Unsoul'd Read online

  Finally, I decided that I needed to get out of the apartment for a while, so I headed to Construct with my laptop. Lovely Rita waved to me and I gave her all the change in my pocket, then spent the next couple of hours at a corner table, pretending to write, but in reality updating my website, composing blog entries, and obsessively checking to see if anyone had posted new reviews of my books on Goodreads.

  There were no new ones, but there was an old one from a few months back that I'd somehow missed. It was a one-star review for my debut novel, Night/Light. It rambled for a while about how bad the book was and ended thus:

  "...and while it might be petty to complain about the title on top of everything else, I have to: Nowhere in the book is a nightlight ever even mentioned. Did Banner read his own book???"

  I gripped the edge of the table and commanded myself not to log in and click "Comment" and write something like:

  "Dear Reviewer: The real problem with this book is that you are clearly not smart enough to read it. The title isn't Nightlight. It's Night/Light, and if you'd actually paid attention to the words while you were sounding them out, you would have realized that it refers to the dual nature of the protagonist's relationship to oh hell just go fuck yourself."

  Manfully, I resisted.

  On the way out of Construct, I gave Lovely Rita the change I'd accumulated inside. She smiled and said, "Bless you!" which made me feel surly for some reason. Maybe because a kind, docile old homeless lady could bless me as much as she wanted, but the fact remained that I had sold my soul. Just because the devil hadn't claimed it yet didn't change anything. I was impervious to blessings.

  I was damned.

  By my own hand.

  Wherein My Agent Takes Me to Lunch

  Maudlin and unproductive days followed, leavened only by hellos to and from Gym Girl at the gym, a phone call from Tayvon, and a night with Manda during which my previously unhelpful member recalled his duty and performed his primary (and most enjoyable) function with aplomb and vigor.

  My agent, Sam, took me to lunch on a Wednesday at his favorite restaurant, an exclusive little bistro in the west eighties. Sam is roughly 927 years old, give or take a couple of decades. I believe it's possible he was, in fact, the very first literary agent ever.

  He spent our lunch barking into his Blackberry and texting on his iPhone, usually alternately, but sometimes simultaneously. I ordered a pretentiously overpriced hamburger with avocado and some kind of pesto mayonnaise, with a side of truffle fries. I rationalized it away by reminding myself that Sam was paying for it. As the burger arrived, I remembered that he deducted expenses from my royalty checks, so really, ultimately, wasn't I paying thirty bucks for a burger and fries?

  I chewed. Well, they were good, at least.

  "How's the new book coming along?" Sam asked, taking a momentary break from his electronic manipulations to stuff some ahi tuna salad into his mouth. I wondered briefly if I would end up paying for that, too.

  "Well, fine," I answered automatically, wincing deep inside. Untitled Manuscript wasn't coming along at all. It had hardly begun. I had half of a first chapter and some scattered scenes, nothing more. "It's a little slow early on, but it's coming together." The best lies are leavened with truth.

  "Good. Good. I think this will be the one to break you out." He said it in an utterly convincing tone and if he hadn't said the exact same thing in the exact same tone about my other books, there was a chance I would have even believed him. He pointed around us at the walls. "This artwork," he said, "is worth two, three million dollars. It's all original--"

  "Look," I told him, "I wanted to tell you something that might end up being pretty cool."

  He arched an eyebrow, a Sam-sign I recognized as meaning, You have intrigued me. Speak. I quickly explained how Fi was now Kiki's agent. "I always thought that Kiki Newman would be perfect for Laura in Flash/Back. What if we got the book to her through Fiona and--"

  Sam shrugged. "We could do that. But I already have Malcolm and Crystyl working on movie stuff for that book. They have some very promising leads right now."

  Every time I wanted to bring up Hollywood, Sam would invoke Malcolm and Crystyl, his theatrical co-agents, who were -- according to Sam -- "working very, very hard" and "very, very close" to a big deal for me. I had never heard of any big movie deals from the Samuel Stein Literary Agency, though.

  I suspected I never would.

  "If we just get the book to Kiki," I pressed. "Hell, if she just carries it somewhere and the paparazzi shoots a picture of her holding it, that would boost sales and get some buzz going."

  "Let's think about it," Sam said, frowning, though whether from my insistence or the cherry-almond risotto he'd just taken a bite of, I couldn't say. "You should be focused on the new book. And Down/Town comes out in a few months. Very exciting!"

  Down/Town. My latest book. Technically, part of the story is set "downtown," but not in any sort of major metropolis. Rather, it's the story of a small-town mayor, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. He's made the decision to sacrifice his personal happiness for his future political ambitions...but as becomes obvious throughout the book, he really has no greater political future. The same lack of ambition and confidence that keeps him yoked to his wife also makes him unsuitable for higher office. I spend most of the book persuading the reader that this depressed ("down") mayor is going to make a big move. He's going to divorce his wife and finally make a play for the big time. But by the end, he's heading back home, having decided only to run for mayor again.

  One of my early readers said the ending is like "being jabbed in the gut with a fireplace poker." I loved that comment. That's exactly what I wanted people to feel. To really identify with the hopelessness and despair.

  It was difficult to be too excited about its pub date, when I knew what would happen already. I'd played this game before. There would be decent early reviews, saying things like, "Banner once again shows why he has and deserves his rabidly loyal cult following." There would be a lone starred review, probably from Booklist. Kirkus would trash the book, but Kirkus trashed everything I wrote, so I no longer cared. And a feminist blog would call me a misogynist for my portrayal of the main character's mother. Then, after a roughly week-long spike in blog reviews and e-mails from readers, things would settle down to normal, and it would be as though the book had never even been published.

  "This one..." Sam said. "There's something different about this one. It's going to be big, I can tell."

  I wondered what the devil would say about that. And in wondering, I realized something.

  Maybe Down/Town would be big. Maybe it would be huge. Maybe this was the book that the devil would make gigantic, and it would change everything. And maybe then he would take my soul. Could that be it? The wording of the contract... "in exchange for a hit book..." Maybe they had to happen at the same time. Maybe that was it. Maybe when Down/Town came out, it would be gigantic and that's when my soul would be forfeit. How exciting. How terrifying.

  "I have some news," Sam said, with a sly grin. I held my breath. What did he know? Down/Town wasn't out for months, but the big chains and most of the indies would have already placed their orders. Maybe the orders were bigger than usual. Maybe my publisher had finally pried open the purse strings and decided to do some actual promotion and marketing for the book.

  "I made my first seven-figure deal," Sam told me, now full-on smiling. Suddenly the smile collapsed and he touched his Bluetooth earpiece. "What?" he snapped. "Tell them that if we don't get separate accounting we'll go to Harper. This is bullshit. I've done ten deals with her and if she doesn't bend a little on this one, ten is where it ends. Got it? I am so excited about this!" The last sentence was for me, I realized.

  "Seven figures, huh?" I asked, trying to be enthusiastic. The closest I'd ever come to seven figures was low six figures, and even that was for two books combined.

  "It's for Carter's new book." Carter Harrington was a well-known crime writer. Y
ou've seen him on all the usual news shows. "Isn't that great news?"

  "Sure is." For Carter? Definitely. For Sam, who would get fifteen percent (plus expenses!) of seven figures? Definitely.

  I couldn't figure out how this was great news for me, though, and that's pretty much all I cared about.

  Still. Down/Town. As Sam returned to his orgy of texting and barking, I pondered the possible fate of my new book and of my soul. It would be worth it, I thought. It would definitely be worth it.

  Right?

  Yes.

  I thought.

  Wherein I Look at Pregnant, Tattooed Women

  Manda, astride, ground herself lazily against me, shuddering through a series of small orgasms, her eyes closed, head flung back, nails lightly raking my chest. I thumbed her hard nipples.

  It was not enough to make me come, not even enough to stimulate me -- just enough to keep me hard, though not really involved, and I found myself flickering through women as though on a psychic rolodex, flipping past Manda to Fi, then Kiki Newman, then Gym Girl, imagining them all doing to me what Manda was doing at that moment, having seen all of them naked (though Kiki Newman only on-screen, of course). That sudden burst of mental stimulation almost drove me over the edge, so I came back to the present, to the here and now, and focused anew.

  "Did you come?" she asked me suddenly.

  I hadn't, but I realized that I was now so distracted that it would be nearly impossible for it to happen. "Yes," I lied. She would have no way of knowing what I had or had not expelled into my condom.

  Soon, we lay in bed next to each other, the windows open on a rare cool-ish July evening, recounting our days to each other. Mine had been the usual: Construct, a couple of bucks handed to Lovely Rita, fruitless staring at the laptop while words fervently and obstinately refused form themselves on the screen. Had the devil agreed to make a hit book for me, only to strike me with a stage-four, terminal case of writer's block?

  (I told Manda everything but that last bit.)

  "Why are you having so much trouble, do you think?" she asked gently, stroking my upper arm with the pads of her fingers; it was one of the most soothing sensations I'd ever felt and I almost fell asleep with the sheer pleasure of it.

  "I don't know." But I did. I knew. I knew exactly what the problem was. I had known the first day I sat down to begin working on this book, and the problem wasn't going away any time soon. It was that I knew the book too well. And according to Tayvon...

  "You're crazy to write this book," he'd told me. "No one wants to read this stuff."

  "That's perfect," I had responded. "No one has read any of my other books, either."

  I changed the subject. "Tell me about your day."

  "There's a new vendor on the site and we're rolling out a whole sub site for them. Custom UI. Custom UX. The whole deal." She proceeded to rattle off a combination of anagrams and numbers that I neither understood nor recognized. I nodded along with her, nearly lulled to sleep by the technobabble, eyes glazed, until she said, "I guess I could just show you."

  Moments later, she dragged my laptop over to the bed and took me to http://www.mommytobeeyotch.com/preggers. I stared at the screen and the image of a heavily-tattooed woman with a distended belly wearing what could only be described as a hinged leather bra.

  "I don't get it," I admitted.

  "It's a nursing bra," Manda explained.

  I stared again. "Isn't the baby going to poke an eye out on one of the spikes?"

  Manda gnawed at her lower lip. "They're not actually metal. They're rubber."

  "Still."

  She shrugged. "I don't use this stuff. I just make it look good online."

  And it did, in fact, look good. Manda wasn't the product photographer, but she selected which photos to use and their presentation. I usually found nothing particularly sexy about pregnancy or tattoos or the sorts of hard-eyed glares evinced by the mommytobeeyotch.com models, but somehow Manda's efforts made them seem as wholesomely desirable as corn-fed Nebraska farm girls in halter tops and cut-off jeans.

  "Someone likes what he sees," Manda cooed, slipping a hand under the sheet to grasp my tumescence with gasp-inducing firmness. "Second go-round. Momma likes." She threw back the sheet and ducked her head down and a few licks and a condom later I was atop her, thrusting and groaning my way to a (genuine this time) orgasm.

  Afterwards, we lay entangled together in drowsy perfection, murmuring to one another, and I was seized by an urge even more powerful than the mating urge, an impulse to say the three words to Manda, to tell her I loved her. So strong was this impetuous impetus that I actually lost track of the thread of our whispered conversation, lost track even of my own location in space and time, forgetting for a moment where and when I was, who I was, thinking only that I needed to tell this woman lying beside me that I loved her.

  An oxytocin haze? A momentary lapse of reason? A reaction to a sudden fear of being alone?

  The real thing?

  I did not know. And, in not knowing, I could not and did not act. With all my strength and all my focus, I forced myself not to tell her I loved her.

  Manda snuggled against my chest. I kissed the top of her head and drifted off to sleep.

  Wherein I Lay Awake All Night

  And yet I didn't. Sleep, that is. For a protracted moment, I felt as though I might fall asleep, and for another moment I felt as though I had. But both moments passed.

  Some nights, I just can't sleep. No matter what I do. No matter what I don't do.

  When I was a kid and I had a night like that, I would lie on my back and stare up at the ceiling and conjure fantasies of being an adult. Of being a Writer. I would compose magazine and TV interviews in my head, wherein I always came across as erudite and droll, even before I knew what those words meant. I would imagine my life: days spent writing, my books in airport bookstores and on every shelf and on every bestseller list. Usually, those night-time daydreams kept me awake even longer, but eventually they relaxed me enough to let me drift off to sleep.

  So as an adult, it's no surprise that I often found myself returning, reflexively, to the same fantasies that had worked so well when I was young. But as an adult, as someone confronted with the reality of "being a writer," those fantasies became more and more outlandish and absurd. With four books in print, it was ridiculous to imagine myself on the bestseller lists, winning awards, on airport bookshelves. That was not me. And there was no evidence on the horizon to indicate that it ever would be me.

  Far from comforting and lulling me into sleep, those old fantasies now aroused my fears, my bitterness, my self-loathing, and kept me up far, far later into the night.

  What no one ever tells you about publishing is this: As soon as your first book comes out -- before it comes out, even -- dreams start to die with frightening and implacable regularity.

  Your first book does well, but not well enough. And now even if you hit every bestseller list on the planet with subsequent books, the fact of the matter is that the fantasy of hitting the grand slam on your first at-bat is now permanently dead. And such is the case with every possible milestone missed thereafter. The first review is positive, but not glowing? Well, then any number of effusive reviews can't make up for the fact that the dream -- long-held through years of childhood and young adult-hood -- of a brain-smashingly good first review is now dead, too, with no hopes of resurrection.

  And so on: First signing. (No one shows up.) First panel appearance. (Ditto. And the moderator gets your book's title wrong.) First interview. (Typos in the transcription make you look like an idiot.) And those are only the dreams of firsts that die. Dreams of seconds and thirds die, too. The human mind and imagination being what they are, dead dreams decay and moulder, fertilizing the soil from which new dreams grow.

  Those dreams die, too.

  "My first book didn't hit the bestseller list, but now I can dream that the second one will."

  And it doesn't. And it didn't. And it never will.


  Sometimes it's difficult to remember that you're a failure when -- to the outside world -- you have the trappings of success.

  People see my life -- my bossless, set-your-own-agenda life; a life in which I make shit up and get paid for it -- and they assume I've succeeded. They assume I've achieved what I want to achieve.

  Of course, I haven't. My books barely break even. I have fewer than four thousand followers on Twitter. I live advance-to-advance, although I occasionally miss, dipping into my credit cards to keep myself buoyed until the next check.

  It's not a successful lifestyle, but compared to the workaday world of most people, it appears successful. And the thing is, when people treat you like a success, it's often difficult not to fall into the pernicious self-delusion that you are a success.

  Fortunately, the world has a way of reminding you. Heaping failure upon failure. Throwing the success of others into your face at every turn.

  And, yes, apparently, conjuring the devil in a coffee shop to barter for your soul in exchange for the much-craved, elusive, glorious success.

  Manda rolled away from me in her sleep. I wondered why I couldn't tell her that I loved her. Why had I resisted? Maybe the conjoined facts that I could resist and did resist meant that I didn't truly love her.

  I wished I knew. I wished I knew so much. I wanted to know if I loved and what love was. I wanted to know why my dreams were dead and washed into the gutters like filthy street snow. I wanted to know: Why not me? In my darkest hours, my coldest, most private hours, it was a plaintive and whining infant's cry from my heart to my throat: Why not me? Why not? Why was I not good enough? Why did the world not care enough? Why not me? Why. Not. Me?

  In that moment in the dark, in the middle of the night, alone in my bed though companioned, I would have sold my soul to the devil for the answers.

  If I hadn't done so already.