Short Story / The Hemingway Collection

Gone are the days of Hemingway and Faulkner. No longer does a writer pay the bills with his pen, idling away in the trendiest cafes and bars that stink of stale coffee and bohemian body odor to engage in heated conversations with their peers only to go home late at night with alcohol and caffeine coursing through their veins, pecking away at a rusty typewriter and sending out the results in one sealed envelope to The Atlantic for publication.

Gone are the days when a writer could pen a short story and expect to live off the publication payment until a new idea came to fruition. I can count on one hand the number of magazines that pay a decent royalty for publication of a work of fiction, and every single one of them has already turned down my newest short story. That makes forty-two magazine rejections for three different short stories, a tally that I’ve taken the liberty of scrawling in black marker on my empty bedroom wall. What once held up a framed copy of my first acceptance letter to a fiction Webzine long ago forgotten has become a tablet for practicing lowercase L’s. And since I’m not getting my security deposit back thanks to a drinking binge gone awry in the living room, I’ve been seriously considering adding agent rejections to the tally as well.

I could have the entire wall painted black in a week.

I know I should be getting ready for work, but I can’t stop staring at the center of my bare wall, opposite the bed and small double window overlooking the south side of town. All those tally marks … all that wasted time. All that wasted paper, my God, how much fucking money did I go through buying fancy premium paper to send out all those query letters to agents? I don’t want to know. The exact sum would probably be enough to make me quit this entire dream and go crawling back to my parents and beg them to take me back. I rip up my account statements so I can’t see all of the office supply charges made at Staples, and I never check my account balance until after I get my next paycheck from Target.

Work. Shit. I’ll miss the bus if I don’t get out of this funk. I force my body to its feet and fight through the process of dressing—clean khakis and a plain red shirt—before grabbing my keys and heading out the door. The apartment smells like Stove Top Stuffing this morning; last morning, it smelled like chicken and rice, and this afternoon it’ll smell like whatever my neighbor decides to have for lunch. If it’s something disgusting enough to make me lose my appetite, I’ll steal his afternoon paper for compensation. If he needs his daily news on how shitty the Iraq war is going, he can steal a paper from his neighbor—it’s one of the perks of living in such a large apartment building.

The bus is late, thank God, and so I don’t have to wait another twenty minutes for the next one but I’m still not on time. The Team Leader in the grocery section gives me the usual shit, but he can’t do much more because the entire store is too shorthanded to begin with, and I’m a good worker even if I don’t make a point of helping every Johnny Jackass find the toilet paper aisle. And I don’t mind the job, as horrible as the money is, because standing and facing food gives you a lot of time to think. Pulling everything to the front of shelves and making sure the labels face out doesn’t consume a whole lot of brain power. If I had to guess, it probably took one percent of the ten percent we actually use.

I should write about this. I should write about being a writer, and how fucking hard it is to make it anywhere, much less achieve any sort of success that would lead to a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. Every day I come into work, I have to walk in on the south doors, near the grocery section, away from the electronics department on the other side of the store that has an entire rack of hardcover copies of The Da Vinci Code. I still get a nagging persistence in the tips of my toes sometimes, just daring me to walk over and look at that goddamn cover and maybe just tear up one copy before anyone can stop me.

That goddamn book. How? There’s an open-ended question I can’t find an answer to. How did an editor look at that writing and think it was good? Based on true events, seriously? Jesus H. Christ. You’d have better luck passing off Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. Now everyone’s reading it and they seem to assume that because I like to write that I must love the book, too, because God knows those poorly written clichéd mysteries are a real page-turner. Every day some new co-worker finds out I like to write and then he or she tries to talk about The Da Vinci Code and how hard it was to put down.

“Hey,” Team Leader Dave says to me. “You want your fifteen minute break now?”

I glance at my watch, then at the aisle number: I’m through two aisles already and I haven’t spent a single minute thinking about writing. Coming up with some kind of game plan for my next move. Strategerizing, as King George Jr. might call it. A hook, no a scheme … something in my query letters to trick editors into actually reading my story instead of basing their decisions on how well I can sell it in one page. Because that’s how the writing world works now, you see. You have to sell your stories before anyone actually reads them.

“Sure,” I say.

“When you get back, you can start re-stocking the frozen section,” he says. He looks like a pig, right down to the flat nose and shaved head and chubby stomach pokes out of his Target-approved t-shirt. He has a walkie-talkie hooked to his belt.

I walk through the grocery section into the perishables department, up to the hot case in the deli. Stacey’s working and of course she’s ugly, because none of the attractive ones are hidden under the bonnets and white lab coats in the deli and the frozen foods of the meat department. The attractive ones are always working the high sales departments like electronics, and cashiering where they can wear tight red shirts and make small talk with disgusting single local guys who’ll buy a pack of gum while they’re waiting. Product placement, as the economic elite might call it.

“What are you getting today?” Stacey asks, smiling so that her cheeks fold up like a wrinkle dog’s. Thirty-two-years-old and still working at Super Target? Thankfully, her poor lexicon rules out a major in Creative Writing during college, making it difficult for her to corner me with small talk.

Then again …

“Just gimme three good-sized chicken fingers,” I say, pointing into the hot case. The wrinkled brown deep-fried pieces of chicken look old, but the last thing I want to do is rock the boat when I’m just going to steal them anyway.

“Here you go,” she says, handing over the small deli bag. She has little black hairs her hands, very fine and dotting her pale skin like a young forest. “You want me to ring you up over here?”

“No, I’m gonna go get a soda from the cafeteria,” I say. It’s true, technically, but I’m still using the same large cup I purchased last week to get the free refill, and after I fill it up with thirty ounces of Dr. Pepper, I walk into the employee break room without even looking twice at the Shift Supervisor because I know I’m not going to get stopped. They’re so goddamned clueless at these corporate stores that I could literally snack on food in the Grocery section without getting busted.

Imagine that! Walking into Super Target, striding casually to the cookie aisle and seeing one of Target’s team members munching on a Double-Stuft Oreo before putting the bag back on the shelf! Worthy writing material, if I do say so myself.

The break room is empty, thank God, but there’s a copy of The Da Vinci Code on one of the tables. It’s been circulating through the store for quite some time, changing hands between the cashiers on their breaks. I make a point of avoiding it, taking the long way around the collection of chairs around the small TV (no cable because we haven’t met our Red Card sale goals for the month) to the refrigerator. I take out a bottle of ketchup marked “Dan’s, Dont use!” and take it with me to the desk. Dan doesn’t know how to use apostrophes, a mistake that cannot go unpunished.

I don’t return to the grocery section until I’m sure the greasy food is going to sit in my stomach through the rest of the shift, which means my paid fifteen-minute break is now a twenty. I walk past the cashiers, past the cookie-cutter customers who are oblivious to everything but their cell phones, through the grocery where the thought again comes to mind that I should grab an Oreo “for the road,” and finally into the back room behind the yogurt section. I toss on the spare coat and gloves and spend the rest of the afternoon in the freezer and cooler, re-stocking frozen vegetables and ice cream and letting the cold air freeze my brain so I can’t truly contemplate the fact that I’m working part-time at a Super Target and haven’t received a single interested letter from an agent after sending out forty-two queries.

I punch out and walk home at six. I need more time to think, but there are other worries that need my attention. I need to eat, but my rent this month has managed to eat up most of my last two paychecks. Thankfully, there are other ways to get through life, albeit they involve lowering one’s standards and moral values by a few notches. I stop at the Pick ‘N Save first and grab a small shopping basket and walk through the perishables department, trying a sample of each fruit before putting a few in the basket. I’ve done this a couple of times per month now, sampling the meats from the deli, snacking on a candy bar and trying out every kind of apple there is and every time, the teenagers working just sort of watch me with a blank expression and let me pass. No bosses stop me, and yet when I tried sniping a few Jelly Bellies at the Shopko down the street, three security guys had me stopped before I could reach the exit.

“Were you going to pay for those jelly beans?” the lead gorilla asked me.

I looked around, just to make sure he was talking to me. Then I looked into my bag of already purchased items (a stick of Old Spice deodorant and toothpaste) and stolen items (a package of socks without the security tag and a pack of Dentine Ice gum).

“The jelly beans,” he said, “that you took and ate without paying.”

Normally, it would have been worth fighting over; but given the circumstances, I decided to concede. “I think I ate five Jelly Bellies,” I said. “One orange and four root beers. I’ll pay for them, if we can figure out a way to quantify it.”

“Just don’t come back,” he said.

Thinking about it now, I start to feel a little anxiety creeping up my legs. I’m already putting some of the food back, opting out of buying anything today because the memory from Shopko is making me nervous. Usually, I keep a couple things in my basket, just bare necessities that I need, and toss out the rest of the half-eaten food. I gotta buy something so it looks like I actually came there to shop, but today I just steal a Jonagold apple and leave as quick as I can because it’s already six-thirty and the mail had to have arrived by now.

I’m excited to get rejection letters. What a fucking life this has turned out to be. From winner of the Grand Jury prize in writing at Georgetown to living in a Milwaukee shithole with a shit job and a stack of rejection letters. Today I have three letters from agents, all three responding to my query regarding my novel where I essentially begged them to take a look at my manuscript and proceeded to try and sum up the entire meaning of the book in a few concise paragraphs for easy reading. All three are form rejections, not even a real signature at the bottom, and all of them begin in the same way:

“Dear writer …”

Fuck! Couldn’t they at least capitalize “Writer” to make it more respectable?

There’s something else, too: a catalogue from Thomasville furniture. A thick book with glossy pages featuring exotic-looking, colorful furniture that resembles a jungle scene. The Hemingway Collection . On the cover is a photo of his Aberdare Club Sleigh Bed, its king-sized mattress covered by lush dark red comforters and a zebra skin blanket, its dark brown mahogany wood frame dominating the photo of the rest of the room which had been modeled after one of Hemingway’s favorite wildlife hunting lodges in Africa.

My God.

The entire catalogue is filled with furniture—dining sets, living room sets, bedrooms—inspired by Hemingway’s life. From Spain to Africa to Cuba, the chairs and correspondence desks … even a bookshelf from Shakespeare and Company in Paris owned by a friend of Hemingway. This is a dream. To model oneself after one of the most amazing and respected writers in the American literary canon … to surround oneself in the very essence of the creation of American Literature. To transfer one’s life into the very setting that inspired such classics as A Farewell to Arms and In Our Time .

If I were to pull all the money from my checking account, including my emergency “Go to Hell” fund, I could put a nice down payment on a Bijou Ottoman.

The form letter from Denise Watkins Literary Associates has the address and office number on the bottom, and so I chance a phone call this late in the afternoon and wait for an answer.

“Denise Watkins.” She sounds tired, and I almost hang up right away because I can almost anticipate this all blowing up in my face. I immediately picture her yelling at me for calling or, worse, explaining in a condescending tone how the publishing process works and that “You can’t just call us … you need to write to us and we’ll call you if we’re interested.”

“Hi Denise, this is Mark Fischer. I recently queried you regarding my novel, Stealing Books .”

A pause. “Ah, yes. Did you receive a response?”

“I did, but I just was wondering if you could give me something to go on. Something that I could improve to make agents take an interest.”

“I’m sorry, Mark, but I go through a ton of queries every day. I can’t remember all of them.” She sighs, as if this conversation is taking such a considerable toll on her that it’s beginning to affect her immune system. She’s contracting a cold simply by spending this moment on the phone, her sigh says. “Why don’t you pitch me your story right now, and I’ll see if I can’t help you identify some things to work on.”

I shake my head, leaning hard on the kitchen countertop. “I don’t even know how to explain it like that. Can’t I just send you a copy of the manuscript?”

“Mark, if I looked at the manuscript of every writer who sought me out, I’d never be able to get anything done.” The condescending tone begins to slide into her vocal chords, settling comfortably until a reserved throat-clearing cough lifts it away. “Not to mention that my recycling bin would have to be emptied fifty times a day.”

“But I can’t pitch my story,” I say. “You gave me one page to sell an entire book, and I have no idea how to sell a book. All I know is my writing can speak for itself.”

“And I’m telling you that’s not how this business works, Mark. If you can’t attract an agent’s attention in one page, how can you possibly hope to get the attention of an editor at Doubleday?”

“But I’m just saying I can’t sell this book like it’s some kind of … I don’t know. I didn’t know I needed a marketing degree to get a book published.”

“You don’t need a degree,” she says, this time in a more sympathetic tone. Right now, even if she told me out of pity that she would read my manuscript, I would let her. “You just need to get some literature on how to sell your book. Go online and take a look at Dan Brown’s query letter for The Da Vinci Code .”

I hang up immediately. If I had Hemingway’s Welsh Chair, with its solid back and soft cushion, I would drop into it and toss my sore feet on the matching Hippo Ottoman and put on a soft record. I would sit and think and try to figure out how I can turn this entire lousy situation into something worth writing, something someone else would find worth reading.

Instead I drop down on my used blue-and-pink couch and tune the radio to the Randi Rhodes Show. I let her do the thinking for me and try to remember why I thought writing was worth all this bullshit in the first place. Was it the glory? Was it a complete lack of knowledge of how the system really worked, or did I just delude myself into thinking I could bypass everything, that I was somehow better than the thousands of other would-be writers out there cluttering up the desks of editors and agents? The majority of which probably can’t distinguish the difference between a subordinate and insubordinate clause?

This is all their fault. These goddamn people who think just because they can string a few sentences together, they have every right pen the next Great American Novel. These idiots who never took a literature class in their life, who pick up a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and pretend to forget all the “facts” they read and decide to write a book about an Italian inventor who might have hidden clues to Christ in his masterpiece painting.

Dan Brown. That fucker’s probably going through the Hemingway catalogue right now, picking out his favorite pieces and ordering them with his platinum credit card. This Dorchester Dresser would look great in the master bedroom. The Paris Bombe Chest would look great in the guest bedroom, dear. The Correspondent’s Desk would look great in the office, right next to the first signed copy of the special illustrated edition of—you guessed it— The Da Vinci Code , and oh did I mention darling that the illustrated edition is now also on the New York Times Bestseller List in addition to the hardcover? Oh darling, I should buy this correspondent’s desk. It would be such a hoot to write my sequel to The Da Vinci Code on the same desk Hemingway used to write A Farewell to Arms.

Maybe my frustration is a little unfocused. Maybe I’m too old-fashioned, laying here trying to figure out how to better my writing rather than buying books on how to write a better query letter. To be granted permission to send my manuscript for evaluation. Every day, I have to fight the urge to give in and purchase a copy of Writer’s Digest and take notes on articles written by two-bit hacks who promise they can help me identify Ten Guaranteed Ways to Get an Agent’s Attention and How to Avoid the Slush Pile and Get Published Fast . Taking tips from marketing majors who can’t write anything without the help of a professional editor, people whose only book publications are how-to books on how to get your book published.

Irony tastes like bitter Jonagold apples.

Maybe I could stomach buying a few writing magazines if I just could hide them right away, keeping them out of view so there would never be that awkward moment between consumer and magazine where all logic flies out the window and I would be compelled to ingest the rotten information contained within in a moment of desperation. If I had Hemingway’s Pamplona Storage Bed Bench, I could hoard the hideous writing magazines before anyone would see them, storing them away in case I ever grew tired of drawing upon my own experiences for my fiction and wanted to search for answers within an article aptly titled 10 Fantastic Writing Prompts for Your Next Novel.

After spending two hours on the couch flipping through the catalogue and listening to the radio, I can’t ignore my stomach anymore. No matter how hard I try, I can’t train it to ignore all of the cravings, even if my wallet’s empty and I barely have enough money in my checking account to cover the rent and utilities for October.

I grab my coat and head out the door. The hallways smells like corned beef that’s been microwaved too long, but even that stench isn’t enough to curb my appetite. I hurry down to the Scrub-A-Dub car wash on Fifth Avenue, one of those multiple garage bays with self-serve brushes and hoses that force the few non-lazy Americans to get out of their cars. I make sure it’s empty—it always is ever since the automated wash on Lincoln Avenue opened up—and slip over to the old change machine next to the bathrooms.

It’s an old machine, one from the late seventies or early eighties that even has a little plastic flap to cover the delicate exposed wires and gizmos and whatnot. I reach into my wallet and pull out the five-dollar bill I have tucked behind my old driver’s license in the laminated middle flap, the one that has a small tear about a half inch past the little 5 symbol on the side with the picture of Thomas Jefferson. I put it into the change machine, which eats the bill up, thinking about the tear while its insides already begin percolating. Just as the twenty quarters are dispensed, the machine gives up trying to read the tear and spits the bill back out. I do this twice, then leave as nonchalantly as possible even though my stomach is already preparing itself for the George Webb burgers it’s about to consume.

I spend an hour at Webb sitting on my ass and inhaling the secondhand smoke before taking my last twenty-four quarters to the bar next door. Between beers I try to decide which fabric would work best for my East African Chair: the zebra stripes or the dark brown leather? The zebra stripes, I decide, because I would have to purchase the Aberder Club Sleigh Bed with the matching covers or everything would look out of place. When I get home, I try to write a little and find myself compiling a list of selling points, some sort of bizarre query to magazine editors and I have no idea what I’m trying to sell because I’m drunk and I’m tired and I can’t stop thinking about those goddamn zebra stripes.

When I wake up the next morning, I take a look at what I’d written, scrawled on a piece of notebook paper and left haphazardly on the kitchen countertop next to the stove. I lick my lips—they taste like stale barley—staring at the drunken chicken scratch. “Dear Editor,” it reads, “please consider this short story for your magazine. Also, please pay me a considerable sum so I can maintain a living as a writer.”

Below that, I had started another letter. “Dear agent,” it reads, “please read the manuscript included. Don’t base your decision on how poorly I write query letters.”

It’s Saturday, which means Sam’s Club will have free food samples everywhere in the store, and I just so happen to know the code to get in through the employee door. It’s one of those old 0-through-9 punch codes that never changes, like the ones in my old college dorm. The upside of Wal-Mart’s shitty business practices is it’s relatively simple to find a disgruntled employee more than willing to divulge company secrets. God bless capitalism. I put a blue shirt on under my jacket and jump into a pair of khakis, but I’ve never actually seen anyone in the Employees Only hallway anyway so I’m not even sure if it’s a good enough disguise to sneak through. Today is no different. I walk down the hall with a blue collar swagger, through the loading doors that lead to the main floor. I zip my jacket back up to hide the blue shirt and I look like just any other customer once again.

The door leads me to aisle four, near the back where all of the frozen food is. Aisle four has mainly yard furniture and other outdoor amenities, all priced considerably lower than you might find anywhere else (or so customers are told). None of them compares to anything in the Hemingway collection. The lawn ornaments are tacky, the plastic lamps so flimsy they would collapse after the first Cuban squall. The wicker chairs couldn’t possibly hold the weight of an average-sized European hunter who’s been thickened by cheap booze and the harsh African sun.

I walk through the aisle and make my way to the produce section, nonchalantly passing the elderly woman in front of the yogurts to grab a sample of some new extreme marketing gimmick that combines the awesome power of fruit and—gasp!—yogurt with the violent force of a herd of elephants. It tastes like strawberry shit, but I can’t complain too much about free meals, and I’m thankful for this old woman’s binocular vision because she still hasn’t recognized me after twelve weekends in a row. And she’s always here, somewhere in the produce section with some different food sample to give out to ungrateful shoppers.

The frozen section has three employees handing out food: meatballs, frozen pre-packaged BBQ ribs and a new flavor of chicken that tastes like fish. I take each sample with a smile as I make my way to the office products in the center of the large warehouse. Two college girls, probably a year or so younger than me but maybe just old enough to drink legally, can’t stop bitching about the lack of diversity among the notebook covers.

“What are you looking for?” I ask casually, picking up a plain blue college-ruled spiral notebook. Surprisingly, despite all of the Sam’s Club advertisements in the outside world, this notebook is the same price as the ones at Staples.

The short brunette looks in my direction, but doesn’t answer. Her eyes are set far apart, the color of shit brown. It’s a pretty condescending attitude for someone who isn’t all that attractive to begin with.

“Something with some flair,” the taller brunette says in a whiny voice that reminds me a lot of Fran Dresher’s.

“Something with pictures on the cover,” is what she meant to say. In college, just like high school, notebooks with cool pictures are always the rage. I had always been quite taken to anything with ponies, sad as that sounds.

“Staples might still have some left,” I say. “But they get pretty low right around finals time.”

I’m not doing this because I’m horny. I mean, I’m definitely horny, but picking up girls at Sam’s Club wasn’t really high on my to-do list when I woke up this morning. Plus, they’ve both got that Wisconsin Paunch around their waists that seems to be the curse of the third-year college student in this armpit of a state. The reason I’m trying to make conversation is because two floor employees have been walking between the center aisles, and it’s making me goddamn nervous. When was the last time I went for a run? Shit, probably two weeks and three packs of cigs ago. I would need a good distraction if I got chased after today.

“We just need a good one for scrapbooking,” the shorter brunette says. She glances again in my direction, then goes back to examining the three rows of colored notebooks.

I nod my head, but the taller brunette is still looking at me like she really wants to get in one good condescending comment. “It’s like a photo album,” she explains. “Only with stories and everything like that.”

I smile, a little bit directed at her but mostly because the two employees have moved onto the Aisle of Ketchups. “Well, good luck with that.”

“We’re having a party tonight,” the shorter brunette says. Her tall compatriot flashes an icy look with both of her fish eyes.

“After the scrapbooking is finished?” I ask with another smile.

The short one laughs. “We’re going to watch the football game. Free beer, everything like that.” She writes down her address. “Bring a friend.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll stop by for a beer tonight.” I won’t. As tempting as free beer is, I have to write. I have to sell something. No time for wasting an entire night on booze—four years of college should have been enough.

I walk past the three samplers in frozen food again and buy a fountain soda on the way out. I’m full, and it only cost me ninety-nine cents and I can save the cup for next time.

Back home, it’s hot inside the apartment. I take off my shirt, crack a living room window overlooking the ally and sit in front of the typewriter. I imagine myself in Cuba, with a cool ocean breeze tickling the hairs on my bare skin while I load a fresh page of white paper into the typewriter. I pretend to be sitting at Hemingway’s correspondence desk, the kind he must have used while he was a reporter, jotting down his notes on the leather surface covering the top of the mahogany frame, reaching into the single drawer for a hidden pack of cigarettes under a heap of crumpled notepaper.

One single piece of used notepaper written by Hemingway in confusing, feverish chicken scratch would now fetch more than twenty book advances alone. Whatever comes out of my brain right now, whatever I put onto this piece of white paper, no matter how good, could—at best—be purchased by the New Yorker for five thousand dollars. Before taxes.

Dear Editor,

How depressing to live in an age where the publication of a manuscript depends solely on how well the author can “pitch” his or her idea. To condense three hundred pages of prose into one concise one-page query letter no longer than three paragraphs, with enough space left over for the obligatory return address and thank-you’s for wasting your precious time.

My bachelor’s degree in English is useless. Had I known I would need to minor in marketing to sell my book, I would have gladly taken the night classes required. Now, I compete in a veritable slush pile of rotting manuscripts with a thousand other bored housewives and cocky businessmen who think anyone can write a novel, a white rhino caked in layers of mud, so indistinguishable from its plain brethren that even the most skilled hunter passes it by. (I think of Hemingway)

What will it take? How long will you subject yourself to this waste? How long will you allow “anyone” to query you with their latest contrived idea? How long before you accept a minimum standard and those of us who have studied the masters are allowed to succeed them?

I graciously await your reply.

I stare at the page in front of me. It looks so beautiful, sitting on this shitty old card table of a desk clamped between the jaws of an old black typewriter that hums methodically. Now is the moment where Hemingway would sit back with a cigarette and stare, his old desk chair creaking under the shifting weight, the old leather of a long-deceased animal groaning quietly under his corduroy pants while the Cuban foliage beside the window welcomes another fresh spray of salty ocean water from the heavy waves below.

The next day I send it out to another agent. The next week, I receive a reply.

“Dear writer …” it begins.

Reviews

There are no reviews of this item.