Read Online About the Author by John Colapinto - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Colapinto
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Murderers, Fiction - Authorship, Roommates, Impostors and Imposture, Manhattan (New York; N.Y.), Literature publishing, Bookstores, Bookstores - Employees
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followed, I would receive up to five phone calls a day from Yaeger, who would deliver panting updates on where “we” stood with the various “interested parties.” Studio A was willing to pay such-and-so, studio B saw its bid and raised it
this
much, while studio C trumped them both with an offer of yea-many dollars, which immediately provoked a still higher offer from studio A, and the whole process would start again, as the figures mounted into dizzying, implausible, impossible regions. . . . It all seemed entirely abstract, unreal, and while I can’t exactly say that I did not feel excited (I had, for instance, developed an uncontrollable flutter in my left eyelid, and I was no longer sleeping), I also experienced the strange sensation that all of this was happening to someone else. That I could be on the brink of unimaginable wealth—after all those years of scrambling to pay my phone bill, of scraping together the change to do my laundry—well, it was just too much for my mind and emotions to encompass. Yaeger himself sensed this. After naming some outlandish sum that one of the studios was willing to pay to acquire the novel, Yaeger would cry, “You’re not saying anything, Cal! ’S’matter? Aren’t you happy?” And I would say something limp about how it was all so hard to comprehend, so hard. . . .
It was a week later that Blackie called to tell me that he wanted to clinch the deal with studio B, which couldn’t wait to pay $950,000 for my little property. Within days, Blackie had, just as promised, initiated a fierce bidding war among five leading New York publishing houses for my suddenly “sizzling” novel, selling it at auction, four days later, to Phoenix Books. For $700,000. Throughout the tense negotiations, he would, as with the movie sale, keep me up to date, explaining complicated things about hard-and-soft deals, foreign rights and royalty rates, and on and on. I confess that I had stopped listening to him. None of it made any sense anymore. Everything was going so fast. Yaeger would ask my opinion on certain matters, and my response was always the same: “Whatever you think best, Blackie.”
It was on a Thursday in mid-August (exactly one and a half months since I had first seen Stewart’s transcription of
Almost Like Suicide
), that Blackie phoned to say that the book sale had been finalized; all it needed was my signature.
I was talking to him from the phone at the shipper/receiver’s desk at Stodard’s—for, you see, despite all the talk of astronomical money, I had continued to work at the bookstore, superstitiously believing that the moment I quit the job, all my deals would fall apart. I was, in fact, just scribbling down the details of where and when to meet Yaeger to autograph the publishing contract when Marshall Weibe burst through the stockroom door, his face scarlet, his plummy lips working inside his blond beard. From his perch at the cash register, he’d obviously been keeping his eye on the lit-up phone button. He now stood in the stockroom doorway, his chest heaving as his eyes darted back and forth from me to the stack of untouched book crates that had arrived just that morning and that Marshall had insisted that I unpack by noon.
“Okay, Blackie,” I said into the phone. “See you soon.” I hung up.
“For Chrissake,” Marshall erupted. “That was a
ten-minute call
! I warned you that
if
you persisted in making personal calls, I—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said.
I rose from my chair. And then I did something that you ordinarily get to do only in dreams. I looked at my fuming, sputtering boss, smiled wanly, and then strolled—mind you
strolled
—past him. I proceeded up the stairs, across the display room, and to the doors that led out to Fifth Avenue. Marshall followed me the whole way, like a baseball coach dogging the heels of an implacable umpire who simply trudges back to his base. Marshall was gesturing, almost shouting, startling
this
much, while studio C trumped them both with an offer of yea-many dollars, which immediately provoked a still higher offer from studio A, and the whole process would start again, as the figures mounted into dizzying, implausible, impossible regions. . . . It all seemed entirely abstract, unreal, and while I can’t exactly say that I did not feel excited (I had, for instance, developed an uncontrollable flutter in my left eyelid, and I was no longer sleeping), I also experienced the strange sensation that all of this was happening to someone else. That I could be on the brink of unimaginable wealth—after all those years of scrambling to pay my phone bill, of scraping together the change to do my laundry—well, it was just too much for my mind and emotions to encompass. Yaeger himself sensed this. After naming some outlandish sum that one of the studios was willing to pay to acquire the novel, Yaeger would cry, “You’re not saying anything, Cal! ’S’matter? Aren’t you happy?” And I would say something limp about how it was all so hard to comprehend, so hard. . . .
It was a week later that Blackie called to tell me that he wanted to clinch the deal with studio B, which couldn’t wait to pay $950,000 for my little property. Within days, Blackie had, just as promised, initiated a fierce bidding war among five leading New York publishing houses for my suddenly “sizzling” novel, selling it at auction, four days later, to Phoenix Books. For $700,000. Throughout the tense negotiations, he would, as with the movie sale, keep me up to date, explaining complicated things about hard-and-soft deals, foreign rights and royalty rates, and on and on. I confess that I had stopped listening to him. None of it made any sense anymore. Everything was going so fast. Yaeger would ask my opinion on certain matters, and my response was always the same: “Whatever you think best, Blackie.”
It was on a Thursday in mid-August (exactly one and a half months since I had first seen Stewart’s transcription of
Almost Like Suicide
), that Blackie phoned to say that the book sale had been finalized; all it needed was my signature.
I was talking to him from the phone at the shipper/receiver’s desk at Stodard’s—for, you see, despite all the talk of astronomical money, I had continued to work at the bookstore, superstitiously believing that the moment I quit the job, all my deals would fall apart. I was, in fact, just scribbling down the details of where and when to meet Yaeger to autograph the publishing contract when Marshall Weibe burst through the stockroom door, his face scarlet, his plummy lips working inside his blond beard. From his perch at the cash register, he’d obviously been keeping his eye on the lit-up phone button. He now stood in the stockroom doorway, his chest heaving as his eyes darted back and forth from me to the stack of untouched book crates that had arrived just that morning and that Marshall had insisted that I unpack by noon.
“Okay, Blackie,” I said into the phone. “See you soon.” I hung up.
“For Chrissake,” Marshall erupted. “That was a
ten-minute call
! I warned you that
if
you persisted in making personal calls, I—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said.
I rose from my chair. And then I did something that you ordinarily get to do only in dreams. I looked at my fuming, sputtering boss, smiled wanly, and then strolled—mind you
strolled
—past him. I proceeded up the stairs, across the display room, and to the doors that led out to Fifth Avenue. Marshall followed me the whole way, like a baseball coach dogging the heels of an implacable umpire who simply trudges back to his base. Marshall was gesturing, almost shouting, startling
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