Grub by Elise Blackwell Read Free Book Online Page A

either, and there might be more money in writing if she went about it the right way, wrote the right kind of thing.”
    Jackson’s gestures were large and easy, and he touched her arm frequently, but in a way that seemed natural. Margot appreciated the way that he gave momentum to the conversation, not seeming to mind that she was soft-spoken. The trait had annoyed her last boyfriend, who’d told her that he was tired of asking her to repeat herself. He’d said that during their break-up fight in the bar where she worked, where his band played, and where they’d met. She’d started to suggest that maybe all the feedback had damaged his hearing, but she let it go. She’d already accepted the job at the bookstore and was happy to leave that particular boyfriend behind with the bar.
    “And, well, money matters, doesn’t it? I should know, because I haven’t got any to speak of, though I do have this for you.” He proffered the two twenties.
    “Was it this much?”
    “Well, maybe if you have a five in change…but, no, keep it. You were kind to have saved me from the Wattleborough debtors’ prison.”
    Margot folded the bills into eighths and pushed them into her dress pocket. “I do like a man who pays his debts promptly, but is money still so very important, in this day and age?”
    “Without it, you spend most of your life working for the first rung of the ladder. It’s increasingly important to start a writing career with money. Otherwise you wind up teaching five composition courses and never writing a word.”
    “I suppose.” Margot leaned over her knees again, this time scraping at the moss with her fingernail. “But don’t you think that really good work will eventually gain attention? Even in this day and age?”
    “Later rather than sooner, I’d argue. The quantity of books being written makes it impossible for all but the luckiest and most heavily marketed to get any attention. Take Jonathan Warbury. He isn’t a friend of yours, is he?”
    She sat up and looked at the bright green under her nail, saying somewhat absently, “I don’t mix in those kinds of circles.”
    “Well, I wasn’t going to run him down, but my question is this: is there anything that makes his work any better than that of twenty other similar writers I could name? Not at all. He’s reasonably clever, yes, and he’s certainly prolific. But so are plenty of others. The reason we’ve heard of his name—the reason you think of him mixing in circles you don’t mix in—is because he started with money and moneyed friends. He went to Harvard, and his father is tied in with the editor of The City and all kinds of people who have pull.”
    Margot noticed that he’d woven her comment into his words, that as much as he loved to talk, he was also listening to her. Her voice registered with him.
    “Warbury’s first book was reviewed before anyone had read it. No one cared what was in the thing.”
    “Is that true?”
    “I am a blowhard, but it’s true. My prediction is this: soon writers won’t publish books to make a name for themselves; they’ll make names for themselves so they can publish their books. I’ve got a friend named Eddie Renfros—”
    Recognizing the name, she interrupted. “I loved Sea Miss .”
    “Well, Eddie can’t get his second novel published to save his life, and it’s certainly no worse than Sea Miss . But the first one didn’t sell as well as it was supposed to, so he’s history. If Warbury had written Sea Miss , it would’ve won the National Novel Award or some PEN prize, and they’d be lining up the Pulitzer for the second book that poor Eddie can’t even get published by the University Press of Southern Alabama or Alaska or whatever it is. Instead, Sea Miss was lost in a flood of that year’s books. With computers, anyone who can type three hundred pages can claim to have written a book.”
    A pigeon landed a few feet from them and scooted from brick to brick, scrabbling but finding