In honor— and defiance—of the bottom of the year…especially this year…
In honor of my youngest kid’s 19th birthday, and in joyous gratitude for the months long banter over titles in mystery book catalogues that triggered this latest what-the-hell-genre-is-THIS, Hirshberg…
In honor of my students. So many of my students, former and current. A couple, in particular, are going to recognize pieces of themselves here. I rarely if ever lift characters so directly from life. Couldn’t help it this time. Had to be done. I hope and trust they feel the love.
And for fun, in the hopes it gives you a rueful smile or ten.
Experimenting with making most of the content free for a while. Hoping that those of you who do find reading it worth your time consider supporting by subscribing at whatever level you can.
In the great tradition of the film capitol of the world, from which I have so recently escaped, the cover image is not a thumb town on a Great Lake, but a west coast stand-in. In this case, Bellingham Bay. But the mood’s kinda right…
I’ll post the conclusion next Thursday.
OH—also, if you’re interested, I’ll be reading and talking Infinity Dreams live on the New Panic Room podcast tonight at 10:30 EST/7:30 PST. There are…erm…live call-ins…
Your Name Here (pt.1)
Half a block from his office, Lenny stopped, staring. Early winter wind whipped in off the lake, rattling lampposts and empty metal newspaper boxes and snatching at his U.P.-YOURS! cap. From the window of the dry cleaners next to his office, Lady Lucy waved. Lenny pulled out his phone and called Jen’s direct line.
“You didn’t warn me about his pants,” he said when she answered.
It took longer than usual. Then Jen caught up. “It’s today! He’s starting today. Do you love him? You’re going to love him.”
“So you knew about the pants. And you didn’t say anything.”
“See? Your first intern. First chance to share all that hard-won entrepreneurial wisdom. Five minutes of in-person conversation, and you’re already having your horizons stretched.”
“We haven’t spoken yet.”
In front of the office, in his pants, stuffing his face with some kind of muffin and looking not toward Lenny but across Weeping Cherry Street toward the marina, stood Tonio, a recent honors graduate of Huron-Crescent High and Jen’s nephew. His parents had apparently mandated a gap year in the hope, Lenny could only assume, that he’d outgrow ideas like a career in what was left of publishing and discover a more lucrative passion. Muffin-making, maybe, or dry-cleaning. Maybe he could intern with Lady Lucy. Learn pants care.
“They stop mid-shin,” he said. “The cuffs have red stripes.”
“Lenny, I’m busy.”
“You know what, Jen?”
Lenny thought she’d hung up. But then she said, “They look good. Don’t they?”
“You’re doing it again. Thinking my thoughts for me.”
“God forbid.”
“I love it when you do that. I’m going to reward you with an entirely new series to commission.”
“How about fulfilling the assignment you’ve already got? Both of them. Lenny, I need those tree-series titles today.”
“Okay, okay. But as a bonus, I’m also giving you…the Pants series. Five books. The Pantathlon!”
“Oh, Christ. Don’t start. Pants aren’t cozy. They are not what cozy mystery readers want to read about.”
“Maybe they need their horizons stretched. Forget cats, lighthouses, aged aunts who uproariously surf soft porn while they knit. Time to style up.”
“Bye, Len. Say hi to Tonio.”
“For Whom the Bell Bottoms Toll.”
Again, Lenny thought Jen had hung up. Also, Tonio had seen him and lowered his muffin. Crumbs flew from his lips as he waved. A long curl of way-too-healthy dark hair bounced on his forehead as though off a trampoline. Lenny was about to press END himself when Jen said, “That’s…really not fucking bad. That has possibilities.”
“Told you. The Pantathlon.”
“It’s not a series. You can’t get five books out of it.”
“Chinos Too Much.”
Jen erupted into laughter. “Enlist Tonio. I challenge you both. Five titles that good by day’s end, plus potential sequel series suggestions, and I’ll pitch it to my team. See if we’ve got a writer who can crank ‘em out.”
“Stitch ‘em together.”
“Stop.”
“Five by day’s end. Done.”
“Lenny. Let him teach you. While you’re teaching him.” She sounded surprisingly serious. Sad, even?
“Jen?”
“He’s great. Super smart. You won’t believe how much he knows. And he really wants to do this, God help him.”
“Why isn’t he your intern?”
She hung up.
“Tonio,” the kid said as Lenny approached, sticking out a hand he’d wiped with a napkin, not on the pants. “Thanks again for this opportunity. I promise—
“Come on,” said Lenny, gesturing toward the marina. “This job is about speed. Efficiency. No time for small talk.”
Five minutes later, he had his new intern ensconced on the bench by the bay window at Grindstone while he got cappuccinos from Kelly, his favorite barista. She wore her dark hair clipped against her ears today. Her AirPods glowed emerald, but her eyes looked clouded, closer to gray than green, the least Chippewa thing about her. The color of the Lake, every day, no matter what color the Lake was.
“Who’s your friend?” Kelly asked, fiddling with the steamer on the espresso machine.
“You look tired,” said Lenny. “You hitting that winter Mackinac night life again?”
“Midterms,” she murmured. “He’s got great socks.”
“Socks? You mean pa…”
But even as he said it, Lenny saw. Tonio had his legs stretched across the pine-stump that served as a table, laptop on his lap, eyes on Lenny and Kelly, not the Lake. The socks below the red-striped cuffs were black with yellow splotches that could have been smiley-face emojis or splatters of paint or blazing suns.
“They’re the happiest grown-up socks I’ve ever seen,” Kelly sighed, sketching maple leaves in the milk foam with a toothpick.
Lenny took the mugs. “He’s too young for you.”
“Aren’t they all.”
For half a breath, Lenny thought she actually was flirting with him, just this once. But she wasn’t. And even if she were, he wouldn’t. Really wouldn’t. Too terrifying, too humiliating. Not to mention clichéd. Also, he couldn’t have lived with Jen’s razzing.
Also, Kelly wasn’t.
“Hang in,” he said.
“Name something for me,” she said, same as every day.
“Gotta be the right one,” he told her again, and took the coffees to Tonio.
At first—same as every day—Lenny watched the Lake. No late-season herons or cranes today, but geese everywhere, fleeing south, trailing sky behind them as though taking it with them. Out in the Strait, a container ship almost as long as the Island squatted on the horizon like a paperweight, holding the water to the Earth.
“You don’t have to ease me in,” Tonio said. He flicked an invisible something off his cuff.
Lenny sighed. At the counter, Kelly had her head over a textbook, but she sensed him looking, glanced up.
Great socks, she mouthed.
“Into what?” Lenny said, setting his mug beside Tonio’s.
“Working. I’m ready. I’m excited. I’ll get you coffee, sort e-mails, whatever.”
“We are working.”
Tonio looked surprised. For the first time, Lenny thought this intern thing might turn out fun.
“We’re stimulating our brains, young Tonio. Also gathering input. You can’t dig out what you never put in.”
If Tonio had been surprised, he got over it fast. “They kinda debunk that in The New Workplace.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a class. Part of Michigan’s 21st Century Workforce initiative, you know? Get Gen Z ready for the reality of what we’re facing?”
“So it’s like shop? Or A.P. Physics? That kind of class?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t take those. Can I ask questions?”
“Ideas are better. But when you’re out of those…”
“If what we’re doing is working—”
“It’s my work, I get to say what’s—”
“How do you measure productivity?”
Good God, Lenny realized, the kid was serious. The kid was taking notes. Tapping things into his phone. Or else he was texting someone, doing some of that Gen Z multitasking. “What do you mean?” he asked, suddenly on guard.
“Well.” Tonio’s hair-curl bounced, seemingly on its own. “Amazon’s trying wristbands. Other places monitor screen use or just film you all day. If this is working, how do you know coffee time is being properly productive?”
Lenny picked up his mug. There was nothing in it. He put the mug down. “The rent comes, and I pay it?”
Tonio laughed. A generous and thoughtful audience. Appreciative of Lenny’s joke, sure it had been one.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Lenny said. “You…” He gestured at the window. “Do some damn work. What do you think I’m not paying you for?”
At the sink, right as the sensor-faucet shut off, Lenny came up with Pantathlon title #3. “Distressed,” he murmured to his own rumpled, wind-etched face.
Neither as distinctive or as clever as Chinos Too Much. And therefore more likely to get used. Also just fine for mid-series, with the premise established. He shrugged at himself. The silver in his still-wavy hair flashed in the flat, fluorescent light. Like whitecaps, Kelly had told him one morning, when he’d bemoaned it. Now you look even more like where you live.
Another of those cryptic things she said that had made him happier than they should have. Like a good title no one was going to use. She should be my intern, he thought.
When he reemerged, Tonio and Kelly stood smiling together at the corner table with the milk pitchers and baskets of spoons. Kelly had her head down, refilling a napkin dispenser. Tonio kept nodding, and then he pointed, as though suggesting a more efficient technique. Something else he’d gleaned in 21st Century Workforce class.
They weren’t actually speaking, as far as Lenny could see. But the AirPods in both their ears blinked, his blue, hers green, which made them look like modems connecting.
Were there still modems?
When she saw him watching, Kelly waved, smiled wider than he’d known she could.
Tonio winked.
Winked.
“This is a great coffee shop,” Tonio said when they’d resettled. He’d ordered another cappuccino. He gestured at the bay.
“That isn’t actually the coffee shop, you know,” Lenny murmured. But of course it was. He was being petulant. For no reason. “You’ve never been to the Grindstone? Didn’t your aunt tell me you lived, what, ten miles away?”
“In my own thumb town,” he said, shrugging. “If you grow up here, you think they’re all the same.”
They probably are, Lenny thought. But this one’s mine.
He banged his empty cup like a gavel on the pine stump. It made a satisfying thwack. “Right. So. Three assignments today. One standing. One a kind of commission-slash-challenge I think I talked your aunt into this morning. Plus, eesh, a real estate commission, much harder and less fun, but you know, paying that rent. Plus Drumming Hour. Three p.m. to four p.m. every day, without fail.”
“We get drums?”
The kid was kidding, now. Comfortable in his new role before he’d so much as set foot in the office. Actually, at what point had Tonio been uncomfortable?
“Drumming up new business. An hour a day, minimum. Sometimes—some weeks—we do that all day. Nature of the biz.”
“But today we have assignments. From my aunt?”
“The standing one, for sure. She’s got an author doing cozies about a nursery detective.”
“Babies?” For the second time, Tonio looked surprised.
He had instincts, this kid. Intuitive understanding. “Of course not. Very good. Because, correct, babies are not cozy. Your cozy consumer might be rocking their screaming, darling niblet while reading the book we’ve titled over its shoulder. We’re talking plant nurseries. Tree husbandry, actually. So it’s crucial that our titles always reference that.”
“Oh, I love this.” Tonio sat up, feet on the floor, shoving the phone he hadn’t once glanced at back into his pocket. “This is your job. How’d you get this job? This is what I want.”
“You want to name other people’s books?”
“No, I want to write them.”
“Ah.”
“But I also want to eat.”
“They do teach you things in 21st Century Workforce class.”
“My aunt taught me that when I was five.”
“Good woman.”
She’d taught Lenny that, too, when, having previously bought his first novel, she’d not just rejected but shredded novel number two. Which had triggered a rant from him about what actually got published. Which had made her laugh. Which… “Wait. Let me get this straight, Tonio. Your Aunt Jen told you to go into publishing in order to eat? Don’t go into publishing. It’s like setting out to be a remora.”
“I don’t know what that…wait, yes I do. They’re those fish that…I get it! Except, aren’t publishers kind of more the whale? And writers are the little parasites or whatever, hanging around for scraps?”
Lenny smiled. Not bitterly. Genuinely amused. More than anyone he’d met in years, this kid made him feel like he knew something. “The whole industry—the whole world—is set up to make you think that.”
He didn’t explain. He watched his smart and smartly trousered new intern drink it in. Turn to the bay. Process.
“Want to hear how I got the job?” Lenny asked. “Your aunt took pity on me. She didn’t like my novels anymore, but she didn’t want me homeless. So she put me in touch with these Arabs—”
“Arabs?”
“I...Their nationality is not important. But yes, I think so. They were making a cheapo horror film set on a sinking ship in the middle of Lake Michigan. They needed a title, pronto. Their title—I swear I am not making this up—was Scary Lake. They gave me the script, which, like the novice I was, I wasted an entire afternoon reading. It was absurd. It had giant squid. In the lake. The Arabs were absurd, young, earnest, clueless. They had no idea what they were doing. They offered me a thousand dollars for ten good title options within 48 hours.”
“Wow.”
“I gave them a hundred. Don’t look impressed, most of them were jokes. I couldn’t help it. I pulled up the lyrics to “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and went to town. Practically a title a line there. Give Up Your Dead. The Witch of November.”
“There was a witch?”
“Nope. They loved that one, though. They almost used that one. Let’s see, what else? Ice-water Mansion.”
“Gitchee-Gumee?”
Lenny stared at Tonio. “No, actually. But that isn’t bad. You know that song well enough to quote it?”
“I grew up here, didn’t I?”
“Still. You are an unusual young man.”
Tonio watched the bay, tapping a finger against his knee. “Is Gordon Lightfoot cozy?”
Startled, stalling, Lenny lifted his empty cappuccino mug to his lips. Fucking surreal, he thought. He hadn’t even defined the term for the kid yet. Most people who read cozies couldn’t define the term, let alone mark the parameters.
“You do learn fast, don’t you?”
“Told you.”
“Actually, your aunt told me. But to answer your creepily perceptive question, I’m going to say no. Gordy’s a little…”
“Remote?”
“I was going to say solitary. But remote works. Too well. Shut up. I’m telling you a story.”
Tonio grinned. Lenny couldn’t help grinning back.
“There were so many more. Every shipping or sailing cliché I could think of. Red Sky at Morning. Below. Dire Strait.”
“Come on.”
“The Arabs liked that one, too. But in the end, instead of mine, you know what they used?”
“Scary Lake?”
“Okay, first of all, the question was rhetorical.”
“Sorry.”
“I should think so. And secondly, wrong. So there, my disturbingly prescient young intern. They dropped the ‘Scary.’”
Tonio’s laugh cracked his voice, making him sound uninhibited, six years old. “Get out of thumb town. They called it Lake?”
“The Lake. Then they went bankrupt and didn’t pay me.”
“So let me make sure I’ve got you: Your Name Here, the company which you’ve kept going for, like, a quarter century, came from a title you didn’t deliver for a movie that didn’t get made for which you didn’t get paid.”
“Ah, but wait, there’s more. One assistant Arab saw my list and liked it. Thought it was hilarious. He passed it to some industry friends. I started getting calls from other movie people. Book people. Local gas station entrepreneurs. Anyone who needed a moniker. Serendipity, young intern. The real engine of any century’s workforce.”
Tonio grinned.
Lenny stood. “Come on. I’m not not-paying you to be smart all day.”
(to be concluded next week…)