thanks,” I replied.
“Better make it six mimosas and two lobster tails.”
While he listened to the person on the other end he pantomimed shooting himself in the mouth.
“All right,” he said. “The door is unlocked, so just come on in.”
He hung up the phone and danced his way to the chaise longue and plopped down next to me. Not just next to me, practically on top of me.
“So what’s the bug, baby? What’s the deal?” He slapped a fat-fingered hand on my knee. “What can Lonnie Saunders do to make you feel good?”
His invasion of my personal space was calculated. He wasn’t making a creepy proposition, nor was he being overly friendly. Lonnie had some inkling of why I was there, and the sweaty little goblin wanted to bully me in some small way.
Lonnie was not physically intimidating. I had almost two feet on him. His move worked anyway. It threw me off. I have always been horrible at negotiating or demanding anything, and his hand on my knee creeped me out just enough to ruin my whole pitch.
Lonnie’s smile broadened and I realized I must have winced or somehow betrayed my discomfort. Having made his point successfully he gave my leg a squeeze and scooted away from me on the chaise.
I knew I was defeated, but I gave it a try anyway.
“I can’t write this book, Lonnie,” I began. “A funny guide book is pretty clichéd to begin with and about the Internet? This isn’t 1995. People know what the Internet is at this point.”
“Come on, Zack, you’re on the Internet,” he said, as if that meant something. “You know all about that stuff. You’re an expert.”
“You can’t write a book about catchphrases and funny websites,” I countered. “That’s what I know. A bunch of weirdos and their weirdo friends on their weirdo websites. Hell, I’m one of those weirdos.”
“So don’t write about the websites; write about the weirdos.” Lonnie craned his neck as if searching for something. “Hey, do you have any cigarettes?”
“Sorry, I just quit,” I said. “Lonnie, look, even if I wanted to write the book, I just…I can’t.”
I waved my bloody bag around. Lonnie snorted with amusement.
“So you cut your hand? Don’t be a baby, baby. Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea with his ball sack cut open. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house was lousy with raccoons. He almost died from rabies.”
“I don’t think any of what you just said is actually true,” I countered, “but I’m not using this hand thing as an excuse. I’m right-handed and it’s going to be many weeks before I can use my right hand again. Maybe many months before I can type or use a pencil.”
“Who the fuck writes with a pencil?” Lonnie flicked one of the yellow pills off the end table.
“You know what I mean.”
Lonnie fixed me with a serious gaze and flipped one of the pills right at my face.
“Look, this isn’t a fun-time party-time negotiation here, baby. We’re not talking about your feelings or your poor little hand. Learn to type with your left hand or cut that one off and type with a hook.”
“A hook?”
“Or whatever. Maybe they have a robot hand. Look, you cashed the advance check for this book and you don’t even have a proposal. We’re being nice here. More than fair. You gave us a list of ideas and, frankly, your wizard books sucked. I say that as a publisher looking for wizard books. We are proactively seeking wizard books. They were just appallingly bad. A romance novel called Wizard Marriage”?
“The amorous spell caster is an underutilized trope,” I replied, feeling a bit outclassed.
“Trope? Slow down there, Proust. You’re a joke writer, so write something funny. Write me a funny book about the Internet.”
He clapped his hands several times.
“Go find your weirdos. Write about your weirdos. All right?”
It was that sort of moment that I always wish I had spent the time and money on those nunchaku lessons. And that I had brought my nunchakus.
The room service cart arrived before I could roundhouse-kick Lonnie Saunders through one of the exterior windows.
A skinny bald kid wheeled the room service cart up to the elegant table in the suite’s dining nook. He carefully arranged the champagne flutes in a semicircle around the centerpiece of a silver-topped dish of lobster tails. Bibs and condiments were provided on a separate tray.
Lonnie tipped the kid well and then motioned me over to the table. He lifted the silver lid from the steaming lobster tails. I hate lobsters. I hate any crustacean. It’s the idea of eating what amounts to a giant sea bug that disgusts me. Normal bugs, fine, but I am not going to devour the guts of some oceangoing cockroach just because the government tells me it’s safe.
I watched Lonnie lustily forking the fluffy white flesh from one of the lobsters. He would fork two or three butter-dipped bites into his mouth, chew for a few seconds, and then chase it down his throat with half a flute of mimosa.
“Back in colonial days lobster was so cheap they banned feeding lobsters to inmates in coastal prisons,” I said, just to make small talk. “At the time it was thought to be similar to eating rats.”
Lonnie slammed his fork down on the table and glared at me while he chewed and swallowed his current lump of crustacean meat. At length he warned me, “Don’t fucking do that, baby.”
“What?”
“Don’t bring that David Foster Wallace shit over here and ruin my lobster,” he said, and then pushed it away. “Rats? If only rats tasted like this. You’re a shitty brunch companion, Parsons.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that and it wouldn’t be the last.
“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, even though I wasn’t.
“It’s all right, you’re just a clueless little baby. Let’s do this then. Let’s do some negotiating. What have you got?”
“Well, I—”
“Because I’ve got a contract that you signed, so keep that in mind when you make your demands. Think about that.”
I did and I had. Lonnie’s suggestion about writing the book about the weirdos rather than the websites was actually pretty solid. Something along those lines had crossed my mind if, as a last resort, I was trapped into writing this infernal guide to the Internet.
“I need a car,” I said.
“No,” Lonnie said.
“Just a rental,” I amended.
“No,” Lonnie replied. “No car. No plane tickets. No gas allowance. If you need to go somewhere for this book
