The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [32]
He’d convinced himself that it was merely Andrew who confronted him one day with the reasonless offer to pen his own works and to submit them under Ralston’s name, for Ralston to receive credit and money as long as Andrew received a certain reasonable sum in return.
As though Andrew couldn’t receive credit himself.
As though Andrew was somehow
(forced into it)
hiding something, running from something, yet he had to write, had to publish.
But it was the (nightmare memories, memories of nightmare) desperation, the offer Ralston couldn’t refuse, which passed the torch of having say—so ultimately to Ralston, and ultimately to Ralston’s fate.
And by now, Ralston was pretty much used to it.
And Andrew seemed pretty much the sap.
“You’ve worked your ass off, Andy-man,” Ralston told Andrew. “Go, get yourself a beer at The Crow Job, check out my new band. I got a seat toward the front just for you. Had to, knowing it’s gonna be hella packed, everyone there to see the big book writer rockin’ and all. But this is really me doin’ this, Andy. I can do this. Watch me. And watch the fans see me kick ass. By the way, nice title. I can’t wait to read The Everborn myself.”
With that, Ralston slipped a hand into his overcoat and withdrew a white envelope, presented it sealed and slipped it into Andrew’s front shirt pocket.
With a brief snicker and hurried anticipation, Ralston turned and departed across the darkened living room, past the flickering music television, out the front door and down the apartment complex’s inner hallway, leaving Andrew standing snug and silent and alone.
And if it wasn’t for the distraction of the deep and disorienting sleep he’d awakened from, Andrew would have wondered what Ralston meant by The Everborn, which wasn’t the title of the novel he believed he’d written.
***
Andrew remained still for a moment’s time until he softly padded across the living room carpet and closed the front door. Turning, he stepped to the recliner, reached for the TV remote, and paused as he viewed an MTV news report about the trampling of several teenagers at a metal concert mosh pit. Kurt Loder signed off with the image of an electrode-studded globe and station logo. Andrew signed off with depression, both from his thumb and his sigh.
There were times like these when Ralston and Ralston’s crock of flamboyant cockiness would indeed get to him, get his goat and leave him fucked like one on a witches’ sabbat, but times few and far between in recent years. He’d learned to accept what needed to be, what (he was convinced) was meant to be, and in truth this ghostwriting racket remained an ongoing sacrifice Andrew would just as soon sign off as drink goat piss.
This conviction made Andrew clench his teeth and bite his tongue whenever his father came to mind, the great B-movie director father he never knew, the father he wished were alive somewhere but doubted was anywhere but six feet under.
A.J. Erlandson was declared missing sometime before Andrew was born, and had been missing since, yet remained an inspiration and an icon to Andrew, yeah even a legend to not only he but many, and what many who knew of him remained to this day as thinking of the heralded director as one would fancy the likes of Elvis....not so much as a king of things but nevertheless working in some obscure Burger King in Utah. Anything but being dead. For some concealed, undercover reason. Though even more so for A.J., since his body was never found, no body at all.
Nobody except for maybe the Weekly World News.
And when someone was missing from someone’s life for so long, as long as Andrew had been alive, which had been twenty-eight years so far, in similar circumstances, one might as well declare them dead. Andrew had done so, quite a while back, and so had Andrew’s mother, who’d refused to so much as date anyone let alone marry until a little under a decade after the disappearance. Deep down, it was all due to wishful thinking. After thinking of the impossible-become-probable for so long, thinking can really become quite dominated