‘Well, since I’ll be getting a new one, I was hoping…’ The surgeon holds up his hands, says, ‘I understand completely,’ goes in the back room, comes back with a peniseightinches long. The guy says, ‘Well, to be perfectly frank, I was hoping for something with a bit more authority.’ The surgeon goes off again, comes back with a penistwelveinches long. The guy says, ‘Now you’re talking! Does it come in white?’”
Kling burst out laughing.
“Do that answer yo question, honey chile?” Sharyn asked.
The intimacy went beyond white and black.
The intimacy was based on the knowledge that living together withanyonewas something that required constant care and attention. Intimacy demanded utter honesty and complete trust. Intimacy meant never being afraid of revealing yourself to another person, exposing yourself to this person, warts and all, without fear of condemnation or derision.
Kling, who was not Jewish, described intimacy as a “shlep,” a Yiddish word that actually meant “to carry, or pull, or drag, or lag behind,” but which he took to mean “a long haul,” as in the expression “Man, that was a shlep and a half!” common to everyone in this city regardless of stripe or persuasion, United We Stand, and God Bless America! They were both in this for the long haul. And though they knew true intimacy wasn’t easy, they realized that once you got the knack of it, everything else seemed so very simple.
Sharyn found a yarn shop near Rankin Plaza that would needle-point a small pillow to her specifications. Actually, she had two of the pillows made, one for his apartment, the other for hers, one in white letters on black, the other in black letters on white. Each pillow read:
Share
Help
Love
Encourage
Protect
Kling was bone-weary when he got to her apartment that night. He had taken the subway out to Calm’s Point, and didn’t get there till almost nine-thirty. He’d grabbed a hamburger at the squadroom, but he was grateful nonetheless for the soup and sandwich she had waiting for him. He didn’t see the pillow until after he’d eaten. In fact, he was lying on the sofa in her living room, watching the Eleven O’Clock News, his head resting rightonthe pillow, when Sharyn suggested that he might be more comfortable with a softer pillow, and he said, “No, I’m fine, hon,” and she said, “Here, let me help you,” and she took the pillow from under his head and replaced it with a down pillow from the bedroom, and then she put the smaller pillow on his chest, and hestilldidn’t look at it, what waswrongwith this man? Patience, she told herself, you did get through med school, you know.
So she waited until the news went off, and they were both ready for bed, and then she came into the bedroom stark naked, holding the pillow with both hands at the joining of her legs, covering the wild tangle of her pubic patch, and he squinted at her, and said, “A definite improvement,” and she burst out laughing and threw the pillow at him.
He read the needlepoint:
Share
Help
Love
Encourage
Protect
“That says it all,” he told her, and took her into his arms.
Now, with her in his arms again, spent and somewhat damp from their exertion, the lights of the bridge twinkling in the distance, he told her that Eileen Burke had been transferred to the Eight-Seven and would be working there from now on, and Sharyn asked, “Does that bother you?” and he said, “I don’t know.”
And that was honest.
And that was what the two of them were all about.
7
IT WAS WHILE OLLIEwas investigating what in his mind would always be known as “The $$$ Case,” that he’d received from a knowledgeable editor at the publishing firm of Wadsworth and Dodds, which later turned out to be a front for a big drug-running operation and God knew what else—but that was another story. Anyway, a woman up there named Karen Andersen had given him a form letter from an editor up there named Henry Daggert, and it was from this letter that Ollie had learned everything he knew about writing bestselling thriller fiction. The letter read:
Dear Aspiring Writer:
I often receive inquiries from writers who wonder about the most effective way to get a suspense novel on the bestseller list. After years of experience, I have discovered that there are some hard and fast rules to be followed in the writing of successful suspense fiction. I would like to share these rules with you now, if I may.
IF YOU WANT TO CRACK THE BESTSELLER LIST
1) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PUTS AN ORDINARY PERSON IN AN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION. Your protagonist must be an “Everyman.” However, you must have at least one complex female character as well. Don’t forget, you want to capture both male and female readers.
2) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PLAYS OUT A UNIVERSAL FANTASY. You must put the reader in a situation that tests him in ways he’s always wanted to be tested, vicariously.
3) YOU MUST COME UP WITH A PLOT THAT PASSES THE “COOL” TEST. You must find an idea that makes readers want to read the book simply on the basis of the ideaalone!
4) YOUR PLOT MUST INVOLVE HIGH STAKES. You must make clear that the fate of the world hangs in the balance—or, at least, the fate of a character we desperately care about.
5) YOU MUST INTRODUCE A TICKING CLOCK. You must give your protagonist only a limited amount of time to solve his problem, and the reader should be regularly reminded of the urgency via “COUNTDOWN CUES.”
Ollie deciphered all this to mean that a bestselling suspense novel had to tell a simple story about an ordinary person who found himself in an extraordinary situation that tested him in ways he’d always wanted to be tested, vicariously. Moreover, the plot had to include at least one complex male or female character in it, and the fate of the world had to be hanging in clock-ticking suspense.
But there was yet more to learn.
6) BE SURE TO AVOID AMBIGUITY! You must avoid situations where points in favor of both sides diminish the reader’s ability to root intensely for one side over another. For example: Novels about the IRA. Novels about murky Central American conflicts. Novels about Pro Choice versus Right-to-Life disputes.
7) AVOID WRITING ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE NEWS! Editors (and especiallythiseditor) will be seeing a slew of books onwhateverit is, believe me! Be especially wary of plots about Computer Hackers, Genetic Engineering, Air Disasters, Terrorist Attacks, etc.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Henry Daggert
Before Ollie went to bed that night, he reread the last chapter of his novel yet another time. It seemed to him that it was perfect. He had completely mastered all the rules of bestselling suspense fiction, which was why he’d been able to bend them a little. Hence the multiple twists, turns, and edge-of-the-seat suspense inReport to the Commissioner.
Small wonder some cheap thief had stolen the book.
I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds and I just got a run in my pantyhose.
