Tours of the Black Clock

43

THIS CONTINUES ABOUT SIX months. During this time I deliver four thin books, each interrupted by a general haggling over the money. The man in the backroom at Charles and Bleecker is small and pudgy, with eyeglasses so strong they seem to disassemble his whole face; he regards me as an oaf. He acts like it’s impossible to believe I’m writing these books, and he’s always giving me messages to deliver to my “employer,” for whom he assumes I’m an errand boy of some sort. “I’m my employer,” I explain; he ignores it. “My employer,” I tell him one day, “says to tell you a dollar a page doesn’t cut it anymore. My employer is making three dollars a page writing for the crime magazines.”

“A dollar’s a very good rate,” the man answers, quietly and insistently.

“It won’t do,” I say. Ultimately my employer and I eliminate the middleman altogether, because it turns out my employer isn’t me after all. It’s a guy named Kronehelm, I notice because his business card gets clipped to one of my manuscripts as soon as I bring it in. This means the Charles and Bleecker man with the disassembling eyeglasses is selling the manuscripts to a private client who, for whatever quirk will explain it, has developed a partiality to my work in particular. I’ve got a good idea Mr. Kronehelm and I can come to an arrangement both of us prefer to the present one.