“Have you ever written a book?” he asked her, looking her straight in the eye. Previously she had said she hadn’t, and had no interest in writing, which was a total lie, and he sensed that she was hiding something from him.
“I play around with short stories sometimes, but not in a long time.”
“That’s a lot of play money, Alex.”
“I did some ghostwriting for one of their celebrity clients while I worked there.” She was thinking on her feet, and that sounded more plausible to him. He was almost convinced, but not quite.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because I signed a confidentiality agreement with the celebrity, so I couldn’t, and I still can’t.” She looked prim as she said it.
“Some people have all the luck,” he said, looking annoyed. “I’d love to do some ghostwriting for that kind of money. Who was it?”
“I told you, I’m not at liberty to tell you, or I’d be in breach of contract.”
“A man or a woman?” he persisted.
“A man.” She was inventing it as she went along.
“That’s stupid. Why would they use a woman to write for a man? You can always tell a woman’s voice when she writes something. There isn’t a woman alive who can write like a man.” There had been a number of them in history, but she didn’t press the point. He had the same limited view and prejudices as many others, which was why she wrote under a man’s name.
“I was the only one willing to do it. He was a very difficult person.”
“Well, you were damn lucky to make that kind of money. So I guess you didn’t have a rich father after all, just a lucky job one summer. You won’t make that kind of money here,” he said, and she nodded, hoping he’d calm down and forget about it. She put the envelope in her desk drawer and they left for the museum a few minutes later, but he was out of sorts for the rest of the day, and sullen when they went to dinner, and he started talking about his future novel again. She dreaded the subject with him. And if he knew the truth, and how much she’d been paid for her last two novels, he would have hated her and she knew it. She felt as though she could never get away from jealous would-be writers who would begrudge her her success if they knew she was always hiding, and pretending to be someone else. She was becoming the fictional person, not Alexander Green.
“Why don’t you just do it,” she snapped at him when he talked about it over dinner, “instead of talking about it? If you want to write a novel, put your ass in the chair and write it.”
“When am I supposed to do that? I work all day and I’m tired when I get home.” So was she, and she had been in college for four years, and she had gotten up at four o’clock in the morning sometimes to write before her classes, or stayed up all night after she finished her assignments and then worked on the book. That was the kind of dedication it took.
“You could work on the weekends,” she pointed out.
“I have other things to do,” he said in a plaintive tone. “And you need time to be inspired, you can’t just sit down and write like an accountant with a calculator.”
“Sometimes you just have to do it,” she said with conviction. She had the kind of drive that was required, Ivan didn’t. He wanted to write at his leisure when he was in the mood. He wasn’t serious about it, and she knew he’d never write the novel. He would just talk about it. If he was compelled to do it, he’d have written his novel by then. All he wanted to do was complain, and resent others who had the grit and guts to do it. Writing wasn’t an easy business, in fact, it was damn hard. She’d given up sleep and fun and parties to do it, and dates and romance, relationships she could have had. To Alex, her life was the writing, not everything else, and the reward was finishing the last page and knowing you had stuck it out till the end. She sensed that he would never know the joy of that, because he wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself.
“What makes you think you know so much about writing,” he said angrily, “just because you did some ghostwriting for some fat cat who wrote you a big check?” She didn’t like his tone or what he said.
“I know what it takes. You have to give up a lot to write a book. But what you get back is so much better.”
“Yeah, the money,” he said bitterly.
“No, the pride in your work,” she said with a light in her eyes he’d never seen before. “The money is nice, but it really has nothing to do with it.”
“I hate my job,” he said then, and she felt sorry for him.
“Maybe you should do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do, other than write a book?” She wasn’t convinced he really wanted to write either, just say he did. “The beauty about writing is that you’re competing with yourself, not someone else.”
“Bullshit. Every writer wants to be on the bestseller list.” He spoke with the lofty tone of someone who knew all about it, and as if she didn’t.
“Of course they do, but while they’re writing, they’re on their own, crawling their way up Everest.” He looked at her blankly, as though her words had no meaning and he didn’t believe her.
“You’ll never write a book, Alex,” he told her with conviction. “You don’t know what it’s all about.”
“I guess not,” she agreed with him, and finally got him to talk of other things, like the exhibit they’d seen that day. But she was shocked by how little he knew about the business they were in, and what the writers went through to produce a book. She had enormous respect for other writers. They were all lonely travelers, rock climbing to the top, fighting for their lives and the lives of their characters along the way. It was like trying to carve a statue out of marble, breathing life into it, and giving it the warmth of human flesh. They gave birth to their characters with each book. Ivan was missing the best part, by focusing on the money, when the words and story and characters they created were so much more valuable and interesting, although the money was nice too. But no one did it just for the money, because they had to pay with blood, sweat, and tears for the end result.