John Lies For Pay

Reposted by request. A short story about a writers' seminar.

John looked at nothing in particular, a resource that the convention center bar had in abundance. From its carpet, designed to camouflage dirt by looking like something very dirty, to its beige walls, to its marble patterned Formica bar, to its unoffensive, pastel art in chrome plastic frames to its burnt orange vinyl chairs, to its egg-shaped, textured pendular lamps, there was a great deal of nothing here. It was cheap enough to cost nothing of significance, and yet no so cheap as to be offensive.

John, being a nobody, a master of nothing, felt in his element. He was comfortable at his table, well away from the bar, with his rail Scotch and water, smiling serenely. He knows that you will read about him, judge him, decide whether you like him or find him interesting, because I told him that he would be a character in a book one day.

“No,” he said, smiling at me in an inoffensive, but not quite friendly way, “I won’t be a character in a book.”

“You don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. I’m an author,” I said. “An unsuccessful one, but I can write pretty much what I want. I’ll change your name though.”

“Why?”

“Because it avoids legal trouble. And it keeps people from drawing unfair conclusions about real people they’ve never met just from what I write.”

The smile never flickered, but his eyes narrowed a bit. “Why would you write about them unfairly?”

“It’s not usually intentional,” I said. “It’s just that we authors don’t usually get everything right about a person. To do anyone justice you’d have to write millions of words just about them. And nobody’s that interested in anyone else. Proust, I suppose, came close to it, writing about himself. Changed the name, of course. But it took up six volumes that almost no one gets all the way through.”

“But you did,” John said. “You read it all, didn’t you?”

“Well,” I said. “I like to think so. I suppose my focus faded here and there. But I gave it a go. I at least looked at every page.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. It was rough going in places. But he’s an important author.”

“And you’re not,” John said.

I nodded. “I’m not.”

He nodded. Sipped.

I continued. “He’s important because he wrote very interesting psychological sketches of the people...characters, rather, in his book. He was one of the first authors to do that.”

He turned his head slightly. Looked toward the bar.

“Anyway,” I said, “I need to get out of the story now. This is starting to feel like a gimmick.”

“Gimmick?” he said.

“Yeah. Just something to make the story more unusual, without really contributing anything.”

He nodded. “Nice meeting you, Kit.”

I nodded, and left.

The woman who approached John’s table, a slight frown on her face, did not make an impression on him at first. She was of average height, of average build, with a square, normal, unthreatening face. She stuck out her hand. A sticker was on the left side of her blouse. It had something printed on it. “My Name Is...” and handwritten underneath, the name “Soozan.”

John shook her hand. “Clarence,” he said.

“Hello, Clarence,” she said. She sounded a bit tired. “What do you do?”

“I’m a liar,” he said.

She looked down at the wood grain print of the formica table. “Christ,” she said, her voice dropping heavily, like an unwanted burden. “Everyone’s so fucking clever. I’m so tired of clever.”

“Is your name really spelled like that?” John asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I changed it to that.”

“Ah,” he said. “A gimmick.”

“I suppose,” she said. “I’d always been called “Susan,” but nobody remembered it. So I changed it, legally. It’s easy. It still sounds the same.”

“Good news for you,” John said. “I’m not clever at all.”

She sneered a bit. “How clever of you. I asked you what you do, and you said, “I’m a liar.” Not “I’m an architect, not a cop, not a drug dealer, an electrician or a pimp. You knew damned well what I meant – how do you make your living? But instead, you give me this fucking clever answer.”

“I make my living by lying,” John said.

“So you’re a lawyer? Or an advertising man?”

“No. I lie to people, and they pay me.”

She sighed. “I paid to be here. I paid for this.”

“I tell people what they want to hear, and they feel better. I tell them I’m a liar, but that doesn’t matter. They feel better, and they pay me.”

She looked at him. “So you’re a therapist? Or a priest?”

He smiled. “No. You seem very interested in titles.”

She didn’t look up. “I paid to be here, this “writer’s conference”. It was supposed to teach something about writing characters. I only asked you because we’re supposed to be doing this exercise - “Introduce yourself to seven people and find out something interesting about them.”

He nodded.

She waved at the bartender. He ignored her. “The last guy I asked, the one with the ridiculous mustache said, “I pursue Wisdom.” Jesus Christ, I wanted to throw my drink in his face.”

“Many people would probably think that’s an interesting answer,” he said.

She looked at him, the twist of her lip became more pronounced. “He was clever. Not interesting,” she said. She sat down at the table. “Look, I’m going to rest here for a minute.”

“Some people find my company restful,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

He cocked his head slightly. “I don’t know. I’ve never really been curious about it.”

“Because you lie to them?”

“Not for free.”

She sat silently for a moment. “So if I paid you to lie to me, what sort of lie would you tell?”

He considered for a moment. “I don’t think you’re the kind of person who needs to be lied to. You’ve been very honest about your motives for meeting me. You know that your writing needs professional help. You’ve been very straight about your opinions about this conference - that you’re disappointed. And about your impressions of the people you’ve met. That means you’re observant.”

She nodded, and smiled slightly. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He said. He drained his glass. “That will be twenty-five dollars.”

She looked shocked. “You just lied to me.”

“Yes.”

“But all those things were true about me.”

“Isn’t it lovely to think so?”

She shook her head, as if she were trying to shake off a dizzy spell.

“Interesting enough?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” she said, her voice flat.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

She sat up. “Arrogant prick,” she said, with a little more energy.

“No insult intended. I just don’t think you’re the sort of person who has sex with someone she just met in a hotel bar.”

She breathed deeply. “You’re damned right I’m not.”

“You’re fifty dollars in, now, Soozan.”

She stood up suddenly. “I’m not paying you...for that.”

He smiled. The bartender brought him another drink. “No, I don’t think you will. But that’s not very fair of you. You came to my table, feeling frustrated and bored. Now, you’re neither frustrated, nor bored. Isn’t being angry better than being frustrated and bored?”

She fished in her purse, and threw a twenty dollar bill on the table.

“Thank you,” he said.

She marched away toward the bar. She glanced back over her shoulder, and then sat down on a bar stool with some force, and threw down a drink. She glared at him, silently for a minute, then marched out of the bar. Quite a contrast, he thought, with how she came in. And surely she had a modestly interesting story to tell. Cheaper, he supposed, than the writer’s conference.

She walked down the hallway, past the foamboard poster with the smiling, best-selling author and the promises to turn writers into commercial successes. She wanted to smash it – to write “BULLSHIT” on it. But instead, she went into the ballroom being used as a lecture hall. She had paid for this, after all.

The program had already begun. She hustled into a chair at the back, then realized that she had left her notebook, and her pen. If she’d spent money she didn’t really have to attend this farce, she wasn’t leaving without a note to show for it. She went back out the door, and walked quickly back to the bar.

Clarence wasn’t there anymore. The table where they had spoken was empty. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. He was, at least, company. He was annoying. Very annoying. She was still annoyed, to the point where she snatched her notebook from where she left it on the bar, and slung the brochures for the conference onto the floor.

She stood still for a moment, trying not to curse, to scream, to completely lose it here in the middle of this nowhere bar, in this nothing hotel, at her nothing books, at her nothing life.

Then she crouched down, recovered the worthless brochures, and walked quickly back to the ballroom - lecture hall. It had a name, she recalled. The Gold Ballroom. There was a plastic sign by the door. She doubted if a ball of any description had ever been held there.

She sat at the back. The sound was bad. She could barely make out what the speaker was saying. He was a round, middle-aged man, nearly bald with a fringe of graying hair around the fringe of his scalp, what she had been taught to call a “horseshoe haircut.” He was not Barry Balentine, the best-selling author of action novels that she had come to hear.

“I am now introducing our keynote speaker. I have listed many, but not all of his best-selling books. He is successful. You are not, or you wouldn’t have paid to be here.” He looked up, smiled, waiting for the laugh. A wet chuckle slunk around the room once, and died.

There were about thirty people in the audience. The room seated about two hundred. They were scattered around the room, some in small groups, some alone. She looked at them, trying to see something about them trying to find something about them that could be written about, some detail that would turn into a character for her next story.

“This man, young man, not thirty, sitting alone, looks like he cuts his own hair. He has a notebook, but he hasn’t opened it. He has thick glasses. He is hunched over. He clears his throat about every thirty seconds. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt, blue jeans that are worn and too short. Name sticker. I can’t read it from here. Black sneakers.”

“Just the sort of loser that reads Balentine’s books,” she thought. “Power fantasies about guns and techy murder toys. Probably got shoved into a lot of lockers a few years ago. Plays video games until three in the morning, gets up at noon when Mom starts yelling at him.”

She didn’t find him interesting at all.

One after the other, she looked at several more. A woman with a purse that looked like it was made out of rainbow dyed cat hair. Big plastic crystals hanging from her ears. She’d probably read your aura or something.

Even less interesting.

By now, she had stopped listening to the introduction. A scattering of applause pulled her attention back to the front. The best-selling author was approaching the podium.

Considering the content of his books, she half-expected him to be wearing a muscle shirt, camouflage pants and combat boots. He was not.

The man who approached the podium was slight of build, wore wire-rimmed glasses, a tweed jacket and brown slacks. He smiled at the attendees. He opened a folder on the podium, and put a clear plastic bottle of water beside it. He smiled again.

He did not wear a name tag. Everyone knew who he was.

She made a point of noticing shoes. Someone had told her that shoes were a clue to character. His were suede, laced, and even from the distance she was from him, she could see they were a little scuffed. They were suited for someone who had to spend a lot of time on their feet, like a manager in a retail store.

He kept smiling. It was the sort of smile that was practiced in the mirror of many mid-range hotels. It was a ceremony, she thought, an obligation, not an expression.

He began. “Welcome, authors, and thanks for coming. Thanks, Bob, for the introduction, which reminded me of the first thing I wanted to tell you all. Say what you have to say, and stop.”

He waited for the laugh. It came, courteously, walked around the room once, and left.

He cleared his throat.

“So, you want to write a book that will sell. I am here to tell you that most of you will never make enough selling books to pay for the price of this conference. A few of you will make enough nickles and dimes to think you’re a commercial author. Maybe one of you will write a successful book. It is likely that none of you will ever write more than one.”

She could see most of the attendees sit back in their stackable chairs. Most of them had been tormented for years by the thought of commercial success. To hear what they suspected – that their efforts were probably pointless confirmed was a relief of a sort.

“But...” he paused, “there is a chance, if you get past your convictions, stop trying to write the book you want to write, and learn to write a book that will sell, you’ll be up here one day. You’ll have a string of best-sellers, and the respect that comes with making that best-seller list you dream about.”

Her lip twisted into a snarl. She didn’t deny that she dreamed of seeing her name on that list, but she wasn’t at all interested in writing mass-market dreck. She had a good book in her, she knew it. A good novel. The quality, the grace of that book would carry it. Maybe not to Balentine levels of commercial success, but successful enough.

He continued. “The problem with most writers is that they are readers. How many of you have read a good book, a book that is respected, the sort of book that gets into literature classes in the past year?”

A few hands went up, then a few more. Most of the hands were up. She had read several such books in the past twelve months, along with several other sorts of books. But she did not raise her hand. No one was going to tell her what to do, even a best-selling author.

“You see,” he said, leaning forward for emphasis, “most of those books wouldn’t get published today, and if they did, they wouldn’t sell. Most of them didn’t sell in their own day. Sure, there’s a small market for “literary fiction,” where a little group of authors in brownstones in New York give each other prizes and nod at each other over crackers and caviar, but that’s not where real success comes from. Real success comes from selling books to people who read to escape their lives, not to enrich or enlighten them.”

“During they day, the boss rides them, their spouses belittle them, their kids harass them. But with the right book, they can ride along with heroes, people who dare, people who never fail, or if they do, it doesn’t matter because by the end of the book, they will have overcome all obstacles because that’s what they were created to do. That’s what the author made them to do.”

She sighed. This was going nowhere for her. But she’d paid. She stayed.

He sipped at his water. “So,” he said, “If I asked you to write a book for me in two weeks – it doesn’t take me that long, but I’m being generous. Sixty thousand words or so, and to make it a book that will sell, I’m betting you couldn’t do it. How do I know that?” He smiled.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

The courteous laugh returned, toured the room, and left again.

“I’m going to give you ten rules that you can use to write a book that will sell. You’ll still need a lot of work to get it sold, in fact, if you’re doing it right, you’ll spend a lot more time getting your book sold than you will hunched over a word processor. But if you follow these rules absolutely, you will write a book that will sell.”

Now, the hunched backs came off the stackable chairs. Pens were poised.

“First,” he said, holding up a finger, “Forget about realism. Just forget it. Everybody lives in the real world, more or less, and almost nobody likes it.”

He paused. Pens scratched.

“You may know that I know a little about combat.” He smiled. All of his books featured combat, soldiers, spies and the like.

“I’ve never served, myself, but my brother did. He was a hero. A genuine hero. He’s always been an inspiration to me. He went under fire to save some of his wounded comrades, seven-point-six-two tracers lighting up the night with green glowing trails.”

She remembered this description. She had read three of his books – a labor for her, to prepare for this seminar. The precise size of the bullets, the weapons, the green glow had been mentioned several times in each of the books.

“Suddenly,” he said, another favorite word of his, “My brother was shot. He went down, but he still managed to drag himself, and one last soldier to safety behind a row of burlap, ccc-c-467, class 3 single wall sandbags.

They gave him a Silver Star, and a Purple Heart, and sent him home. He spent the rest of his life, six years, in a wheelchair, in pain, living on a tiny government check, pissing and shitting into a bag.

The room was silent. No one stirred.

“Now, that’s real,” he said. “But who wants to read about that? Who, after having carried their family, who doesn’t respect them, kowtowing to a boss who treats them like trash, doing a job that means nothing to anyone; who wants to sit down for the hour they have to relax and read that?”

More silence.

“Nobody,” he said. “Maybe some simp, some peacenik who thinks they’re righteously suffering along with my brother. But they won’t buy it. They won’t pay you to tell that story.”

“What if, instead, the heroic soldier runs, regardless of his safety, through the hell of battle, rescues his friend, and turns his M-two-forty-nine, SAW light machine gun, ripping through them with five-five-six NATO until they fled his courageous fury? What if his commanding officer had clapped his hand on his tired, but firm shoulder and said, “Well done, Son. Your country is proud of you?”

“How do you think your reader feels now?”

Again, he sipped at his water.

“Some of you are thinking that’s corny. It’s not real...

… and that’s why you’re out there, and I’m up here.”

“1. Forget realism,” she wrote.

“Next. Number two,” he continued, “Never let your reader be wrong. Some of you are writing twisty plots, clever stories in which the reader is sent on a wild goose chase, hitting dead end after dead end, only to show them how clever you are at the end. Agents and editors know better than to try to sell those books.”

“But what about mysteries?” you may ask. The key to writing a mystery...so I’m told, I don’t write mysteries, is to keep the reader guessing right up to the end, and then show them that they were right all along. They’re so clever. They could be detectives, if they weren’t working at the box store fifty hours a week, and if they didn’t marry young and have all these responsibilities.”

“This is always true – no character in your book can ever be smarter than your reader. If you have a professor, or some sort of professionally smart person in your book, make them ridiculous. Make them a snob. Make them incapable of tying their own shoes. Make them sexually incompetent. Anything to make your reader feel that they are better, more capable than the smart person. Nobody dreams of being around people smarter and more capable than them.”

“If I were to write a mystery, my detective would be someone that all the other characters say is brilliant. But I’d make sure that my reader solved the mystery long before the detective did. Why, you, Sales Department Team Member, are cleverer than the cleverest detective of the NYPD!”

“They’ll pay you to make them feel like that.”

“It’s the same with a horror book. If you want it to sell, make them feel the danger, but always make them think that they would have survived, that they would have found a way out. Did you ever hear of the “final girl?” That’s the last survivor, the one that remains to tell the tale. All her friends were butchered, their brains scrambled by the Eggbeater Killer, but she was clever. She found a way.”

“It is of critical importance, if you want the book to sell, that your reader identifies with that character. They aren’t the coolest, prettiest, or most popular girl. That’s because your readers probably aren’t. You won’t describe her too carefully, so your readers can readily see themselves in her. You can talk all you want, and you probably should, about the first victim, the blond, slightly slutty bombshell with the big, jiggling breasts, or the doomed black kids firm, bulging muscles, or the soon-to-be-slaughtered, rich, popular girl’s fashionable clothes, but go light on the details about the final girl. You want your reader to think that they could be her. That they’re clever enough, good enough, lucky enough.

“Is that pandering? Yes. Will people pay for it? Yes. They do. Millions. Every day.”

“Remember, your protagonist can be bigger than the reader, stronger, more capable at things they never have to do, like fighting. But they can’t be smarter than the reader. Not ever. That’s the one thing your reader thinks they are – smart. They’ve been reading books while all their friends were out drinking, partying, getting laid. Being smart is the one thing they value about themselves.”

She squirmed uncomfortably in her uncomfortable chair. She was smart. She was lonely.

She thought about the paperback on her nightstand, the book she was reading at night, before going to sleep. The heroine was a smart, brave and skillful warrior...

...but not so smart that Soozan couldn’t see how she could solve the problems pages before she did.

The story had intrigue, plots, twists and turns...

But not any that Soozan hadn’t seen coming.

The heroine, the warrior was stronger than she, braver than she, more competent than she.

But not smarter.

The book wasn’t well written. It was...relaxing to read, to chuckle at its obvious plot and shallow characters. Soozan was sure she could do better.

And she remembered, on the top of the garish cover, the “Number one fantasy best-seller” banner.

Maybe there was something to what Balentine was saying. Maybe there was something here. She wouldn’t, she assured herself, “sell out,” but maybe she could make some...compromise between “selling out,” and not selling at all.

Balentine was on to his next point.

“Never forget your first, and most important reader. The first person to look at your book will be a low-level editor, assigned to glance through what they call the “slush pile,” unsolicited manuscripts or sample chapters. You can imagine what that job is like. Tons of garbage. Tons of work to get through.”

“It’s pretty likely, isn’t it, that the editor who glances at your cover sheet hates their job? The only pleasure this low-paid, overworked drone gets is in finding an excuse to sneer at your work, and reject it. Every one of them is a failed writer. Every one. And they hate you because you’re still writing, and they’re not.”

“Do you think they’re interested in your subtle title, your crafted, intricate plot that hides the juicy stuff behind artsy metaphors and language that their audience probably won’t understand? Do you think they have time to follow the deep, psychological profiles, the complexity of your characters?”

“That sound you just heard is the sound of your work hitting the recycle bin.”

“Your one and only edge is the fact that hours, days, weeks, months and years of wading through bad prose by commercially useless writers has burned all the soul, all the pride right out of them. They’re cynical to the core. They hate their bosses, who care nothing about “literature,” they have less regard for their readers, who, in their minds, only read dreck. But their real contempt is for you, my dear unsuccessful author. You, who take up their time with your sloppy imitations of someone you read in a literature seminar.”

He paused. Sipped.

“So, give them what they want. If one of these drones actually gets so far as to read the first sentence of your work, make it a doozy. Make it an action scene. Make it a sex scene. Make it a sexy action scene. Make it broad, simple, utterly devoid of literary merit. Make it something you’d be embarrassed to be caught reading in a coffee shop.

The editor will wrinkle their nose at it. But it is possible that here is something that will sell to the readers, that will get their boss to nod approvingly. Maybe, if that book does well, they can get out of this publishing galley slave job. So you get one more sentence.”

“Lather it up, rinse, repeat.”

Soozan found the rest of the lecture disappointing. It consisted, mostly, of repeating other points, and tips on how to structure her story to make it as predictable as possible: Three acts, setup, confrontation, resolution. She’d heard it before.

He ended by taking questions.

The young man with the black sneakers had his hand up first. “Mr. Balentine,” he said, his voice shaking a bit between star-struck and confrontational. “Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Balentine, that in your book, “Through the Green Fire,” Major Steele uses an M249 SAW when he assaults the terrorist headquarters?” He crossed his arms on his chest. “Actually, the Army doesn’t use the M249 anymore. They replaced it with the SIG Sauer XM250.”

For a moment, Soozan felt a twinge of sympathy for Balentine. Who cares? Who cares what gun he used?

“That’s a good question,” Balantine said. “What’s your name?”

“Mark. Mark Grader.”

Balentine smiled, but left the obvious joke alone. “Well, Mark, the Army didn’t make that decision until 2022. There’s still a lot of the good, old, reliable SAWs out there. And “Through the Green Fire” is set in 2020.”

Mark Grader sat down, took out his phone, and started thumb-typing furiously. He looked up after a moment, but said nothing further.

A few other questions were taken.

“Where do you get an agent?”

“You won’t until you sell some books.”

“Where do you get your ideas?”

“I don’t get ideas. I’m not selling ideas, I’m selling books.”

After he was done answering the same dozen questions he’d answered a dozen times in the last month, he thanked them, and looked at the man who had introduced him. Mr. Horseshoe haircut came back to the podium, and announced that Mr. Balentine had graciously agreed to take some of his valuable time to sign books for them. A line formed.

Soozan got at the end of the line. She didn’t have a book. She supposed she’d ask him to sign her brochure, or something. She had a question that she didn’t want to ask in front of that whole crowd.

Each of the people in front of her put their book down. Black sneakers had three of them. Each of them said something nice, about the books, about the lecture, about the seminar. Soozan had no intention of being so deferential.

She noticed that he took whatever he was supposed to sign, signed it without looking up, said, “Thanks for coming, smiled the practiced smile, maybe gave a sentence of encouragement, then immediately looked at the next person in line.

Finally, she was alone. She walked up to the table. She didn’t put the brochure down immediately. He looked up.

“Don’t you feel like a fraud?” she said.

The smile flickered.

“You aren’t even pretending to write anything worth reading,” she continued. “You write candy. Cheap candy. For grown-up children.”

He looked straight at her.

“Do you want to know what I feel like...” he paused, and looked at her name tag, “Soooozan?”

She stood silently.

“I feel like someone who gets an advance check every time I even mention that I’m going to write another candy book. An advance check that’s more money than you’ll ever make in your entire life. I can write three books in the time it takes someone like you to write a paragraph. I feel like a guy who has everything he ever wanted. I feel like someone who has thousands of readers waiting for my next book, in twelve languages. I feel like a success.”

He paused.

“What do you feel like, Sooooozan?”

She left.

There was a “mixer” after the lecture. She thought about going for a moment. She had paid, after all. But she didn’t feel much like socializing.

She walked past the “Royal Reception Hall,” and heard the voices. They sounded phony. Like there was an amateur play going on that no one was watching.

She went to her room, with its beige wallpaper, its watercolor prints, its beige sheets, and gathered her things into her bag.

The sun was warm on her face, and the warmth of the day hit her as she escaped the damp cool of the industrial air conditioning. She took out her phone to call a cab. She had a room for the night at the convention center hotel, but she wanted to leave. It didn’t matter that she had paid.

While she waited for her cab, she thought about the novel she’d been writing for the last two years. She thought about her smart protagonist, her complex and intricate plotting, her outline, hanging on her wall, with markers connecting characters, scenes, themes. She thought that just maybe, she should redo just some of it. Maybe punch up the first sentence.

She took out her notebook, and reviewed the notes she’d taken. At the back, was a list, made for her “exercise,” given at the beginning of the seminar: “Introduce yourself to seven people, and find out something interesting about them.”

There was only one name. “Clarence. Lies for pay.”

She tossed the notebook into a waiting trash can.

There was someone else waiting, looking down the street. “Clarence?” she said. He seemed to ignore her.

She touched his sleeve. “Clarence?” He turned, looking startled for a moment.

“Oh.” he glanced at her name tag. “Soozan. How was the seminar?”

“I didn’t see you there,” she said.

“I wasn’t there for the seminar,” he said.

“Then why were you in that place? It’s so...”

He smiled. “I’ve been coming here for some time now. Twice a week.”

“But it’s so...”

“Boring? Yes,” he said. “That’s why. I have a drink or two. There’s nothing...stimulating about it. It’s safe. Nothing ever happens there. Nothing demands my attention. Almost no one speaks to me. I don’t know the bartender’s name. No one expects anything of me.”

She looked at him. He still smiled.

“The seminar was...nothing. I thought maybe it was, but I don’t think I can...” she stopped.

“Clarence, I want you to tell me something.”

He waited.

“I want you to tell me it’s okay if I never sell a single book. If I just write and write and write and nobody cares. I want you to tell me...that I’m okay. I’m not a failure. That having standards isn’t stupid.”

He looked her directly in the eyes. His face had grown serious. “Sounds like you had a rough moment in there.”

She said nothing.

“Now listen, Soozan. Integrity won’t make you a dime. But it’ll make you a better person. There’s a lot of books out there that sell, but very, very few that matter. If you keep trying, maybe you’ll write one. You’ll get better at it. When you’re done, you’ll know you did something worthwhile.”

She smiled. He smiled, and nodded.

He held out his hand. She gave him a twenty dollar bill.

Her cab arrived. She got in.

He leaned down. She rolled down the window. “My name,” he said, “isn’t Clarence. It’s John.”

“So, you lied to me. For free.”

“Professional courtesy.” He said, and walked away.