I ever did was ... talk you out of a bad book you’d written and into the best one you ever wrote....
Maybe there was a queer sort of truth in that. Maybe he had wildly overestimated just how good Fast Cars had been.
That’s just your mind trying to heal itself, part of him whispered. If you ever get out of this, you’ll work yourself around in much the same fashion to thinking you never needed your left foot anyway—hell, five less nails to clip. And they do wonders with prosthetics these days. No, Paul, one was a damned good book and the other was a damned good foot. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Yet a deeper part of him suspected that to think that way was kidding himself.
Not kidding yourself Paul. Tell the goddam truth. Lying to yourself. A guy who makes up stories, a guy like that is lying to everyone, so that guy can’t ever lie to himself. It’s funny, but it’s also the truth. Once you start that shit, you might as well just cover up your typewriter and start studying for a broker’s license or something, because you’re down the toilet.
So what was the truth? The truth, should you insist, was that the increasing dismissal of his work in the critical press as that of a “popular writer” (which was, as he understood it, one step—a small one—above that of a “hack”) had hurt him quite badly. It didn’t jibe with his self-image as a Serious Writer who was only churning out these shitty romances in order to subsidize his (flourish of trumpets, please!) REAL WORK! Had he hated Misery? Had he really? If so, why had it been so easy to slip back into her world? No, more than easy; blissful, like slipping into a warm bath with a good book by one hand and a cold beer by the other. Perhaps all he had hated was the fact that her face on the dust jackets had overshadowed his in his author photographs, not allowing the critics to see that they were dealing with a young Mailer or Cheever here—that they were dealing with a heavyweight here. As a result, hadn’t his “serious fiction” become steadily more self-conscious, a sort of scream? Look at me! Look how good this is! Hey, guys! This stuff has got a sliding perspective! This stuff has got stream-of-consciousness interludes! This is my REAL WORK, you assholes! Don’t you DARE turn away from me! Don’t you DARE, you cockadoodie brats! Don’t you DARE turn away from my REAL WORK! Don’t you DARE, or I’ll—
What? What would he do? Cut off their feet? Saw off their thumbs?
Paul was seized by a sudden fit of shivering. He had to urinate. He grabbed the bedpan and finally managed, although it hurt worse than before. He moaned while he was pissing, and continued moaning for a long while after it was done.
Finally, mercifully, the Novril began to kick in—a little—and he drowsed.
He looked at the barbecue pot with heavy-lidded eyes.
How would you feel if she made you burn Misery’s Return? the interior voice whispered, and he jumped a little. Drifting away, he realized that it would hurt, yes, it would hurt terribly, it would make the pain he had felt when Fast Cars went up in smoke look like the pain of this kidney infection compared with what he had felt when she brought the axe down, cutting off his foot, exercising editorial authority over his body.
He also realized that wasn’t the real question.
The real question was how it would make Annie feel.
There was a table near the barbecue pot. There were maybe half a dozen jars and cans on it.
One was a can of charcoal lighter fluid.
What if Annie was the one screaming in pain? Are you curious about how that might sound? Are you curious at all? The proverb says revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but Ronson Fast-Lite had yet to be invented when they made that one up.
Paul thought: Burn the mother down, and fell asleep. There was a little smile on his pale and fading face.
25
When Annie arrived back at quarter of three that afternoon, her normally frizzy hair flattened around her head in the shape of the helmet she had been wearing, she was in a silent mood that seemed to indicate tiredness and reflection rather than depression. When Paul asked her if everything had gone all right, she nodded.