End Day. James Axler

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       Chapter One

      Once again Veronica Currant found her attention wandering across the luxuriously appointed dining room, past the dark leather booths, crystal chandeliers and liveried waitstaff. It came to rest on the TV above the Manhattan restaurant’s bar. Because the presidential inauguration was less than a day away, media was replaying the whole “lost ballot” business in excruciating detail: the characters in the Florida GOP implicated in the computer tampering conspiracy, and the Supreme Court decision that had ultimately determined the outcome of the election. The country was sick of hearing about it, and so was she. She just wanted it over with. After all, there were checks and balances built into the system, no matter who was elected. The Republicans had had three successive terms in the White House since 1980. How bad could a Democratic President be?

      The tall, gaunt man on the other side of the table tapped his water goblet with a silver spoon to get her attention. “We were discussing terms on a multibook deal,” Noah Prentiss reminded her.

      It took an effort of will on her part not to stare at the swollen red knob of his nose and the constellations of tiny starbursts on his cheeks.

      Prentiss was an alcoholic, low-rung literary agent. His low-rung client—a small pudgy man who bit his nails—sat to his left. They had turned their half of the white linen tablecloth into a veritable Jackson Pollack of red-wine spills, meat juice and grease spots, bits of discarded gristle, drips of Caesar dressing, shreds of romaine and escaped bread crumbs.

      “Kyle and I have discussed the matter at length,” Prentiss went on, “and feel a raise in advance is appropriate on the next Clanker contract.”

      Clanker was one of the eight-book series Veronica edited for a New York City paperback house. The central character of the same name was a steampunk cyborg—coal and wood fired.

      “No one writes Clanky as good as me,” Kyle Arthur Levinson boasted, somewhat thickly after four martinis and a half bottle of cabernet.

      Veronica looked from one man to the other but did not reply. Silence in answer to a question was a negotiating technique she had learned from the five-foot-two pulp-fiction publisher, cigar-smoking entrepreneur and renowned tightwad who was her boss. It was a strategy that put the opposition at an immediate disadvantage.

      If she had chosen to, she could have listed many reasons why Mr. Levinson didn’t deserve more book contracts, let alone a raise in pay. He never turned in his assignments on time. Despite the advance outlines to the contrary, he wrote the same story over and over. Clanker aways ran short on energy at a crucial moment in the plot and broke up some chairs or bookshelves to burn in his brass firebox, thus saving the day. Levinson cannibalized action and sex scenes word for word from his own books. He never researched or fact-checked his work. He never read books by the other ghosts in the series, which created conflicts with canon. None of these issues set him apart from the rest of the stable—to one degree or another, all the writers were guilty of the same offenses. So why should he get more money?

      Prentiss had an answer for that.

      “Remember,” the agent said, “Kyle’s been on this series from the start. He helped build its current global audience.”

      “I’m the one who invented ol’ Clanky’s catch phrase, ‘Stoke me!’”

      That was hardly something Veronica could forget. Levinson used that tag line at least fifty times in every book, and she had to go through the manuscript and personally remove forty-five of them. Truth be told, “his” catch phrase for Clanker was stolen from “Stalk me!”—the catch phrase from another of the company’s series, Slaughter Realms. Which in turn had been lifted from “Stake me!”—the catch phrase of the house’s vampire line, Blood City.

      Sometimes in the middle of an excruciating edit of one of his Clankers, she caught herself wishing he’d write “Choke me!” so she could strangle him with a clear conscience.

      “We have come up with some numbers we’d like to run by you,” Prentiss said, holding out a slip of paper.

      Veronica took it and put it in her purse without looking at it. “A decision like this has to come from the top,” she said. “I’m sure you understand...”

      “Of course,” Prentiss said. “I understand completely. Now, how about a little something sweet?”

      Levinson was already scanning the dessert menu with keen interest.

      Half an hour later Veronica was starting to feel hungry. She’d had only sparkling water to drink, a seafood risotto and an undressed green salad. Not wanting to prolong the ordeal by ordering more food, she paid the tab with a company credit card and left agent and client happily nursing their third brandies. She knew her boss wouldn’t grouse about the bill. A $300 lunch was peanuts compared to actually giving Levinson a raise. Effective stalling cost money but paid off big time down the road when the writer became desperate. And sooner or later, writers always became desperate.

      Outside the restaurant, the January temperature was in the high thirties; it felt colder because it was so damp. She thought about walking the five blocks back to the office but changed her mind. She had a big pile of manuscripts to edit at home, and she wanted to get out of her high heels and into a pair of comfy slippers. After hailing a passing taxi and getting СКАЧАТЬ