Bag of Bones CHAPTER THREE

My newspaper didnt k today, my editor Debra Weinstock didnt know, my agent Harold Oblowski didnt know. Frank Arlen didnt know, each, although on more than adept occasion I had been tempted to prove him. Let me be your brother. For Jos sake if not your own, he told me on the day he went back to his printing business and mostly solitary life in the s erupthern Maine town of Sanford. I had never expected to polish off him up on that, and didnt not in the elemental cry-for-help way he capacity progress to been beting close entirely I ph matchlessd him e precise couple of weeks or so. Guy-talk, you know Hows it going, Not too bad, cold as a witchs tit, Yeah, here, too, You essential to go prevail all(prenominal)(prenominal) over to Boston if I goat desexualize Bruins tickets, possibly next y pinna, pretty busy full now, Yeah, I know how that is, seeya, Mikey, Okay, Frank, keep your wee-wee in the teepee. Guy-talk.Im pretty sure that once or twice he asked me if I was working on a new go for, and I see I utter Oh, fuck it thats a lie, okay? One so ingrown that now Im even distinguishing it to myself. He asked, any right, and I always said yeah, I was working on a new take hold, it was going good, genuinely good. I was tempted more than once to tell him I cant write devil paragraphs with issue going into summation mental and physical doglock my heartbeat doubles, then triples, I get short of breath and then start to pant, my eyes feel homogeneous theyre going to step to the fore reveal of my head and hang at that place on my cheeks. Im the uniform a claustrophobe in a sinking submarine. Thats how its going, thanks for asking, but I never did. I dont c both(prenominal) for help. I cant call for help. I think I told you that.From my admittedly prejudiced standpoint, palmy novelists even modestly successful novelists have got the best gig in the inventive arts. Its true that people buy more CDS than books, go to more movies , and watch a lot more TV. just now the arc of productiveness is longer for novelists, peradventure because readers ar a little brighter than cull outs of the non-written arts, and thus have marginally longer memories. David Soul of Starsky and Hutch is God knows where, same with that peculiar discolour rapper Vanilla Ice, but in 1994, Herman Wouk, James Michener, and Norman Mailer were all still around talk astir(predicate) when dinosaurs walked the earth.Arthur Hailey was writing a new book (that was the rumor, anyway, and it turned out to be true), Thomas Harris could take seven geezerhood amongst Lecters and still produce bestsellers, and although not heard from in almost cardinal old age, J. D. Salinger was still a hot topic in English classes and informal coffee-house literary groups. Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled onto the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.What the publisher wants in return, especially from an author who can be counted on to sell 500,000 or so copies of all(prenominal) novel in hardcover and a ane thousand thousand more in paperback, is perfectly simple a book a year. That, the wallahs in New York have determined, is the optimum. Three hundred and eighty pages bound by string or glue every twelve months, a beginning, a middle, and an end, continuing main character like Kinsey Millh angiotensin converting enzyme or Kay Scarpetta optional but very practically preferred. Readers love continuing characters its like coming back to family.Less than a book a year and youre screwing up the publishers investment in you, hampering your business managers ability to continue floating all of your credit cards, and jeopardizing your agents ability to pay his shrink on time. Also, in that locations always some fan attrition when you take too long. Cant b e helped. Just as, if you publish too much, there are readers wholl say, Phew, Ive had enough of this guy for awhile, its all head start to taste like beans.I tell you all this so youll understand how I could spend four years using my computer as the worlds most expensive Scrabble board, and no one ever suspected. Writers block? What writers block? We dont got no steenkin writers block. How could anyone think such a issue when there was a new Michael Noonan suspense novel appearing individually fall upright like clockwork, perfect for your late-summer pleasure reading, folks, and by the way, dont forget that the holi years are coming and that all your relatives would too probably enjoy the new Noonan, which can he had at B dispositions at a thirty percent discount, oy vay, such a deal.The secret is simple, and I am not the alone popular novelist in America who knows it if the rumors are correct, Danielle Steel (to name just one) has been using the Noonan Formula for decades. You see, although I have published a book a year starting with Being Two in 1984, I wrote two books in four of those ten years, publishing one and ratholing the other.I dont remember ever talking virtually this with Jo, and since she never asked, I always assumed she understood what I was doing saving up nuts. It wasnt writers block I was thinking of, though. Shit, I was just having fun.By February of 1995, by and by crashing and burning with at least two good ideas (that particular function the Eureka thing has never stopped, which creates its own special version of hell), I could no longer deny the obvious I was in the worst sort of trouble a writer can get into, barring Alzheimers or a cataclysmic stroke. Still, I had four cardboard manuscript boxes in the big safe-deposit box I keep up at faithfulness Union. They were pronounced engagement, Threat, Darcy, and Top. Around Valentines Day, my agent called, moderately nervous I usually delivered my latest masterpiece to him b y January, and here it was already half-past February. They would have to crash production to get this years Mike Noonan out in time for the annual Christmas buying orgy. Was everything all right?This was my premier(prenominal) chance to say things were a country mile from all but Mr. Harold Oblowski of 225 Park Avenue wasnt the sort of man you said such things to. He was a fine agent, both desire and loathed in publishing circles (some clock by the same people at the same time), but he didnt adapt well to bad news from the dark and oil.treaked levels where the goods were actually produced. He would have freaked and been on the next plane to Derry, ready to give me creative let the cat out of the bag-to-mouth, adamant in his resolve not to leave until he had yanked me out of my fugue. No, I liked Harold right where he was, in his thirty-eighth-floor dominance with its kickass view of the East Side.I told him what a coincidence, Harold, you calling on the very day I finished the new one, gosharooty, how bout that, Ill sling it out FedEx, youll have it tomorrow. Harold assured me solemnly that there was no coincidence about it, that where his writers were concerned, he was telepathic. Then he congratulated me and hung up. Two hours later I true his bouquet-every bit as fulsome and silky as one of his Jimmy Hollywood ascots.After putting the flowers in the dining room, where I rarely went since Jo died, I went polish to Fidelity Union. I used my key, the bank manager used his, and soon enough I was on my way to FedEx with the manuscript of on the whole the route from the Top. I took the most recent book because it was the one closest to the front of the box, thats all. In November it was published just in time for the Christmas rush. I dedicated it to the remembering of my late, beloved wife, Johanna. It went to number eleven on the Times bestseller list, and everyone went home happy. Even me. Because things would get better, wouldnt they? No one had te rminal writers block, did they (well, with the possible exception of Harper Lee)? All I had to do was relax, as the chorus girl said to the archbishop. And thank God Id been a good squirrel and saved up my nuts.I was still affirmative the following year when I drove deal to the Federal Express office with Threatening Behavior. That one was written in the fall of 1991, and had been one of Jos favorites. Optimism had attenuate quite a little bit by March of 1997, when I drove th jolty a wet snowstorm with Darcys Admirer, although when people asked me how it was going (theme any good books lately? is the existential way most seem to phrase the question), I still answered good, fine, yeah, writing lots of good books lately, theyre pouring out of me like shit out of a cows ass.After Harold had read Darcy and pronounced it my best ever, a best-seller which was also serious, I hesitantly broached the idea of winning a year off. He responded immediately with the question I detest above a ll others was I all right? Sure, I told him, fine as freckles, just thinking about easing off a little. on that point followed one of those patented Harold Oblowski silences, which were meant to convey that you were being a terrific asshole, but because Harold liked you so much, he was trying to think of the gentlest possible way of telling you so. This is a wonderful trick, but one I saw through about six years ago. Actually, it was Jo who saw through it. Hes only pretending compassion, she said. Actually, hes like a cop in one of those old film noir movies, keeping his mouth shut so youll blunder ahead and end up confessing to everything.This time I kept my mouth shut just switched the phone from my right ear to my left, and rocked back a little further in my office chair. When I did, my eye fell on the framed characterizationgraph over my computer Sara Laughs, our say on Dark Score Lake. I hadnt been there in eons, and for a moment I consciously wondered why.Then Harolds voic e cautious, comforting, the voice of a reasonable man trying to talk a lunatic out of what he hopes will be no more than a passing delusion was back in my ear. That might not be a good idea, Mike not at this stage of your career.This isnt a stage, I said. I peaked in 1991 since then, my sales havent rattling gone up or down. This is a plateau, Harold.Yes, he said, and writers whove reached that steady state really only have two choices in basis of sales they can continue as they are, or they can go down.So I go down, I conceit of saying . . . but didnt. I didnt want Harold to know exactly how deep this went, or how shaky the ground under me was. I didnt want him to know that I was now having heart palpitations-yes, I mean this literally almost every time I opened the Word Six program on my computer and looked at the blank disguise and flashing cursor.Yeah, I said. Okay. Message received.Youre sure youre all right?Does the book read like Im wrong, Harold?Hell, no its a hel luva yarn. Your personal best, I told you. A broad read but also prison guard serious shit. If Saul Bellow wrote romantic suspense fiction, this is what hed write. But . . . youre not having any trouble with the next one, are you? I know youre still missing Jo, hell, we all are No, I said. No trouble at all. Another of those long silences ensued. I endured it. At ending Harold said, Grisham could afford to take a year off. Clancy could. Thomas Harris, the long silences are a part of his mystique. But where you are, life is even tougher than at the very top, Mike. There are five writers for every one of those spots down on the list, and you know who they are hell, theyre your neighbors three months a year. Some are going up, the way Patricia Cornwell went up with her lowest two books, some are going down, and some are staying steady, like you. If Tom Clancy were to go on hiatus for five years and then bring Jack Ryan back, hed come back strong, no argument. If you go on hiatus for five years, maybe you dont come back at all. My advice is shambling hay while the sun shines.Took the words right out of my mouth.We talked a little more, then said our goodbyes. I leaned back further in my office chair not all the way to the tip over point but close and looked at the photo of our western Maine retreat. Sara Laughs, sort of like the championship of that hoary old Hall and Oates ballad. Jo had loved it more, true enough, but only by a little, so why had I been staying international? Bill Dean, the caretaker, took down the storm shutters every spring and put them back up every fall, drained the pipes in the fall and made sure the pump was ladder in the spring, checked the generator and took care to see that all the maintenance tags were current, anchored the swimming float litre yards or so off our little lick of bank after each Memorial Day.Bill had the chimney cleaned in the early summer of 96, although there hadnt been a fire in the fireplace for two ye ars or more. I paid him quarterly, as is the custom with caretakers in that part of the world Bill Dean, old Yankee from a long line of them, change my checks and didnt ask why I never used my place anymore. Id only been down two or three times since Jo died, and not a maven overnight. Good thing Bill didnt ask, because I dont know what answer I would have given him. I hadnt even really thought about Sara Laughs until my chat with Harold.Thinking of Harold, I looked away from the photo and back at the phone. Imagined saying to him, So I go down, so what? The world comes to an end? Please. It isnt as if I had a wife and family to support the wife died in a drugstore parking lot, if you please (or even if you dont please), and the kid we wanted so badly and act for so long went with her, I dont crave the fame, both if writers who fill the lower slots on the Times bestseller list can be said to be known and I dont fall asleep dreaming of book club sales. So why? Why does it ev en bother me?But that last one I could answer. Because it felt like giving up. Because without my wife and my work, I was a superfluous man living alone in a big house that was all paid for, doing nothing but the newspaper crossword over lunch.I pushed on with what passed for my life. I forgot about Sara Laughs (or some part of me that didnt want to go there buried the idea) and spent another sweltering, miserable summer in Derry. I put a cruciverbalist program on my Powerbook and began making my own crossword puzzles. I took an interim appointment on the local YMCAs board of directors and judged the Summer Arts Competition in Waterville. I did a series of TV ads for the local homeless person shelter, which was staggering toward bankruptcy, then served on that board for awhile. (At one public meeting of this latter board a woman called me a friend of degenerates, to which I replied, convey I needed that. This resulted in a loud outburst of applause which I still dont understand.) I tried some one-on-one counselling and gave it up after five appointments, deciding that the counsellors problems were far worse than mine. I sponsored an Asian child and bowled with a league.sometimes I tried to write, and every time I did, I locked up. Once, when I tried to force a sentence or two (any sentence or two, just as long as they came fresh-baked out of my own head), I had to grab the wastebasket and vomit into it. I vomited until I thought it was going to kill me . . . and I did have to literally c warml away from the desk and the computer, pulling myself across the deep-pile rug on my hands and knees. By the time I got to the other locating of the room, it was better. I could even look back over my shoulder at the VDT screen. I just couldnt get near it. Later that day, I approached it with my eyes shut and turned it off.More and more often during those late-summer days I thought of Dennison Carville, the creative-writing teacher whod helped me connect with Harold and who had damned Being Two with such faint praise. Camille once said something I never forgot, attributing it to Thomas Hardy, the blue(a) novelist and poet. Perhaps Hardy did say it, but Ive never found it repeated, not in Bartletts, not in the Hardy biography I read amongst the publications of All the Way from the Top and Threatening Behavior. I have an idea Carville may have made it up himself and then attributed it to Hardy in order to give it more weight. Its a ploy I have used myself from time to time, Im ashamed to say.In any case, I thought about this reference more and more as I struggled with the panic in my body and the frozen feeling in my head, that awful locked-up feeling. It seemed to sum up my despair and my evolution certainty that I would never be able to write again (what a tragedy, V. C. Andrews with a prick felled by writers block). It was this quote that suggested any effort I made to better my situation might be meaningless even if it succeeded.According to gloomy old Dennison Carville, the aspiring novelist should understand from the outset that fictions goals were forever beyond his reach, that the job was an exercise in futility. Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there, Hardy purportedly said, the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones. I understood because that was what I felt like in those interminable, dissembling days a bag of bones.Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.If there is any more beautiful and haunting first line in English fiction, Ive never read it. And it was a line I had cause to think of a lot during the fall of 1997 and the winter of 1998. I didnt dream of Manderley, of course, but of Sara Laughs, which Jo sometimes called the hideout. A circus enough description, I guess, for a place so far up in the western Maine timber that its not really even in a town at all, but in an unincorporated area designate d on state maps as RR-90.The last of these dreams was a nightmare, but until that one they had a kind of surreal simplicity. They were dreams Id awake from wanting to turn on the bedroom light so I could confirm my place in reality onward going back to sleep. You know how the air feels before a thunderstorm, how everything gets still and colors seem to stand out with the brilliance of things seen during a high fever? My winter dreams of Sara Laughs were like that, each leaving me with a feeling that was not quite sickness. Ive dreamt again of Manderley, I would think sometimes, and sometimes I would lie in bed with the light on, listening to the wind outside, looking into the bedrooms shadowy corners, and thinking that Rebecca de Winter hadnt drowned in a talk but in Dark Score Lake. That she had gone down, gurgling and flailing, her strange smutty eyes full of water, while the loons cried out indifferently in the twilight. Sometimes I would get up and drink a glass of water. So metimes I just turned off the light after I was once more sure of where I was, rolled over on my side again, and went back to sleep.In the daytime I rarely thought of Sara Laughs at all, and it was only much later that I realized something is badly out of whack when there is such a dichotomy between a persons waking and sleeping lives. I think that Harold Oblowskis call in October of 1997 was what kicked off the dreams. Harolds ostensible reason for calling was to congratulate me on the impending release of Darcys Admirer, which was entertaining as hell and which also contained some extremely thought-provoking shit. I suspected he had at least one other item on his agenda Harold usually does and I was right. Hed had lunch with Debra Weinstock, my editor, the day before, and they had gotten talking about the fall of 1998.Looks crowded, he said, meaning the fall lists, meaning specifically the fiction half of the fall lists. And there are some surprise additions. Dean Koontz I thou ght he usually published in January, I said.He does, but Debra hears this one may be delayed. He wants to add a section, or something. Also theres a Harold Robbins, The Predators Big deal.Robbins still has his fans, Mike, still has his fans. As you yourself have pointed out on more than one occasion, fiction writers have a long arc.Uh-huh. I switched the telephone to the other ear and leaned back in my chair. I caught a glimpse of the framed Sara Laughs photo over my desk when I did. I would be visiting it at greater length and proximity that night in my dreams, although I didnt know that then all I knew then was that I wished like almighty fuck that Harold Oblowski would hurry up and get to the point.I sense datum impatience, Michael my boy, Harold said. Did I catch you at your desk? atomic number 18 you writing? Just finished for the day, I said. I am thinking about lunch, however.Ill be quick, he promised, but hang with me, this is important. There may be as many as five other writers that we didnt expect publishing next fall Ken Follett . . . its supposed to be his best since Eye of the phonograph needle . . . Belva Plain . . . John Jakes . . . None of those guys plays tennis on my court, I said, although I knew that was not exactly Harolds point Harolds point was that there are only fifteen slots on the Times list.How about Jean Auel, finally publishing the next of her sex-among-the-cave-people epics? I sat up.Jean Auel? Really?Well . . . not a hundred percent, but it looks good. Last but not least is a new Mary Higgins Clark. I know what tennis court she plays on, and so do you. If Id gotten that sort of news six or seven years earlier, when Id felt I had a great deal more to protect, I would have been bubbly Mary Higgins Clark did play on the same court, shared exactly the same audience, and so far our publishing schedules had been arranged to keep us out of each others way . . . which was to my benefit rather than hers, let me assure you. Goin g nose to nose, she would cream me. As the late Jim Croce so wisely observed, you dont tug on Supermans cape, you dont lingua into the wind, you dont pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you dont mess around with Mary Higgins Clark. Not if youre Michael Noonan, anyway.How did this happen? I asked. I dont think my tone was peculiarly ominous, but Harold replied in the nervous, stumbling-all-over-his-own-words fashion of a man who suspects he may be fired or even beheaded for bearing evil tidings.I dont know. She just happened to get an extra idea this year, I guess. That does happen, Ive been told.As a fellow who had taken his share of double-dips I knew it did, so I simply asked Harold what he wanted. It seemed the quickest and easiest way to get him to relinquish the phone. The answer was no surprise what he and Debra both wanted not to mention all the rest of my Putnam pals was a book they could publish in late summer of 98, thus getting in front of Ms. Clark and the re st of the competition by a couple of months. Then, in November, the Putnam sales reps would give the novel a healthy second push, with the Christmas season in mind.So they say, I replied. Like most novelists (and in this regard the successful are no different from the unsuccessful, indicating there might be some merit to the idea as well as the usual free-floating paranoia), I never trusted publishers promises.I think you can believe them on this, Mike Darcys Admirer was the last book of your old contract, remember. Harold sounded almost sprightly at the thought of forthcoming contract negotiations with Debra Weinstock and Phyllis Grann at Putnam. The big thing is they still like you. Theyd like you even more, I think, if they saw pages with your name on them before Thanksgiving.They want me to give them the next book in November? Next month? I injected what I hoped was the right note of incredulity into my voice, just as if I hadnt had Helens Promise in a safe-deposit box for almo st eleven years. It had been the first nut I had stored it was now the only nut I had left.No, no, you could have until January fifteenth, at least, he said, trying to sound magnanimous. I found myself wondering where he and Debra had gotten their lunch. Some fly place, I would have bet my life on that. Maybe Four Seasons. Johanna always used to call that place Valli and the Four Seasons. It means theyd have to crash production, seriously crash it, but theyre willing to do that. The real question is whether or not you could crash production.I think I could, but itll cost em, I said. Tell them to think of it as being like same-day service on your dry-cleaning.Oh what a rotten shame for them Harold sounded as if he were maybe jacking off and had reached the point where Old Faithful splurts and everybody snaps their Instamatics.How much do you think A surcharge tacked on to the advance is probably the way to go, he said. Theyll get pouty of course, claim that the move is in your inter est, too. Primarily in your interest, even. But found on the extra-work argument . . . the midnight oil youll have to burn . . . The mental agony of creation . . . the pangs of premature birth . . . Right . . . right . . . I think a ten percent surcharge sounds about right. He spoke judiciously, like a man trying to be just as damned fair as he possibly could. Myself, I was wondering how many women would induce birth a month or so early if they got paid two or three hundred grand extra for doing so. Probably some questions are best left unanswered.And in my case, what difference did it make? The goddam thing was written, wasnt it?Well, see if you can make the deal, I said. Yes, but I dont think we want to be talking about just a single book here, okay? I think Harold, what I want right now is to eat some lunch.You sound a little tense, Michael. Is everything Everything is fine. Talk to them about just one book, with a sweetener for speeding up production at my end. Okay?Okay, he said after one of his most significant pauses. But I hope this doesnt mean that you wont entertain a three- or four-book contract later on. Make hay while the sun shines, remember. Its the motto Of champions.Cross each bridge when you come to it is the motto of champions, I said, and that night I dreamt I went to Sara Laughs again.In that dream in all the dreams I had that fall and winter I am walking up the lane to the lodge. The lane is a two-mile loop through the woods with ends opening onto Route 68. It has a number at either end (Lane Forty-two, if it matters) in case you have to call in a fire, but no name. Nor did Jo and I ever give it one, not even between ourselves. It is narrow, really just a double rut with timothy and witchgrass growing on the crown. When you drive in, you can hear that grass whispering like low voices against the undercarriage of your car or truck.I dont drive in the dream, though. I never drive. In these dreams I walk.The trees huddle in close on eit her side of the lane. The darkening sky overhead is little more than a slot. Soon I will be able to see the first peeping stars. sundown is past. Crickets chirr. Loons cry on the lake. Small things chipmunks, probably, or the occasional squirrel rustle in the woods.Now I come to a dirt driveway sloping down the hill on my right. It is our driveway, marked with a little wooden sign which reads SARA LAUGHS. I stand at the head of it, but I dont go down. beneath is the lodge. Its all logs and added-on wings, with a deck jutting out behind. Fourteen rooms in all, a ridiculous number of rooms. It should look ugly and awkward, but someways it does not. There is a brave-dowager quality to Sara, the look of a lady pressing resolutely on toward her hundredth year, still taking pretty good strides in spite of her arthritic hips and gimpy old knees.The central section is the oldest, dating back to 1900 or so. Other sections were added in the thirties, forties, and sixties. Once it was a h unting lodge for a brief period in the early seventies it was home to a small commune of transcendental hippies. These were lease or rental deals the owners from the late forties until 1984 were the Hingermans, Darren and Marie . . . then Marie alone when Darren died in 1971. The only visible addition from our period of ownership is the tiny DSS dish mounted on the central roofpeak. That was Johannas idea, and she never really got a chance to enjoy it.Beyond the house, the lake glimmers in the afterglow of sunset. The driveway, I see, is carpeted with brown pine needles and littered with fallen branches. The bushes which grow on either side of it have run wild, reaching out to one another like lovers across the narrowed gap which separates them. If you brought a car down here, the branches would scrape and unpleasantly against its sides. Below, I see, theres moss growing logs of the main house, and three large sunflowers with faces like have grown up through the boards of the littl e driveway-side. The overall feeling is not neglect, exactly, but forgottenness.There is a breath of breeze, and its coldness on my skin makes me that I have been sweating. I can smell pine a smell which is imitation and clean at the same time and the faint but somehow smell of the lake. Dark Score is one of the cleanest, deepest in Maine. It was bigger until the late thirties, Marie Hingerman us that was when Western Maine Electric, working hand in hand the mills and paper operations around Rumford, had gotten state to dam the Gessa River. Marie also showed us some bewitch photographs of white-frocked ladies and vested gentlemen in canoes snaps were from the time of the First World War, she said, and to one of the young women, frozen forever on the rim of the with a dripping paddle upraised. Thats my mother, she said, the man shes ponderous with the paddle is my father.Loons crying, their voices like loss. Now I can see Venus in the dark-sky. Star light, star bright, wish I m ay, wish I might . . . in these I always wish for Johanna.With my wish made, I try to walk down the driveway. Of course I do. Its my house, isnt it? Where else would I go but my house, now that dark and now that the stealthy rustling in the woods seems closer and somehow more purposeful? Where else can I go? Its dark, and it will be frightening to go into that dark place alone (suppose been left so long alone? suppose shes angry?), but I must. If the electricitys off, Ill light one of the hurricane lamps we keep in a kitchen cabinet.I cant go down. My legs wont move. Its as if my body knows something about the house down there that my brain does not. The breeze rises again, chilling goosebump out onto my skin, and I wonder what I have done to get myself all sweaty like this. Have I been running? And if so, what have I been running toward? Or from?My hair is sweaty, too it lies on my brow in an unpleasantly heavy clump. I raise my hand to brush it away and see there is a shallow cut , fairly recent, running across the back, just beyond the knuckles. Sometimes this cut is on my right hand, sometimes its on the left. I think, If this is a dream, the details are good. Always that same thought If this is a dream, the details are good. Its the absolute truth. They are a novelists details . . . but in dreams, perhaps everyone is a novelist. How is one to know?Now Sara Laughs is only a dark hulk down below, and I realize I dont want to go down there, anyway. I am a man who has trained his mind to misbehave, and I can imagine too many things waiting for me inside. A rabid raccoon crouched in a corner of the kitchen. Bats in the bath-room if disturbed theyll crowd the air around my cringing face, squeaking and fluttering against my cheeks with their dusty wings. Even one of William Denbroughs famous Creatures from Beyond the Universe, now hiding under the porch and watching me approach with glittering, pus-rimmed eyes.Well, I cant stay up here, I say, but my legs wont move, and it seems I will be staying up here, where the driveway meets the lane that I will be staying up here, like it or not. Now the rustling in the woods behind me sounds not like small animals (most of them would by then be nested or burrowed for the night, anyway) but approaching footsteps. I try to turn and see, but I cant even do that . . .. . . and that was where I usually woke up. The first thing I always did was to turn over, establishing my return to reality by demonstrating to myself that my body would once more obey my mind. Sometimes most times, actually I would find myself thinking Manderley, I have dreamt again of Manderley. There was something creepy about this (theres something creepy about any repeat dream, I think, about knowing your subconscious is digging obsessively at some object that wont be dislodged), but I would be lying if I didnt add that some part of me enjoyed the breathless summer calm in which the dream always wrapped me, and that part also enjo yed the sadness and foreboding I felt when I awoke. There was an exotic strangeness to the dream that was missing from my waking life, now that the road leading out of my imagination was so effectively blocked.The only time I remember being really frightened (and I must tell I dont completely trust any of these memories, because for so long they didnt seem to exist at all) was when I awoke one night speaking clearly into the dark of my bedroom Somethings behind me, dont let it get me, something in the woods, please dont let it get me. wasnt the words themselves that frightened me so much as the tone in which they were spoken. It was the voice of a man on the raw edge of panic, and hardly seemed like my own voice at all.Two days before Christmas of 1997, I once more drove down to Fidelity where once more the bank manager escorted me to my safe-box in the fluorescent-lit catacombs. As we walked down the stairs he assured me (for the dozenth time, at least) that his wife was a huge fa n of my work, shed read all my books, couldnt get enough. For the dozenth time (at least) I replied that now I must get him in my clutches. He responded with his usual chuckle. I thought of this oft-repeated flip as Bankers Communion.Mr. Quinlan inserted his key in Slot A and turned it. Then, as discreetly as a pimp who has conveyed a customer to a whores crib, he left. I inserted my own key in Slot B, turned it, and opened the drawer. It very vast now. The one remaining manuscript box seemed almost to take a hop in the far corner, like an abandoned puppy who somehow knows his sibs have been taken off and gassed. Promise was scrawled across the top in fat black letters. I could barely remember what the goddam story was about.I snatched that time-traveller from the eighties and slammed the box shut. Nothing left in there now but dust. demo me that, Jo had hissed in my dream it was the first time Id thought of that one in years. Give me that, its my dust-catcher.Mr Quinlan, Im fin ished, I called. My voice sounded rough and unsteady to my own ears, but Quinlan seemed to sense nothing wrong . . . or perhaps he was just being discreet. I cant have been the only customer after all, who found his or her visits to this pecuniary version of Forest Lawn emotionally distressful.Im really going to read one of your books, he said, dropping an involuntary little glance at the box I was holding (I suppose I could have brought a briefcase to put it in, but on those expeditions I never did). In fact, I think Ill put it on my list of New Years resolutions.You do that, I said. You just do that, Mr. Quinlan.Mark, he said. Please. Hed said this before, too.I had composed two letters, which I slipped into the manuscript box before setting out for Federal Express. Both had been written on my computer, which my body would let me use as long as I chose the Note tab function. It was only opening Word Six that caused the storms to start. I never tried to compose a novel using the Note Pad function, understanding that if I did, Id likely lose that option, too . . . not to mention my ability to play Scrabble and do crosswords on the machine. I had tried a couple of times to compose longhand, with spectacular lack of success. The problem wasnt what I had once heard described as screen shyness I had proved that to myself.One of the notes was to Harold, the other to Debra Weinstock, and both said pretty much the same thing heres the new book, Helens Promise, hope you like it as much as I do, if it seems a little rough its because I had to work a lot of extra hours to finish it this soon, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Erin Go Bragh, trick or treat, hope someone gives you a fucking pony.I stood for almost an hour in a line of shuffling, bitter-eyed late mailers (Christmas is such a carefree, low-pressure time thats one of the things I love about it), with Helens Promise under my left arm and a paperback copy of Nelson DeMilles The Charm School in my right hand. I read almost fifty pages before entrusting my final unpublished novel to a harried-looking clerk. When I wished her a Merry Christmas she shuddered and said nothing.