Author's Note: For What It's Worth

For those of you keeping track of such things and who are at all here for the BTS aspect, the chapter I am about to post is NOT the one I had in mind.  The one I had in mind involved Malcolm, Jeff's bestie, visiting the Stuart place.  This has not fallen by the way side but doesn't help my narrative reach its conclusion at this point.  I might find a place for it in the second draft. 

This chapter is another flashback to the ancient or alternative time where the posts are worshiped, etc, that Jeff has experienced in a dream.  I woke up and realized that, based on what I have planned, I needed to add a chapter like this.  So here it is!  I hope it's as fucked up as I think it is.

Author's Note: Progress

Dear Friends,

I have not posted for the last two days, as some of you will have noticed.  This is for several reasons, both personal and practical.

On the practical side, those of you who are paying attention will notice that we are hurtling towards the end of the book.  The prologue, The Beginning of the End, takes place on August 3.  In book time, we have reached the latter part of July, meaning the shit is about to hit the fan and the climax of The Author is right around the corner.  This last week, if you will, of the book, was giving me some trouble.

Thanks to some recent clarity, which I am crediting to a conversation with Miss Willow Bl00, which got me thinking about the book and about other things, I am now on the right track to complete the book.  I know what the next few chapters will be, which will bring us to the conclusion, which I have had in mind, more or less, for quite some time.

A new chapter will go up tomorrow and I should be able to continue with a chapter a day until we reach the end of the book.  I am thrilled to have you all with me, and I hope you enjoy the conclusion as much as I'm sure I'll enjoy writing it.

The Author, Chapter Forty-One: Wisdom

July 22

Here's the extent of what I have to tell you, Jeff. With the sun down and the cool breeze blowing, the damn heat finally breaking off the place, I'm gonna tell you what I have to tell you, and you can take it or leave it.
Number one: If you're gonna take it seriously, take it seriously. If you were me, you could have made a couple million bucks by the time you were 25 and then gotten out of the business. Trouble is, the people who are really serious about this shit aren't looking to get rich, God help us, we're looking to be writers. So give that some thought. See if you can justify making a big splash and then opting out. Your bankbook might not thank you, but the rest of your life will. The returns on a decent investment of a million bucks will keep you in beer and steak for a good, long while if you're careful.

The second part of that is, don't forget to take it seriously. You've seen me do it. I don't write on the road, I don't write on a laptop wherever I happen to be, you know? But when I write, that's all I do. The shitty thing is, is no one's gonna pay you to write until you break through. It's lame, you know, working a shitty job, scrabbling for rent and grants or whatever, or living with your parents until you're 30, but that's the way it has to be some times.

I realize I'm not the guy to be talking about that, I'm the great white success story, $500,000 advance at 20 years old and I just moved on from success to success. I was declared the North American Publishing Association Young Writer to Watch in 1990. I've had a book at the top of three bestseller lists at the same time.

But it's true. When there's nothing left to be loyal to, you fucking be loyal to you, man. You stick that shit out. Because no one will believe in you as much as you do.

Be careful when you get married. Admittedly, these are the words of a callous guy over 40 who has been divorced, but my words are still valid. I'm not here to tell you to get a pre-nup so she doesn't take you to the cleaners. If you make it you'll have lawyers to tell you that. I'm here to tell you to hitch your wagon to someone who gets it. Who gets that just because you succeeded doesn't mean you're ready to retire. That just because you're rich doesn't mean you've told all the stories you have to tell. That just because you have kids doesn't mean you don't have to be loyal to the angry, hungry, story-writing machine that lives inside you.
But the hardest truth I have to tell you, Jeff, is this. Consider the consequences of your actions. You want to be a man of letters, be a lit teacher. Be a literary agent. Be an editor. If you sign up to be the coal-fed word engine that propels an entire industry, you may not be happy.

Ask yourself if I'm happy, or if you'd be happy sitting where I am. I ask myself that all the time, and I'm still not entirely sure, you know? For that matter, what is happy? Happy was where I could have been fifteen years ago, one kid, another one on the way, millions of dollars in the bank, and that should have been it, right? But it wasn't. I don't know what more I wanted, but I wanted more.

Even if I'd have been strong enough to leave and never come back, if I'd have sold the house and moved away with my family to live off the successes of my youth, it wouldn't have been enough. Whoever bought this house would have woken up one night at two in the morning to find me sitting at this table with a bottle of booze and a laptop. Maybe I'm a cautionary tale or a rare example, Jeff, but I think I'm less rare than you might imagine. Just because I'm lucky enough to be the guy whose books are a compulsion tied to a location doesn't mean that I'm the only one.

The only old man of fiction who quit while he was ahead that I can think of is Tom Clancy. Maybe Rowling will stay silent now that she's as rich as God, but I doubt it. Think about it, how many novelists of 60 are multi-multi-bestsellers and could afford to quit whenever they wanted to. Grisham could have quit after five books and never worked again, but instead he keeps cranking out stuff that makes him happy that people don't even like that much. Critics and fans will have told you that Stephen King could have quit three different times and maybe been liked better than he would be today because he kept writing. There are people who don't forgive the poor bastard for not dying after he got ran over by a car, can you believe that shit? Lawrence Block, Stephen Cannell, Dean Koontz, even someone who only hit the jackpot a few years ago like Janet Evanovich, how much is enough?

And that's what I'm here to tell you, Jeff, as I sit here at my expensive house with my expensive bourbon and expensive cigar, is don't do it. It's not worth it. This job, if you can even call it that, has been an albatross around my neck since the day I signed that contract with Wally, the devil take his soul. Decisions, deadlines, editorial choices, photo shoots, compromises, always the fucking compromises. Maybe you really think it's necessary for your story to accurately and brutally portray a pedophilic relationship, but your editor, your agent and your publisher are all terrified of it. And maybe that will be your one way of trying to say enough is enough, this is my ejection seat, let me out, I don't want to play anymore.

Ah, Jesus, kid, I'm sorry. The job is amazing. Most of the time I love it. But when I'm out here, busting my ass for a public that just expects me to operate like a giant, annual literary jukebox, it gets kind of hard to deal with sometimes. I'm sorry. It's really not all that bad, it really isn't.

The Author, Chapter Forty: The Walk

July 20

They didn't speak much for the rest of the day. Stuart decided to throw himself directly into his work, since he was already up, and he did so with gusto, pouring himself a towering glass of bourbon without bothering to put any ice in it.

Jeff tried to find something to do, but nothing stuck. He tried to read and found his mind wandering. He had absolutely no interest in trying to write, either. He tried to watch a movie and then he started doing laundry. He found himself staring into the open washer, half loaded, his thoughts far away.

Eventually he gave up and tried to take a nap, closing the door to his room to shut out the sound of Stuart's typing. He gave up on that idea as soon as he closed his eyes and found that the only thing he could really see was Thorsen's staring, milky eye.

“Fuck it,” he said, and went back upstairs. He poured himself a glass of water and drank it over the sink, then he went into the living room.

He touched Stuart's shoulder to get his attention. The writer looked up impatiently.

“I'm going out for a while,” Jeff said.

“You taking the car?”

“No, I'm gonna walk.”

“Okay.” The writer returned to the laptop.

Jeff took two beers from the fridge and went out the back door. He pounded one of the cans standing under the carport and dumped it in the trash. The other went in his back pocket. He put on his headphones, dialed up Fallout Boy on his iPod, and started to walk.

What he hadn't told Stuart was that he was going to buy cigarettes. The one he had bummed from Mandy had jump started a craving that would not go away. The only two things he could think about were getting cigarettes or Thorsen. He hadn't smoked since he'd come out to Stuart's house until today and it had gotten under his skin more than he would have thought possible. He kept swallowing in anticipation.

He'd felt this before, when he'd tried to quit once in college. Eventually his smoking had petered out when he lived with Malcolm because he couldn't justify buying them himself with how little money he had, and he rationed how many he would cadge from his friend. But he remembered the texture of his mouth and the slight swaying sense of his body that came from the addict's necessity. The shitty thing was, if his behavior followed the pattern, the first cigarette would taste like shit, regardless of how much he wanted it.

The sun wasn't quite at full height yet, but light was direct and strong and the air was hot and getting hotter. Jeff stopped on the side of the quiet, woodsy street, finished the second beer and threw the can in the ditch.
He was punishing himself, he knew. He could have easily driven the damn Land Rover to get his fix, but then he wouldn't have earned it. If he was going to be this weak, so weak as to be a pussy about seeing a dead body and so weak as to need nicotine after being free of it for more than a month, then by God he would walk his ass of for it. It was at least a mile to the nearest convenience store, and in this temperature, he would feel it.

Once he got to the end of the street where he turned left to head towards the main road that would lead him to civilization, he was already feeling the buzz of the beer. It didn't seem to be sitting well with his stomach, however, it was occasionally gurgling and once he burped and could taste bile in it. He just kept swallowing.
He turned right onto California Avenue, and he could see the 7-Eleven sign in the distance. “Almost there,” he said. And then he answered himself, “Yeah, and then you just have to walk back.”

His steps were heavy and he could feel the wetness of his t-shirt as it clung to his back between his shoulder blades before he reached the store. His stomach continued to twist and clench. The sun was on his back, and that meant it would be on his face when he returned, and he was sure, now, that this impulsive decision was a bad one. Not only would he have an unsatisfying cigarette, and then he'd feel compelled to smoke more of them because he'd blown seven dollars on the fucking pack, but then he'd walk back home facing the sun and he'd get a fucking sunburn to show for it as well. “Fuck this for a shitty idea,” Jeff mumbled.

When he reached the store he spent a moment standing in front of the magazines, simply soaking in the wonderful air conditioning. Then he went to the cooler and grabbed a Gatorade and immediately chugged half of it, which made him feel a bit better.

He was on his way to the counter to pay for his drink and buy the cigarettes when he saw the beer cooler. He went over, just to take a look at it.

But why the hell not? He'd already started drinking. It wasn't every day you saw a fucking dead body, was it? Some more beer would be therapeutic. He could raise a can to Thorsen, even though he'd never read anything by the poor bastard, and after the build up Stuart had given him, he imagined he'd never bother.
He was reaching for a simple six pack when he decided it wouldn't be enough. So he grabbed a 40-ounce bottle, of Bud Light, as they didn't have his brand in the ghetto bottles, just in case. His arms were full now, a plastic bottle in one hand, a glass bottle in the other, a six-pack hanging off of one finger.

The man in the turban began to ring up the items and Jeff was sure he could see a look of disapproval. Fuck him. “Pack of Marlboro Lights, too, please,” he said, remembering his manners through the light beer haze in his mind. He grabbed some 7-Eleven branded matches from the counter as well, proud of himself for having remembered. Wouldn't he have felt stupid getting ready to light up and finding nothing to do it with!

With a plastic bag in each hand, he broke back out into the sunshine, squinting. There was a park across the street, but it was too public for him to drink it. He wandered around behind the store and found a pile of milk crates there, with cigarette butts scattered around. The employee break area, apparently.

Just as he went to sit down, there was a sudden, swollen pain in his stomach. He almost doubled over, carefully setting the bags down and holding his gut. He groaned, but the feeling passed quickly. He chugged down the rest of the Gatorade, telling himself it would make him feel better and then threw the bottle in a dumpster.

He started with the 40, drinking the neck dry. Then he packed the cigarettes on the butt of his left hand and lit up. He had been wrong. The smoke hitting his tongue, following the crisp bitter-sweetness of the beer was perfect.

He'd smoked four more cigarettes by the time the bottle was empty and by then he realized he probably should have eaten something. He wobbled as he stood up, ready to return home before the store clerk came out back and found him.

His stomach was not feeling any better, “And of course it isn't,” he told himself, “You're drinking and smoking on an empty stomach.” He walked down the sidewalk, down to one grocery bag, holding his six-pack, his other hand saluting over his forehead to protect him from the sun.

It was a relief to get off California, and once he was a few blocks away, he found a quiet place to step over the ditch and sit in the scrubby grass there. He placed his feet on the road side of the ditch to keep himself from sliding in, and opened another beer. He felt better, sitting in the shade now, although his stomach continued to gurgle.

He stopped several more times along the way, smoking and surreptitiously drinking, even though he grew more and more paranoid about someone seeing him.

He broke the cigarettes into the trash can behind the car port, knowing that if he kept them around he'd just smoke the rest of them. He finished the last can of beer and threw it in after.

Jeff opened the door quietly, not wanting to disturb Stuart. The writer did not look up, but kept staring intently at the laptop. Jeff walked unsteadily to the laundry room and staggered down the stairs. He managed to turn off the light and kick off his shoes before he passed out on the bed.

He woke in time to make dinner around 7:30, and Stuart did not mention his absence. He probably had not noticed at all. Jeff work still craving beer, for some reason, and managed to get drunk again and pass out for the night by 11 p.m.

It never occurred to him that his stomach didn't hurt any more, or that, even though he had drank an entire six-pack of beer on his journey home, his stomach had hurt less and less the closer he had gotten to the house.

The Author, Chapter Thirty-Nine: Thorsen's Body

July 20

There was no smell, that was what surprised Jeff the most. Well, to be accurate, there was no smell of dead body, just the typical smells of a bathroom, smells of soap and the faint odor of mildew. When he took a deeper breath, he realized the air was also tinged with the iron tang of blood, but it was not obvious. He had expected the room to smell like bad meat that had been left out too long, or, he realized, like a much stronger version of the very faint smell in his basement.

Stuart was standing in the bathroom, staring at something behind the door. As soon as Jeff saw Vic framed that way and saw what room the body was in, he knew what they would find.

The water was so dark with blood that Jeff couldn't actually see the wounds. The color of the water made it look as though Thorsen had been left to sit in a Jello mold that had yet to solidify.

“Shit,” Stuart said softly, his eyes riveted to the old man's body.

Thorsen's eyes were open, which made Jeff uncomfortable. He saw that one of the man's eyes was white, deformed in some way. He had always assumed that Thorsen's eye patch was either a preposterous affectation or covering up some kind of actual injury, not that it was simple vanity.

The razor sat on the side of the tub, inside a ragged, diluted puddle of blood and water. It was an old fashioned cutthroat razor and Jeff could see small pieces of tissue on the blade from where it had bitten in—
He turned to the sink and wretched into it. His stomach was empty, so nothing came up or out of him except a few strands of that incredibly stretchy saliva that seems to come from down in your throat. He coughed, swallowed, took a drink from the tap. He stayed there, his hands on either side of the sink, not wanting to look at himself (and at that moment he had a flash of the different face he'd seen in the mirror after his dream), not wanting to see anything. His breathing was ragged and he kept shaking his head, as if it would make it all go away.

A moment later, Stuart was there, his hand on the younger man's right shoulder.

“Alright, buddy,” he said. “We'll just go, okay?”

Jeff took another swallow of water and spat it into the sink, then he turned away from the tub and Stuart and left the door without looking again.

They went and got the girl out of the truck. Stuart wanted to wait on the porch, but neither Jeff nor Mandy, as it turned out her name was, wanted to be that close to the house. Reluctantly, Jeff helped Stuart bring a chair and a bench off the porch so they could sit in the yard and wait for the police.

Jeff bummed a cigarette off the girl while she shared her brief life story. She was from South Dakota, she'd finished high school and run off to the West to get away from her parents and small town life. She tried Los Angeles and hated it, and she was on her way back into the Southwest, where a high school friend had settled, when she passed through Las Vegas. She'd never left.

She told them that she met Thorsen on one of his frequent trips to Vegas, where he always stayed at the Riviera, where he had been staying since it was actually a hotel to brag about. She was working as a cashier at the hotel when he had cashed out after a big run at the blackjack table. He'd asked her out.

“And it's not like we're allowed to date the customers, you know? But I knew who he was, so I took the risk and we met across the street at Circus Circus, which is an even bigger dump than the Riv, and when he went home he asked me to come with him. And it's not like I was doing anything in Vegas, and he even gave me a check to cover next month's rent so I could leave me place! That was, I dunno, a couple of weeks ago. Then we had this conference and we came back here and...”

Her voice trailed off and she turned her head to look at the water, checking out of the conversation.

The police arrived soon after and excused the two men after taking their statements and personal information.
“Seems real clear-cut,” Officer Stanley told Jeff at the end of the interview, “But we might call you up for s'more details later.”

The two men left Mandy with the authorities with mixed feelings of relief and guilt and returned home.

“I'm almost proud of the son of a bitch,” Stuart said, as they found the path.

Jeff gave him a sharp look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The guy built his life on Hunter Thompson. As soon as you realized she was saying he killed himself, didn't you figure he shot himself, just like ol' Hunter S?”

Jeff blinked at that and realized that yes, that's exactly what he'd thought. It occurred to him that it would also explain why he'd been expecting such a strong smell. He'd been expecting cordite and scorched brains and burnt hair.

“I guess,” he said finally.

“Well, I sure fuckin' did. I'm honestly shocked. I mean, he clearly had all those guns around, right?”

“Oh, wow.”

“What?” Stuart looked at him so quickly he almost lost his footing. “What is it?”

“You don't think...Uh...”

“What!” Stuart almost yelled.

“Shit, this is a bad idea. I mean, if he didn't go out the way you'd figure a guy like that would...maybe she did it.”

Stuart's mouth dropped open. He coughed once, in surprise, and then slapped both hands over his mouth to muffle his laughter. Hysterical hooting noises came from behind the hands as Vic's eyes crinkled and twisted with hilarity.

“Shut up!” Jeff said, embarrassed.

Stuart removed one hand and waved it at Jeff, trying to reassure him. When he finally caught his breath, he reached out to him and pulled him closer.

“Ohmygod,” he panted. “That is brilliant. I don't give a shit if it's true or not, that, my friend, that right there is one of those things that makes you a writer. Who else would be mean enough to go there? But you're fuckin' right, dude. I mean, the guy seems like a sad bastard to us, so we're perfectly willing to accept her explanation, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be bullshit. That doesn't mean there's anything to believe about it at all! God damn. You know, I think if you hadn't have said it, it would have occurred to me at some point.”
“Should we—I dunno, should we tell the cops?”

“Oh, shit no, kid, if there's really something there, they'll catch it. I'm sure it's just overactive imagination, even if it is a hell of a good one. Don't sweat it. Although, come to think of it, would you get tired of that girl in just a couple of weeks?”

“You gotta get tired of everything sometime,” Jeff said.

“Such wisdom you have in you,” Stuart said, in an awful faux Asian accent.

When they reached the house, Jeff went in and fetched some beer and they sat on the deck. Jeff didn't even consider the fact that he was drinking beer before noon. They sat in silence, sipping, Jeff wishing he had another cigarette. He looked down and realized that his hand was shaking. He wondered if he was in shock. He figured he probably was, a little anyway.

“You ever think about it?” Stuart asked him, his words hanging in the air between them.

Jeff knew what he was asking, but played dumb.

“Think about what?”

The look Stuart gave him made it clear that he knew Jeff was being intentionally dense. Jeff caught it out of the corner of his eye and didn't react.

“Taking the easy way out,” Victor said eventually.

Jeff took another swallow of beer. “Not lately,” he said finally.

“Yeah.” Stuart finished his beer and burped. Jeff kept looking out at the trees, keeping his eye off the post and off of the writer. He'd had enough of suicide for one day.

“I think about it every summer,” Stuart said. Jeff heard the clink of his bottle as he put it down on the deck and then the writer stood to go inside.

The Author, Chapter Thirty-Eight: Thorsen

July 20

Jeff was elbow deep in a sudsy sink, washing dishes, when the thumping came. After the fact, he realized that it was knocking, but the sound was so much larger that that, he didn't realize it at the time.

He quickly walked into the living room, wiping the soap from his hands with a towel, and he could see a silhouette knocking on the door to the deck. Ordinarily the doors would be open overnight to let the house breathe and let out the hot air, but last night there had been a breeze that was too cool to be comfortable and Jeff had locked up before going to bed. Later he wondered if the girl would have just walked right in if the doors had not been closed and locked.

“Help,” he heard a woman's voice call over the pounding.

“What the fuck is going on?” Stuart said, emerging from his bedroom, rubbing his eyes.

Jeff threw the bolt and pulled the door open. A young woman took a step back, apparently startled at the response. Her eyes were staring, haunted for a moment, and then she pushed her way in.

“You have to help me,” she said, screeching, grabbing at Jeff. “I think he's dead!”

“Who?” both men said together.

“Henry! He wasn't breathing, we need to call someone!”

So instead of asking all the questions that were on their minds, and there were lots, Jeff called 911 on the landline and Stuart got the girl some water.

“Just a second,” Jeff said, in response to a question from the emergency operator. “Um...” he looked at the girl, unsure what to call her. “Henry is Henry Thorsen, right?”

She looked up and nodded urgently.

“They're on their way,” Jeff said, hanging up a moment later.

“We have to go and help him,” the girl said, and the men looked at each other. Morbidly, they both wanted to go to the next door house, so they let her lead the way.

“He said...he said he was gonna do it last night,” she stammered, as she led them through the line of trees. “But I didn't believe him.”

“What?” Stuart asked.

“That he was gonna, you know, do it.”

Stuart rolled his eyes at Jeff. She sounded like a sixth grader talking about sex. Jeff changed the subject.

“So how do you know Henry?” he asked, intentionally using the same name for him that she had used.

“Oh, I'm his girlfriend,” she said, without hesitation.

Stuart threw Jeff another glance. Jeff would have guessed young relative, niece or daughter, certainly not lover. But now that he took a second look at her, it made sense. She was wearing a wife beater and boxer shorts, clearly what she slept in. Her hair was wound together in gentle dreads at the back of her head, there were spacers in her ears, and she had henna markings on her hands. She would dig a counter culture icon like him. Although Jeff could not imagine sleeping with anyone that much older than himself, no matter how cool they were.

“Okay,” Jeff said, just to keep her talking. “How long have you been out here?”

“We just got back from a publishing conference. They gave him an award.”

“Oh, yeah,”Stuart said, “I forgot that was this weekend. Chicago Publisher's Convention,” he told Jeff.

“So that was this huge deal, and then we got back here and he was all down and said that even though they gave him an award, no one actually wanted to publish his fucking books anymore.”

Stuart reached forward and grabbed her arm. She was pliable now, talking about Thorsen as if he were a concept instead of a person. Her face was slack and empty of expression.

“And he threated to hurt himself?”

She nodded.

“And he's inside?”

She nodded again.

They were in the yard of the Victorian now, so Stuart led the girl over to the truck, which was unlocked, and put her in it. He left the door open and returned to Jeff.

“You follow all that?”

“Yeah. You really think...” Stuart started nodding, so Jeff didn't bother to finish. “I guess I figured he just had a heart attack or something, you know?” he said instead.

“Yeah, me too. 'Specially with Miss My Legs Up To My Chin, over there.”

“So, now what?”

Stuart grinned, his teeth flashing with a carnivore's glee. “I dunno about you, kid, but there's no way I'm passing this up.”

“But if he really topped himself, this place is gonna be a fucking crime scene in ten minutes!”

“Suicide isn't illegal in Washington State,” Stuart shot back. “I'm never gonna have another chance like this. I've sat in on autopsies before and shit, but it was never real. As far as the cops were concerned, we thought there might be a chance he wasn't dead, okay? It's not like we really got much info out of her, is it? She's hysterical or in shock or something.”

Jeff shook his head. “You're nuts.”

“I'm just making the case for what we both wanna do. Imagine the shit this'll give you for your book!”

That, of course, was what did it. It was what pushed Jeff's reason off the cliff and propelled him to follow Victor Stuart as they entered Thorsen's house.

The door was ajar, and Victor pushed it open with the tip of his shoe. He looked back at Jeff and the two of them entered.

They did a quick circuit of the ground floor, which was set up as a huge square around the giant staircase that divided the house. In one corner was a small bedroom, filled with the remnants of Thorsen's career, awards, posters, trophies, a stuffed lion's head, and a wall covered in rack-mounted guns.

“I could spend a fucking day exploring just this room,” Stuart said quietly, as if he were in church or a library.
Jeff put his hand on Stuart's shoulder. “We don't have time, dude, c'mon!”

The rest of the downstairs held nothing interesting, except that, on some level, it was all interesting. If Thorsen were really dead, then this entire house was practically a museum of his life. What magazines did he read in this living room, what food did he eat in this kitchen, did he shoot the colossal buffalo whose head was mounted over the dining room table?

Jeff found a door in the kitchen that led into a cellar. It was not finished, like his basement, it still had dirt walls and it was filled with swollen, oozing boxes of documents, magazines, manuscripts, catalogs, newspapers. As soon as he saw the contents of the room, Jeff was tugging on Stuart's arm again, anxious that if they were going to see the body, they should do so ASAP.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stuart said, almost to himself, looking over his shoulder as they went back up the basement stairs.

They split up at the top of the stairs to the second floor, Jeff going left, Stuart going right.

Jeff found what seemed to be a guest bedroom, devoid of any particular personality. There was a larger room next to it, which might have been a study 100 years ago, but which was now an entertainment room, with a digital project and small rows of theater seats.

“Found him!” he heard Stuart cry, and he ran out into the hall.

The Author, Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Best Books

July 17

“You ever see High Fidelity?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah. I liked the book better,” Stuart said, smiling. “When they moved the movie to Chicago they gutted a bit of the book's instincts, since it was a British novel. If you haven't read About a Boy, by the same guy, you should, especially if you're a fan of Nirvana.”

“So, if you saw it, you're familiar with the Top 5 concept?”

“Top 5 Desert Island Whatever, sure,” Stuart said.

“So the Top 5 are what your favorite things are. Not the most important or the ones you think others should check out, but the ones that you would be stuck with if you only had five, right?”

“Right.”

“Top 5 Desert Island Books, then, Victor Stuart edition.”

Stuart nodded and poured himself some bourbon. “You first. And defend your selections.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, as if he had been expecting such a response. “Me first.” He took a breath and cracked his beer. “In no particular order, mind you.”

“Of course. Top 5 does not mandate values in order,” Stuart said, reasonably.

“Needful Things, by Stephen King. He claimed that it was a satire of Reagan's America, but I feel like the book takes his powers of observation and his affection for small town life and threw them together like a car crash. No holds barred, a happy ending, yes, but only after a dozen unhappy ones. Ruthless, even. And an ending that leaves questions to be asked instead of sewing everything up tidily, as he sometimes does.”

“'Kay,” Stuart nodded. “Continue.”

“Watership Down. Richard Adams called it a grown-up's book for children, but I've always maintained it was the reverse. Kids shouldn't read it. I tried to read it when I was 12 and barely got through it. It wasn't until I read it as an adult that I could stomach it or understand it. Plague Dogs was even worse.”

“Plague Dogs is a hell of a book, but I'm not sure anyone should read it. It's too grueling and depressing.”

“Says the author of the Alistar Wilcox books.”

“Point. Watership is really heavy, too, though. With all that stuff with the general and the prophecies and everything. Not something I'd read to my kids, at any rate. What else?”

“Preacher, a comic series—“

“By Garth Ennis, yeah. I know it. A fan of mine recommended them a few years ago and I read them all in one sitting, basically took up a whole day. I liked Y, The Last Man, better, but not by much. Why?”

“The foreign perspective of the United States and our culture meshed with spirituality and a spaghetti western is just, I guess it's just too surprising and original not to acknowledge.”

“Agreed. Keep going.” Stuart seemed to be enjoying Jeff's selections.

“By The Rivers of Babylon,” Jeff said.

“DeMille, really?” Stuart asked.

“It was the first book of his I read, and probably still his strongest. It was probably also the first book that I read that really opened my eyes to an international perspective, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“No cardboard characters, no easy ways out, original solutions to common problems, and a genuine perspective on what a fucking no-way-out mess there is in the Middle East.”

“Sure. Last one.”

“You're not gonna like it,” Jeff said.

“Try me.”

“It's this book by a hack named Victor Stuart. Cemetery. I read it when I was 15.”

“You mentioned that before, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“So now tell me what happened to your father.”

Jeff looked at Stuart for a long moment. “Cancer,” he said in the end, quietly, “He died of lymphoma.”

“I'm sorry. I know that of all my work, that book speaks to those who lost a parent, whether they died or ran off, or whatever. It makes sense, too, because I wrote it about my own father, right after he died. Ask me about that some time, yeah?”

Jeff nodded, trying not to be overwhelmed by unhappy recollections.

“Alright, my turn. Since you chose Needful Things, I'll start with my favorite Stephen King book: Thinner. Writing as Richard Bachman, which means he could be as mean-spirited and unpleasant as he wanted.”

“I read somewhere that the big difference was that in the end of King's books the good guys lived and in the end of the Bachman books no one gets out alive..”

Stuart snorted and then considered and began to laugh. “Yeah, kid, that's pretty accurate. I like it. His observation is at its finest in that book, cutting and clever, the descriptions, the Gypsys, the fuckin' ending. I reread it every so often, it's a fast book.

“Second I'm gonna go with Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.”

“Good choice.”

“I mean, everyone quote-unquote literary likes Stephenson, he's and geeky and literate and everything all at once. Cryptonomicon, though, got me excited through the treasure hunt and the World War Two stuff, and all the code geekery was just gravy.

“You mentioned a comic, so I suppose I will have to, too. I'll say The Crow, by James O'Barr. The movie wasn't bad, but never really did the original work justice. Some of the same things about Thinner are what I like about The Crow. It's unhappy, it's mean-spirited in places, it doesn't offer easy answers. It's brutal, more than anything.”

“I cried like a little bitch when I read it,” Jeff said. He then immediately regretted it.

Stuart looked at him for a moment. “Of course you did,” he said. “You have a soul. It's a tough book to get through. I read it when it was pretty new and I was...I dunno, not very old. I didn't just have a young wife, I had my first kid at the time and the idea of losing those that I held most dear was just...heinous.”

“That's three,” Jeff said.

“Yeah. I'm gonna say Small Town. It's mostly because I want to list a book by Lawrence Block, who is the fuckin' man, and I can say that having met him. He's a gentleman and a hell of a writer. Have you read it?”

“No. I've seen it at the stores, but I haven't read it.”

“It's an ode to post-9/11 New York City. There's a mystery, but it's really secondary to the intertwining stories of all these people and how the tragedy affected their lives. One of the reasons why I respect him so much is he can write on all these levels, humorous, serious, snarky, scary, and that book was the culmination of the lot of it. A love story to the city. It's on my shelves, I think, if you wanna look for it. You can't read just me all summer.”

“I'll check it out,” Jeff said. “What else?”

“The Hobbit,” Stuart said. “It's a cliché choice, I suppose, as it's a formative work for many writers, but I can always go back to it and remember what it was like to not be a writer yet and be so enamored of the fact that some guy, in another country, decades before, could suggest all these ideas that would resonate with a 10-year-old in 1978. I'd been a scribbler before then, but that book was what turned me into a writer. Or, at least, a kid who wanted to be a writer.”

“For me that was Grave.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I wrote my first real short story after that.”

“Wow. Thanks, kid, that's really flattering. Was it any good?”

“No, it was a complete rip off. But it was a place to start.”

“Damn right. Good for you.”