“But you said you were having nightmares about it, right?”
“All the time. It was eating me alive—you know, I didn’t want to be a sell-out.”
Beresford spit out a laugh. “You crack me up, Roger. Yeah, I don’t get that—I’m fine with being published.”
Tenpenny forced a smile. “Good. Then you should. Be published.”
As Roger climbed into his car, Beresford blurted out, “Hey, I don’t suppose . . . ? Ah, never mind.”
“What?”
“Not important. Bad idea.”
“Come on, what is it?”
“Well, it’s just, I was going to say, being that you’re going to be in New York . . . But you’ve already done way too much for me.”
“For Christ’s sake, spit it out. I have a plane to catch.”
“Would it be possible for you to pop your head into Knopf and see how my book’s doing?”
“Consider it done.”
“Really? You don’t mind? You could do it?”
“Charlie horse, you have my word.”
*
Manhattan is a gracious town when one is there by invitation. The Knopf people treated Tenpenny like a king. His editor, Paul Scholl, called him a once-in-a-lifetime find. He said his characters breathed, his plotting was seamless, and his style harkened to a more literate era. His was a new voice with an old sound, and they were anxious to get it out there. Incredibly, Tenpenny discovered, there are publishing seasons, and in a highly unusual move, and assuming they could quickly reach an agreement, his book was being fast-tracked to the summer season. What’s more, they were going to make Danke, Dolores their tentpole release. Roger Tenpenny was about to become a household name.
“Whoa, whoa,” Roger said. “Household name? Uh, no, that would be the kiss of death for someone like me. I need to fade into the shrubbery to do what I do. That’s why I wrote it under a pen name.”
“I didn’t literally mean a household name,” Scholl said. “I just meant, you’ll be well known in literary circles.”
“But I don’t want to be famous in any circle, I just want to be able to do what I do in privacy . . . but be well-compensated.”
Scholl’s droopy-faced assistant Phyllis laughed, though it hadn’t been meant as a joke. (Bell’s palsy, it had been explained—tick bite.) “I do like what he’s saying, shough,” she slurred. “I shink people will be drawn to that kind of humility.”
“Okay,” Scholl agreed. “We’ll go by your pseudonym.”
“Right. Good. Excellent. But I’d prefer something different than Charles Beresford—it has such a stuffy ring to it.”
“Really?” Scholl said. “I kind of like it. Beresford’s a solid name.”
“But a little pretentious, no? I was thinking of something like . . . Thames Bannister?”
Scholl couldn’t tell if he was kidding. Phyllis chuckled uneasily.
“What?” said Tenpenny. “It’s kind of strong-sounding and memorable and it’s—”
“Weird,” said Scholl. “It sounds like a soap opera villain.”
Eventually they agreed on the name Charlie Pettygrove.
Tenpenny was put up at the Hotel Elysee, and that evening Scholl and a flashy editor named Gary took him to dinner at Nell’s, then to the Limelight where Tenpenny charmed them with ex-wife stories until four a.m. A happy, comedic light suddenly shimmered on all the bad things that had happened in Roger’s life, because everything had led him to this moment. He told them about Wife #1 buying her father a seaplane without telling him; how he knew the second one was over when his brand-new wife air-kissed him on the altar to protect her makeup; the time he came home to find #1 and #2 rifling through his financial records while the soon-to-be ex-#3 served them wine spritzers. Though often showcasing his own character weaknesses, his detached, it-is-what-it-is delivery charmed the editors. Even when he came across in the worst light—as when he drunkenly lit his Telluride property on fire with Wife #3 inside pounding her lesbian lover (it went out on its own)—his honesty was his redemption. Scholl and Gary recognized that Roger Tenpenny had had his ass kicked in a big way, and those were the dues one paid to become, if not a great man, well, certainly a great writer.