“But wait,” said Roland, the publicist. “How can you even suggest that you’re going to sue him if you don’t know who he is?”
“We file a lawsuit against ‘John Doe.’ That gets us subpoena power. We can also serve on the ISPs to try to get the guy’s registrant information, or even better, his IP address. If it’s a shared computer, like a library, we’ll be out of luck, but it can still be useful information. If this is coming from bumfuck nowhere maybe it turns out Jake knows somebody who lives in bumfuck nowhere. Maybe you stole his girlfriend in college or something.”
Jake tried to nod. He had never stolen anyone’s girlfriend in his life.
“And if it’s a work computer, that’s the best news of all, because then we can amend the complaint not just to add the person’s name but also the name of his employer, and that’s quite the powerful lever right there. He’s brave enough when nobody knows it’s him, but if he thinks we’re going to sue his employers, you better believe he’s going to shut up and go away.”
“I certainly would!” said Roland cheerily.
“Well, that’s … encouraging,” Matilda said. “Because it isn’t fair that Jake should have to be dealing with this. Any of us, but Jake especially. And I know it’s been worrying him. He hasn’t said so, but I know.”
For a moment Jake thought he might cry. He shook his head quickly, as if disagreeing, but he didn’t think they were fooled.
“Oh no!” said Wendy. “Jake, we’re on this!”
“Right,” said the attorney. “I’m going to do my thing. That sound you’re about to hear is a deer in the headlights, running away through the woods.”
“Okay,” Jake said with a blatantly false heartiness.
“Honey,” his agent said, “like I said. It’s pathetic, but it’s a point of honor. Anyone who accomplishes anything in this life has someone out there dying to tear him down. You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. You are not to think of this as your problem.”
But he had. And it was. And that was the ongoing hell of it.
CRIB
BY JACOB FINCH BONNER
Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 43–44
Samantha’s father drove her as far as the front door of the hospital. Her mother walked her into the lobby but declined to go farther. It was all a regular ABC After-School Special, except for the absurd amount of physical pain she was in. She’d been hoping for some drugs, but there was a distinctly punitive aspect to the way the nurses, in particular, seemed to handle her labor. In the end, she got nothing until somebody told her it was too late, at which point she got more nothing. To make matters worse—and worse was hardly what she needed—the mother of one of her classmates was in labor at the same time, which meant that the boy, a wrestler with raging acne, was on site, in and out of his mother’s room, walking her down the corridor, and sneaking fascinated looks in Samantha’s direction every time he passed her open doorway.
It was a long and interesting day, punctuated by indignities and agony and the very new and fascinating attentions of the hospital social workers, who seemed especially interested in the question of how she’d be filling out the Baby’s Father line on the forms.
“Can I say Bill Clinton?” she asked between contractions.
“Not if it isn’t true,” said the woman, who didn’t even smile. She wasn’t from Earlville. She looked like she came from money. Cooperstown, maybe.
“And you plan to remain in the family home after your child is born.”
It was a statement. Could it be a question?
“Do I have to? I mean, could I leave?”
The woman put her clipboard down. “Can I ask why you would want to leave the family home?”
“It’s just that, my parents don’t support my goals.”
“And what are your goals?”
To hand this baby off to someone else and finish high school. But she never got that out, because the next contraction hit her like a boulder, then something started beeping on the monitor and two nurses came in and after that she couldn’t remember much. When the pain stopped she was just waking up, it was the middle of the night outside, and next to her bed was something that looked like a portable aquarium, inside of which a red and wrinkled creature was squalling. That was her daughter, Maria, apparently.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
An Unfortunate Side Effect of Success
About a week after their meeting, the attorneys representing Jake’s publisher inserted the following notice in the comments section after several of TalentedTom’s known appearances:
To the person posting here and elsewhere as TalentedTom: I am an attorney representing the interests of Macmillan Publishing and its author, Jacob Finch Bonner. Your malicious spreading of inaccurate information and unfounded suggestion of bad actions on the part of the author are unwanted and unwelcome. Under the laws of the State of New York it is unlawful to make deliberate statements with intent to harm a person’s reputation without factual evidence. This serves as a pre-suit demand that you immediately cease and desist all verbal attacks on all social media platforms, websites, and via all forms of communication. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit against you, this social media platform or website, and any related or involved responsible party. Representatives of this social media platform have been contacted separately. Sincerely, Alessandro F. Guarise, Esq.
For a few days there was blessed silence, and the dreaded daily trawl of his Google alert for Jacob+Finch+Bonner produced nothing but reader reviews, gossip about casting for the Spielberg film, and an actual Page Six “sighting” of himself at a PEN fundraiser, shaking hands with an exiled journalist from Uzbekistan.
Then, in the space of a Thursday morning, it all went to shit: TalentedTom produced a communiqué of his own, this one sent—again, via email—to Macmillan’s Reader Services but also posted on Twitter, Facebook, and even a brand-new Instagram account, accompanied by lots of helpful tags to attract the attention of book bloggers, industry watchdogs, and the specific reporters at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal who covered publishing:
I regret to inform his many readers that Jacob Finch Bonner, the “author” of the novel Crib, is not the rightful owner of the story he wrote. Bonner should not be rewarded for his theft. He is a disgrace and deserving of exposure and censure.
So much for the deer in the headlights theory.
And so the day unfolded. It was a terrible day.
Within moments the contact form on his author website was forwarding comment requests from half a dozen book bloggers, an interview query from The Rumpus, and a nasty if illogical dispatch from somebody named Joe: I knew your book was crap. Now I know why. The Millions tweeted something about him by midafternoon and Page-Turner was hot on its heels.