'Honey, somewhere out there in the great wide world there is a man who wrote that book. Now he knows it, and Frensic knows it and that Futtle bitch knows it and you and I know it. That's the lot. Hutch doesn't.'
'Thank God,' said Piper.
'Right. And if that's the way you feel, just imagine the way Frensic & Futtle must be feeling now. Two million Hutch paid for that novel. That's a lot of money.'
'It's a ludicrous sum,' said Piper. 'Did you know that Conrad only got '
'No and I'm not interested. Right now what interests me is what happens when you rewrite this novel in your own beautiful handwriting and Frensic gets the manuscript.'
'Frensic gets...' Piper began but Baby silenced him.
'Your manuscript,' she said, 'from beyond the grave.'
'My manuscript from beyond the grave? He'll do his nut.'
'Right first time, and we follow that up with a demand for the advance and full royalties,' said Baby.
'Well, then he'll know I'm still alive,' Piper protested. 'He'll go straight to the police and...'
'He does that he's going to have a lot of explaining to do to Hutch and everyone. Hutch will set his legal hound-dogs on him. Yes sir, we've got Messrs Frensic & Futtle right where we want them.'
'You are mad,' said Piper, 'stark staring mad. If you seriously think I'm going to rewrite this awful...'
'You were the one who wanted to retrieve your reputation,' said Baby as they drove out of town. 'And this is the only way you can.'
'I wish I could see how.'
'I'll show you,' said Baby. 'Leave it to momma.'
That evening in another motel room Piper opened his ledger, arranged his pen and ink as methodically as they had once been arranged in the Gleneagle Guest House and with a copy of Pause propped up in front of him began to write. At the top of the page he wrote 'Chapter One', and underneath, 'The house stood on a knoll. Surrounded by three elms, a beech and a deodar whose horizontal branches gave it the air...'
Behind him Baby relaxed on a bed with a contented smile. 'Don't make too many alterations this draft,' she said. 'We've got to make it look really authentic.'
Piper stopped writing. 'I thought the whole point of the exercise was to retrieve my lost reputation by rewriting the thing...'
'You can do that with the second draft,' said Baby. 'This one is to light a fire under Frensic & Futtle. So stay with the text.'
Piper picked up his pen again and stayed with the text. He made several alterations per page and then crossed them out and added the originals from the book. Occasionally Baby got up and looked over his shoulder and was satisfied.
'This is really going to blow Frensic's mind,' she said but Piper hardly heard her. He had resumed his old existence and with it his identity. And so he wrote on obsessively, lost once more in a world of someone else's imagining and as he wrote he foresaw the alterations he would make in the second draft, the draft that would save his reputation. He was still copying at midnight when Baby had gone to bed. Finally at one, tired but vaguely satisfied, Piper brushed his teeth and climbed into bed too. In the morning he would start again.
But in the morning they were on the road again and it was not until late afternoon that Baby pulled into a Howard Johnson's in Beanville, South Carolina, and Piper was able to start work again.
While Piper started his life again as a peripatetic and derivative novelist Sonia Futtle mourned his passing with a passion that did her credit and disconcerted Hutchmeyer.
