THE HUNDRED-AND-THIRTY-FIRST PAGE

I wanted to call My Editor and ask what was really going on, but that would have led to a thorough examination of the case. The last time I had seen him, he was vomiting into a trash container out of my speaking range. I probably had not spoken directly to him since he called to say they couldn’t even sell the overstock as remainders. In reflection, he had seemed to take some delight in telling me about it. In further reflection, as I sat amidst my books, I decided that he never did like my novel. He had seen a business opportunity in it and when others failed to see such possibilities, he had come to hate the book, and in every later step of the way he sabotaged it. He had tried to kill the book, and having succeeded with such delectation, was out to do the same to me. As his treacheries escalated, I began to fear that he saw His Author as another form of the book, something to humiliate dress shabbily, starve, and march to the pulping machine. Is that what he had in mind for me? The pulping machine.

No.

No.

No.

No.

He couldn’t do that to me. I’d pulp him first.