‘About what?’ Billy’s actually starting to enjoy himself now, but he’s careful not to show it.
Giorgio exchanges a glance with Nick, who shrugs. ‘Haven’t decided that yet, but I’ll come up with someth—’
‘Maybe my own story? Dave’s story, I mean. There’s a word for that—’
‘Autobiography,’ Nick snaps, like he’s on Jeopardy!
‘That might work,’ Giorgio says. His face says nice try, Nick, but leave this to the experts. ‘Or maybe it’s a novel. The important thing is you never talk about it on orders from your agent. Top secret. You’re writing, you don’t keep that a secret, everybody you meet in the building will know the guy on the fifth floor is writing a book, but nobody knows what it’s about. That way you never get your stories mixed up.’
As if I would, Billy thinks. ‘How did David Lockridge get from Portsmouth to here? And how did he wind up in the Gerard Tower?’
‘This is my favorite part,’ Nick says. He sounds like a kid listening to a well-loved story at bedtime, and Billy doesn’t think he’s faking or exaggerating. Nick is totally on board with this.
‘You looked for agents online,’ Giorgio says, but then hesitates. ‘You go online, don’t you?’
‘Sure,’ Billy says. He’s pretty sure he knows more about computers than either of these two fat men, but that is also information he doesn’t share. ‘I do email. Sometimes play games on my phone. Also, there’s ComiXology. That’s an app. You download stuff. I use my laptop for that.’
‘Okay, good. You look for agents. You send out letters saying you’re working on this book. Most of the agents say no, because they stick with the proven earners like James Patterson and the Harry Potter babe. I read a blog that said it’s a catch-22: you need an agent to get published, but until you’re published you can’t get an agent.’
‘It’s the same in the movies,’ Nick puts in. ‘You got your famous stars, but it’s really all about the agents. They have the real power. They tell the stars what to do, and boy, they do it.’
Giorgio waits patiently for him to finish, then goes on. ‘Finally one agent says yeah, okay, what the fuck, I’ll take a look, send me the first couple of chapters.’
‘You,’ Billy says.
‘Me. George Russo. I read the pages. I flip for them. I show them to a few publishers I know—’
The fuck you do, Billy thinks, you show them to a few editors you know. But that part can be fixed if it ever needs to be.
‘—and they also flip, but they won’t pay big money, maybe even seven-figure money, until the book is finished. Because you’re an unknown commodity. Do you know what that means?’
Billy comes perilously close to saying of course he does, because he’s getting jazzed by the possibilities here. It could actually be an excellent cover, especially the part about being sworn to secrecy concerning his project. And it could be fun pretending to be what he’s always sort of wished he could be.
‘It means a flash in the pan.’
Nick flashes the money grin. Giorgio nods.
‘Close enough. Some time passes. I wait for more pages, but Dave doesn’t come through. I wait some more. Still no pages. I go to see him up there in lobsterland, and what do I find? The guy is partying his ass off like he’s Ernest fuckin Hemingway. When he’s not working, he’s either out with his homeboys or hungover. Substance abuse goes with talent, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Proven fact. But George Russo is determined to save this guy, at least long enough to finish his book. He talks a publisher into contracting for it and paying an advance of let’s say thirty or maybe fifty thou. Not big money, but not small money either, plus the publisher can demand it back if the book doesn’t show up by a certain deadline, which they call a delivery date. But see, here’s the thing, Billy: the check is made out to me instead of to you.’
Now it’s all clear in Billy’s mind, but he’ll let Giorgio spin it out.
‘I have certain conditions. For your own good. You have to leave lobsterland and all your hard-drinking, coke-snorting friends. You have to go somewhere far away from them, to some little shitpot of a town or city where there’s nothing to do and no one to do it with even if there was. I tell you I’m gonna rent you a house.’
‘The one I saw, right?’
‘Right. More important, I’m going to rent you office space and you’re going to go there every weekday and sit in a little room and pound away until your top secret book is done. You agree to those terms or your golden ticket goes bye-bye.’