Nick and Anastasia have taken on too much editing work with their self-made company Ghost Train Publishing, and something has to give.
After our demonic alarm clock screeches for ten minutes, there’s a litany of emails from our clients, plus a text from our friend, Cockroach. He wants to get together for drinks tonight.
You gotta stop overworking yourself, man. You overthink. Just come out and drink like a champ. You’ve been promising for a month. Time to pay up.
I should respond. He’s been there for Anastasia and me over the past ten years. He talked us through the struggles with our publishing house, put up with my temper. He encouraged Anastasia to do stand-up comedy on the side too. I’ll shoot him a text at the office. I really will.
“Get up, asshole.” Anastasia pulls the covers down and tries to drag me out of bed. “We gotta get to the office by seven.” I smirk and resist, but she wrenches me up.
There’s a stack of manuscripts, deadlines are creeping up on us, and I kid you not, nine-tenths of these novels involve trains. Every year, we seem to have some particular trend. Last year, it was vampires, so this is a bit of a quantum leap.
“Fuck,” I groan, but I shouldn’t. This is our work, something I can take pride in. This is something I helped create, our little office, with our ten editors and our commitment to taking chances on unknown authors. And we don’t just fob off all the work to the editors. We try to read many of the manuscripts ourselves.
“Nicky, you’re the one who wanted to expand our clientele,” Anastasia says. “You said we could handle this.”
“And I can. We can.”
“You better. Because you need to carve out some ‘Anya time.'” She grins and does that dancing eyebrow routine I love so much. I wish I could discard all this shit and make love to her. Crank up the Tchaikovsky and find release. Hang out with Cockroach in bars that evoke old Hopper paintings, with blue lamps glowing in the stillness of haunting midnights.
Now I try to dress and go over the first tranche of emails at the same time. First up is Everett Guttman. He doesn’t know a thing about interiority, doesn’t know what the word “bode” means, and he wants his 600-page draft in four days (a story about a Vietnam vet who goes on a killing spree on a train). Another email from a brand-new potential client, Bina Spicoli (who’s been writing to find herself after she lost her husband to EMT porn). She’s trying to gauge if we’re a good fit for her, and wants us to give her a fifty-page sample of what she calls “your purported expertise.” Fifty pages doesn’t seem like a lot, but on top of thousands of other pages, it really is. She wants it back in two days, too.
Another text from Cockroach: 7:30, Bavo’s Bar. No excuses man! Like I said, you’ve been promising. Don’t go soft on me, motherfucker!
He’s got a point. I did promise. And I still mean it. Cockroach is my best friend.
So I get dressed and scarf down my morning meal of beans, onions, and yogurt, which Anastasia ribs me about (even though she eats more onions than me). My phone pings with other reminders, and Anastasia tries to stop me, but I have to check. They’re important alerts. Check my blood pressure, pay my credit card bills, make sure we stop at CheapGoods because we’re low on groceries, and we are NOT going to dine on Vienna sausages and onions. We did enough of that back in the days of sketchy apartments and neighbors named Bubba and Hickam Lomax.
“I’m not kissing a guy who smells like a fucking onion,” she quips, but she kisses me anyway. I laugh as we get our asses out of our mango-colored house.
Just then, the phone pings again. This particular ping indicates that there’s an email from one of our clients.
I start to open the email, but Anastasia grabs me and pulls me toward the car.
“Let’s go.”
“Just a second.” I quickly have a look. Great. Cyril Higgenbottom.
I slump into the passenger’s seat. It could be one long day.
At exactly 6:37, we pull out of our home in Pastoral Heights, this little subdivision on the west side of town. To some degree, there’s a certain soullessness with the same guacamole, egg-yolk, and mango-colored houses, but it beats our younger days in apartments with turd-colored walls and names like The Convenience Court. This is what taking on even more clients has netted us. It’s worth it. Especially in the evenings, when we walk through the neighborhoods as the butter-colored lamps come on, and the scents of sausages, grills, and elegant perfumes flirt with our senses.
“Which monstrosity shall we tackle first?” Anastasia says, as the phone pings again. Hey man, 7:30 good? Let me know. 8:00 is good too. Hope you’ve found some masterpieces. Don’t ghost me, bud.
“Ah, we’ll figure it out,” I say. “Time enough for that.”
The clock on the dashboard changes to 6:38.
“Perfect. Some Nick time.” She grins and gives me a kiss. She smells like mint toothpaste, onions, and soap, a pleasant mélange.
“Gorgeous morning.” I hope it is. Huge puffy clouds flit through the sky, elegant dancers on a vast cerulean ballroom.
We cruise neat driveways, perfectly mown lawns, litanies of minivans, BMWs, and a couple Teslas here and there. Very little traffic now. Signs rush past. Pedestrian crossing. 15 MPH. 10 MPH, past Strickland High School at the edge of the subdivision. A yellow light flickers in front of the school. Don’t run over the kids! When we smoothly cruise through, we’re greeted by a smiley face on a sign. It should make me smile too, but there’s so much expectation in that electronic face with the little blue dot tracking our speed.
So many commands, and a part of me feels a little overwhelmed. But I’m shouldn’t be. I’ve got this.
Then a sudden shift to 20 MPH, after we hit the light that leads us out of the subdivision and onto Hot Springs Avenue, where elegant old Victorian, Colonial, and Tudor homes line either side of the street, along with massive oak and elm trees.
I check Cyril’s email again.
Sorry to bug you, Mr. Botkin, but could you possibly get us this round of edits in three days instead of a week? The wife and I are going on a cruise. Last minute decision. I know you probably hate me, but we’ll make it worth your while!
Fuck. I know this sounds pompous, but I really hate when people move the goalposts around, change the deadlines. I’ve tried hard to live up to my promises at Ghost Train Publishing. When I’ve promised something in two weeks, I’ve really tried to get it done in one. Of course, with the load we have now, the goal is just to ensure they get it on time. But it’s the principle, again.
“Who is it?” Anastasia says. She touches my left arm. “How bad?”
“Cyril.” I inhale. Hot Springs Avenue is a two-lane road, but a dipshit in a cranberry-colored truck zips around us into the other lane, almost strikes a Dodge Stratus, and then pulls in front of us with little room to spare.
“That asshole,” Anastasia slams on the horn. “How’s that for a signal, you douchebag? Why are you in a hurry?”
She turns back to me as the truck zooms up the road.
“What does Cyril want?”
“Oh, he just wants this round of edits in three days instead of a week.”
Anastasia stares at me, her owl-like eyes filled with a kind of sorrow, a kind of weariness. I know what she’s thinking. I’m going to cave to client demands. Again. I wish she were wrong. But I have a reputation for being fast. For being timely.
“I can do this, Anya,” I say. “I promise.”
“Don’t say that word, Nick.” She offers a long stare. “You’re a good man, but don’t go overboard. It’d break my heart.”
Cockroach texts again. Hey man, shoot me a text as soon as you get this, all right? I know things are busy, but still, just talk to me. You promised to hang out.
Promise, promise. What a word. It’s a word that’s starting to feel harsh, like some dark creed. But I can still do it. My sister, Nan, always said I needed to take things in baby steps, and maybe she’s right. I can start with sentence-level edits and move from there into the thematic issues. Don’t think about too much at once. Think about something positive, too. Like Cockroach.
I love hanging out with Cockroach, especially because as a bartender he can make some spot-on observations about people. People watching with Cockroach is fun. He can tell you who has a shitty family history, who he thinks has abandonment issues, who has a hidden temper. Knowledge spills from Cockroach with an ease I can only envy.
My phone pings again. Less than a week until the initial round of edits on Karla Pritchard’s novel’s due. This one is about a mother-son fight on a train. The highlight of this one is the mother telling her son she wanted to have an abortion, while he was watching some YouTube clip with a laugh track.
And yet another ping. An email from Karla of all people.
“Nicky, are you all right?” Anastasia rolls up to a stoplight which turns an arresting red, while a left turn signal sends people onto Broadway. What can I say? How can I tell her the truth, even though we’ve shared so many secrets and jokes and lovemaking sessions and pranks together in our past. How can I tell her I need off this never-ending train?
Here’s the thing. I’d like for nothing more than to just relax a little. But people have deadlines, and if you say no, there are consequences.
So I just say, “I’m fine.”
There was a client a year ago, Gertrude Schicklgruber. She was writing this memoir about her family’s legacy, going all the way back to late Hapsburg Austria. But she wanted a first edit in two days. For a 500-page memoir.
“I’m getting up there in years,” she’d said. “I just want to bequeath this to my family. To let them know the shape and scope of our lives. We’re we’ve come from. Where we could go, you know?”
“I’ll get it done,” I’d said. “I’m more punctual than Phileas Fogg.”
I understood that need to leave a mark on the world. To leave something, however small it might seem to others. I wanted so much of that with Ghost Train (although I wanted to be a Maxwell Perkins or Gordon Lish, sans the fights with Raymond Carver). I wanted to make a difference in others’ lives, as saccharine as that sounds. To say that I contributed to a novel’s growth into something beautiful and dynamic and seductive.
And speaking of time, it wasn’t that I didn’t try to meet Gertrude’s deadline. I did. I swatted away Anastasia’s offers to cook, to go out for walks. I couldn’t even talk to my sister, sweet Nan. I was a computer zombie, and she and Anastasia had had to pry me from the computer in the middle of the night. I was apparently delirious. I didn’t even make it through one day on that project, and both had insisted I give up Gertrude for my health.
But it was what Gertrude said that hit me: “I thought you could deliver. Don’t promise the world. If you’re not capable, accept your deficiency.”
Deficiency. What a cold word. I vowed to purge that word from my record as much as possible, no matter how many manuscripts. I could get mountains and I would keep going.
Now we turn right onto Van Der Linden Street, a four-lane road. Houses have given way to a myriad of businesses. Richardsonian Romanesque structures mingle with sleek glass ones that hold shops like Sugar Daddy’s Morning Brew, Yakamoto’s Sushi Empire. Signs proclaim the BEST NEW HOUSING IN TOWN. Vehicles roar, spewing exhaust, Afroman, country, and some talk radio.
I don’t want to look at the fucking email, but I know I need to. Preferably before we get to the office. I need to have all our deadlines and complications and everything in between nailed down.
Another text from Cockroach. Just shoot me a line, man. What are you fuckin doing, jerking off? Luv ya!
I should tell Anastasia about Cockroach, but just as soon as we get to the office. Friends are forever, but clients are demanding. If there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s the importance of priorities. I know that sounds cold, and it really does sound bad, but it’s the hard truth. I have to work at it. I’m not Cockroach, who has this charisma, this ability to move across the room from one customer to another, to remember their favorite drinks. Anastasia and I call him “Bill Clinton without the blowjobs.”
“What does Karla want?”
“My penis,” I quip, but Anastasia slugs me in the shoulder.
“That’s all mine.”
“Tell that to Karla.” I try to grin, but Anastasia shakes her head.
“Just read it, Nicky. Be serious here.”
Dear Nick and Anya,
I’ve decided to take this novel a different direction. I decided the mother on the train didn’t feel natural. I’ve attached a new draft. If you can have this in four to five days, that would be great. Sorry to inconvenience you and Anya.
All the best,
Karla Pritchard
This means that we’re going to have to start over – on a novel I truly hate, a Hallmark bullshit story about a mother and son reunion on a train. Anastasia says as much as she hates book burnings, this is one book that could go into the pyre. I hate that we’ve gone from books we believe in to all this. But that’s the business side of things.
On top of that, she calls Anastasia Anya. That’s something just between us, two people married for ten years, an unwritten communion which we treasure and hold and marvel at.
“At least she’s killed off the mother,” Anastasia says.
I have to laugh. Then I start emailing Karla. She’s the type who panics if you don’t respond within ten minutes of receiving the email.
The phone pings again. Ping, ping, ping. Cockroach.
Hey man, it’s not hard to reply to a fucking text is it? Just reply. Just two words, man. Just tell me if you’re in or out for tonight. I love ya man, but I’m increasingly close to stabbing you in the eye with a fuckin’ pencil.
I pause over the email. I really need to reply to him. But Karla is waiting. I can imagine her in her cinnamon-colored house, refreshing the screen, forming opinions of me as time ticks and expands like a monster. But Cockroach’s anger is rising. When he jokes about ways to kill me, I know I’m fucked.
But I think of Gertrude again, that word, “deficiency.” As angry as Cockroach is, he’ll forgive me in the end. Karla won’t. So I shoot Karla a terse email and tell her I’m on top of her book. There won’t be a problem at all, and please let me know if she has questions.
“Deal with old Karla?” Anastasia says.
“I wish she’d kill off the book.” I try to laugh, but I notice a harshness rise in my voice, and it scares the shit out of me.
“Karla’s like Rasputin,” Anastasia quips. “We can poison, stab, and shoot her, and she’ll never die. I think we have to accept that.”
I laugh. Anastasia can find the funny in just about anything. Who can tell jokes about debt, suicide jokes, 9/11, jokes that would get her cancelled – and all with great aplomb? I tell tame dad-type jokes. So I just smile and say, “Well, maybe the train in that bullshit story will swerve, and people will die faster.” Anastasia laughs and punches me in the arm, and I have to smile. Anastasia’s laugh, musical, husky (the ghost of a thousand Camels and joints past) is something true and beautiful that I try to hold on to, even as we rush into the rat race of exhaust and drivers in minivans, sterile-colored BMWs, and cranberry and midnight-colored trucks vying for the Darwin Award.
Now we’re at the railroad crossing on Grant Street, which is a bit of a labyrinth. So FIRST, there’s a stoplight, and just a few feet beyond that, the railroad crossing itself, a series of crossbucks and lights. No gates, though. There’s a long line of cars behind Anastasia and me, and the light is red right now. Exhaust sputters, and a few engines rumble behind us. People are eager to move forward from this stop, from this location, next to Mr. Smiley’s addiction clinic with its giant yellow smiley face and baby vomit-colored walls, next to the giant billboards for Mohammad’s Bail Bonds (inexplicably in what looks like Fraktur font) and the Harvest Fellowship Church. Aryan, blond-haired Jesus (without a trace of swarthiness) stares at me and proclaims HUMBLE THYSELF.
Another text from Cockroach. You’re really an asshole, sometimes, buddy. I can be. I’ve barked at him a few times (the last time, I told him bartending was easy compared to a myriad of other jobs), and Anastasia too (the last time, I actually said she was too cheerful). I feel truly bad, wish I could somehow wipe those words away. But they linger like words on a whiteboard, scrawled in permanent marker. As soon as we get to the office, I swear, I’ll email him, I’ll make this whole thing right.
“Gee, you’re popular,” Anastasia says.
I grunt and think. Everett wants his killer manuscript in four days. Bina wants her so-called sample in two. Cyril wants his manuscript in three. Karla wants hers in four to five. And the day is just beginning. They may ramp up the demands, constrain time even more. I try to make the math work in my head, but every permutation equals a deficit of hours.
“Earth to Nick.”
“I’m sorry, Anya,” I say. “What is it?”
“The latest text? Who’s it form?”
“It’s just Cockroach.”
“Just Cockroach?” Anastasia shakes her head. “Nicky, he’s our best friend. What’s wrong with you today?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I scroll through my emails. Karla has replied, and she wants to make sure I can handle this. This project is the core of her life. “I love Cockroach. I love that son of a bitch, you know that. I’ll get back to him.”
“Then don’t say ‘just’ Cockroach. What does he want?”
What do I say to Karla?
“Earth to Nicky.”
“He wants to get drinks tonight.”
“Great. I could use a drink too.”
“But all these projects…”
“I think you overpromise. I hate to be harsh with you, Nicky, but you do. You think it’s a virtue, but it’s just as bad as doing porn.”
A part of me thinks she’s right, but there’s something frustrating. You try so hard to please everyone and when someone tells you you’re wrong, it’s like it all collapses. You don’t know where the hell to go next.
“I don’t overpromise,” I snap. “Look, we have a huge load, but I can handle it, all right? Everyone has their moments of stress. It’s no fucking problem.”
“Let’s just get some drinks,” Anastasia says. “Look, getting away from a computer will be good. Do it for me, if you can’t do it for our friend, huh? And I’d like to have a good time, too, you know. I’m just as busy, but I’m not complaining. I work just as hard, Nicky. Don’t you think I’d like to have more time to do stand-up? To do something beyond editing?”
I grunt something. Car horns honk behind us, a series of blares that melt into discordant diarrhea, and Anastasia shouts, “I’m eager to move, but the light is red, genius.”
Just then, a train horn rises. A blue and orange engine snakes into sight. The train is coming from the east, moving toward me, toward my passenger seat. The lights atop the crossing begin to flicker, on and off, on and off, like giant possessed eyes.
“Isn’t that all the luck?” Anastasia jokes. “We get stopped by a train, and we have to read about trains. We’re on track to have an interesting day.”
“Oh god, please never say the word ‘train’ again.”
Just then the stoplight flickers green. The train rolls closer, and its horn sounds again. It’s even more discordant than the obnoxious car horns. It’s probably only going twenty miles an hour or so, and there’s a long line of cars behind it. Coal-colored tanks cars, cranberry and piss-colored boxcars.
A car horn blares behind us, and Anastasia takes off, but that feels so distant. Everything except the train feels distant. The train snakes closer to me in the passenger seat, its lights almost staring at me like it has some kind of monstrous face. Everything feels like some slo-mo scene, and as Anastasia bumps across the tracks, I imagine the moment the train makes contact with my window, as shards of glass shatter and tons of metal turn me into some train track pizza, hold the anchovies. I imagine Cyril and Karla and every other fucking client aboard that train, laughing their asses off as I let out my last scream. I imagine the train opening its metal mouth, but instead of a horn, it spews out all sorts of signals, cell phone pings, nags, reminders, an angry Cockroach. It’s like Thomas the Tank Engine and Salvador Dali and the man in the gray flannel suit all fucked and produced this monstrosity.
“Jesus,” I scream. I’m only now aware that Anastasia’s zipped across the tracks and past a pina colada-colored elementary school with a verdant soccer field and a giant flag flapping in the morning breeze. I look behind me. The train is moving with swiftness through the crossing, and I think again, of being crushed or eaten by it.
“We’re all right.”
“Didn’t you see the fucking train?”
“Didn’t you see the fucking light?” Anastasia snaps.
“I’d say the train trumps the light.”
“And you didn’t hear that dipshit honking his horn?”
“I’m worried about you, Nick.”
“I’m not the one who played chicken with a hundred tons of metal. I’m just stating facts.”
“I’m not gonna let a thousand assholes honk at me,” Anastasia says. “Fuck your facts.”
She’s shaking. She can be sarcastic and brash, but seeing this fragility now breaks my heart. And weirdly, I hate her for it at the same time. I wish she could just keep it all together, at least for the moment.
“Well, it’s better to deal with the dipshits.”
“Like you just deal with me – and Cockroach?” Anastasia still shakes, but there’s a steel in her eyes.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I look back down at my email. Something from a potential new client. Great. “I love you both. I love you both so much. You know that.”
Anastasia strikes the wheel, and the horn blasts its own indignant cry, as we climb a hill, one vehicle in a long, never-ending line. I can’t lie. It scares the hell out of me. Angry Anastasia scares me, because there’s a force to her. When she stays angry, there’s a chill worse than Siberia, and she gets more laconic.
“And you’re so wrapped up in your fucking email, you can’t look at your wife.” She strikes the wheel again. “You can’t even say you want to do something for me. You can’t tell your best friend we’ll go have drinks. That’s not a hard choice. And yet you drag this thing out, as if it is. It’s not like asking we’re asking you to marry your sister.”
“I love Cockroach,” I murmur, staring at the expanding abyss of email. “And I love you, Anya. I just don’t want to see you risking your life because of some idiot driver.”
“My God, Nick, did you even hear what I said? Talk about a mixed signal.”
I just nod and keep scrolling. I don’t know what to say. Sorry won’t do it. I could make a quip about what she said about marrying Nan. But that would piss her off more.
We keep rolling, past car dealerships, past Bacon Bob’s Breakfast Bungalow, with bacon and scrambled-egg covered walls, past crumbling French-fry colored houses. People zoom by in adjacent lanes, women in aviator shades, men in horn-rimmed glasses, even bros with backwards baseball caps. They all look concentrated, intense, miserable.
Anastasia sighs and looks at me. I can only imagine what she sees. A guy trying to keep it altogether. A guy who’s promised so much, he has nothing of himself left.
“Nick, admit it. You overpromised. There’s no shame in admitting that. We can figure things out. Take on a bigger team, if needed. I just want you to be happy. To be my Nicky.”
I wonder if she’s right. But a part of me doesn’t want her to be right.
I’ve worked so hard to keep things together. I don’t want to work at some place like CheapGoods like back in grad school. I wore a black apron and worked the cash register, checking out pita bread, vodka, oodles of mucus-colored TV dinners. I still think of the awful beeps that rose with each item I checked out, the customers who told me speed it up, speed it up. No wait, I forgot my Jimmy Dean sausage. Hold on while I get my Diet Pepsi, my herbal shampoo, my pita bread, my guacamole. Could you speed it up, asshole? My dog’s got obedience school in three minutes, I’ll be late for the latest Star Wars movie, and I still need to gas up.
“Look,” Anastasia says, as we zoom across an intersection and through yet another stoplight, flashing yellow purgatory. “What happens happens. But I don’t want something to happen to you. Just go along for the ride.”
“But what if we fail?”
“We’re alive. That’s what matters. And shit, I don’t mean to sound like some Hallmark movie sage, but it’s true. You overpromise, Nick.”
“It won’t matter to the clients or anyone else.”
My phone pings, and Anastasia puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Leave it.”
“But it might be important.”
“Do it for me.” There’s this weariness, something almost sad in her voice, something I really haven’t heard much in our ten years. So I don’t look, and Anastasia smiles, her old, crooked smile. We keep moving forward, a heat and silence hanging over the car, as we rush by a park, a community center. After what seems like two hundred years, she lets out a little laugh.
“Remember hitting those trash cans? Remember the ease, the momentum, just being able to not give a fuck, to just watch everything loose?”
“Those were some good times.” I grin.
I smile as we flash past the Rocky Mountain Gas Company, a Mormon temple, a beige-walled convenience store, with walls of sodas and energy drinks staring out. A sign proclaims 50% off all twelve-packs of Pepsi products. There’s this swarthy man in a maroon shirt and ripped blue jeans. He’s just shaking his booty in front of the store, dancing to the cadence of some invisible song. What I love is the way he twists, he gyrates. Some might think he’s having a stroke, a seizure. But I want to think he’s taking commands from something only he can see.
“Look at that.”
Anastasia sees it, and she laughs.
“Pull over.”
“Really?” But Anastasia’s smiling, and she makes a smooth shift into the parking lot.
I wonder if this man has a friend in the world. Or if he’s utterly alone, dancing to release every ounce of pain, every ounce of bullshit. I hope he has someone, his own Anya. But either way, I must tell Cockroach about this. First, though, I have to apologize.
Hey man, I’ve been an asshole. Let’s talk tonight.
I stare at the screen. No bubbles forming. No sign. No signal. Time to try again.
I have to slow down. Let’s get wild tonight and shake our booties.
I keep watching the swarthy man dance. He swivels, moves backwards, almost stumbles into a bike rack, but he rights himself, just as the screen shows that Cockroach has read the message. As the swarthy man resumes his dance, the phone pings with some other alert. Probably Cyril, Karla, Bina, one of them. But meanwhile, text bubbles begin to form, unknown words soon to be born in the expanse of bright, beautiful day. I get out of the car, and so does Anastasia. I offer to buy her a monster-sized Coke, and she smiles and offers to buy me some Flaming Hot Cheetos, as we walk toward the store to our own little cadence. We saunter in and back out, our snack-filled courage in hand. The text bubbles disappear, then form again. The swarthy man still swivels and turns, and I try to absorb myself in all this and shut out the roars and exhaust, all the trains in the world.
