Chapter 14 $ #2
“Yeah, I know you think people aren’t reading anymore,” said Jeff, “and you’re right. They’re not. But everyone’s writing like crazy. So, for self-publishing—we’re riding a wave.”
“What happens when it breaks?”
Jeff smiled. “I hear you. But that’s just it! There’s always another story coming. There is so much creativity out there it’s scary. You’ve seen our website.”
“Yes.”
“So you know what we’re about.”
“Quality.”
“Yup. Our books are beautiful—and we do them all in-house, soup to nuts—from editing, to cover design, to marketing.” Jeff pulled a glossy sample off the stack on the table.
“This is a collection of feminist oral histories. We’re very proud of it.
And this is a really smart vampire novel.
Look at that cover design.” Steve gazed at the blood-red cover marked with vampire teeth.
“And here’s a memoir. This guy is an obstetrician, and he’s fascinating.
He’s a brilliant, brilliant guy. We vet all our authors, by the way. ”
Steve nodded, because he had indeed studied the Cloverleaf site. “They send you a writing sample.”
“Right. We only take the most promising.”
“But do you find that they’re all mostly—promising?”
“No! Our potentials send us an excerpt and we do a sample edit on a thousand words and we talk about whether we’re a fit. Then we match up author with editor—or writer.”
“What’s the writer for?”
“We’re soup to nuts,” Jeff reminded him.
“So, you not only edit, design, and market books but you…”
“Write them. Yeah!” Jeff said.
“Oh wow.”
“Look, everybody has a story,” Jeff said. “But not everybody has the words.” He held up the obstetrician’s memoir, which was titled Baby Doc. “Production is only a small part of what we do. The writing is the most rewarding, and the most time-consuming.”
“So that’s why you’re hiring.”
“We need wordsmiths,” Jeff said. “Frankly, we need poets, and novelists. Storytellers. People who can take the rough ideas and—”
“Spin straw into gold?” Steve ventured.
Jeff did not take offense. “Exactly!”
—
At home, Steve sat on the couch, opened his laptop, and gazed at his first assignment. “It’s a trial balloon,” he told Andrea.
“What did they send you?”
Steve read the first paragraphs on his screen. “It looks like a family history of life in the Old Country.”
“Oy. How bad is it?”
Steve read the opening silently. Our family came from Bukovina in what is now Ukraine.
We were descended from rabbis on both sides and naturally we were orthodox Jews (everybody in the village was very religious) and we spoke Yiddish.
That was a given. It was a family where everybody loved each other but it was difficult because we were so poor.
We had nothing except we had love which is everything.
Along with Papa and Mama, there were seven brothers, Mendel, Yussel, Nachum, Dovid, Moisheh, Yitzchok, and Binyomin, and one sister (my grandmother Feygie) but at any moment the Tsar’s men might come knocking on the door to conscript her brothers for his army after which they might never return. They lived in fear!
“Well?” Andrea waited for the verdict.
“It’s heartfelt.”
“Steve!”
But he was reading Jeff’s instructions. “So, this needs oomph. Author says it’s nonfiction, i.e. don’t change characters or incidents.”
Oomph. Steve began walking up and down. He poured himself a drink—but he could not unsee that first paragraph. He looked at Andrea and shook his head.
“Okay,” Andrea said.
Steve heard Andrea’s resignation, and he knew how hard she worked all day rewriting college essays—or, rather, helping high schoolers find their voices. How was this any worse than what she did? He wanted to share the load. But seven brothers? Mendel and Yussel and…Christ.
He stepped outside without his coat and stood in the freezing air. All was still. Only one neighbor was out walking her dog.
Do it. Do it, he thought. “Come on!” he shouted aloud, as he did when he played tennis. Dog and neighbor turned around.
Steve waved. Then he retreated into his house, set himself up at the kitchen table, and started typing. We live in fear. At any moment, the Tsar’s men might ride up on their black horses. If they come and ask you for your sons, you cannot refuse. They must ride away to fight…
He typed like this for half an hour and then he put the kettle on.
We eat only black bread, he wrote, remembering something he had read.
Black bread with schmaltz if we are lucky.
White bread is a delicacy—and in our village hard to find.
Steve thought for a moment and then he added, We are always hungry.
He worked and brewed some tea and worked some more. He looked up and thought about Sir Walter Scott, toiling by hand to pay his debts.
It was midnight when he sent his trial balloon back to Jeff. The house was quiet. Andrea was asleep. Back aching, Steve lay on the living room floor. He’d done this thing. He had spun a thousand words.
—
In the morning, Andrea took her travel mug down to the basement, and Steve took the car in for service, since it was squeaking whenever he turned corners.
He set up his laptop in the waiting room and donned earbuds to block the sound on the wall-mounted TV.
No response from Jeff, and it had been nine hours.
He opened his laptop even as news of bitcoin played on the television above his head. What was bitcoin? Imaginary money? Money that cost money? He gazed at the Cloverleaf website. There was an old-fashioned typewriter on the home page. Yes, we publish first-time writers! Yes, we publish poetry.
“Steve? Steve Rubinstein?”
It was the Subaru serviceperson, Gary, coming to find him. “Yes.” Steve assumed his car was ready, but Gary knelt by his chair instead.
“So, we’ve got some issues,” he said in a low voice, as though he was protecting the car’s privacy.
“What kind of issues?”
Gary looked at him with regret and sympathy. “Steering column.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s very unusual, but your steering column is cracked.”
“How did that happen?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“How much would it be?”
Gary showed him the estimate on his diagnostic worksheet. “This includes parts and labor.”
“Is it something we would have to do now?” Steve asked.
“Well,” said Gary, “at this point you might want to consider buying another vehicle.”
Uh-huh, thought Steve. With what? With your savings. With whatever you have left. Keep eating at it. Keep spending. And he sensed his mother’s disapproval, her quick appraisal. She had always been quick. He said, “I don’t want to buy another car.”
“Understood.” Gary was waiting for a decision, and Steve was staring at the enormous price of the repair. Wait, he thought. Wait, let me think.
Just then his phone lit up. It was Jeff! A text! U NAILED it. sending Contract asap
Steve felt a rush of affirmation, celebration. Pure adrenaline. “Let’s do it!” he told Gary. “Let’s fix this thing!”
“All right!” Gary sprang to his feet.
Seven hours later, Steve drove home with his new steering column, and he felt efficient, productive.
Solvent. No longer spending his inheritance, counting down to bankruptcy.
He thought of texting Charlotte the headhunter.
Hey, I did find employment despite my advanced age, in case you were wondering.
“I got it,” he told Andrea, who had finished work and was now lying on the couch.
“What?” She sat up. “Amazing!”
“They’re sending me a contract.”
“For how much?”
“I mean, I don’t know the details.”
“I was just wondering what kind of job it is. Like do you get paid by the project, or do you get a salary?”
“I said I don’t know yet!”
“You didn’t even ask, did you?”
“They are very successful.” Steve thumped into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
With one kid at college and the other never home, the shelves were almost bare.
He saw condiments and leftovers and a dozen Greek yogurts, and he wanted to go out.
He wanted a proper restaurant-cooked meal, because he had done this.
He’d landed a job. Maybe it wouldn’t be a lot of money.
It wouldn’t be a salary, but it was work. It was living by his wits.
Even so, he didn’t want to jinx himself, going out to eat.
He drove to the store for salmon and broccoli and cooked dinner.
It was one of those sheet pan recipes where you gave the broccoli a head start, and then you glazed the fish with soy mustard brown sugar, and you broiled everything together and it came out great.
Steve’s father, Irving, had never cooked a meal in his life.
He had left it all to Jeanne. But preparing food was not so bad.
Neither was ghostwriting. It just took some patience—and ingenuity.
“I actually think I did a pretty good job,” Steve told Andrea as they ate at the kitchen table.
“It’s delicious,” she said.
“I mean the memoir,” he told her. “I think I captured the family’s fear.”
“What’s that?” said Andrea.
His phone was buzzing. A text from Jeff. Call me?
“Uh-oh.” Steve’s mood changed instantly.
“What happened?”
“Not good.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Something’s wrong.” Calling back, he paced the kitchen while Jeff’s phone was ringing.
“Steve!” Jeff said, as though everything was fine.
“Hi!” Steve answered, trying to match Jeff’s tone.
“So, this is just a bump in the road.”
You charlatan! Steve thought. You con artist. You aren’t going to pay me! But he said, “What is it?”
“Our client.” Jeff lowered his voice and suddenly he sounded like the Subaru serviceperson, Gary. “She has a few issues.”
Steve tensed. “What do you mean?”
“Okay, listen. First of all, I want to reassure you this is very normal. It’s just some questions. And they are all totally doable! The author wants to know why you are writing in the present tense when this book happened in the past.”
“It’s the historical present!” said Steve.