turned to watch the guard retreat. "I've abandoned probably hundreds of narratives partway through," Wheatyard continued, resuming the steady voice of before. "Maybe thousands. Some of them I've bothered to write down but some were only in my head. A lot of writers destroy their aborted writing—a few even burn every scrap of paper and bury the ashes—but I keep absolutely everything. The way I figure, anything I can't use now might be salvaged later."
"Which explains Captain America drinking with Copernicus in a hooker bar in Bangkok."
"Exactly. Eventually every little fragment can be worked around to fit with something else." I thought again of his bubble gum, and realized the Bazooka Joe comic must have been one of those fragments. Keeping it meant more to him than wrapping up the gum and politely throwing it away. "Maybe you'll write a novel start to finish, and everything will just flow—characters and situations and themes will come to you effortlessly, and writing it all down will seem routine, like you're taking dictation from your imagination. If so, you're fortunate. I'm not that lucky. For me writing is laborious, mentally exhausting. I pull all these threads together into one big hodgepodge and force it to make sense."
"All right. I guess I can try it sometime."
"Start right away. Not tomorrow, not next week, but today. On your way home, observe as many details as you can, smell all the scents in the air and figure out where they came from, drop into a few stores even if you're not buying anything, listen to people talk. Then for the rest of the walk, think about everything you observed and come up with something to say about it. When you get home, sit down right away and write out all those insights. Don't worry if none of it is profound. Being profound comes with time. I'm not even there yet myself."
He made it all sound so simple. Observe, reflect, write down. No, I thought, that wasn't right—what's the simple verb for "write down"? Maybe someday I'd put those three words on a plaque, that is, if I eventually pursued writing. Even at that moment, after knowing Wheatyard for more than two months, I still was unsure.
Soon we said our goodbyes, Wheatyard smiling his encouragement while I feigned confidence and resolve, though I felt more doubt and indecision than ever. Part of me wanted to write, not fully for the writing itself but as an alternative to the wavering course of my career. We shook hands, and as I turned to leave I spied him pulling a thick hardcover from his bag. Maybe Melville, maybe Dostoevsky, or maybe someone I had never heard of.
SEVEN