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Daniel poured. As he passed the cream and sugar, he said, “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
“It wasn’t so much an invitation as an edict, Mr. Matherly.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Curiosity.”
Daniel acknowledged the candor with an appreciative nod. “So you were surprised to hear from me?”
“Shocked, actually.”
“I’m glad that we can speak frankly with one another, because I know your time is valuable and I’m on a tight schedule myself this morning. My son-in-law is picking me up at ten o’clock and driving me to our house in the country. He invited me to spend some quality time alone with him while my daughter is away.” He lifted a napkin-lined silver basket toward his guest. “Muffin?”
“No, thanks.”
“For bran muffins, they’re not bad. My housekeeper makes them herself.”
“No, thank you.”
He returned the basket to the tabletop. “Where was I?”
“Mr. Matherly, I know that you’re not in your dotage, so please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to be. You didn’t invite me here to sample your housekeeper’s bran muffins.”
Daniel dropped the pose. Planting his elbows on the table, he clasped his hands together and looked at his guest from beneath his white eyebrows, now drawn into a steep V above the bridge of his nose.
“I would stake my fortune on the probability that when Noah and I arrive at our country place, he will have in his possession a document of some sort that empowers him to conduct business for my publishing house.” He spoke with the brusque efficacy that had always been at his command and on which he had built his reputation for hard and sometimes ruthless dealing.
“Over the course of the weekend, I will be pressed into signing this document.” He raised his hand to stop his guest from speaking. “No. Say nothing. You would do well only to listen.”
Following a long, thoughtful, somewhat mistrustful hesitation, Daniel was motioned to continue.
“Envy” Ch. 20
Key West, Florida, 1988
Todd hadn’t counted on it taking this long.
He was impatient to attain wealth and achieve fame—in that order.
After the mortgage on his parents’ house was paid off, the profit he’d made on its sale had been a pittance. Each parent had carried a meager life insurance policy, but his mother had used his father’s to bury him, and Todd had used hers to lay her to rest. Once all their affairs were settled, the leftovers that comprised his legacy were hardly worth counting. He barely had enough to finance his relocation to Florida and had arrived in Key West virtually penniless.
The cost of living was far higher than he and Roark had estimated, even though they were living in veritable squalor and eating cheaply. He earned good tips parking cars, but the cash was quickly consumed by rent, gas, food, and other necessities.
And his monthly installments on a pc. He, unlike his roommate, wasn’t fortunate enough to have a great-uncle he had seen only twice in his entire life but who had felt a familial obligation to give his grandnephew an expensive college graduation gift. Roark’s advantage had rankled. Todd had wasted no time in leveling the playing field and acquiring a computer on a lease-purchase plan.
He was bummed over his chronic shortage of legal tender.
He was even more bummed over his chronic shortage of creativity.
Fame, even more than wealth, seemed so elusive as to be out of the question. Writing fiction was hard work. He had dozed through countless boring lectures on the subject, but he was fairly certain that none of his creative writing instructors had emphasized how labor-intensive it was. That had never been a starred point in his classroom notes. That question had never been asked on an exam. True or false, writing is damn hard work.
At least once a week, he and Roark went to Hemingway’s home. The Spanish Colonial estate was their shrine, and they went as pilgrims to pay homage. Todd had always been an admirer, of course. But he was only now beginning to appreciate Hemingway’s greatness.
Talent was something you were born with. Either you had it or you didn’t. But talent by itself was useless. Hours of tedious effort were required to awaken and exercise that talent, to write that riveting “one true sentence” that seemed so damn simple when read.
That simplicity was deceptive. It didn’t happen by accident. Nor was it a skill easily acquired. Writing was demanding, solitary, backbreaking work. A writer mined the tunnels of his brain, using words for his pickaxe. A week’s effort might yield only one nugget that was wor
th keeping, and you could weep with pathetic gratitude over that.
