Chapter 5

My first stop the next morning was with my lecture agent, Len Gardner. He was unlocking his office when I arrived. “Can’t see you now, Paul.”
    I followed Len into his office. “Your message said to stop by.”
    “Yesterday, Paul. You were supposed to come by yesterday.”
    “What’s this business about my contract being up? We have a standing contract.”
    “Your bookings have fallen 50 percent in the last year. And that’s down 50 percent from the year before. Face it. There’s no demand for your act anymore.”
    “I’m in a bind. I’ll take whatever work I can get.”
    “I hate this as much as you, but I run a business.” Len sank into the executive chair behind his desk.
    “You built your business on my name. Show a little gratitude.” I paced back and forth.
    Len shuffled the mail on his desk.
    I raised my voice. “Two days ago, I received the Medal of Freedom. Are you telling me you can’t promote that?”
    “Yeah, then you lost your temper on national TV.”
    “I need a favor.”
    “After your outburst at the White House, I’ve been getting calls from these outfits that promote controversy.”
    “How much does it pay?”
    Len hesitated. “Not enough, good buddy. These promoters put you in a public arena—TV, college campus—against some fake journalist, and the two of you go at each other like pit bulls. I told ‘em to shove it.”
    I slumped into the chair in front of his desk.
    “Write another best seller. Then we’ll talk.” Len came around his desk and opened the door for me.
    My luck wasn’t any better with the publishers I saw. My name got me in the door, but from that point, the interviews were like the first one with Patricia O’Malley, editorial director at Windbrook Press.
    I said, “This is your lucky day, Pat. I’ve got the manuscript you’ve wanted for years.”
    “Is it the one Bart Roberts turned down yesterday?”
    “Poor timing. He can’t take on another project now.”
    “I could waste your time, take the manuscript, and pretend to look at it, but I have too much respect for you to do that, Paul. The word from Roberts is that your new novel is sub par. I doubt any of the New York houses will sign you without a major rewrite.”
    “Look, Pat, I know this manuscript isn’t going to win me another Seminal Prize, but my name on the dust jacket is a gold mine.”
    “You’re a victim of your own success, Paul. The people who would buy a Paul Genet novel expect the best and nothing less. That’s why the main houses won’t touch it. I’d love to see anything else you’ve got in the works.”
    Pat gazed out her window at the skyscrapers in Rockefeller Center. I stood awkwardly holding my manuscript until I realized she had dismissed me.
    I didn’t have another project and I needed cash. Now. I did get one offer: a standard contract, no jumps for performance, and I had to throw in the paperback rights. I was humiliated, but I would have pounced on the offer if it had included a decent advance.

It was almost noon. I remembered my luncheon date with Maria, but I needed to clear my head first. I walked east on Forty-ninth Street. At Fifth Avenue, I was so lost in my thoughts that I stepped into the street against the light. A cab squealed around the corner and brushed against me.
    The driver blew his horn and snarled, “You ain’t long for this world, Mac.”
    When I reached the east side of Fifth Avenue, I retreated into Saint Matthew’s Catholic Church.
    As I entered the church, I caught a whiff of incense that took me back thirty years to the scene I used to play out in my mind when I served Mass at prep school. I would picture Jesus descending to the altar at the consecration of the host. I flushed with embarrassment at this reminder of my youthful naïveté.
    A funeral mass was in progress. The priest was giving the homily from the pulpit. I took a seat on the end of a pew midway down the center aisle.
    The priest said, “In Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23, Jesus says, ‘The person who does not gather with me scatters.’ Who, then, can enter the Kingdom of God? Only those who gather with Jesus.
    “How does one gather? Through the narrow gate for ‘Wide is the gate that leads to destruction, and many find it. Narrow is the gate that leads to life, and only a few enter through it,’ Matthew 7:13. What gate? In John 10:9, Jesus says, ‘I am the gate.’
    “When are we called to enter through the narrow gate? We do not know the day or the hour when Jesus will issue his invitation to, ‘Come, follow me.’”
    Something was wrong. I saw the priest’s lips form the words, but the sound seemed to come from the back of the church. Stranger still, it was Preacher John’s voice I heard say, “Come, follow me.”
    I turned to look behind me. I had a clear view down the aisle to the vestibule but John wasn’t there. No one around me seemed to hear the voice I was certain I heard.
    “Come, follow me,” the priest repeated, and again I heard Preacher John call me. His voice urged me softly, insistently, to join him. Instinctively, I understood that all I had to do to enter the Kingdom of God was to meet John at the back of the church.
    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” the priest said, again quoting Scripture.
    Was John calling me in the name of the Lord? That’s nuts, I thought. Besides, no one around me seemed to hear a thing.
    The priest continued to quote Scripture. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life shall lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it,’ Matthew 16:24.”
I placed the manuscript for my novel on the pew and laid my wallet and keys on top. I would have no further need of these things.
    “Come, follow me,” the priest repeated, and again it was John’s voice that I heard calling to me from the vestibule.
Every muscle in my body wanted to respond. I put my hands on the back of the pew in front of me and began to pull myself up. But somewhere between sitting and standing I froze. I wanted to give up all right to myself but I couldn’t give up being me. I was sweating from the tension.
    Then I noticed an elderly woman in my pew staring at me. I became self-conscious and relaxed my grip. I put my wallet and keys back in my pocket and tightly clutched the manuscript to my chest. I strained to hear the voice once more.
Suddenly, Preacher John’s double warning—the person who hesitates is lost; there is no second chance—jolted me as if I had been knocked down by that taxi on Fifth Avenue.
    My throat tightened and I couldn’t swallow. Panic seized me and I fought to breathe. A searing sense that I was lost overwhelmed me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I told myself repeatedly that nothing had happened. Jesus did not invite me to follow him. I had a bad moment, that’s all. And why not? Except for the Medal of Freedom, wasn’t this the worst week of my life?
    It didn’t work. Something weird had happened. The only way to get some peace of mind was to talk to John, and clarify this second chance business. He could not have meant, literally, there was no second chance.
I stood. I thought my knees would buckle, but I managed to walk. A gust of icy air cut through me as I left the church. The cold weather had reappeared as quickly as it had vanished on Monday, and snow flurries began dropping from an ashen sky.

Chapter 5 continued