JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 15 из 425“Now why don’t you come inside and do me?” And before I could answer, the panties she had been wearing dropped in my lap in a little whisper of nylon.
Afterward, lying in bed and eating oranges (a vice we later outgrew), I asked her: “Good as in publishable?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know anything about the glamorous world of publishing, but I’ve been reading for pleasure all my life—Curious George was my first love, if you want to know—”
“I don’t.” She leaned over and popped an orange segment into my mouth, her breast warm and provocative against my arm. “—and I read this with great pleasure. My prediction is that your career as a reporter for the Devry News is never going to survive its rookie stage.
I think I’m going to be a novelist’s wife.”
Her words thrilled me—actually brought goosebumps out on my arms. No, she didn’t know anything about the glamorous world of publishing, but if she believed, I believed… and belief turned out to be the right course. I got an agent through my old creative-writing teacher (who read my novel and damned it with faint praise, seeing its commercial qualities as a kind of heresy, I think), and the agent sold Being Two to Random House, the first publisher to see it.
Jo was right about my career as a reporter, as well. I spent four months covering flower shows, drag races, and bean suppers at about a hundred a week before my first check from Random House came in—$27,000, after the agent’s commission had been deducted. I wasn’t in the newsroom long enough to get even that first minor bump in salary, but they had a going-away party for me just the same. At Jack’s Pub, this was, now that I think of it. There was a banner hung over the tables in the back room which said GOOD LUCK MIKE—WRITE ON! Later, when we got home, Johanna said that if envy was acid, there would have been nothing left of me but my belt-buckle and three teeth.
Later, in bed with the lights out—the last orange eaten and the last cigarette shared—I said, “No one’s ever going to confuse it with Look Homeward, Angel, are they?” My book, I meant. She knew it, just as she knew I had been fairly depressed by my old creative-writing teacher’s response to Two.
“You aren’t going to pull a lot of frustrated-artist crap on me, are you?” she asked, getting up on one elbow. “If you are, I wish you’d tell me now, so I can pick up one of those do-it-yourself divorce kits first thing in the morning.”
I was amused, but also a little hurt.
Afterward, lying in bed and eating oranges (a vice we later outgrew), I asked her: “Good as in publishable?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know anything about the glamorous world of publishing, but I’ve been reading for pleasure all my life—Curious George was my first love, if you want to know—”
“I don’t.” She leaned over and popped an orange segment into my mouth, her breast warm and provocative against my arm. “—and I read this with great pleasure. My prediction is that your career as a reporter for the Devry News is never going to survive its rookie stage.
I think I’m going to be a novelist’s wife.”
Her words thrilled me—actually brought goosebumps out on my arms. No, she didn’t know anything about the glamorous world of publishing, but if she believed, I believed… and belief turned out to be the right course. I got an agent through my old creative-writing teacher (who read my novel and damned it with faint praise, seeing its commercial qualities as a kind of heresy, I think), and the agent sold Being Two to Random House, the first publisher to see it.
Jo was right about my career as a reporter, as well. I spent four months covering flower shows, drag races, and bean suppers at about a hundred a week before my first check from Random House came in—$27,000, after the agent’s commission had been deducted. I wasn’t in the newsroom long enough to get even that first minor bump in salary, but they had a going-away party for me just the same. At Jack’s Pub, this was, now that I think of it. There was a banner hung over the tables in the back room which said GOOD LUCK MIKE—WRITE ON! Later, when we got home, Johanna said that if envy was acid, there would have been nothing left of me but my belt-buckle and three teeth.
Later, in bed with the lights out—the last orange eaten and the last cigarette shared—I said, “No one’s ever going to confuse it with Look Homeward, Angel, are they?” My book, I meant. She knew it, just as she knew I had been fairly depressed by my old creative-writing teacher’s response to Two.
“You aren’t going to pull a lot of frustrated-artist crap on me, are you?” she asked, getting up on one elbow. “If you are, I wish you’d tell me now, so I can pick up one of those do-it-yourself divorce kits first thing in the morning.”
I was amused, but also a little hurt.