One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(9)

“I have never understood ‘flourless chocolate cake,’ ” stated the warlord, finally. “Is flour such a bad thing? I mean, compared to the other things in chocolate cake?”

“You want to split that?” said Julie.

“Flour is probably the least unhealthy thing I can think of in chocolate cake,” the warlord continued. “Is that supposed to be the point? That the whole cake is just all eggs and sugar and butter? And anyway, who cares? It’s chocolate cake. We know it’s not a health food. Use whatever ingredients you want. All it has to do is taste good. We don’t need to know how you did it—just make it.”

“You want to maybe split that?” said Julie again.

“We will split the flourless chocolate cake,” declared the warlord.

“Great!” said the waitress, disappearing again.

“So, do you get to travel a lot?” asked Julie.

“Not as much as I’d like. Now and then we’ll reach some cease-fire, after some especially big massacre, and things get quiet for a bit. That’s what allowed me to take some time off, travel, meet you, stuff like that. Oh, I meant to say: you look even better in person than in your profile picture.”

“Oh … Thank you.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you that. Nice surprise. Rare it goes in that direction.”

“Ha. Well, thanks. Um, same. Don’t let that go to your head.”

“Thanks. So … Lost my train of thought.”

“Cease-fires?”

“Right! So, you know cease-fires—they never stick.”

“Yes, I think I saw something about that on Jon Stewart. That must be frustrating.”

“It is! Thank you, Julie. That’s exactly the right word,” said the warlord. “It’s very frustrating!”

“Flourless chocolate cake,” said the waitress.

“Thank you,” said Julie and the warlord at the same time.

“Can I get you anything else? Another drink?”

“I really shouldn’t,” said Julie. “Are you okay to drive, by the way?”

“I have a driver,” said the warlord.

Julie ordered a fourth and final cocktail.





Discussion question:

Do you think Julie should f*ck the warlord? Why or why not?





The Something by John Grisham





John Grisham woke up shortly after sunrise in his large, light-filled house outside Charlottesville, Virginia. He put on a pot of coffee for his beautiful wife, picked up the fresh crisp newspaper from his driveway—he was still a print guy, print had been good to him—and flipped peacefully through the front section as he did every morning until he found something that nearly made him choke on his locally baked bread.

CONGRATULATIONS TO AUTHOR JOHN GRISHAM, declared the full-page ad, which featured a smiling, handsome picture of his face from ten years ago, WHOSE NEW THRILLER THE SOMETHING DEBUTED THIS WEEK AT #1 ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST. CONGRATULATIONS FROM EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING. Then, in smaller letters: CHECK OUT THE SOMETHING AND OTHER JOHN GRISHAM BESTSELLERS AT RANDOMHOUSE.COM.

Nothing happened for a minute. Birds chirped.

John Grisham picked up the phone.

“Dale. John Grisham. Call me back. Call me back ASAP. Thanks. Looking forward to your call. This is John Grisham.” Then a minute later he texted to the same number: Call me. 911. JG.

A minute later his home phone rang.

“Hey, Dale.” Dale was John Grisham’s new editor. Art was still his editor officially, but he had handed off most day-to-day duties to this new guy Dale seven months ago, and so far, there had been no problems. But so far only goes so far, as the protagonist of his latest book liked to say; so far only goes so far.

“First things first: congratulations!” said Dale. If Dale was at all surprised that John Grisham was calling him and texting 911 to his cell phone at 5:55 a.m., he did a very good job hiding it. “Can we pause to appreciate this for a second? I know this is par for the course for you, but: number one for The Something in its debut week? I hope you give yourself a second to really—”

“Where did you send the galleys?” asked John Grisham.

“For you to proofread? Uh, we sent them to your farm in Mississippi on, let me check … August fourth. Does that sound right? You always spend July and August on the farm, correct?”

“Not this August. I was here in Virginia.”

“Ah. My apologies. Right, the weather, that makes—yeah. Well, we didn’t hear back for a couple weeks, and word around here is that you never really weigh in on galleys anyway, right? I mean, that’s what everyone told me. So after a couple weeks—we were up against this holiday deadline, and, hey, congratulations again, because obviously there could not be a better time to debut at number one than the Christmas season … I’m sorry, John. Obviously, I should have double-checked. I just didn’t want to disturb you and, like, hound you, especially being the new guy here, and again, I was told you really never weigh in on galleys. Is there anything you wanted to change? I can definitely see about changing it for the paperback, or—”

“The title of the book is not The Something.”

There was a long silence.