‘How can you call Jimmy Gold ordinary?’ Morris cried.
Andy had given him a patronizing look. ‘Oh, please. His entire story is an epic journey out of exceptionalism. The purpose of American culture is to create a norm, Morris. That means that extraordinary people must be leveled, and it happens to Jimmy. He ends up working in advertising, for God’s sake, and what greater agent of the norm is there in this fucked-up country? It’s Rothstein’s main point.’ He shook his head. ‘If you’re looking for optimism, buy a Harlequin Romance.’
Morris thought Andy was basically arguing for the sake of argument. A zealot’s eyes burned behind his nerdy hornrims, but even then Morris was getting the man’s measure. His zeal was for books as objects, not for the stories and ideas inside them.
They had lunch together two or three times a week, usually at the Cup, sometimes across the street from Grissom’s on the benches in Government Square. It was during one of these lunches that Andrew Halliday first mentioned the persistent rumor that John Rothstein had continued to write, but that his will specified all the work be burned upon his death.
‘No!’ Morris had cried, genuinely wounded. ‘That could never happen. Could it?’
Andy shrugged. ‘If it’s in the will, anything he’s written since he dropped out of sight is as good as ashes.’
‘You’re just making it up.’
‘The stuff about the will might just be a rumor, I grant you that, but it’s well accepted in bookstore circles that Rothstein never stopped writing.’
‘Bookstore circles,’ Morris had said doubtfully.
‘We have our own grapevine, Morris. Rothstein’s housekeeper does his shopping, okay? Not just groceries, either. Once every month or six weeks, she goes into White River Books in Berlin, which is the closest town of any size, to pick up books he’s ordered by phone. She’s told the people who work there that he writes every day from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. The owner told some other dealers at the Boston Book Fair, and the word got around.’
‘Holy shit,’ Morris had breathed. This conversation had taken place in June of 1976. Rothstein’s last published story, ‘The Perfect Banana Pie,’ had been published in 1960. If what Andy was saying was true, it meant that John Rothstein had been piling up fresh fiction for sixteen years. At even eight hundred words a day, that added up to … Morris couldn’t begin to do the math in his head, but it was a lot.
‘Holy shit is right,’ Andy said.
‘If he really wants all that burned when he dies, he’s crazy!’
‘Most writers are.’ Andy had leaned forward, smiling, as if what he said next were a joke. Maybe it was. To him, at least. ‘Here’s what I think – someone should mount a rescue mission. Maybe you, Morris. After all, you’re his number one fan.’
‘Not me,’ Morris said, ‘not after what he did to Jimmy Gold.’
‘Cool it, guy. You can’t blame a man for following his muse.’
‘Sure I can.’
‘Then steal em,’ Andy said, still smiling. ‘Call it theft as a protest on behalf of English literature. Bring em to me. I’ll sit on em awhile, then sell em. If they’re not senile gibberish, they might fetch as much as a million dollars. I’ll split with you. Fifty-fifty, even-Steven.’
‘They’d catch us.’
‘Don’t think so,’ Andy Halliday had replied. ‘There are ways.’
‘How long would you have to wait before you could sell them?’
‘A few years,’ Andy had replied, waving his hand as if he were talking about a couple of hours. ‘Five, maybe.’
A month later, heartily sick of living on Sycamore Street and haunted by the idea of all those manuscripts, Morris packed his beat-up Volvo and drove to Boston, where he got hired by a contractor building a couple of housing developments out in the burbs. The work had nearly killed him at first, but he had muscled up a little (not that he was ever going to look like Duck Duckworth), and after that he’d done okay. He even made a couple of friends: Freddy Dow and Curtis Rogers.
Once he called Andy. ‘Could you really sell unpublished Rothstein manuscripts?’
‘No doubt,’ Andy Halliday said. ‘Not right away, as I believe I said, but so what? We’re young. He’s not. Time would be on our side.’
Yes, and that would include time to read everything Rothstein had written since ‘The Perfect Banana Pie.’ Profit – even half a million dollars – was incidental. I am not a mercenary, Morris told himself. I am not interested in the Golden Buck. That shit don’t mean shit. Give me enough to live on – sort of like a grant – and I’ll be happy.
I am a scholar.