JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 30 из 425As the late Jim Croce so wisely observed, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t Ipit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Mary Higgins Clark. Not if you’re Michael Noonan, anyway. “How did this happen?” I asked. I don’t think my tone was particularly 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 don’t know. She just happened to get an extra idea this year, I guess. That does happen, I’ve 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 rest 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—Darcy’s 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. They’d 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 hadn’t had Helen’s Promise in a safe-deposit box for almost 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 they’d have to crash proseriously crash it, but they’re willing to do that. The real ques-is whether or not you could crash production.”
“I think I could, but it’ll cost em,” I said. “Tell them to think of it as: being like same-day service on your dry-cleaning.
“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 hadn’t had Helen’s Promise in a safe-deposit box for almost 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 they’d have to crash proseriously crash it, but they’re willing to do that. The real ques-is whether or not you could crash production.”
“I think I could, but it’ll cost em,” I said. “Tell them to think of it as: being like same-day service on your dry-cleaning.