In Laymon's Terms

They asked for Geoff. Lawyers always ask for you by both names: first and last, and are never as informal as a shortened down version of your first name. To a lawyer, I’d be “Geoffrey,” just like when I was a little kid and my mom was really pissed. This wasn’t a lawyer. Maybe some guy she hired, an ex-cop with buddies still on the force who would come over and beat the shit out of me with impunity. Maybe one of her boyfriend’s friends, calling to threaten me, suggest I leave town or end up as gator food.

“This is,” I said, looked around the room for a weapon.

“Hi, Geoff! It’s Dick Laymon. How’re you doing?”

I lied, told him I was hanging in there, and was quite relieved that he was calling and not a lawyer. We yapped for a while, then he said the reason he was calling was he really dug a story of mine that was online, and he asked me if I had anything that was unpublished that he might be able to read. Me, being my ever-eloquent self, said, “Are you fucking shitting me?”

He assured me no fecal matter—or fornication thereof—was involved. “Just send me a good, unpublished story, if you can.”

If I could. Yeah. You know: if I, some unknown writer who nine people on the face of the planet heard of, would be kind enough to send him, Richard Laymon, a story to read. If I could. Let me see if I could fit it into my oh-so-busy schedule.

“You kidding? Of course! I’ll e-mail it to you right now.”

Have you ever seen a cat about to fall into the bathtub? Because that’s what it felt like Dick did on the other end of the phone. I heard him freeze up, panicking at the thought. “Well...you see, Geoff, I...I always get messed up with attached files, and Kelly isn’t home to open it for me. Would it be okay if you sent it to the house?”

I printed out the story, dropped it in the mailbox that night so it would go out first thing in the morning. I thought it was a little odd that he specified an unpublished story, but who was I to question the intent of Richard Laymon? He was a Big-Time Author, and I was just some guy bumming around Fort Myers, Florida, trying to not look across the street and see my wife’s Thunderbird parked in front of some other guy’s house.

Okay, so what I could do is wait until one of ’em left for work. Surprise ’em, give ’em a bash on the head as they walked out the door, force my way in before it closed fully and start popping caps. Nah: too cliche. Better to make her live with the guilt. Maybe just do myself right here, right now—pull a Robert E. Howard. Bleh. No style. Oh! I know: I go and do it in the T-bird. Sit down inside, and blam! Splatter my brains all over the upholstery. I liked that idea. That was it. Or wait! Maybe I should consider the possibilities of high voltage...

A week went by, a thousand different scenarios of murder, death and suicide, all boiling in my brain. From the time I came to until the time I collapsed, pain so deep my blood was on fire, burning its way down each artery and capillary like a toxic chemical, one my body tried to reject. I wanted to open every vein and bleed it out, just get it out of me, maybe then some release, some numbness, something other than...

I got used to the taste of gun oil. Slept with the barrel in my mouth every night, hoping that in a dream, I’d yank the trigger and never wake up. Yet I did. Every fucking day, I woke up, and there it was: the failure that was my life waiting for me: Good morning! Everything still sucks! It’s going to be a beautiful day to take the kid to the beach—oh, did I strike a nerve there?

I was at the bottom. One more day would have killed me. One more sympathetic phone call, one more “I’m sorry, Geoff,” one more “You’re better off without her,” one more “You just hang in there, okay?” would have been more than I could take. I hadn’t eaten in four days. The dog shit the floor. I didn’t care. Couldn’t remember the last time I walked her. Whatever. Nothing mattered anyway. Why wasn’t I dead yet?

I was about that far in my thinking when Dick called again.

“Hey, I really like this story. Can I put it in Bad News?”

“Are you fucking shitting me?”

See, he managed to leave that part out of the first phone call. That tiny little part that he was asking for a submission to his anthology, Bad News.