The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,94

at the coffee shop. I kept wondering if Faye would stay with Roth, or if she would come back to me; if she liked me better or only my stories; if she had truly been the one who had helped to save me as I had suspected or whether I had made all that up. Finishing the book was the only way I could think of to find out.

I spent almost a year writing the rest of Zero Ninety-eight while sitting at a window table at Morningside Coffee, drinking tea, and chatting with Joseph, who was usually in far better spirits than he had ever been when I’d worked there. At that table, I wrote about my trip to Manhattan, Kansas, about the desolate field, the fire at Big Box Books, the ride aboard an eastbound train, the night I met Anya again. I suppose I could have left Jed’s and Faye’s names out of the story, could have written that Faye had forged some book other than The Tale of Genji. But I wanted to tell my tale as honestly as I knew how, because I thought Faye would never come back to me if she read my story and saw that I was still telling lies. I figured that any future I might have with her depended on my telling the truth. Jed Roth had told me that a time would come when I would reveal that The Thieves of Manhattan was a lie so that he could have his revenge, and now I was revealing the story just as he told me I would. But he hadn’t wanted me to tell the whole truth, so I doubted that this book I was writing was what he had in mind.

Completing Zero Ninety-eight took far longer than I anticipated, for I wanted to get every detail right. I was writing for different reasons than I ever had—not to escape my loneliness as I used to; not to try to make my rent; not to save my skin; not to play a trick or get revenge or draw attention to my fiction. I was writing to explain to another person who I was now and how much I had come to realize she meant to me; she had given me not only this story, but the chance to tell it and make it true. And as I wrote, I vowed to myself that this would be why I always would write—to tell another human being a story, one that felt meaningful to me, whether it actually happened or I had just made it up—and I sensed that, now that I had lived a true adventure, I knew how to make one up pretty well.

Thieves had ended just as Roth had wanted it to—with a romantic embrace between the hero and the Girl in the Library, who takes the manuscript that he has brought her and melodramatically tells him that true love never has to end, that it should live on “even after the last page.” But, though Roth was a decent storyteller, he didn’t know too much about how people spoke and acted in real life; he’d read too much, lived too little. I had no priceless manuscript to give the woman I loved, just a story that was as true as I knew how to write it. On the autumn day that I sat in the café with my laptop and approached the end of my story, no one leaped into my arms for a passionate embrace; instead, I just felt a hand on my shoulder. And after I started writing my last page and I heard a woman’s voice behind me, it didn’t say anything profound or romantic; it just said, “I thought you’d never finish, Sailor.” When I looked up, and saw Faye standing there, a cheshire on her face, the moment felt so perfect that I wished it could really be happening. And then I realized it was.

GLOSSARY OF SELECTED TERMS

atwood n. A mane of curls as sported by the author Margaret Atwood.

canino n. A gun, from Lash Canino, the gambler Eddie Mars’s menacing hired hit man in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.

capote n. A broad-brimmed hat of the sort favored by the author Truman Capote. The hat is often worn to best effect at a rakish angle.

chabon n. A wavy mane like the one worn by the author Michael Chabon.

cheshire n. A gleeful, mischievous smile that seems to conceal a secret, from the grinning Cheshire