Witnesses said his car sank like a stone. When the police fished him out, they found inside his car an itinerary for Joyce Carol Oates’s upcoming visit to town and an unfinished novel manuscript with Max Kellogg’s name on it. The police labeled the cause of death an accident, but I knew without a doubt that it was his damned unfinished novel that had killed him. It was the owner of the bookstore, Bobby Dunn, who hooked me up with this job, calling me only a day after the police had found Max Kellogg’s body. He’d warned me about the publicists (“By and large, a bunch of rich daddy’s girls that went to Sarah Lawrence and Vassar,” he’d said. “A hundred bucks says not a one of them could even find Iowa on a map”), but when he told me how much money I could make, I didn’t hesitate. It sounded easy. Too easy. And, by and large, it was a cushy job. But then there were days like this one when everything went wrong. Armed with onion rings, I stepped back inside George’s.
What do You think about After The Workshop (2010)?
