Short Stories of a Frustrated Author

I was sixty-six years old the day the man from Hollywood called to tell me I had become a genius. I was in my slippers, inconveniently attached to my house by nostalgia and a broken screen door, and I had exactly twelve dollars and nineteen cents in my checking account, a fact I had memorized so I could recite it to myself during moments of optimism. The phone rang like a church bell with hay fever. I let it ring twice to appear un-needy, then I answered and said hello with the brave tone a man uses when he doesn’t yet know if he is owed money or called to judgment. “Is this Mr. Harlan P. Blodgett, author of The Card Catalog of Doom?” said a voice so smooth it could’ve been butter with a marketing degree. “It is,” I said, because for once it was. “Mr. Blodgett, I represent Titan Colossus Paramount CineMaxima. We would like to secure the film rights to your novel for ten million dollars.” I set the phone on my kitchen table as one gently sets down a pail with a live wasp in it. I walked...

  Chapter 1 The elevator moved like a slow thought—smooth, soundless, almost indulgent—rising through a building that wanted to feel like a spa and function like a fortress. Erin Voss stood with her back to the brushed-steel wall, one hand wrapped around a paper cup that was too hot and too expensive for what it contained. The coffee smelled like burnt sugar and somebody else’s optimism. The other riders were silent in the way people got silent when silence became a rule. A man in a slate suit stared at his own reflection in the doors as if he were rehearsing calm. Two interns in identical pale-blue lanyards kept their eyes down, thumbs moving in micro-scrolls on their phones. A woman with a sleek ponytail and a baby-soft cardigan watched Erin with the faint, bright expression of someone trained to notice anything that might become a problem. Above the elevator doors, a slim screen ran the building’s morning bulletin. It used the same font as hospitals and airports—friendly, readab...