(No rest for the wicked. Mr. Tope is back for an encore)
Louis Becker looked down at himself, at the stretched and ragged t-shirt he wore. It was filthy. Small wonder, he thought, since it was the same shirt he’d worn since Wednesday and tonight was Saturday. He shook his head, mildly disgusted with himself.
Suddenly the screen of the PC he sat before flared once and then died.
“Shit!” said Becker. He proceeded to see what was the matter. Probably he struck the power button on the surge protector with his foot or disconnected it from the outlet in the wall of his bedroom, where Becker had his equipment laid out. The computer, monitor, keyboard and TV reposed upon a low-slung coffee table running the length of his bed. His beefy thighs sat upon the mattress. On a good day, he would leave his bedroom only to relieve himself or to grab a few calories from the kitchen.
He checked where the eight-plug electric power strip attached to the wall and found it intact. Next he surveyed the connections with the cable which attached to the modem and found that intact as well.
“Ah,” he said, and punched the power switch on his tower. Still nothing. The keyboard and monitor and cable box were all okay too. What the hell?
He snatched up his land line.
Silence.
Then he remembered: the phone and the computer and the TV were all connected. Bundling, they called it. Which saved him some bucks, but at the same time, when the system went down, so too did the phone. Becker grabbed his cell. No bars. Why? he wondered. It was 90% discharged. Oh.
He said “shit!” again.
Becker was an aspiring writer and so depended upon the PC for his life’s work. He couldn’t survive without it. Then again, he told himself, his status as “aspiring” had been the status quo for going on nine years.
His girlfriend, Madge, had asked him four nights ago, while in the throes of passion, how much dough he had netted from his writing over the previous 12 months.
“$90,” he answered at once, thrusting his hips forward.
“Explain that,” she said, breathing hard.
“I won second place in a monthly contest,” he replied, “and that was good for $20. Then I had two stories and one poem published that netted me $10, $15 and $30 respectively.”
“That’s just $75,” she pointed out, moving her hips in a circle.
“Well,” continued Becker, “I won an honorable mention in another competition and for that I got a one-month subscription to the magazine. That was a $15 value, they said.”
“How much did you pay in submissions fees and contest entry costs over that same period?” she asked, gasping and coming.
Becker admired her ability to multi-task.
“For the year, I paid out around $300 in fees, all totaled,” he said.
“Listen, Louis,” she said, poking him hard in the chest with a painted nail. “Unless you make some real dough off this enterprise, then it’s a waste of time and effort.”
“Why are you so concerned with how much I get paid?” Becker wanted to know. “Did I forget to pay you for tonight?” He smirked.
When he woke up, aside from suffering a maddening ringing in the ears, his head hurt where Madge had clobbered him with the bottle of Sangria they’d enjoyed prior to sex. She had not darkened his door since that evening.
“Was it something I said?” he asked himself. Small loss, he thought. Now he could devote himself 24/7 to writing.
Next Day
Having discovered the problem with his PC (an outage at the provider), Becker was stoked up on coffee. Having made a 14-cup pot, he had consumed almost all of it and his breath was heavily coffee-flavored. He was now ready, he thought, to resume his writing assignment: the novel! He had contracted with an editor who worked for the publisher of Babies, Orphans and Puppies (BO&P), his favorite literary mag, to write his opus. Already he had completed almost 250 pages; just over 750 pages to go, he thought to himself. He took a deep breath, gently laid his hands on the keyboard and flexed his fingers. This promised to be a lucrative endeavor. He would show Madge, and in the process, get her back into his bed.
_____
Meanwhile, 1,000 miles away, in Chicago, Charlie Fishead contemplated the critique he was writing for another Louis Becker short story. He shook his head. Becker was pretty hopeless.
“What’s up, boss?” asked Devon, one of Charlie’s unpaid slush pile readers, as he walked into the editor’s office and spotted Charlie’s scowl.
Charlie looked up and smiled. Devon was a good kid. He worked his ass off and got squat for his efforts. He was an intern studying for an MFA and was here to supposedly learn how to edit and publish. Charlie wished he could get a dozen doofuses like Devon. “I’m just writing a paid critique for one of our inveterate scribblers,” he replied.
“Louis Becker?” suggested Devon at once.
Charlie nodded.
“That sod is the worst effin’ prose writer this side of the Rockies,” snarked Devon. “Want me to do it?”
Charlie smiled at last.
_____
Becker was an earnest worker. He sometimes wrote as many as 50 pages per day. But it wasn’t all text. Sometimes he wrote only one or two sentences on a page, spaced oddly and strung out in mad fonts and with bizarre formatting. Whenever an editor questioned him on his technique, he would simply reply that it was a “hybrid” piece and that served to shut them up.
But he was playing this one straight, for he was being paid–handsomely–by the word. Sitting at the PC in his underwear, his stomach rumbled, but he had no time for food; he was under a deadline. Scratching his dick, Becker reached out and grabbed a bottle of liquid cold meds. He was so inured, and so very addicted, that sometimes it took more than an entire large bottle to get the effect he’d achieved before with only a tiny capful.
Glugging the green, gloppy liquid, Becker smacked his lips and washed the OTC concoction down with his sixth, no, his seventh beer. No matter, when he got his dough from the book, he could go to a spa somewhere and dry out. He resumed typing.
_____
Back in Chicago, Carol, B,O&P’s factotum and Charlie’s right hand, struggled across the office under the weight of a prodigious watermelon. Charlie hurriedly cleared his desk and covered it with the pages of another of Louis Becker’s fiction.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll ruin the copy?” wheezed Carol, plopping the melon atop the desk.
“Don’t matter,” replied Charlie. “I’ll never publish his shit, and I only need copies of work he pays me to critique. We’re good.”
Carol nodded and took out a huge butcher knife and gutted the fruit, drawing a wince from her employer. Melon juice steamed out of the fruit and across the desk.
“Why’d you get some an enormous melon?” Charlie asked Carol.
“Devon is smoking and tooting and shooting and what have you more than ever. And you know how he gets the munchies.”
Charlie sighed. “I’d fire that boy…if I paid him anything.”
One month later
After averaging more than thirty pages per day, Becker was near completion of his masterpiece. Just 7 pages to go, he thought, drawing a great breath and then releasing it. He believed that his commitment had been worthwhile. Of course, he had been fired from his job at Build-a-Bear Workshop, for not reporting in to work for days on end. But he had been working on the novel! He had let nothing stand in his way. He was content. Content, but poor. But, penury wouldn’t last long: with a guaranteed advance of $1 per word, Becker was set to receive some $250,000 upfront for the completed volume; and would that be sweet! The editor he signed with, he thought, must have been stoned.
_____
Devon sat at Charlie’s desk, carefully dicing a crop of fresh peyote. Using a small, razor-keen chef’s knife, he made tiny incisions into the succulent green buttons, each about the size of a wooden nickel. Sweat beaded up on his forehead.
“If you could edit the way you prepare illegals, you would be the Ezra Pound of BO&P,” Charlie commented, arriving at his desk and finding it occupied.
Carol emerged from the ether and handed Charlie a thick tranche of paper, more than 1,000 pages, representing Becker’s 30-day novel.
“What’s this?” asked Charlie with a frown.
“That contest you ran as a joke for the April 1 issue,” Carol reminded him.
Charlie stared back blankly.
“You said that if someone wrote a 1,000-page novel in 30 days, you’d publish it….”
“I…” he interrupted.
“And pay the writer $1 per word,” Carol said, talking over her boss.
“You mean this schmuck took him seriously?” asked Devon in wonder. He looked up from his work and chuckled. “Surely he doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“It was legal,” Carol went on, “because Charlie didn’t run a disclaimer.”
“Still,” protested Charlie, “there would have to have been a contract, and I sure as hell didn’t sign one.”
“Someone did,” insisted Carol.
Together they turned to look at Devon, who was lighting up a joint.
“There’s more,” said the woman. She handed over what amounted to a billing statement for $250,000. Charlie said nothing at first. Carol added, “He said you can pay him by PayPal.”
_____
Becker, meanwhile, unused to unlimited riches, had gone a little crazy, buying anything and everything, telling the sales clerks, “Chaaarge it!” He had gotten titanium-coated cookware–Becker didn’t cook; he had gotten a new silver Tesla–Becker didn’t drive; and he had procured a gross of gold and silver-lined condoms–Becker hadn’t had any luck lately, but he held out hopes for Madge. He wondered how long before his publisher would pay him what he had coming. He’d probably be so happy with his work that he’d send him a bonus. Furrowing his brow, Becker wondered how he’d spend that.
“Gosh, Charlie,” said Carol, awed. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars: that’s nearly your entire yearly salary.” Charlie frowned at her, said nothing.”
Carol said, “I told this Becker bloke to fax over his contract. “Here it is.” She held out a single page of flimsy. Charlie took the fax and he and Carol huddled close and read. Slowly they lifted and then swiveled their heads. And, like moths drawn to a burning bulb, all eyes shifted to Devon. His eyes opened wide.
“M…me?” he stammered.
“Contracted writer: Lewis T. Becker,” read Charlie venomously. “And BO&P representative: Devon C. Shire.”
“What’s the date?” asked Devon feebly.
“April 2 of this year.” replied Charlie, his eyes searing embers. “Uh..,” he murmured weakly, as recognition dawned in his eyes.”I remember now there was this funny little guy in here–everyone else was gone–it was near end of business and…”
“Devon,” said Charlie, dismayed, “what did you do?”
“Well,” said Devon, “he seemed like such a pathetic little schmuck and I never thought he’d ever write 1,000 pages. In part, I guess you could blame it all on Mr. Natural. I just didn’t have the heart to…”
Suddenly the telephone jangled off the hook. Carol answered, held the receiver close, listened intently. She sighed. “Might as well send him up. That,” she informed them, “is the writer of the hour.”
Louis Becker, a germophobe, entered the elevator, moved to the rear of the car so as not to touch anyone. The other riders likewise moved to opposite corners. Becker sported a yellow slicker, Hush Puppies, green denim jeans and carried with him a jumbo-sized trash bag, with which to collect his literary fee, which he hoped to accrue in cash. A well-dressed woman with white hair turned up a small bottle of disinfectant and sprayed it in Becker’s direction.
_____
“Give me that contract, Carol,” said Charlie. “What’s in it, Devon?”
“Just standard stuff,” he answered. “Boilerplate.”
“Was there a timetable?” he asked, perusing the document rapidly.
‘Yes, I gave him the 30 days for completion that you stipulated in the contest, and he finished in just 28.”
Charlie scowled. “Wait!” he said, his eyes opening wide. “I’ve got it; get this freak up here!”
At length, Louis Becker, trash bag in hand, arrived in the editors’ room of BO&P, was introduced to everyone concerned. “I’ve come to settle things,” announced Louis with a hopeful smile.
“That’s just what we want too, Mr. Becker,” said Charlie. “You’re probably anxious to take your money–hard-earned–and get on your way.”
“Yes sir,” said Becker politely. He was relieved; he had thought there might be some difficulty in collecting what was due him. “You can just put my quarter million in here,” said Willy helpfully, offering up his bag.
“That’s fine,” said Charlie, “but your contract stipulates “payment upon publication.” Becker blinked. “There’s also the matter of serialization,” Charlie went on. “You are to receive compensation upon publication of each installment; do you know what that means?” Becker shook his head no. “It means,” Charlie said breezily,”that each time we publish a part of your novel, you are due remuneration forthwith.”
“When do I get my money?” croaked Becker plaintively.
“We’ll publish the first installment of your novel in the September issue of BO&P and pay you for that. With each subsequent month, upon publication, we’ll then pay you for the that installment. And we’ll print one page per issue, which comes to $250 per month. You see?”
“I guess so,” said Becker, crestfallen. His next Tesla payment was due in two days, costing him $4,000, and he couldn’t pay that on $250 per month.
“Here,” Charlie said, scribbling and then tearing off a check. “I’ll pay you for the next year in advance: that’s $3,000 dollars, Louis!” He slapped him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, you’re now a professional novelist!” Becker held up his sad looking bag and Charlie plunked the check inside. Becker left, quiet and forlorn, wondering where he could hock his titanium-coated cookware.
“Whew, that was a close one,” said Carol, with a sigh.
“Yeah, but we got out of it,” chirped Devon. The others frowned, looked darkly at him.
“In future, Devon, take it easy on the psychedelic drugs,” counseled Charlie, taking out a huge stainless steel bong and filling it copiously with hash. Striking a match, he murmured, “Never know what you might do when you’re under the influence…”
Saragun Springs 