The Children of Hamelin Read online

  Rule four: don’t discourage nobody from writing nothing. Get those new submissions! Maybe this old bat can write only sniveling motherhood stories, the way the Mad Dentist can only write about the Communist Fluoridation Plot or Martin K. Beale about Aaron Burr. Let the creeps do their thing. Rule five: don’t actually lie about the story. Tell them how great they are, then chop the story to pieces fast, and get out neat:

  ... I’m sorry that A Mother’s Love could not be the story that breaks you into the ranks of our many selling authors, Mrs. Clinestadt, for your own sake as well as mine, since our modest reading fees merely cover our editorial costs in considering the work of new writers for the market. However, I feel confident that your next submission will be a giant step forward in your literary career. I’ll be looking forward to seeing more of your work soon.

  Sincerely,

  DIRK ROBINSON

  That’s all there really is to it. Attach the letter to the manuscript and off it goes to the mailing room. And return bitches are the worry of Jack Miller, the fee-correspondence specialist. Dirk has it down to a science.

  Even the moral angle, as the man would put it. Dirk unburdens his soul to Dickie (though it may be a plot) and Dickie tells Dirk Robinson stories to the rest of us, either out of genuine admiration or under orders, and probably both. But whether by accident or chance (fat chance!) we fee readers have been provided with an excellent moral rationalization (the only fringe benefit of the job) which I have no doubt Dirk thoroughly believes and which I may even believe too. The Gospel according to St. Robinson:

  We are a legitimate literary agency with many successful authors in our stable. Therefore, when we tell the fee writers that we will evaluate their manuscripts for the market and sell them if possible, we are telling the truth. We are under no moral obligation, however, to inform them that we accept for marketing approximately one fee manuscript out of two hundred. We do not lie to them; they lie to themselves by assuming that their manuscript is worth the powder to blow it to hell. We are selling a service and a few professional writers have actually emerged from the depths of feedom. Therefore, we do good. Also, the fee operation pays for the entire overhead of the professional operation so that all commissions on sales are profits. Who can deny that this is a Good Thing?

  Thus spake Dirk Robinson. I’ve even heard it from the man himself on occasion. It’s true as far as it goes.

  Of course, only a junkie, ex or otherwise, would pick up on the significance of the fact that Dirk is sometimes referred to in the boiler room as the Man.

  Personally, I carry the justification a bit further:

  Fee writers are shits. They are shits because, as Berkowitz, our resident Struggling Young Writer continually moans, they firmly believe that any prick with access to a typewriter is a Writer. Actually, fee creeps want to be Authors, not Writers. People who answer Dirk Robinson ads are the same people that answer Rosicrucian ads. They assume that they have Talent up front. They swallow the bullshit we dish out because we tell them what they want to hear. They are ego-junkies. They are shits. They are asking for it, and we give it to them, is all. We fill a need, just like dealers in more concrete commodities like smack.

  “I got one!” Bruce shouted, like a prospector who has just struck paydirt, at 3:22 P.M. (We’re all clock-watchers, of course.)

  I looked up from my letter to Theodore Q. Hurst, a regular fee writer who is a semiliterate cop in Pasadena, said: “Got what?”

  “A nice little mystery story from a new freak. Worth a try, anyway.” Bruce leaned forward and said to Nancy: “Fetch Dickie, wench.”

  We always love running across a submission that might be marketable. Because it gives us a sense of fulfillment? Not exactly. Because if Dickie accepts the thing for marketing, all that’s required from us is a little note that says:

  Dear Mrs. Carbunkle:

  Thanks very much for your story, Chickenfat Junction. I found it entertaining, well-written, and I’m taking it right out to market. I hope I’ll have good news on it for you soon.

  Sincerely,

  DIRK ROBINSON

  Which sure as hell beats writing a two page single-spaced letter! These diamonds in the rough, however, put Dickie in a curious bind. The Man does not trust us lowly fee readers to unilaterally transfer a manuscript from fee country to the lofty heights of pro territory. Now Dickie had to read the thing and either drop it on the desk of one of the pro people for marketing or bounce it back to Bruce with a pained expression. Dickie, being Dickie, and therefore Dirk’s prophet and a dedicated player of the Big Game, not only had to pretend that he was elated at the prospect of discovering a potential new pro client but had to psyche himself into believing it too.

  “What? What?” Dickie said when he arrived with his usual air of having been interrupted in the middle of some Big Deal.

  “This,” said Bruce, handing him the manuscript.

  “Which is?”

  “A nice 3,500 worder for Ellery Queen or Hitchcock.”

  Dickie tucked the manuscript into his armpit. “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said.

  He started to go, then paused, leaned over the desk and drew us into a huddle like a quarterback who has just decided to change signals on a hunch—a sure sign that he was about to drop a carefully-calculated piece of gossip.

  “Is there a pornographer in the house?” Dickie asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve just gotten the Word,” Dickie said. “Slick is looking for a new slush-pile reader. Dirk thinks he can get the job for one of his boys.”

  “It’s not like Dirk to help promote one of his peons out of Dirk Robinson, Inc.,” Berkowitz observed.

  “What’s his percentage?” I asked.

  Dickie smiled beatifically. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I ask you, who has more slush to drop in said pile than this worthy establishment?”

  “Are you suggesting that said slush-pile reader would be expected to give special consideration to Dirk Robinson submissions?” Bruce asked.

  “Would I suggest anything so unethical?” Dickie said archly. “However, Dirk in his childlike innocence assumes that he is not surrounded by ingrates. I say no more.”

  “Isn’t Slick one of those LA stiffener magazines?” Berkowitz asked.

  “Un-huh,” Dickie said.

  “Los Angeles?”

  “You expect one of us to go to Los Angeles?”

  “Feh.”

  Dickie shrugged. “Think it over,” he said. “Fame and fortune awaits in the Golden West. Also, I am reliably informed, all the unretouched doity pictures you can eat.” And with that, he hustled back to his inner sanctum.

  “Something fishy,” Bruce said.

  “Isn’t there always?”

  “It just doesn’t add up,” Bruce insisted. “Big deal, Dirk gets an inside man as a slush-pile reader. So what? A slush-pile reader can’t buy anything.”

  “You don’t think Dirk is just being altruistic?” I said.

  Bruce and Berkowitz rolled their eyes.

  And, I suppose, that’s why people stay on as fee readers at Dirk Robinson. None of us was about to involve ourselves in Dirk’s machinations to the ridiculous extent of picking up and going to Los Angeles. But this was a taste of the Big Game, Dirk Robinson’s exercise in paper empire building, and we could get into it any time we chose. In the very office we sat in, novels and stories were sold every day, foreign rights, coups pulled off, six-figure movie deals closed. Any day, I, me, Tom Hollander, could discover the Great American Novel in the shitpile. I could try for a pro desk. I could become a slush-pile reader at Slick. The Big Game swirled around me every day, and I could get into it any time I chose.

  Of course I would do nothing of the kind—what a drag to actually play the Big Game. But it was a great spectator-sport and I had a front-row seat; I got the surge with no sweat involved. And all I had to do to keep my choice seat was traffic in the reading and writing of bullshit.

  Sitting there, thinking
about it, I remembered Robin and the acid trip and Harvey and his foundation. Remembered that both silly scenes had become just another bullshit story to tell to Dickie. My head had been turned inside out twice and sitting here digging the Big Game, it was just a joke. A fee manuscript from a lunatic exjunkie.

  Which I could laugh at in my present incarnation as a fee reader for the Dirk Robinson Bullshit Agency, Inc...

  Dear Mr. Hurst:

  Thank you very much for your latest submission, Black Power—Or Red Power-Grab? This hard-hitting expose of the Urban League is surely your strongest work so far. However, there are certain elements which...

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I got the feeling that I should’ve brushed him off, but hell, I couldn’t do that to Ted, could I? Ah, he just wants to come over and shoot the shit for a while on a quiet Wednesday night, he knows I’ve gotta go to work tomorrow, he can’t be out to drag me to the Foundation or anything.

  So I went back into the living room ready to make like a host. Ted lived only a few minutes away, but I figured I might have time to read one of the fee manuscripts I had taken home with me. I take a few home every once in a while, the real sickies which are good for a laugh; if I can get a little work done at odd moments I can go home early on Friday or rack up a few extra points and a few extra bucks.

  I turned on one of the pole-lamp lights (you’d go blind trying to read in that orange light) and curled up to wait for Ted and Doris with:

  The Little Blue Snake

  (a fairy tale)

  by Doris Wheeler Finche

  Once many long years ago in a wee little country across the green ocean, there was a bosky dell in the deep dark woods. Under a cozy rock by the roots of a great oak tree there lived a cute little blue snake named Peter...

  Hmmm... A little blue snake named Peter. Peter!

  —Although he was the nicest little blue snake in the forest, Peter was not happy. He did not want to be a little blue snake. “Oh, why can’t I be a big red snake and scare all the little girls who pick acorns around the roots of my tree?” he would sigh.

  What? Jesus Christ! A little blue snake named Peter who wants to be big and red and scare the girls? Naw, this has to be a put-on! I turned a couple of pages, read at random:

  ...and so the evil magician waved his hand and Peter began to swell and swell and grow and grow and puff up red with pride. “Oh!” cried Peter. “Now I’ll be just the biggest reddest fiercest snake in the whole forest and wait till those mean little girls...”

  Bleech! There are times when the fee desk at Dirk Robinson resembles the Black Hole of Calcutta. What a letter I’m going to have to write on this one!

  Dear Miss Finche:

  Thanks just ever so much for your fairy-tale. While it is clearly the sort of thing that would make Kraft-Ebbing puke, it does indeed display considerable literary talent...

  Fortunately for my sanity, there was a tremendous thumping at the door that could only be Ted. I deposited Miss Finche’s phallic fairy tale on the big red table near the central hole from which the pole lamp sprouted (dig that Miss Finche!) and went to the door.

  In the hall stood Ted and Doris and an unknown girl in a green toggle-coat. Honey-blond hair, intense green eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, full lips au natural, pale smooth skin pink with the November chill, a flaring nose that was slightly but not unpleasantly Semitic, and giving off strange, somehow exciting, tense vibes. As Dickie would say, “A promising puss, old man.”

  “Well come on, man, invite us in,” Ted said.

  “Wel-cum to Cohumnist Chin-na,” I said in a Charley Chan accent. Ted, Doris, and the slightly uptight blond stepped into the kitchen, out of which mess I led them at flank speed and into the living room. Ted took off his coat, tossed it on the big table and sat down on the wing of the couch under the windows, resting his combat boots on the table. Doris took off her coat and sat down next to him, but, typically, kept her feet on the ground. The girl in the green toggle-coat stood there like a girl in a green toggle-coat getting more and more uptight. In certain ways, Ted can be a prime shithead. Or was he setting it up for me?

  “I must apologize for my neanderthaler friends here,” I said to the girl in the toggle-coat. “However, I did notice that you came in with them and I assume you’re not a gate-crasher, so if you’ll take off your coat and sit down, maybe that creep who is digging holes in my table with his Wehrmacht surplus jackboots will condescend to introduce us.”

  A ghost of a smile I could not tell meant drop dead smartass or thank you; she took off the coat, handed it to me, I dropped it on the table over Doris’s, she sat down on the empty wing of my jury-rigged sectional since Ted and Doris pretty well covered the other cot, and I sat down next to her. Neatly done. But by whom?

  “Oh yeah,” Ted finally said, “this is Arlene Cooper. Arlene, this is the world-famous Tom Hollander.”

  Strange vibes: Ted invites himself up, doesn’t tell me he’s bringing this chick, then makes it all so super-casual, but the chick is too uptight for it to be all a spur-of-the-moment thing, more like she’s meat for the monster and knows it.

  “We met Arlene at the Foundation,” Doris said. “She’s a graduate student in English. Ted happened to mention that you worked in a literary agency and...”

  Oh no!

  “Actually, I’m in the school of Ed at City,” Arlene Cooper said. “I mean, I guess I’ll end up teaching English, I hope on a college level, but I’ve got to take my Masters in Ed because you have to be in the school of Ed for the grant I’ve got that pays the rent. You know...”

  She shrugged a Gallic shrug and smiled a Jewish smile. Nice combination. Arlene Cooper was wearing a loose white blouse which revealed nice breasts (or maybe just a good bra) only when she shrugged and a shapeless black skirt that at least hinted at good legs and a nice ass.

  “Arlene is a writer,” Ted said, and shot me a look which seemed to say that her writing could be the key to her cunt. Meat for the monster, yes.

  Arlene squirmed a little at this, gave me a little look that said she knew such a remark was gauche and pretentious, but what could you do. I gave her a little smile that told her I had read her look; she smiled back and so the seed of something was planted between us.

  “I just... fool around a little,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t sold anything.” Meaning of course that I was therefore a Figure of Significance. Meaning of course that if I played Literary Lion, I could ball her in about three simple moves. The prospect was exciting: something about her uptightness hinted at a really wild lay if I could uncork all that tension. And Ted had set her up for me with all of his old-time style.

  “I don’t know what Ted told you about my job...” I said, tentatively deciding: yes, I wanted to ball her, but no, I didn’t want Dirk Robinson, Inc., pimping for me.

  “He said you work for the Dirk Robinson agency. That’s a big agency, isn’t it?”

  “Dirk claims it’s the biggest,” I said. Two points for first-naming Dirk.

  I saw Ted smiling a go-get-her smile, Doris sitting back like a satisfied Jewish momma. Funny vibes.

  “I read manuscripts, evaluate them, and write letters of criticism to authors,” I lied truthfully.

  Behind her glasses, Arlene Cooper’s green eyes lit up. Her weight seemed to gravitate towards my body subliminally. Oh yes, this would be easy! Too easy—about as sporting as hunting rabbits with an elephant gun. I decided to give myself a handicap to make the game more interesting.

  “Would you like to see the story I’m considering now?” I said with modest self-importance. Ted, who had heard plenty of Dirk Robinson stories, winced. Doris just looked confused at old Tom being selfdestructive again.

  Arlene nodded like a sweet little girl, which, behind the uptightness of being a would-be writer, an Ed major, and a Harvey Brustein sucker, just maybe she was.

  I handed her Doris Wheeler Finche’s little master(bation) piece; Ted rolled his eyes as she began to leaf through it. Doris l
ooked pained. Ted, Doris, and I stared at each other peculiarly while Arlene skim-read (a natural fee-reader) The Little Blue Snake. After a couple of minutes, she tossed the manuscript back on the table as if it had leprosy.

  “That’s... why that’s pathological,” she said piously.

  “Really?”

  “I mean, it’s an obviously phallic fantasy on an overt level. Who would publish a thing like that?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Do you often see things as sick as that?”

  “Oh, only about ten times a week.”

  “I don’t understand,” Arlene said innocently. “How can a literary agency handle writers like that?”

  “They pay to have their stuff read,” I said. “Ten bucks for a thing like that, for instance.”

  “You mean you’ll consider anyone’s work?”

  “As long as the check doesn’t bounce.”

  Poor Arlene looked as if she had fallen down a rabbit-hole. “But what can you tell someone like this woman? She obviously needs psychiatric help. Can you tell her that?”

  “I tell her she’s a great writer, but this story isn’t quite suitable for the marketplace, that she should write another story and another ten dollar check and that the next one will probably make it.”

  “But the woman’s hopeless!”

  “It is the Dirk Robinson philosophy that no one is hopeless who can still write checks.”

  “But you’re lying to her!”

  “She doesn’t think so. She knows she’s a great writer who just needs a little minor help. We tell them exactly what they expect to hear.”

  “That’s horrid.”

  “Indubitably,” I said. So much for the handicap. Now the game should start to get interesting.