Why any of these fans think they can get at him now is beyond me. Can they just take a breath and realize that maybe trying to get an autograph at the airport isn’t the smoothest move?

  Me, I’m kicking it safely from the center aisle of seats, watching Church do as he’s done presumably many times, walking a quick enough pace, head somewhat down, grinning and waving. He only stops to greet a mother and her toddler (nice celebrity move, bro), just enough so that any pictures and video that makes it onto social media will at least portray the J.D. Church as somewhat humble, and maybe a little bit shy.

  One bodyguard sticks to his side while the other retrieves his luggage at baggage claim. There’s already a vehicle waiting when they’ve gotten the luggage. Pretty nice, not a limousine, but rather one of the many new Tesla models being recommended to ride app drivers. Just like that, in under 25 minutes, Church is in the safety of a vehicle like a pro. He navigates the confusion and stress of JFK with ease, and once he’s in that backseat, I bet he’s breathing better, probably chatting with the bodyguards, nothing too intimate. Likely today’s schedule of events. It’s going to be a long week in the city. Church hasn’t visited since last year, which means everyone earning anything off his brand name is going to ensure that they get the most out of him while he’s here.

  The Tesla is easily lost in traffic. One wrong turn, and he’s no longer in my sights. Not that I’m too worried. When you have access like I do, every email and text message shared between agent and author, author and editor, author and publicist, it doesn’t really matter if his driver makes a right at the intersection and I am stuck at a red light.

  I know where he’s staying.

  I know what route the driver will likely take.

  And best of all, I know which room the publisher has booked. You see, an author like Church doesn’t want to go for the penthouse suite. No, imagine if word got out that he enjoys such lavishness. He wants to remain grounded in reality. Just any ol’ room will do. So that means seventh floor, third door on the left.

  Well, good, because I just so happen to have reserved the room next door. Modest price for Manhattan, too. So, I take my own route, side streets and then over the bridge. I’ll get there around the same time he does, but even so, I won’t be spotted.

  I won’t even be in the same line.

  Where they get dropped off, I drive by, choosing to park the car myself in the hotel’s own subterranean parking garage. When I finally make it out of the elevator and step foot into the lobby, he’ll be almost finished checking in. Not that Church has any of those details. His two bodyguards handle the business while Church focuses on his phone, presumably he’s texting with, I don’t know, maybe Pendel, or his young assistant. Yeah, probably the latter actually. She seems like the loyal type, never dropping the ball. You’d have to be if you last more than six months as Pendel’s assistant.

  The bodyguards aren’t paid to stick around.

  I’ll wait at the bar, sipping from a seltzer, while they chat and then part ways. I’ll leave the glass almost full, walking the length of the lobby casually enough not to catch any looks. At the elevator block, I’ll stand near him, but not near enough. The elevators always offer their own preemptive cues. People rush off the elevator and there’s always a few that clamor to get on first, when really the worst spots are in the back of the elevator.

  Church knows this. He is much calmer and nondescript than any fan might think. Though recognizable when one’s read even a single paragraph of his work, he could easily pass off as just another middle-aged white man. Yet even at this hotel, he battles the hellos, the various fans asking for an autograph. Still, I wait. I’m patient like that.

  Does it seem like I’ve done this before?

  Is it so obvious?

  In the elevator, we stand next to each other, both staring up at the numbers rolling past. In the hushed silence of an elevator, you’d think I’d be nervous; Church is standing right next to me. Yet no, it’ll be okay. I’ve played this out in my head. Everything goes according to plan.

  When we both get off on the same floor, I know well to make a show of how ironic that we’re “neighbors.”

  He grins and nods, “Seems like it.” I see it in his eyes, the exhaustion.

  We’re both fumbling for our key cards when I make that connection, a simple and so very common ask, yet the one he will soon regret.

  “Umm,” I start and then stop, coming off shy. “Could I…?”

  He nods, exhaling deeply, a quick draw from his pocket revealing an expensive pen, “Autograph? Sure.”

  “Thanks so much,” I say, reaching into my pocket. My turn to grin, and it’s genuine because I know he’s expecting a book.

  Chapter 5

  That feeling in the pit of his stomach, it could be whatever —fear, stress, anxiety. Really, Pendel’s more inclined to believe it’s the beginning of a heart attack or stroke. This long since inking a deal, and with his highest-earning client? It’s a miracle he hasn’t broken out into hives yet. Seriously, what the fuck is going on?

  He isn’t in a position to have a dry spell.

  Never mind the warning signs of an impending merger and a handful of publishing imprints being restructured, absorbed, and very plainly cannibalized to repair a company bottom line; in his 12 years as an agent, he’s garnered deals on a weekly basis, often so many he can’t keep track of what’s been announced and what has yet to get its little marketplace deal announcement.

  When Marina tells him that Church is unreachable, he knows it’s a lie. His author is not only very reachable but also likely in the city right now, the same damn city, and yet he can’t even get a text or a call.

  Pendel picks up the phone, a cold call. This is serious. Hendrix hasn’t been responsive, and that is enough to be viewed as a sign of disrespect.

  “Anything else?” Marina remains poised, on guard at the office door.

  “No,” he says, batting her away with his hand. Then he remembers something and calls out to her while she is still within earshot, “But the queries!”

  Way ahead of him. She gives him a deadline, “I’ll have the latest to you by the end of the week.” Same as always.

  “Good,” he mumbles, newly alone in his office. “Good…”

  Hendrix must be on the line, the phone continuing to dial, the tone repeating like further proof of him being cold-shouldered by what he had thought was his biggest lead. Pendel curses to himself and hangs up. Immediately, he dials again, this time he goes right to the publisher, who picks up on the third ring.

  “Henry Pendel, how the hell are you this afternoon?!” This Jonathan Sharpe, he’s always traded with such positivity it borders on plastic and overtly fake. “Love the fall weather finally coming in.”

  Pendel can’t stand it, “Never mind all that. Where are we on the latest Church manuscript? We have quite the ticking clock on this, and I haven’t heard back from your editor, Hendrix.”

  Where Sharpe may deal in false positivity, Pendel’s frequent threatening, bordering on aggressive advances are the stuff of legend. Sharpe laughs, “I can say that we’re all loving the book. It may be J.D. Church’s best yet!”

  “You’re not answering me,” says Pendel. “I’m holding out on this for the sake of our history. We’re talking preempt, for an author like J.D. Church. That just doesn’t happen, hmm? I can go to S&S or even Cachet and they’ll pull all the stops, give the biggest offer possible. But here we are. How many books have we brokered together… eight? And now, of all times, you all are ghosting me?”

  After a brief pause, Sharpe’s suddenly more evenly toned, the positivity snuffed, “We are not ghosting you, Henry. We never have. We are in fact working with both the editorial and marketing departments to best assess the quality of the offer. We aren’t taking any of this lightly, I guarantee you.”

  “Stop talking PR talk,” Pendel sighs. “This is me. Tell it straight. I know his sales numbers. This can’t have anything to do with a P&L statement not adding up.”

  Sharpe clears his throat, a tell, “Actually, it’s not that at all.”

  “Out with it,” Pendel says, tapping his finger against the receiver. “There must be a reason you haven’t just pounced.”

  “Right,” Sharpe replies. “Short version is there have been some allegations that have come to light on behalf of Church. It looks like it happened many years ago, back when he was a professor and not yet the ‘J.D. Church’ we all know like the back of our hand.”

  “Okay…” That feeling again.

  Hives.

  Pendel’s entire body visibly shakes.

  Dry mouth, eye twitch.

  Numbness in left arm.

  A stroke, maybe an aneurysm.

  Sharpe’s voice fades out and then back in with a slight ringing in Pendel’s ear, “… and our lawyers have begun investigating the severity of the allegations. Though there could be a statute of limitations to defamation, if there is evidence that he was sexually abusive and predatory to some of his female students, there could be legal action taken.”

  Pendel is livid, “Oh please. They come out of the woodwork when one’s standing tall at the top of the mountain. How many copies did December Falls sell last year?”

  “Well, the allegations are quite⁠—”

  “How many?” Pendel won’t let Sharpe worm out of it.

  “BookScan, last I checked was…”

  “It could sell a million copies,” Pendel says. “Not even a year in the market, and it’s out in dozens of languages, a film adaptation with David Fincher at the helm, this is his biggest novel yet, and guess what?” He holds on to that question.

  “What?”

  “December Falls was a preempt. I gave it to you guys. Hendrix got first dibs.”

  “I understand, Henry. I really do. We’re in an odd situation and…”

  Ringing in his ear.

  He groans, blood boiling.

  Pendel snaps, “Look! Nobody reads anymore. I’m almost positive nobody picks up a book simply to read for pleasure. People buy books because they want to be part of something that the author has already propelled into the media stratosphere. The book they buy is sacred, like a new spell capable of making their lives more exciting for a couple days. And it can’t be just any author. It takes a special voice, a writer that can be more than the 98%. Most books last year sold less than 3,000 copies. Don’t you get it? We aren’t moving books. We’re moving prospects. The writing itself is the least profitable part. Moving prospects means we’re talking scandals, media spinning the story, and deals—speaking gigs, classes, seminars, films, television shows… there’s no limit to an empire once it is branded effectively.”

  Or, to put it simply, Pendel can see the allegations as publicity. Publicity always pays.

  “Look, I’m leveling with you,” Sharpe says. “Hendrix is Church’s champion. There will be a book deal, and soon. I promise you. It’s more like we’re waiting for what our legal department decides, and how to work through this mess. I hear you loud and clear. Things do need to change. We, and by we, I mean me, I believe truly in people getting second chances.”

  “Church is of an older generation,” Pendel says, coming up with excuses. “What they saw as predatory behavior, maybe he saw as being flirtatious. He didn’t know.”

  Pendel didn’t know.

  Silence on the other line. Pendel exhales deeply. He could use a drink. “If anything, you should be adding a few extra zeroes to that number,” Pendel says.

  “I hear you,” says Sharpe. “Expect an email by EOD.”

  Chapter 6

  I love the look on his face. Proof that someone so conditioned to being recognized in public, used to signing autographs everywhere he goes, is still capable of surprise.

  Perhaps pleasantly surprised?

  “So sorry,” I say. Utilizing a mixture of shy and clumsy, especially when you take the time and care to condition a look (meaning dress—opt for a nice shirt, nice haircut, a nice smile) that thwarts any suspicion, I attach the apology with good-natured hyperbole: “Go figure. I’ve been a fan for over a decade and have all of your books on my shelves, even that rare hard-to-find novella Night Moves, which only had, I think, a thousand copies printed, and I even went to that AWP across the country the year where you were on a panel with other writers about conditioning oneself in the face of public opinion, and I stood in line for like an hour before I had to leave the line because I had to go help staff a table at the bookfair, and then I even went to your book launch for December Falls in the city but was too nervous to face you, so, I just listened to the reading and conversation, just another person in the audience, and then I left with my copy unsigned like a coward and regretted it for days, and now here you are, standing right in front of me…” I point at his hotel room door, “We’re neighbors in a liminal space! And I don’t have anything but this,” I have my moleskin, a diary, held outward like an offering, “with me for your autograph.”

  Exhale. Note that it did the trick. He’s overwhelmed but charmed. I’ve proven that I’m a rabid fan, and like any author, they can’t risk losing someone so supportive. Unlike rockstars and actors, authors connect purely through the intimacy of reading. Once that level of trust is shattered, it’s hard to regain. It’s not like some actor ending up in rehab after a meltdown and then playing the role of a wounded character a few projects later, or a rockstar turning out to be a sleazebag, yet remains at the height of their powers, mostly because they were always a superficial persona to begin with. Authors tell stories, and stories have the potential to teach readers how to survive the ongoing story of their lives.

  “Calm down,” he says. “It’s cool.” He takes my moleskin. “Life is weird that way.”

  “It is,” I say, intentionally out of breath.

  He’s flipping through the first couple of pages, “Is this… your diary?”

  I frown, a little bit bashful, “Is that weird?”

  We exchange eye contact and then he clicks his pen, “Yeah, it’s weird. But I dig it.”

  There we are, first contact, in a hallway in some Manhattan hotel. J.D. Church stops on a page, bad poetry, and I see that gesture of judgment. Everyone’s got to start somewhere. Words don’t just pour out of a mind readymade; you got to bleed a little bit so that they may scream off the page.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Oh!” Now it’s about giving a whole lot of nerves, maybe a little stutter as I tell him, “My-my name is Alex.”

  “Alex,” he says, vision trained to a page at random. Then he says one of a half dozen things he tells everyone as he scribbles his signature and accompanying “stay scared” message: “So which one did you in first?”

  He’s asking about the book title of note.

  Always doing his marketing research, a little dragging, seeing what can be unearthed from the depths of narcissism. I already have his full life story memorized, right down to a lesser known fact that he faked most of his publicized childhood, and though the names are real—mom’s name is Margot, father’s name is Charles—everything else, including the now well-regarded and infinitely quoted stuff like his first childhood fear (“I was afraid of strangers long before I became afraid of the unknown”), is a fiction all its own. I know all about his secret safety net, an inheritance from his aunt who passed away from cancer, the only relative he was ever close to, and how, though he did work a few retail jobs, a year at an Amazon fulfillment center, and then finally as a professor at two separate state colleges, he never needed the funds. The money went first into fueling his budding alcoholism and then, after he got sober, again, made into a public story that ended with it being relatable and edifying for his entire fanbase: I’m flawed. A person is flawed; they are like the best characters in a book, flawed and complex, a contradiction waiting to be found and figured out.

  His significant savings went into a marketing fund for his first half-dozen books. And I even know all about what’s taken the whisper networks a decade to dig up, the allegations, grooming and being a sexual predator to young female college students, many of them aspiring writers looking up to Church. I know the number currently is five but will climb to 18 in a month. I know he’s worried, which could be the real reason for having two bodyguards, being so hush-hush; the past comes back, like any good story, the details that direct a character and plot circle back to complete its thread. What I know, yet he doesn’t, is that he won’t need to worry about his career. He won’t be seeing the full wrath of his misdeeds. When I’m replying with personal details rather than a book title, it sets an entirely different sort of tone.

  “I think it was when you said you worked at an Amazon fulfillment center and stole from ‘the man’ as a means of making ends meet,” I say.

  He almost doesn’t hear me, or rather, he doesn’t want to believe that I brought up something so personal, something hidden behind layers of time and fabrication.

  “What was that now?”

  I laugh, “I’m just nervous; that’s all!”

  Suddenly he’s nervous too, and I deflate the situation by turning our attention back to the moleskin. Sure enough, the same prepackaged annotation, “Stay scared.”

  “There’s a lot to be scared about,” I say.

  He grins, but when he agrees, “Yeah, the world is weird and full of monsters,” I can see his mind working through the sequence of events.

  The moleskin back in my hand, I turn to my door, keycard pressed to the sensor. The doorknob beeps. Turning it, I step partly inside the darkened room, “Thank you for the autograph! You’ve made my day. No, my year!”