Authors' Rep

Chapter One

The old man in the striped shirt and suspenders, glasses halfway down his nose, slumped in his chair with his chin on his chest. He looked as if he were contemplating either a nap or the sleep eternal. A young woman was running a comb through his thin hair, smoothing errant follicles with her other hand.

Behind one of the cameras, a man wearing a headset said in a loud voice: "And we’re back in three-two-one… At One," he pointed at the old man.

Two things lit up simultaneously, a red light on Camera Two and the old man sitting at the table. He sat up bright and alert, with a friendly smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye. He looked straight into Camera Two and said, Welcome, welcome once again to the Fred Staunton Show. I’m delighted to be your host, Fred Staunton, and of course with us tonight…

The red light on Camera One went on and audiences in the United States and select parts of Canada and Mexico were treated to the sight of a man who, though he was probably forty, could have passed for twenty-five. Slightly shaggy, scrupulously-unkempt blond hair framed a boyish face with a lopsided smile that fairly screamed, Aw, shucks. He looked into the camera, extended the lopsidedness of his grin, and then glanced at Staunton as if looking for instructions as to what do to next.

…Sean Bishop, the audience heard Staunton’s voice while still feasting on the face of the All-American Boy, unarguably the world’s most successful writer of horror novels. He’s been called a combination of H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Robert McCammon, and Dan Prince all rolled up into one.

The cameras now traded their red lights on-and-offing as the director favored the viewing audience with shots of Staunton, Bishop, or both, as was his wont.

Gee, that’s...that’s very kind of you, Fred, Bishop said with a little nod of his head.

Well, it’s not just me, Staunton chided him, waving an admonishing finger. "Let me quote from the New York Times Book Review from, ah, from last November."

He adjusted his glasses and picked up a piece of paper, which, since he was looking at Bishop as he read, the audience believed he memorized. In truth, he was looking past Bishop, at giant cue-cards held off camera, because he couldn’t have read the small print on the paper in front of him had his life depended on it.

‘The novels of Sean Bishop’, Staunton intoned, ‘whether straight horror, supernatural ghost stories, science fiction-flavored horror, or stories of very non-surreal psycho killers, all have one thing in common, they’re all different. He never repeats himself. Indeed, the only thing repetitive about Bishop is how he manages to scare us over and over again while always coming up with a new way to separate us from our sleep and give us nightmares during our waking hours’. He set down the paper.

Well? he challenged Bishop.

Bishop ducked his head, all but screaming, AW SHUCKS, at the top of his voice. That’s a…that’s a very, uh…a very generous statement, he murmured in a low voice.

Well, look here, Sean, Staunton almost insisted. Your first novel came out ten years ago and was a bestseller. Since then, you’ve written eighteen other novels, not a one of which failed to make it to number one on the bestseller lists. He paused, pretended to look at his notes. "As a matter of fact, your latest, The Death of Death, is at number one this week, while Something Borrowed, which came out four months ago, is still on the list at number six!"

The lopsided grin became lopsidier. I said the statement was ‘generous’, Bishop drawled. "I didn’t say it was false."

He and Staunton shared a warm chuckle.

Staunton’s smile faded first. He was a journalist, after all, damnit.

Okay, Bishop, come clean. Where do you get your ideas?

Now the grin faded from the writer, to be replaced by the pursed lips and thoughtful brow-furrowing of the creative artist. Well… he began. "It’s…uh…it sounds silly to say it, to put it into, you know, uh, words…but I never stop thinking."

"You never stop thinking," Staunton stentorially verified.

"Yeah, uh, I mean, I mean, we all think all the time, you know, but I mean I never stop thinking, uh, stories, plots. I mean, all the time. Like, uh, when we go to the cemetery, to pay our respects, how many of us, uh, you know, do we think, like, ‘What would happen if two hands suddenly came out of the grave, like in a million movies?’ What I do, is, I think, ‘okay, what if the dead came back but instead of, y’know, brains, they wanted, um, sex?’"

"…that was the plot of your novel, Return of the Horny Dead, wasn’t it?" Staunton put in.

Bishop nodded. Uh huh. My only venture into horror comedy, and, uh, as a matter of fact, the one that spent the least amount of time as number one on the bestseller list. He sighed. "I mean, everybody has things that scare them. Not everyone has the ability, or maybe just the time, to put their fears into coherent form. I do, y'know, with all due modesty and everything, and, um, I guess I must be good enough at it since people are willing to buy my books and see the movies made from my books. So, uh, I get an idea, and, and, as you can tell, um…well, I’m actually a little shy in, in talking to people. Like tonight, how many times have I stammered?"

His apologetic grin was answered by an approving smile from the host. "But, uh, when I sit down at the computer with an idea, it’s like, whoosh I keep going. My fingers outpace my brain sometimes. He paused. Thank God for spell-check."

"Thank God, Staunton winked at the camera, or thank Satan?"

Ah, ah, ah, no, Bishop corrected him with a wiggling index finger and a forgiving smile. "You’ll notice no matter how many people I kill in my novels, the bad guy or whatever always gets his in the end."

~ * ~

About two hundred and fifty miles away from the Washington, D.C. studio where the Fred Staunton Show was being broadcast, in Seaford, NY, a shower of popcorn hit a television screen.

"You should get this in your end," someone yelled at the TV.

Sitting on top of its cage, well away from the TV, a large blue and yellow macaw flapped his wings for a second and croaked, Bishop sucks. Bishop sucks.

Sitting on the couch…technically, sprawled on the couch, Gerald Check knocked a few small pieces of popcorn off his chest and nodded encouragingly at the bird. You said it, Edgar.

Did you feed the bird, Gerry? Did you feed the bird? the macaw asked.

Shut up, Edgar, he was answered.

Gerry looked for the remote, which he sitting on, recovered it and switched channels. A commercial for a self-shrinking garden hose came on, and he was content to watch it. It was better than looking at that smirking, smarmy, dirty, rotten, louse Bishop.

Gerry looked down at himself, at his butter-stained and popcorn-kernel bedecked Long Island University t-shirt along with the red-and-black fuzzy reindeer lounge pants that should have gone back into the attic two months ago, when the spring and summer clothes were supposed to have come out.

I look like a slob, he thought, but I wouldn’t if I was on the Fred Staunton Show, like I outghta be. Gerry scratched his copious belly, reminding himself that in all the publicity pictures and on the book-jacket covers, Sean Bishop always resembled a ‘60s surfer dude.

Bishop sucks, he said aloud.

Bishop sucks, agreed the macaw.

At that second a woman carrying a glass of raspberry-flavored sparkling water walked into the living room. Unlike Gerry, she was relatively flat of stomach, and her chest was reasonably prominent without the sags his own pectorals possessed. Her hair looked like there was a beauty parlor in the kitchen. She wore actual slacks, not jeans, and a shirt that Bloomingdale’s was proud to carry. Her face would never have been described as beautiful, but those who sought to describe it used words like striking, handsome or expressive.

She stopped in her tracks and surveyed the small pile of popcorn in front of the TV, tracing, as did Hansel and Gretel, the path of stragglers back to the couch.

What. She didn’t ask, she said, What. Again. The hell is going on in here?

Gerry Check, with some grunting, pulled himself to an erect seated position. He smiled a little-boy smile at her. Hi, hon, he said.

She hadn’t moved. "What the hell is going on in here? she more or less repeated. Was there a parade I wasn’t told about?"

Oh, just a little editorializing, Gerry said in a small voice. I disagreed with what was on TV.

She looked at the TV. The hose commercial was over, and she saw that Gerry was watching one of those retro channels so popular with the Baby Boomer crowd.

"You have an objection to Bonanza?" she asked, incredulous.

Gerry nodded his head. Yeah. I always found it unnecessarily homoerotic.

In one smooth motion, so fast he couldn’t stop her, she set her glass down and picked up the remote. Looking at him as if she just realized he was the architect of the Holocaust, she very ostentatiously pushed the ‘last channel’ button. Instantly, the large screen was full of the boyish, happy face of Sean Bishop. She groaned.

Oh, for Christ-sakes, Gerry. She picked up her glass, stepped over his feet, and settled herself down on the other end of the couch. Shoot the damn TV, okay, but don’t go throwing popcorn all over my rug.

Gerry picked up the remote from where she had dropped it on the couch and muted the show. Well, he deserved it, Gloria. He put his face in my house.

MY house, Gloria corrected. I just let you live here ‘til I find the escape clause on the marriage license. She took a sip of her water. If you hate him so much, then why are you even watching him?

I like to remind myself how much he sucks. Gerry almost sulked.

Bishop sucks. Bishop sucks, cried the macaw.

See? Gerry crowed, almost triumphantly. Even Edgar thinks so, and he’s a birdbrain.

I think there’s more birdbrains in this room than are allowed by law, Gloria said with a derisive snort. You want to know what I think?

No, not now, not ever.

Good, then I’ll tell you. I think it’s time you get over this irrational hatred of Bishop and get on with whatever it is you call your life.

Gerry shifted on the couch, turning toward her. He put on his serious face. "No, now listen to me for once. Support me for once. This…prick is on TV, pushing his twentieth novel in ten years. I met him…"

Gloria recited the rest of Gerry’s sentence along with him, word for word, inflection for inflection, as if she had heard it a hundred times before.

"…at the Monmouth Writer’s Retreat back in 1998, and this guy was the worst, most talentless jackass I had ever met in my entire life. He couldn’t write a successful laundry list, and woulda had trouble defining the plot of a See Spot Run book. He kept walking into the ladies’ room because he couldn’t spell ‘Men.’ And now, for some stupid godforsaken reason, just because he’s cute and editors are all brainless women who like to take out their titties and twiddle them when he walks in the room, he gets published while a true genius like me struggles in obscurity."

They both stopped, sighed. How’d I do? Gloria asked.

Not bad, he admitted. Though you usually giggle when you say ‘titties.’ I think you’re getting the hang of it. He put on his most woebegone expression. It's who you know in the publishing business, not how good your stuff is. Bishop's agent...I don’t even know who his agent is, but he or she’s gotta be a genius. Made a millionaire out of a sow's purse...a damn colonoscopy receiver…

Yeah, well. She took another sip of her water. "I’m a getting a little tired of this petulant act of yours. You have a job. You are a writer. I don’t know why you’re obsessed with him."

"Because it ain’t fair, Gerry whined. I’m not a real writer. Not in my own mind, anyway. I write for some stupid goddamn soap opera."

"You don’t write for some stupid goddamn soap opera, she corrected him. You write the whole stupid goddamn soap opera."

Yeah, he fake-snarled at her, and who won three daytime Emmys for best actress?

He poked her in the abdomen. She slapped his hand away.

"Gloria Endgame, that’s who, star of the goddam soap opera. And whose were the words Gloria Endgame said that won her them damn Emmys, that no one ever thought to give an award to the creator thereof of those selfsame words, which if she didn’t say them, she wouldn’t’ve won any awards?"

Gloria looked at him like he had two heads. "I hope you don’t expect me to repeat that."

Repeat it? he looked at her in wonder. "I don’t even know what the hell I said."

Gloria graced him with an appreciative chuckle. Well, what about Thomas? she asked. Can't he do anything for you?

Gerry made a soft Bronx cheer noise. Thomas? He should quit the Writer's Guild and sign up with the LAWFA.

The…LAWFA, Gloria exaggeratedly repeated.

Uh huh, Gerry nodded. "Uh huh. League of Agents Who're Freakin’ A-Holes. You know, I don't think I told you, about a year ago I gave him a couple of novel manuscripts, one of which I already adapted into a screenplay, and asked him to market them for me. He comes back and you know what he says? ‘You're a TV writer, Gerry, a soap opera guy. The publishing houses aren't interested in TV writers, and the studios are only interested in seeing established movie writers.’ I mean, bullshit. Thomas Draw, Literary Consultant, he calls himself. Schmuck should be unloading trucks at Barnes and Noble, if he wants to be in the publishing business."

If that’s the case, why didn't you get rid of him? she asked, even though she knew the answer.

Her husband grimaced as if he had a gas pain. Well...‘cause...I'm the only client he’s got that's making him any kind of consistent money. I can’t...dump him, y’know...he’s been with me for more than fifteen years. Besides, his wife just left him, just up and left him, forty-two years they were married. Y’know, I just can't...

Aww, my widdle witer has a soft spot for his fwiend, Gloria cooed in a baby voice. You know what’s going on? You, my love, my dove, my all, are just having a little hissy fit this evening and are crying out for a little attention. She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. Kissed him again. Gave a little laugh and drew him on top of her as she lay back on the couch. He felt one of the reindeer on his pants getting a shiny red nose.

Feed the bird, Gerry, squawked the macaw. Gerry, did you feed the bird?

Feed yourself, Tweety-pie, Gerry murmured to him, and then said no more as his mouth became otherwise occupied.

Chapter Two

Depending on one’s perspective, it might have been a young man, or an old fart of thirty, who walked down Madison Avenue looking at building addresses. He finally found the one he was looking for, between East 27th and East 28th Street. A chain faux-Mexican restaurant and a chain overpriced coffee place flanked the doorway.

He took a deep breath and entered the building. In front of him a middle-aged black man in a blue blazer with the real estate company’s logo on his breast pocket was sitting behind an impressive built-in desk, idly perusing the Post. The visitor looked around for one of those menu boards that listed a building’s occupants, but couldn’t find one. He approached the desk. Uh, Rookh Agency? he asked.

Without looking up from the paper, the man said, Eighteen-eleven.

Uh, eighteenth floor, right? the young man asked, embarrassed at his nervousness.

The guard managed to look at his questioner with one eye, while keeping the other on the American League standings. Uh huh, he confirmed. Second bank of elevators.

Th-thank you, the young man stammered.

He found the elevators easily enough and got himself to the eighteenth floor. As he got off, he looked left and right.

The building, he realized when he approached it, was not a new one. Many of the buildings in this neighborhood were more or less contemporary with their big brother, the Empire State Building, which opened in 1931. While the electrical and plumbing had been updated since, of course, the walls and floors were showing their eighty-five years of age. He almost felt an oppressiveness, a sadness in this narrow corridor with its old-fashioned overhead lights and semi-Greek frieze where crown molding should have been. Still, he knew, the back offices of any enterprise did not need to be glamorous.

He looked left and right. To his left he could see several doors on both sides of the corridor, the most immediate ones being marked MEN and WOMEN. To his right, more doors. The corridor at that end seemed to take a right-angle turn to his left, as he looked at it. Saving him about three seconds of searching, there was a pitted plaque on the wall directly opposite the elevator with arrows telling him that 1801-1813 were to his right; the irrelevant 1800 to 1814 were on the other side.

He took a deep breath, made sure the thick padded envelope he had been carrying under his arm all the way from the Richmond Hill section of Queens was still there, and strode purposefully down the hall toward office number eighteen-eleven.

There was a little gold plaque set into the door that read ROOKH AGENCY – AUTHORS’ REPRESENTATIVES. The man took a deep breath and opened the door.

He found himself in a room maybe twenty feet by thirty. Immediately facing him was a desk behind which sat a woman about his own age, who was busy typing at her computer’s keyboard. Without looking up at him, she raised one finger, indicating that he should wait a moment. He turned his head to quickly scan the room, and saw three rather tired chairs that might have come from someone’s old dining room set, a couple of file cabinets that obviously pre-dated the building, and two doors, one at a right angle to the receptionist’s desk and one in the wall behind her and to her right. On her desk perched a name plate identifying her as ‘Monica Paune.’ From where the young man stood, he could see she was wearing a plain button-down white shirt that was moderately stuffed and above that had a face that was pleasant enough but would not get her a job as a meteorologist on the local news. A regular person in a tired old building, he thought.

She finished her typing and looked up at him, affixing a smile. Now, what can I…

The phone on her desk warbled, and she rolled her eyes at the young man. Excuse me, she said with an embarrassed little smile. She picked up the phone, taking her foot off the button on the floor that made it ring. Agency, she said into the phone. Pause. I’m sorry, Mr. Scorsese, but he’s not here. Pause. "I—I know, Mr. Scorsese, he’s never here when you call…Well, sir, no offense, but maybe you should call before Mr. Spielberg gets his hooks into one of the…Yes, yes, I’ll tell him you called...Yes, yes, sir, I’ll tell him you begged. Yes, thank you, Mr. Scorsese."

She hung up and turned her attention back to her visitor. Now, then, she said brightly. What can I do for you?

I’m uh, Mike Kassel, he said. She looked at him expectantly. I, uh, I contacted Mr. Rookh about maybe representing my novel?

Röök, she said.

Mr. Kassel was taken aback. Huh? he cleverly riposted.

You said ‘rook,’ like the chess piece, Monica told him with exaggerated patience. He pronounces it ‘roooook.’

Kassel found himself embarrassed. Oh, I’m sorry.

"Don’t apologize to me, she shrugged. Okay, you contacted him…?"

Yes. He brandished the thick padded envelope in front of her. Yes, he said he’d be willing to read my novel, so I figured I’d bring it down here my…

That wasn’t necessary, Monica said. You could have mailed it or UPS’d it. She smiled. It doesn’t impress him if you drop it off in person.

She stood up and took it from him. He was now totally embarrassed, unsure as to what to say or do.

Oh…oh… he stuttered. Um, so, then I just, uh…and he’ll, uh…

You leave it here. He’ll get to it eventually and we’ll let you know. She smiled, but her smile said, ‘Okay, now get the hell out of here.’

A novelist, albeit a budding one, Mike Kassel was smart enough to take the hint. Well, then, uh, I guess, uh, thank you. So long.

~ * ~

She watched him walk the thousand miles back to the door and out of the embarrassment. She walked around her desk and opened the door that was nearest her desk, revealing a small closet with six shelves absolutely jammed with similar thick padded envelopes. She couldn’t squeeze Kassel’s manuscript in between any other two envelopes, so she just stood it up on the floor and forced the closet door shut. Going back to her desk, she resumed typing on her Facebook page.

She had no sooner unfriended an old rival/acquaintance from high school, How’d she get my name? Bitch, when the door behind her opened and Justin Rookh came out of his office.

Would-be novelist Mike Kassel, on first glance, would have described Rookh as vulpine. His face was slightly elongated, as if someone had squeezed his head a little too hard with the forceps at birth. His nose was not overly long, but pointed, as were his ears. His eyes were small, dark brown…beady. Rookh was tall, about six-three, and apparently weighed no more than a hundred and forty pounds. His suit jacket was buttoned, hiding the Italian designer’s name, and his tie was silk. He had a pronounced widow’s peak, exaggerated by the slicked-back hairstyle he favored. He would have struck Mike Kassel as the guy he would cast, were his novel made into a movie, as the late Frank Gorshin’s evil half-brother.

I heard the door, he said to his receptionist. Who was it?

Somebody dropping off a manuscript, she told him.

Was it any good? he asked.

Monica gave him the same look she had that hastened Kassel’s departure. I haven’t finished it yet.

Oh…oh, Rookh realized. I heard the phone, too. Who was it?

Monica pushed the button on the floor and the phone rang once. Scorsese, she drawled.

Oh…oh… her boss stammered. I, I thought we were doing Kurosawa this month.

She was lucky her face didn’t freeze in that contemptuous expression. Kurosawa’s dead.

Oh…well, send flowers.

~ * ~

He turned and went back into his office. Monica rolled her eyes and looked up to the ceiling for succor. Finding none, she went back to work.

The visitor in the guest chair facing Rookh’s desk was fidgety. Rookh slid into his chair, smoothed his tie and his hair with both hands, and said, Sorry about that.

Sean Bishop crossed and uncrossed his legs, as if he were sitting on a radiator. You know, Justin, it's annoying when you jump up every time the door opens or the phone rings.

I'm running a business, here, Sean, Rookh answered him in an explaining-to-a-child tone. "I