Potboiler

He remembered the first time Bill revealed any literary aspirations of his own. Prior to then, Pfefferkorn had thought he understood the roles each of them played in their friendship, and it was with some unease that he sat down to read the story Bill had written “for the heck of it.” Pfefferkorn was worried it would be either superb and cause for envy or rubbish and cause for an argument. In fact, it fell somewhere in between, and Pfefferkorn felt relief at being able to express honest enthusiasm for the story’s strengths while yet retaining his position of dominance. He even offered to mark up the text, a suggestion Bill pounced on. Pfefferkorn interpreted his enthusiasm as an admission that Bill still held Pfefferkorn to be the superior writer and would gladly accept any pearls of wisdom Pfefferkorn cared to drop.

How naïve they had been. Pfefferkorn nearly laughed out loud. The sound of dirt being shoveled atop the grave helped him maintain his composure.

It took Carlotta more than an hour to shake the hands and kiss the cheeks of everyone who had come to pay respects. At her request, Pfefferkorn lingered nearby.

“Hell of a guy,” Lucian Savory said.

Pfefferkorn agreed.

“Hell of a writer. I knew from the first line of that first book that this fellow was something special. ‘Savory,’ said I, ‘Savory, behold something rare here. Behold talent.’” Savory nodded in confirmation of his own judgment. Then he glanced sidelong at Pfefferkorn. “You probably can’t guess how old I am.”

“Well—”

“Ninety-eight,” Savory said.

“Wow,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Ninety-nine in November.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Of course I fucking don’t. That’s not the point. The point, dingleballs, is I’ve been around the block. Updike, Mailer, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Twain, Joseph Smith, Zola, Fenimore Cooper. I knew em all. I fucked all three of them Brontës. And let me tell you, I never met a writer like Bill. And I never will again, even if I live to be a hundred.”

“I think that’s likely,” Pfefferkorn said.

“What is.”

“That you’ll live to be a hundred.”

Savory stared at him. “You’re a smart-ass.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Savory said. “Fucking smart-ass.”

“I’m sorry,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Pfft. Any rate, I’m telling you: Bill’s name belongs up there with the greats. We could chisel it into Mount Rushmore. Maybe I’ll do just that.”

“Mark Twain?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“Nicest guy you’ll ever meet,” Savory said. “Not like that Nathaniel Hawthorne, he was a cunt. You’re a writer?”

“Of sorts,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Publish anything?”

“A little.”

“How little.”

“One novel,” Pfefferkorn said. “In the eighties.”

“Name?”

“Shade of the Colossus,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Shitty title,” Savory said.

Pfefferkorn bowed his head.

“Not a selling title,” Savory said.

“Well, it didn’t sell.”

“There you go.” Savory rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “You should have called it Blood Night.”

“What?”

“Or Blood Eyes. Now those are selling titles. See? I haven’t even read it and I came up with two better titles in thirty seconds.”

“They don’t really relate to the book.”

Savory looked at him. “You don’t understand this business, do you.”

12.

“Never mind him,” Carlotta said. “Lucian likes to make himself feel more important than he is. Bill keeps him on out of habit, or maybe compassion. God knows he doesn’t need an agent anymore.” She paused. “Listen to me. That’s what people do, isn’t it, use the present tense.”

Pfefferkorn squeezed her hand.

“Thank you for coming, Arthur.”

“Of course.”

“You’ve no idea how meaningful it is. These people . . .” She gestured to the vanished crowd. “They’re nice in a way but they’re not our friends. Or, they are in one sense, but you have to understand: this is Los Angeles.”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“I know what they’re saying about me,” she said. “They think I’m not sad enough.”

“Oh, please.”

“What they don’t understand is that I’ve been mourning him for months. You can’t sustain a fever pitch that long. It’s unnatural. I’ve known more than a few widows like that, going around all day beating their breasts. There’s something terribly stagy about it. And wouldn’t you know, they always seem to recover as soon as the inheritance check clears.”

Pfefferkorn smiled.

“Let them think what they want,” she said. “This, here—it’s just a formality. It’s for everyone else. The real horror is all mine, and it only starts when I’m alone.”

Arm in arm, they crossed the burial grounds, parting eddying clouds of midges. The abundant lawns gave off a humidity that drove Pfefferkorn to loosen his tie.

“I expected them to hassle me about burying an empty casket,” she said. “But they were darling. They’re exceptionally good at dealing with people in a time of grief.”

“I bet.”