Paperback Jack, page 3
And there were comic books: On the covers a flock of professional wrestlers dressed in capes and swimwear, leaping and soaring and beating up thugs, a menagerie of cartoon animals, a conga line of rotting zombies. Nothing that hadn’t already been done by Uncle Remus, Edgar Allan Poe, Bulldog Drummond, and Tom Swift, this time drawn by crude artists with speech balloons (quote: “What the—?”). But Winderspear had been wrong about threats from that quarter. Children outgrew childish things.
His workday at the Clock started before dawn and he never got home before dark. Six days a week, the sun was a leaden rumor sliding through greasy glass. He ate lunch at his desk, but memories of spoiled chow mein—and Chinese Checkers—kept him from ordering from downstairs. A boy in a white coat and a paper hat brought him drugstore sandwiches and he washed them down with coffee from the vending machine in the hallway. The vendor seemed to be dumping what remained of the swill that had passed for the real thing during rationing, but at least it was hot, and the scalding stuff helped kill the taste of liverwurst.
The job was stimulating at first. The thunder of typewriters, the constant ringing of telephones, copy boys bustling about, snatching copy and dodging crumpled cardboard coffee cups launched at their heads—the eternal push to scoop the competition; The Greenwich Clock was uncut adrenaline. He saw himself as a fixture in The Front Page, drinking from a flask and spouting cynicisms.
The first story that came his way, rapped into his ear in the breathless tenor of a reporter on the scene, was a fire in a school for the underprivileged, with a Puerto Rican janitor thought to be trapped on the top floor. He took it all down in his personal shorthand. His rewrite passed muster with Rosetti, after he’d made slashing cuts with a fat blue pencil in one hand, chopsticks in the other. There was a deadline breathing hot down his hairy neck, so the refinements were minimal. Jacob had the satisfaction of proofing his own spare prose in galleys within the hour, fresh from the Linotype.
The janitor turned out to be okay, having deserted his post for an evening with the school nurse. Jacob despised himself for being disappointed.
He made no friends. The other reporters took coffee breaks that stretched into four hours in a bar called The Scribblers’ Lounge, but they didn’t invite him, and he couldn’t have joined them if they had, chained as he was to the candlestick phone on his desk. The only one he’d have liked to ask him along was the sob sister, a hard-faced blonde with a nice figure who churned out tearjerkers about battered wives and runaway children; but she drifted past his desk without a glance in his direction. He wasn’t attracted to her, especially, but after more than a year back in the States he missed sex.
But the stories couldn’t all be about fires, or beat cops delivering babies, or Zoot Suiters brawling in the Bowery. He wrote up wedding ceremonies for the Society section, quiana lace and baby’s-breath bouquets (a revolting name, upon consideration) and rapped out captions for pictures of couples celebrating golden wedding anniversaries, the snowy-haired former brides radiant and the rumpled erstwhile grooms looking like blessed death.
So this was postwar prosperity.
For sanity’s sake he often read the want ads over lunch. One particularly soul-destroying day, he found a listing for a creative writing class being taught in a public school building on Twenty-Second Street. He dialed the number on an impulse. He’d been a professional writer for four years, allowing for his service and not counting two months with The Greenwich Clock. Maybe it was time he learned to be an amateur.
CHAPTER SIX
P.S. 187, a square brick building constructed on a wooden frame, looked like a fire station. Room 3-C belonged to every schoolhouse in North America. The cloakroom smelled of sour wool and rubber galoshes, and chalk and graphite salted every surface beyond; the first night, Jacob decided to spare his corduroy sportcoat and come to class from then on in flannel and denim. Dry-cleaning rates had gone up along with everything else.
The night-school crowd had to sit sideways at desk-and-chair sets designed for fifth-graders. A smudged geography lesson on the blackboard said the annual mean precipitation rate in the Andes was thirty to forty inches.
The instructor’s name was Tharp. He was a balding man in his forties who for some reason wore a varsity jacket from a high school in Buffalo and sneakers that squeaked on the linoleum floor; the noise was like an ice pick in the brain. The course description said he was a published poet. He lectured on theme in a voice that droned when it was audible at all. His listeners coughed and squirmed in their hard small seats and sneaked glances at the big electric clock mounted above a bulletin board shingled with crayon drawings of turkeys and pilgrims.
Jacob gave up taking notes. He’d never understood theme and never would. If he’d mentioned the subject to any of his editors, they’d have stared as if he’d just stepped off an alien spaceship on the cover of Astounding Science Fiction. “Theme, fuck’s that? Plot is God, kid.” (Every writer was kid to editors and agents, even if he had white hair and an ear trumpet.) “When the story bogs down, shoot somebody.”
The second night, he was asked to diagram a sentence. He understood syntax. He didn’t know a second predicate from First Communion, but he knew where to place the active verb in a sentence, even if he couldn’t explain why. But Tharp insisted his students apply rules to the English language that were better suited to math. When Jacob turned in his worksheet, it came back with a big red D-.
“Son of a bitch.” He stared at the grade.
“He is, isn’t he?”
He jumped. The woman seated across the aisle was leaning his way, an arm flung across the back of her chair, and had spoken low, behind the instructor’s retreating back. Jacob had noticed her before. She was about his age, pleasant-looking, with her red hair in a shoulder bob and one of those suits that made women look like Charles Atlas. This one had nice legs where her skirt caught them at mid-calf. She hadn’t paid him any attention until now, so he’d dismissed her as just another frustrated former defense worker done out of a job by a returning serviceman.
He was abashed. “Excuse my French. In high school I never scored lower than a B in Composition.”
“Tharp would say that’s the theme of today’s story.”
“This isn’t discussion time, people.” Tharp had come to the end of her row and turned to scowl at the pair.
“My fault, sorry,” Jacob said.
“If I were you, Mr. Heppleman, I’d save my energy for concentration. You’re getting a free ride, courtesy of the G.I. Bill. You should show your gratitude to the taxpayers by buckling down.”
The woman spoke up. “Pardon me, Mr. Tharp. What branch of the military did you say you served in?”
The man’s pasteboard face blossomed high on the cheeks. “I have an inner-ear condition, Miss Curry. I did my bit in the Civil Defense.” He laid the sheet on her desk and moved on.
She glanced at the sheet, turned it over. “Shit.”
“What’d he do to you?” Jacob was mildly shocked by her language. Something had happened to femininity while he was away.
“Me? Nothing. I’ve had my fill of these four-effers looking down on veterans because they weren’t smart enough to beat the system like them.”
“I meant what grade did he give you?”
“Does it matter? I’m just here to learn how to write a decent letter. Secretarial work’s all there is now.”
He grinned. “Aced it, didn’t you?”
“Not quite.” She tapped a row of scarlet-painted nails on the sheet, then smiled and turned it over. She had a crooked smile.
He looked. “B-plus. What are you, a math whiz?”
“Well, don’t say it like it’s a criminal record.”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I never learned to add, so I wrote for pennies.”
“You’re a professional writer? What have you written? Would I know it?”
The instructor chose that moment to address the class. Jacob was grateful for the timing.
“Going over your worksheets, I see some potential, some faint hope, and some despair for the race. This is an adult class, so I assume you all know where you belong in that scenario. During the next four weeks, we’ll be discussing characterization, motivation, mechanics, and plot development. At the end of that time, I’ll ask each of you to write a complete short story—I place the emphasis on short: By which I mean longer than two hundred words on how you spent your summer vacation, but not as long as Forever Amber; which on second thought would have spared the world a great deal of agony had it restricted itself to two hundred words. My time, judging by some of these exercises in construction”—Jacob swore he looked directly at him—“is a commodity I value more than some of you do yours. When I’ve read your contributions to culture, I’ll be in a position to say whether there’s hope for you or if you’re better suited to writing jingles for Burma-Shave.”
Jacob hoisted his briefcase and headed for the door. He hoped he gave Miss Curry the impression he was late for some appointment, not that he was ducking the subject of his body of work. (“No kidding, you’re that Jacob Heppleman? The author of ‘A Punk with a Rod’? I had no idea. Could I prevail upon you to autograph my copy of Double-Barreled Detective? Preferably in my apartment?”)
Right.
He went back to the Clock, rolled a sheet into the cranky Underwood on his desk—and began his first short story in nearly six years:
The Remington Streamliner portable was black, glossy, curved, with a sleek low profile like a Cadillac roadster.…
It was automatic writing, as if the spirit of Fergus Tunn, the mad poet, haunted his old machine. A down-at-heels scribe, unable to afford a typewriter, steals one from a shop. Terrified of discovery, he tries to turn himself in to end the agony, only to learn that the theft was never reported, and therefore officially no crime has been committed. Just when he decides to put the past behind him and become a productive member of the literary establishment, he’s arrested for the shop owner’s murder, which took place later, and of which he’s innocent. “The Typewriter” came in at 3,500 words and required little revising. It was as close to perfect as he’d ever come.
* * *
“F?”
“Very good, Mr. Heppleman. An understanding of the alphabet is the first sign you’ve shown of real literacy.”
He’d lingered at the teacher’s Noah’s-Ark desk until the rest of the class had filed out, holding the rolled typescript of his story crushed in his fist. Tharp had circled the failing mark in still more scarlet, as if to vent dissatisfaction with the finite nature of the grading process. Had there been a G, the circle suggested, he’d have put it to use. The instructor stood, putting papers in a tattered leather portfolio and tying the strings.
“What’s wrong with the story?” Jacob asked.
“Nothing, to the ill-read. It’s a competent work of plagiarism.”
“Plagiarism! I—” He stopped himself before confessing the story was based on experience.
“Victor Hugo and O. Henry would bear me out. It begins as Les Misérables and ends as ‘The Cop and the Anthem.’ I’m not incensed so much by the theft as by the assumption I’m unaware of the source material.”
“Listen, Tharp, I’m a professional. I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with. I’ve got no reason—”
“Yes, I read your biography on the enrollment form. The rags who published you couldn’t have existed in Hugo’s day or O. Henry’s. It’s a sad fact of universal literacy that the public’s taste in reading has fallen so far. But to be charitable, let’s assume your assault on intellectual property was an unconscious act. If you can write a new story—emphasis on new—and turn it in Tuesday, I’ll give it a passing grade—if I like it—and we’ll pretend this little slip never happened. This is a very good deal I’m offering; a veteran’s benefit, let’s say.”
Jacob said, “I have a counter-offer.”
* * *
Sucking his skinned knuckles, he almost bumped into the redhead in the hallway. They’d hardly spoken since the second day of class. Her eyebrows were raised. “What was that?” She crushed out her cigarette against the frame of the open window at the end by the stairs. “Was someone moving furniture?”
“That was the sound of me dropping out of school. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”
“Whoa, mister. Wartime speed limits are still in effect.”
“I’ve stayed under them so far. I’ve asked you out for coffee the last four Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you’ve had somewhere to be every time. You don’t seem to be in a hurry tonight.”
“If you think I was waiting for you—”
“I need your answer, Miss Curry. When Tharp comes around, I may be wanted for assault and battery.”
She smiled and hoisted the strap of her handbag higher on one padded shoulder. “Call me Ellen.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Can I read your story?”
Jacob’s tone took on a droning quality. “I assume you can, Miss Curry, ours being a nation of compulsory education. Whether you may is the point at issue.”
She shuddered. “Golly, don’t do that again. You sound too much like him.”
“Be my guest. The F is for ‘fine.’” Not bothering to open his briefcase, he’d folded the crumpled pages into a clumsy square and thrust it in a jeans pocket. Now he spread it out on the table between them.
They were in a booth at Woolworth’s, across the aisle from the gleaming counter. The store was observing Christmas hours; the buzz of customer conversation mingled with Perry Como’s crooning on the loudspeaker. Jacob drank from his cup and watched her read, one elbow on the table and the cigarette in her hand pointed toward the ceiling. She’d eaten half a chicken-salad sandwich and taken a refill on her coffee.
She read briskly, but she wasn’t just skimming. Once she paged back to look at something again, then continued without pausing. When she came to the end she drummed the pages together and returned them. Smiled.
“That bad?” He refolded and stuffed them back inside his pocket.
“It’s good. I like your hero. He knows he did wrong, but he doesn’t get all weepy and hand-wringy over it. Frankly, that was the problem I had with Hugo. I’ve never read O. Henry, so I can’t say anything about that.”
“So you agree with Tharp.”
“Gosh, no. I’d never have made the connection if you hadn’t told me what he said. How many plots are there in the world, really?”
“Six. Snow White, Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three—”
“I get you. No need to go on.”
“Good. I can’t think of the others.”
“All those stories have heroines, not heroes.”
“Tharp would just say I have trouble writing women.”
“Did you really knock him out?”
“Silly, but not out. A man isn’t as easy to KO as you see in pictures. I learned that at Fort Dix. I’m afraid to look at my old stuff. I put more guys to sleep with one punch than Joe Louis, and that was just in one story.”
“I’d like to read your old stuff.”
“Good luck. I left a trunk with my landlord. He sold the building while I was overseas and everything in it. You won’t find them at the library.” He blew on his cup, although it had stopped steaming ten minutes ago. “May I read yours?”
“I don’t have any old stuff.”
“Stop stalling, sister,” he growled.
She laughed. The counterman looked up from his polish rag. “Did you really write like that?”
“I had to. Think the black market’s risky? Try smuggling good dialogue past the editors at Goon Squad.”
“Goon Squad, really?”
“Don’t be a snob. Its sister publication was The Cultural Quarterly, which it outsold ten to one. The story, lady.” He extended his palm, wiggling his fingers.
She opened her handbag and took out a sheaf of pages bound with a paper clip. He reached for it. She drew it back. “Promise you won’t be kind.”
“Cross my heart.” He did.
She let him take it. He looked at the grade. “A-minus.”
“Tharp asked me out a couple of times. He thinks he can pry his way into my pants with a report card.”
Blushing, he signaled the counterman for a warm-up and read. Ellen plucked out a Lucky, tapped it on the pack, and lit it, sat back to smoke and hum along with Peggy Lee.
He finished and slid the story her way. “Cute.”
“Thanks for not being kind.” She scooped it up and stuck it back in her handbag. Her nostrils were pinched.
“I don’t know what else to say about a lost-dog story, unless the dog winds up getting run over. Oh, on page six you used ‘further’ when you meant ‘farther.’ I’m surprised our intrepid instructor missed that; but like you said—”
“You’re a bit of a shit, aren’t you?”
“You asked for honesty.”
“I did not.”
He sat back and finished his coffee. “What a relief! I keep hearing the girls back home aren’t the same girls I left behind. Good to hear they still don’t make sense.”
“Just how many girls did you leave behind?”
He put down his cup and counted on his fingers. “Princess Lotus, Vesta von Vix, The Moroccan Man-Eater—”
