Part 24 (1/2)
”All that psychic energy, baby.”
”All that money, you mean.”
”A little PR never hurt anyone. Speaking of which, Damon-I noticed quite a number of little darlings decked out in flowing bedsheets and pointed ears and carrying about boxed sets of The Fall of the Golden Isles in ardent quest of your signature. Is rumor true that Columbine has just sprung for a second trilogy in the series?”
”Helen has just about got them to agree to our terms.”
”Christ, Damon! We're better than this s.h.i.+t!” Nordgren banged his fist on the table and sent half a gram onto the carpet. One of the girls started to go after it, but Trevor shook his head and muttered that he bought it by the kilo.
”You don't look particularly ready to go back to the good old days of 3 a word on publication,” Damon suggested.
”And paying the bills with those wonderful $1,000 checks from Bee Line for 60,000 words worth of wet dreams. Did I tell you that a kid came up to me with a copy of Stud Road to sign, and he'd paid some huckster $150 for the thing!”
Damon almost choked on his line. ”Remind me to put my copy of Time's Wanton in a safe deposit box. Christ, Trevor-you've got enough money from all this to write anything you d.a.m.n well please.”
”But we somehow write what the public wants from us instead. Or do you get off by being followed about by teenage fans in farcical medieval drag with plastic pointy ears begging to know whether Wyndlunne the Fey is going to be rescued from Grimdoom's Black Tower in Book Four of The Trilogy of Trilogies'?”
”We both have our fans,” Damon said pointedly. ”And what dire horrors lie in wait for some small suburban community in your next mega-word chart-buster?”
”Elves,” said Nordgren.
The last time that Damon Harrington saw Trevor Nordgren was at the World Fantasy Convention in Miami. Because of crowd problems, Nordgren had stopped going to cons, but a Guest of Honor invitation lured him forth from his castle on the Hudson. He had avoided such public appearances for over a year, and there were lurid rumors of nervous breakdown, alcoholism, drug addiction, or possibly AIDS.
The Changeling, Nordgren's latest and biggest, concerned an evil race of elves who lurked in hidden dens beneath a small suburban community, and who were systematically exchanging elfin babies for the town's human infants. The Changeling was dedicated to Damon Harrington-”in remembrance of Styrofoam boaters.” The novel dominated the bestseller lists for six months, before finally being nudged from first place by The Return of Tallyssa: Book Six of the Fall of the Golden Isles.
Harrington squeezed onto an elevator already packed with fans. A chubby teenager in a Spock Lives! t-s.h.i.+rt was complaining in an uncouth New York accent: ”So I ran up to him when the limo pulled up, and I said to him 'Mr Nordgren, would you please sign my copy of The Changeling?' and he said 'I'd love to, sweetheart, but I don't have the time,' and I said 'But it's just this one book,' and he said 'If I stop for you, there are twenty invisible fans lined up behind you right now with their books,' and I thought 'You conceited turkey, and after I've read every one of your books!'” The elevator door opened on her floor, and she and most of her sympathetic audience got off. As the door closed, Harrington caught an exclamation: ”Hey, wasn't that...”
A hotel security guard stopped him as he entered the hallway toward his room, and Harrington had to show him his room key and explain that he had the suite opposite Trevor Nordgren's. The guard was scrupulously polite, and explained that earlier fans had been lining up outside Nordgren's door with armloads of books. Damon then understood why the hotel desk had asked him if he minded having a free drink in the lounge until they had prepared his suite after some minor vandalism wrought by the previous guests.
A bell captain appeared with his baggage finally, and then room service stocked his bar. Harrington unpacked a few things, then phoned Nordgren's suite. A not very friendly male voice answered, and refused to do more than take a message. Harrington asked him to tell Mr Nordgren that Mike Hunt wished to have a drink with him in the suite opposite. Thirty seconds later Nordgren was kicking at his door.
”Gee, Mr Hunt!” Nordgren gushed in falsetto. ”Would you please sign my copy of The Other Woman? Huh? Huh? Would you?” He looked terrible. He was far thinner than when they'd first met, and his skin seemed to hang loose and pallid over his shrunken flesh-reminding Harrington of a snake about to shed its skin. His blue eyes seemed too large for his sallow face, and their familiar arrogance was shadowed by a noticeable haunted look. Harrington thought of some fin de siecle poet dying of consumption.
”Jack Daniel's, as usual? Or would you like a Heineken?”
”I'd like just some Perrier water, if you have it there. Cutting down on my vices.”
”Sure thing.” Damon thought about the rumors. ”Hey, brought along some pearl that you won't believe!”
”I'll taste a line of it, then,” Nordgren brightened, allowing Damon to bring him his gla.s.s of Perrier. ”Been a while since I've done any toot. Decided I didn't need a Teflon septum.”
When Nordgren actually did take only one line, Harrington began to get really concerned. He fiddled with his gla.s.s of Jack Daniel's, then managed: ”Trevor, I'm only asking as an old friend-but are you all right?”
”Flight down tired me out, that's all. Got to save up my energy for that signing thing tonight.”
Damon spent undue attention upon cutting fresh lines. ”Yeah, well. I mean, you look a little thin, is all.”
Instead of taking offense, Trevor seemed wearily amused. ”No, I'm not strung out on c.o.ke or smack or uppers or downers or any and all drugs. No, I don't have cancer or some horrid wasting disease. Thank you for your concern.”
”Didn't mean to pry.” Damon was embarra.s.sed. ”Just concerned, is all.”
”Thanks, Damon. But I'm off the booze and drugs, and I've had a complete check-up. Frankly, I've been burning the old candle at both ends and in the middle for too long. I'm exhausted body and soul, and I'm planning on treating myself to a long R&R while the royalties roll in.”
”Super! Why not plan on spending a couple weeks knocking around down on the coast with me, then? We'll go down to Ensenada.”
A flash of Nordgren's bitter humor returned. ”Well, I'd sure like to, young feller,” he rasped. ”But I figger on writin' me one last big book. Then I'll take all the money I got put aside, and buy me a little spread down in Texas-hangup my word processor and settle down to raise cattle. Just this one last book is all I need.”
The signing party was a complete disaster. The con committee hadn't counted on Nordgren's public and simply put him at a table in the hotel ballroom with the rest of the numerous pros in attendance. The ballroom was totally swamped by Nordgren's fans-many from the Miami area who forced their way into the hotel without registering for the convention. Attempts to control the crowd led to several scuffles; the hotel overreacted and ordered security to clear the ballroom, and numerous fights and acts of vandalism followed before order could be restored. Nordgren was escorted to his suite, where a state of siege existed.
Completely sickened by the disgusting spectacle, Harrington afterward retreated to the Columbine Books party, where he was thoroughly lionized, and where he discovered an astonis.h.i.+ng number of fellow writers who had known all along that he had the stuff of genius in him, and who were overjoyed that one of their comrades who had paid his dues at last was rewarded with the overdue recognition and prosperity he so deserved. Harrington decided to get knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk, but he was still able to walk, a.s.sisted by the wall, when he finally left the party.
Standing with the other sardines waiting to be packed into the elevator, Harrington listened to the nasal whine of the acne farm with the shopping bag full of books who had just pushed in front of him: ”So all my friends who couldn't afford to make the trip from Des Moines gave me their books to get him to autograph too, and I promised them I would, and then they announced His Highness would sign only three books for each fan, and then they closed the autographing party with me still standing in line and for an hour and a half! I mean, I'm never buying another book by that creep! Nordgren doesn't care s.h.i.+t about his fans!”
”I know!” complained another. ”I wrote him an eight-page fan letter, and all I got back was a postcard!”
Harrington managed to get most of the vomit into the shopping bag, and as the crowd cringed away and the elevator door opened, he stumbled inside and made good his escape.
His next memory was of bouncing along the wall of the corridor that led to his room and hearing sounds of a party at full tilt in Nordgren's suite. Harrington was surprised that Trevor had felt up to throwing a party after the debacle earlier that evening, but old habits must die hard, and Damon thought that a few more drinks were definitely called for after the elevator experience.
The door to Nordgren's suite was open, so Harrington shouldered his way inside. The place was solidly packed with bodies, and Harrington clumsily pushed a route between them, intent on reaching the bar. By the time he was halfway into the party, it struck him that he didn't know any of the people here-somewhat odd in that he and Nordgren generally partied with the same mob of writers and professionals who showed up at the major cons each time. The suite seemed to be packed entirely with fans, and Harrington supposed that they had crashed Nordgren's party, presumably driving the pros into another room or onto the balcony.
Harrington decided the crowd was too intense, the room too claustrophobic. He gave up on reaching the bar and decided to try to find Nordgren and see if he wanted to duck over to his suite for a quick toot and a chance to relax. Peering drunkenly about the crowded room, Harrington noticed for the first time that everyone's attention seemed to be focused toward the center. And there he recognized Nordgren.
”Trevor, my man! ” Damon's voice sounded unnaturally loud and clear above the unintelligible murmur of the crowd.
He jostled his way toward Nordgren, beginning to get angry that none of the people seemed inclined to move aside despite his mumbled excuse-me's and sorry's. Nordgren might as well have been mired in quicksand, so tightly ringed in by fans as he was, and only Trevor's height allowed Harrington to spot him. Damon thought he looked awful, far worse than earlier in the day.
Nordgren stretched out his hand to Harrington, and Damon's first thought was that he meant to wave or to shake hands, but suddenly it reminded him more of a drowning victim making one last hopeless clutching for help. Shoving through to him, Harrington clasped hands.
Nordgren's handgrip felt very loose, with a scaly dryness that made Damon think of the brittle rustle of overlong fingernails.
Harrington shook his hand firmly and tried to draw Nordgren toward him so they could speak together. Nordgren's arm broke off at his shoulder like a stick of dry-rotted wood.
For a long breathless moment Harrington just stood there, gaping stupidly, Nordgren's arm still in his grasp, the crowd silent, Nordgren's expression as immobile as that of a crucified Christ. Then, ever so slowly, ever so reluctantly, as if there were too little left to drain, a few dark drops of blood began to trickle from the torn stump of Nordgren's shoulder.
The crowd's eyes began to turn upon Harrington, as Nordgren ever so slowly began to collapse like an unstrung marionette.
Harrington awoke the following noon, sprawled fully dressed across a couch in his own suite. He had a poisonous hangover and shuddered at the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. He made himself a breakfast of vitamin pills, aspirin, and Valium, then set about cutting a few wake-up lines to get him through the day.
Harrington was not really surprised to learn that Trevor Nordgren had died in his sleep sometime during the night before.
Everyone knew it was a drug overdose, but the medical examiner's report ruled heart failure subsequent to extreme physical exhaustion and chronic substance abuse.
Several of the science fiction news magazines asked Harrington to write an obituary for Trevor Nordgren, but Harrington declined. He similarly declined offers from several fan presses to write a biography or critical survey of Nordgren, or to edit proposed anthologies of Nordgren's uncollected writings, and he declined Warwick's suggestion that he complete Nordgren's final unfinished novel. Martin E. Binkley, in his Reader's Guide to Trevor Nordgren, attributed this reticence to ”Harrington's longtime love-hate relations.h.i.+p with Nordgren that crystalized into professional jealousy with final rejection.”
Damon Harrington no longer attends conventions, nor does he autograph books. He does not answer his mail, and he has had his telephone disconnected.