The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [48]
For seventeen days he wrote every day. That was not uncommon for him at the beginning of a book; he dreaded breaking for a day for fear of losing the handle. In those seventeen days he wrote one hundred and eighteen pages. His novels normally ran close to eight hundred pages, sometimes longer. Cutting reduced this length by as much as a third in some cases, but several of them had been published virtually as written.
On the eighteenth day he sat at the desk and typed “119,” at the top of a page. For two hours he sat without typing anything further. It was time for a break, time to take a week or more off, and he had known it from the moment he had finished the previous day’s writing. He fought it because he could not begin a book without a fierce urge to see it finished, but he knew better than to fight it any longer. He was drained for the time being. He could not write what he could not imagine, and his imagination was out to lunch. He dropped page 119 in the wastebasket and covered his typewriter. It had not been covered once since he began the book.
He drove to Trenton, caught an express train to New York. He lunched with his agent, Mary Fradin, an intense woman who chainsmoked and consumed endless cups of strong black coffee. She had represented him far the past dozen years, inheriting him from Jerry Geller, who had retired to Florida and died within two months, presumably of boredom. On their first meeting after Geller’s retirement, she took him to Orsini’s and Downey’s, and he took her to the Algonquin and to bed. All night long conversation had been a trial, and little about her had appealed to him personally or professionally. He made a pass at her less out of desire than with the thought that she might recoil violently, providing him an excuse to find another agent. She surprised him twice, first by going to his room, then by revealing a talent and enthusiasm beyond his fondest dreams.
After the first time he lay back exhausted, too spent even to laugh at his own astonishment. She said, “Ready to sleep?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s what you think. You look better naked than I thought. A little pudgy, though. You should get more exercise out there in God’s country. Chop some wood, do you good, just like the song.”
“Song?”
“Never mind. Let me know if you don’t like any of this.”
“Any of what?”
“Shhhh.”
She began to kiss and lick various parts of his body. For the most part these consisted of areas he had never considered erogenous zones, and for the most part he found out he’d been wrong. At the end he raised his head to watch her mouth working greedily on him. The expression on her face was the most erotic thing he had ever seen. And then at the very end he had to put his head down and close his eyes because the pleasure was too intense to be borne.
“When you come good,” she said, “you like to make noise, don’t you?”
“Jesus.”
“And you thought you were ready to go to sleep. Now you can sleep.”
He sat up. “I’m not sure I can now.”
“Of course you can.” She was off the bed and dressing. “God, don’t tell me I shocked you. You should have figured. Cigarettes and coffee all day long. Very oral. Read your Uncle Sigmund. Something you should know, I don’t sleep with clients.”
“That’s why you’re going home now?”
“Correction, I don’t fuck clients. But you were obviously ready to look for someone else anyway, and I had the feeling we’d be good together.”
“So?”
“So don’t think you have to stay with me so we can do this again. Because if you do stay with me, it means we won’t do this again. Although I have the feeling we wouldn’t anyway. I don’t think you’ll want to.”
“I want to right this minute, and I haven’t—”
“Yes, right this minute, but you also have a wife and you’re not looking to get involved with anybody. You won’t pass up a quick jump but you don’t want an affair. Neither do I, as far as that goes. So don’t stay a client thinking