bastard,” I said. “Who do you think...?”
“Save the wounded artiste routine for someone who gives a rat’s ass,” Kowalski snarled. “The truth is you don’t have the slightest inkling why so many people buy your books.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Oh?” he shot back. “Your ideas are good but your dialogue stinks. Your plotting is inconsistent at best. Your prose is decent enough: you paint pretty pictures. But your protagonists are cold, overly intellectual. Every one of em’s got a dictionary crammed so far up his ass they shit crossword puzzles. Your work lacks guts.”
I stumbled back to the table.
“Take a load off, Shakespeare.”
I sat.
“Like I said, your work lacks passion. But your imagery...”
Kowalski chuckled. “ That’s where you tip the scales. You give people nightmares and they love you for it.”
It was all I could do to keep my jaw from bouncing off the table top. I picked up a piece of bread from the basket between us and began to knead it between my fingers.
“I bust my ass trying to bring them to life,” I said over a fistful of multigrain. I’d always suffered from a tendency toward nervous starch manipulation. Under a looming deadline it wasn’t unusual for me to massacre an entire loaf of white bread in one sitting. When my mother stayed with me after recuperating from her hysterectomy my apartment looked like the floor of a cocaine processing plant staffed by workers with the worst dandruff you could possibly imagine. Kowalski had rattled me and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I wrack my brain,” I went on. “Writing and rewriting, trying to breathe life into different versions of the same idea over and over until I’m blue in the fucking...”
I stopped, blinking like a politician caught fondling himself while reading to Mormon pre-schoolers. In two paragraphs Kowalski had defined everything I despised about my own writing.
I threw down the dismembered bread and stood up.
“Who the hell are you?”
Kowalski grinned.
“I’m the fella holds the keys to the kingdom, Junior,” he said.
“You want to cross the drawbridge or swim the moat?”
13
“Into the Cosmos, Time Rangers! Awaaayyy!”
As the hired car pulled out of the long, circular driveway, I confronted the house Kowalski called “home.”
“Welcome to Kalakuta ,” he said.
The massive Victorian sprawled the length of an entire city block. It hunkered there, a dingy gray so dark it looked black against the bright summer sky, four stories tall, with widely-spaced windows that reflected the afternoon sun. They provided only minimal visual relief from Kalakuta’s squalid unloveliness.
“Black Summit .”
“What?” I said, my eyes flinching over the mansion’s oppressive stone turrets and soaring black parapets.
Her name,” Kowalski said. “Kalakuta. It’s the name for Death as personified in Hinduistic mythology. To drink of Kalakuta’s poisonous waters was to gain immortality. The Hindu gods fought tremendous battles to win that gift.”
Kowalski walked up to the front door and opened it.
“Come on in.”
Before stepping over the threshold, I marked the sun’s position in its westward crawl over Yonkers .
I’ll give him ten minutes, I thought. I didn’t want to be inside Kalakuta when the sun went down.
* * * *
Kowalski stomped down the stairs that led into the kitchen carrying a battered black hatbox. He set the box on the table in front of me. It was nearly identical to the one Lenore had shown me after Marcus’s funeral, save that Kowalski’s box was as dusty and battered as a well-worn suitcase.
Kowalski reached down and flipped open the lid.
Despite myself, I jumped.
“In 1975, my father was murdered by his best friend, a man who called himself Satin Jack,” Kowalski said. He pulled out a tattered photograph.
“He betrayed my father on orders from this man.”
The man in the picture was
“Save the wounded artiste routine for someone who gives a rat’s ass,” Kowalski snarled. “The truth is you don’t have the slightest inkling why so many people buy your books.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Oh?” he shot back. “Your ideas are good but your dialogue stinks. Your plotting is inconsistent at best. Your prose is decent enough: you paint pretty pictures. But your protagonists are cold, overly intellectual. Every one of em’s got a dictionary crammed so far up his ass they shit crossword puzzles. Your work lacks guts.”
I stumbled back to the table.
“Take a load off, Shakespeare.”
I sat.
“Like I said, your work lacks passion. But your imagery...”
Kowalski chuckled. “ That’s where you tip the scales. You give people nightmares and they love you for it.”
It was all I could do to keep my jaw from bouncing off the table top. I picked up a piece of bread from the basket between us and began to knead it between my fingers.
“I bust my ass trying to bring them to life,” I said over a fistful of multigrain. I’d always suffered from a tendency toward nervous starch manipulation. Under a looming deadline it wasn’t unusual for me to massacre an entire loaf of white bread in one sitting. When my mother stayed with me after recuperating from her hysterectomy my apartment looked like the floor of a cocaine processing plant staffed by workers with the worst dandruff you could possibly imagine. Kowalski had rattled me and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I wrack my brain,” I went on. “Writing and rewriting, trying to breathe life into different versions of the same idea over and over until I’m blue in the fucking...”
I stopped, blinking like a politician caught fondling himself while reading to Mormon pre-schoolers. In two paragraphs Kowalski had defined everything I despised about my own writing.
I threw down the dismembered bread and stood up.
“Who the hell are you?”
Kowalski grinned.
“I’m the fella holds the keys to the kingdom, Junior,” he said.
“You want to cross the drawbridge or swim the moat?”
13
“Into the Cosmos, Time Rangers! Awaaayyy!”
As the hired car pulled out of the long, circular driveway, I confronted the house Kowalski called “home.”
“Welcome to Kalakuta ,” he said.
The massive Victorian sprawled the length of an entire city block. It hunkered there, a dingy gray so dark it looked black against the bright summer sky, four stories tall, with widely-spaced windows that reflected the afternoon sun. They provided only minimal visual relief from Kalakuta’s squalid unloveliness.
“Black Summit .”
“What?” I said, my eyes flinching over the mansion’s oppressive stone turrets and soaring black parapets.
Her name,” Kowalski said. “Kalakuta. It’s the name for Death as personified in Hinduistic mythology. To drink of Kalakuta’s poisonous waters was to gain immortality. The Hindu gods fought tremendous battles to win that gift.”
Kowalski walked up to the front door and opened it.
“Come on in.”
Before stepping over the threshold, I marked the sun’s position in its westward crawl over Yonkers .
I’ll give him ten minutes, I thought. I didn’t want to be inside Kalakuta when the sun went down.
* * * *
Kowalski stomped down the stairs that led into the kitchen carrying a battered black hatbox. He set the box on the table in front of me. It was nearly identical to the one Lenore had shown me after Marcus’s funeral, save that Kowalski’s box was as dusty and battered as a well-worn suitcase.
Kowalski reached down and flipped open the lid.
Despite myself, I jumped.
“In 1975, my father was murdered by his best friend, a man who called himself Satin Jack,” Kowalski said. He pulled out a tattered photograph.
“He betrayed my father on orders from this man.”
The man in the picture was
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