Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(86)

Shit. The unemployment office could have set up an application desk in our dining room. What’s more, Megan and I would have been first in line.





YES, WE WERE in trouble.

From the outside we still looked prosperous—the crazy-looking loft (full of interesting, artsy “found objects”), the two good-looking teenage kids, the August rental on Fire Island.

But the fact was, we were hurting badly.

To our shock, Anne Gutman had turned down the book that Megan and I had been working on for almost two years. Our proposed project was entitled The Roots of Rap. It traced the history of rap music from blues through early rock and roll, then doo-wop, and ultimately the past twenty-five years of rap and hip-hop.

“I just don’t have the funds anymore,” Anne had said. “I had money when you started the project, but I’ve just been squeezed too hard by the Internet …. Then, of course, there’s always the Store …. I just can’t afford to take big risks anymore …. I could shove it into self-publish, but the guys in research told me you’d be lucky to sell five hundred copies.”

The Store. This online colossus was becoming a huge player in the world of publishing. And in every other part of the consumer world as well.

The Store stocked what people wanted. Then, because it controlled pricing, it pretty much told us what to buy. It’s where we all went shopping for our toasters, tractors, Tide, soy sauce, jeans, lightbulbs. If somebody on earth manufactured something, anything, the Store sold it. Potted oak trees, cases of wine, automobiles … all usually at a lower price than the brick-and-mortar source.

The Store’s publishing arm was churning out e-books, and every once in a while they’d hit upon something really popular. Okay, Megan and I thought … if you can’t beat ’em …

So as soon as the painful impact of Anne’s rejection sank in, we did the only thing left to do. We moved over to the opposition: we flipped open our laptops, quickly pulled up the Store page, then clicked over to “Independent Publishing.” We had no other choice. Why the hell not? Megan and I were sure we had a bestselling e-book.

Within less than a minute of logging on, I was having my first e-mail conversation with my “contact rep.”

At the beginning, our e-mail conversations were all warm hugs and wet kisses. A few rewrites. Our promise to start a Twitter account, a Facebook page, an Instagram profile—the usual social-media journey to the bestseller list. It was going great … only a matter of time until Megan and I would be looking at book-cover concepts.

Then came the not-so-inevitable kick in the balls. With one tap of the Send button, the Store destroyed our plan. They suddenly rejected The Roots of Rap. No reason was given. Their e-mail sounded like a ransom letter: Your project is no longer viable. The Store.

My index finger raced to the Reply tab. Hey, folks, what gives? All of a sudden? This idea is a winner waiting to happen. This book could really live online. It’s about music. You know, music downloads. The YouTube clips. The cross-ref …

Came a one-line response: We are as sorry about the outcome as you are. The Store.

It was clear: the Store was finished with us. Or so they thought.

But we were not finished with the Store. Not by a long shot.





“NEBRASKA! THAT’S NUTS!” Chuck McKirdy shouted. “You two will be moving to freakin’ Nebraska?”

Megan stepped in and answered the question with her usual patience.

“That’s where the jobs are. So that’s where we’ll be going,” she said softly.

“What’s Nebraska’s nickname? The Cornhusking State?” Sandi asked.

I corrected her. “The Cornhusker State.”

“Go, Cornhuskers!” someone shouted.

The chant was quickly picked up. “Go, Cornhuskers! Go, Cornhuskers!”

“Okay,” I said. “The annual asshole convention will now come to order.”

Megan smiled, then began a little speech. She said it was hardly a secret in our social group that our most recent nonfiction effort had been rejected “not merely by faithful friends who shall remain nameless”—at this point Anne Gutman jokingly hid her face behind her unfolded napkin—“but also … and you’re not going to believe this humiliation … even rejected by the Store.

“So with The Roots of Rap totally without a future, and Jacob and I—not to mention our two kids—totally without a future, it looked like we were doomed. But just when things looked darkest, lo and behold, the Store came through for us.”

We stopped talking. Just for a moment, but long enough to run the risk of screwing up our story. And it was a story, almost a fairy tale. It was a highly fictionalized account of what really had happened.

At that very moment Megan and I were about to tell a very big lie to our closest friends. And even though we had rehearsed it carefully, my stomach was rolling, my chest was filling with acid, and Megan’s hands visibly shook. But the starting pistol had been fired. We had to talk. So Megan took off.

“Well, it’s sort of crazy what happened next. We thought it was all finished between us and the Store. And Alex and Lindsay even started joking about being so poor that they’d have to decide which relatives to go live with.”

I interrupted. “Nobody wanted to go with Megan’s family.”