Benjamin felt there were some things he should say to her on behalf of the manuscripts and their authors, but they all jammed in his throat at once. How many times had she ditched a promising writer’s career because her stomach was upset, or a cabbie was rude, or her PMS meter was off the scale? How many careers and lives had been trashed because the author’s pages had not contained the politically correct slant, the cause of the moment, the verbal wash-and-wear fad of the hour? There was simply too much to say. Bending over, Benjamin took the dull edged letter opener off her cluttered desk, thrust its point through her left eye and out the back of her head. She hadn’t even had time to scream. Her mouth was open, a single string of drool hanging from her astonished lower lip.
Withdrawing the letter knife from her head, Benjamin whirled and faced the door. Across the hall was the closed door of Colin Dean’s office. His name was on the door’s frosted glass pane.
“I’m coming for you, Dean!” he bellowed. “Do you hear me? I’m coming for you!”
It would be simple. Run, leap across the hall, dive through the glass panel, and take Colin Dean and throw him through his own office window. That accomplished, he could then shout after him, “If you can’t do the time, Colin, don’t do the crime!” After that it wouldn’t matter what happened.
Taking a deep breath, Benjamin braced himself against the dead reader’s desk and—
“Sorry to keep you on hold for so long, Benny.” The sounds of “Mack the Knife” had been replaced by the words of Colin Dean. The editor’s voice was soft and articulate. Benjamin looked at the receiver in his hand as though it had appeared there through magic. He turned and looked around his office: the desk, the filing cabinets, the birch paneled walls. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head as he listened on the phone. Part of him was still across town trying to kill Colin Dean. As he sat in his office he could hear the glass shattering, Dean’s screams as his body hurtled toward the sidewalk.
“If you can’t do the time…”
And Dean was talking in his ear about the Roger Parish manuscript. Grover Hill’s editor was still alive. Despite that, the day turned out rather well. The final figure on the Parish novel came in with a broom strapped to it’s bowsprit. Simple really. Colin Dean kept interpreting Benjamin’s stunned silence as someone who could not believe the crap he was being offered and was about to take a walk. They eventually settled on an amount for Roger’s manuscript that was almost triple the author’s previous advance. In addition, Dean gave Benjamin Waters the biggest compliment an editor can give a literary agent. He said, “You’re getting to be a real pain in the ass, Benny. I won’t be so easy next time.”
After the talk was ended and Benjamin had hung up, he collapsed on his desk in tears. He was listening to the sirens as the crowd on the sidewalk gathered around Colin Dean’s bloody smashed corpse.
“You are the one who asked for this session, Benjamin,” said his therapist. “I had a devil of a time getting hold of someone to cancel to make a hole for you. Now that you’ve got it, what’s the emergency? You’re just going to sit there?”
Don Franklin was tweedy, bookish, and blinked large blue eyes through oversized lenses. He looked like a bass who taught comparative literature at Columbia. His foot twitched impatiently. “Well?”
“Thanks for the support, Don.”
The therapist grimaced, took a deep breath, and nodded as he let it out. “Okay. I’m steamed. This wasn’t the most convenient emergency you’ve ever had. Anyway, I apologize. I know you can’t pick your moments. But I did say they’d get worse if you quit therapy.”
“It takes real class not to say I told you so, Don.”
Don Franklin’s eyebrows went up. “Look, you can either tell me what’s the matter, sit there like a post, call me names, or whatever. You’re going to be billed for the time all the same.”
Benjamin leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and felt the tears well in his eyes. “It’s really getting out of control. It used to be fun. It still is fun a lot of the time. I get to do things, say things, that a lot of people would secretly like to do—”
“No,” interrupted the therapist. “You do not do those things, and you do not say them. It’s all in your head. It’s all fantasy.”
“I hear them. I see them. Hell, I even smell them.”
“No you don’t, Benny. You don’t see them, hear them or smell them.” Benjamin listened in astonishment to the therapist. He couldn’t remember why he had called the idiot in the first place; his superior attitude, his lies, all of his own unresolved issues. The man was being paid to infect his clients with his own disease, and now finally it had come out. Don was totally out of touch with reality.
After all, he had just called Benjamin Waters “Benny.” Everyone in the world knew about that. Benjamin sprang out of the chair, whirled about, and struck Don Franklin in the head with his naked foot. The therapist fell backwards over his chair and scrambled to get to his feet. Again the ball of Benjamin’s calloused foot struck his head, again, and again until Don Franklin’s body was still, the blood from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes pooling on the hardwood floor.
“Benny, are you all right?”
Benjamin lifted his head from his desk, opened his eyes, and looked up to see Alex Merit’s concerned face peering in the door. “I was resting my eyes, Mr. Merit. I guess I have a bit of a headache.” Benjamin decided against calling Don Franklin for an appointment. What would be the point? The man was hopeless.
He tapped his fingers on the papers in front of him. “I just finished talking with Colin Dean at Grover. We have an offer on the new Parish novel.”
“Oh?” Alex Merit pushed his way into the small office and took the papers from Benjamin’s outstretched hand. His florid jowls quivered as his quick eyes scanned the worksheet. “Excellent,” he murmured beneath his breath as his eyebrows went up. “Excellent,” he said out loud. “I’m proud of you, Benny. You’ve done a fine job here. Take your headache and go home, son. You’ve earned yourself the rest of the day off.”
“Thanks, Mr. Merit. I might do that.”
“You’ve been here long enough, Benny. Call me Alex.”
“Only if you call me Benjamin.”
Alex Merit laughed and nodded. “That’s right. Benjamin. Okay, Benjamin.”
After Mr. Merit left his office, Benjamin waited to see if some trailing feather of fantasy might make him a junior partner in the agency or bring the entire building down in flames, but nothing materialized. Anyway, he did have a slight headache, and he felt emotionally drained. Benjamin decided to grab a bite to eat at Izzy’s and head on home.
At the deli he and the waitress Nola were the only occupants. Julio, who usually manned the cash register, was in the back. Benjamin had barely started undressing Nola to take her upon the counter when she placed the hot corned beef on rye in front of him. “Here you go,” she said, her wicked smile hovering beneath those wicked eyebrows. “I made it just the way Suzie said you like it.” She leaned her elbows on the counter as Benjamin lifted the sandwich and took a bite. It was delicious. Better than delicious, it was erotic. As Benjamin chewed, Nola’s full bosom strained against the front of her uniform.
“So, how do you know Suzie?” Benjamin took another bite and mentally sank his head between Nola’s heaving breasts.
“We’ve been roommates for a few weeks.”
Benjamin took a sip of decaf and positioned his sandwich for another bite. “And what’s Suzie been saying about me?”
“She calls you Still Waters. That’s your last name, isn’t it? Waters?”