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The mystery of the one seeming exception gets solved a few days later. Lincoln is visiting the iAgatha office when Sammy yells over to him, “Hey, that guy who kept calling you here is in the news.”
She’s staring at her computer screen. Lincoln looks over her shoulder. She’s opened an item on the Huffington Post Chicago site. Beneath the headline “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Books,” a photograph shows Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, sitting stiffly in a tall wing chair in a slightly formal interior setting, perhaps the White House. Clearly visible on her lap is a copy of Still Life by Antonio Buford. Thanks to Gregor’s serendipitous cover design, the title pops visually. The HuffPo account reveals that the book had languished until someone happened to send a copy to Mrs. Robinson. By chance, an AP photographer snapped her reading it, and sales took off. The White House wouldn’t comment on the book’s success, but Buford told the reporter, “I have heard through friends that Michelle’s mother reads from it to Malia and Sasha every night.”
Lincoln lets out a low, soft whistle.
“You know him, right?” Sammy says.
“Yes,” says Lincoln carefully. “Yes, I know him.”
“Maybe we can get him to write a mystery for us,” Sammy enthuses. “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if he could get the president to endorse one of our books?”
Lincoln thinks: I’m surrounded by children.
Partly to avoid being pressed to recruit Tony Buford, Lincoln stops dropping by the iAgatha office—it’s more efficient to work at home, in any case. Needy writers (the supply is endless) continue to populate his iAgatha inbox with their artless manuscripts. Several clients are already back with their second book, and Vijay Sharma, Jaipur’s answer to James Patterson, has warned that his eponymous private eye is about to launch his third assault on the corrupt Raj. Lincoln has developed the ritual—no matter the quality of the finished manuscript—of sending the books he edits off into the world with a simultaneous note of encouragement to the author: “Something you can really be proud of!” “1,000% improved!” “A pleasure to see the novel take shape!” He thinks of these remarks as the verbal equivalents of smiley faces, but he’s astonished how often the authors respond with earnest grat
itude.
And the work pours in. Some days Lincoln only leaves the apartment to jog or ride his bike. Occasionally, he joins Flam for dinner at Barleycorn. (The Fieldstone review remains unremarked between them. Flam is perhaps regretful, and Lincoln prefers to leave open the suggestion that he never saw it, the Tribune being such an insignificant player in the world of letters.) More often, though, Lincoln eats alone at home and then turns to another hour or so of editing after dinner. His clients need him.
On one such night, he finishes up an edit memo for a public defender in Florida (premise: the DA prosecuting the murder actually committed it) and then opens the iAgatha home page to see what else has come in. On a whim, he clicks on The Ultimate Position for the first time in several weeks to see what’s happened to sales. They’ve skyrocketed! More than one thousand in the last week alone. Lincoln scrolls down through the comments to try to find some explanation and sees a reference to a website, JennifersUltimatePosition.com. Right away, Lincoln senses trouble. He types the address into the computer and up pops a crude site with a constantly evolving cartoon of a busty naked woman assuming a variety of sexual poses—presumably as a prelude to testing their relative advantages. The title “Jennifer’s Ultimate Position” scrawls across the top of the page, and on close inspection, Lincoln sees that each letter is formed by tiny naked women poised for sex.
The site explains itself in big type right at the top: “For millennia, men and women have sought the secret holy grail of ecstasy, the perfect sexual position for maximizing pleasure for both partners. Most of us have searched quietly over the years in private, but recently a beautiful and forthright fictional character, Jennifer Blythe, in a visionary new novel, The Ultimate Position, brought the pursuit of the Ultimate Position into the open. With Jennifer’s inspiration, we can share our insights. This site is dedicated to questers.”
Scores, probably hundreds, of people have weighed in with their nominations, many of them described in intricate physiological detail and most accompanied by photographs or crude line drawings. Many postings have attracted long commentary tails. A link on the side goes directly back to the iAgatha site and the sales page for The Ultimate Position.
Lincoln searches for indications of the site’s proprietors. No names, no hints. Then he lingers briefly over the submitted illustrations (does the erect male penis really bend in that direction?), before sending off an e-mail to Jimmy: Why didn’t anyone alert me?
Jimmy texts back quickly but elusively through his new iPhone: “We actually just recently noticed it ourselves!!!”
Lincoln texts to Jimmy: “Isn’t somebody monitoring sales?”
Now, Jimmy is slower to respond, though Lincoln knows the iPhone is welded to Jimmy’s hand. After about twenty minutes (time to allow a consultation with the other principals?): “Sales are going great, and we were afraid you would want us to take the book down.”
Lincoln: “Why would you think that?”
Jimmy: “Because that site is pretty nasty, and we were afraid Alice Upshaw would be mad.”
Lincoln lets the correspondence drop. Yes, Alice would be mad. Furious, in fact. But what’s Lincoln to do? If he insists that iAgatha stop selling the book, he’ll probably raise more questions with Jimmy and the others about this mysterious author.
Lincoln returns to JennifersUltimatePosition.com. Some of the illustrations are rankly pornographic, but most of the really raunchy stuff comes in the comment tail, as men (obviously) weigh in on the merits of the nominations. The remarks, defiled by typos and misspellings, provide a raw profile of the male psyche. For example, there’s the substantial niche who seem to assume that women derive pleasure from being doused on the face with ejaculate. Doggie style, if not outright anal, is widely popular, and an unpleasant faction favors S&M (apparently, a Wi-Fi connection has reached Hell, and now the Marquis de Sade can post through eternity). Lincoln browses for several minutes looking for a posting that’s clearly from a woman. No luck—if women are visiting, they aren’t leaving DNA. Lincoln is far from a prude—he’s visited plenty of porn sites—but this site is supposed to be devoted to equality of ecstasy. He clicks off when he starts to feel really cruddy about the passions lurking in his gender.
Still, half an hour later, when Jimmy texts, “How about it? Can we keep on selling the book?” Lincoln responds, “Yeah.” What good would halting sales do now? The damage is done—pages live forever on the Web. He’ll ration out royalties to Amy so the spike in sales won’t be apparent, and maybe she’ll never know. With luck, the whole faddish commotion will fade in a few weeks.
It doesn’t. Sales don’t increase, but they stay steady at the elevated pace. Questers for the Ultimate Position apparently keep buying. It pains Lincoln to see the work that he and Amy labored over so earnestly—in which they invested their literary sensibilities—turned into a manifesto for sexually adventurous frat boys. He checks in every day, perhaps the first editor in the history of publishing to hope to see a decline in the fortunes of one of his books.
One afternoon, he comes in from a jog along the lakefront and plops into the chair in front of his computer. He has a message in his e-mail inbox from Cheryl Romano, the enterprising young arts columnist for The Reader, an alternative Chicago weekly. “Dear Mr. Lincoln,” she writes. “As you certainly have noticed, the novel The Ultimate Position has become a minor hit and inspired a pornographic website, JennifersUltimatePosition. I’d like to find out how the writer, Alice Upshaw, feels about it. Your colleague, Jimmy Englehardt, said you know Ms. Upshaw. Could you put me in touch?”
Lincoln ignores the request. Cheryl Romano probably pursues a dozen stories a week. If he stays low, maybe she’ll move on to something else. But the next afternoon, she returns to his inbox. “Dear Mr. Lincoln, You no doubt saw my e-mail from yesterday and disregarded it. So I will come right to the point: Are you Alice Upshaw?”
This is not a crisis—not yet. Lincoln spends an hour or so crafting a brief reply. “No, Cheryl, I am not Alice Upshaw. Some authors simply prefer to stay out of the public eye, to let their work speak for itself. Frankly, I think we should respect that attitude—as unfashionable as it is these days—particularly in instances, such as the present, when anonymous opportunists have crudely hijacked the material. The Ultimate Position should be allowed to manage on its own.”
Two sentences of fact, two of mild opinion. No lies. His father the lawyer would admire the skill. Lincoln clicks the SEND button, and within seconds Cheryl Romano responds: “Oh, come on, get off it.”
Now, Lincoln is worried. Someone (Jimmy?) has obviously planted the suggestion that Lincoln is Alice. What if Cheryl Romano, despite his denial, writes an item that points the finger at him? Local bloggers will get on the case no doubt—there’s never enough to write about in Chicago. He sees himself led down a pathway of more evasions and half-truths until he’s finally strangled by his own obfuscations.
Lincoln calls Jimmy, who denies, somewhat unconvincingly, that he’s Cheryl Romano’s source. Jimmy promises that if she calls, he will join in assuring that Lincoln is not Alice. “And tell Sammy and Wade, too!” Lincoln orders.
“Will do!”
