“I’m listening,” Anthony said warily.

“What do you want first? The bad news, or the bad news?”

“Just give it to me straight,” said Anthony. “Please, Huxley.” Anthony was sitting at the little formal table in Fitzy’s uncle’s living room, his bare feet on the ornate carpet. He stared at the decanter, the two glasses sitting next to it. “You’re making me nervous.”

“You probably should be nervous. There’s been a miscalculation.”

“A what?”

“We owe more to the foreign rights agent. They miscalculated.”

“They what?”

“They miscalculated, something about the advance from Turkey, I don’t know how it happened, but anyway I had to cut them a check for twenty grand today, which means you have to cut me a check for twenty grand.”

“Shit, Huxley.” Anthony stared hard at the piano. IVERS & POND, it said. BOSTON. Who was Ivers, who was Pond? Anthony sighed and stood and walked over. He hit one of the keys. The piano let out a weary, malnourished plink.

“What’s that noise?” asked Huxley. “What are you doing?”

“Just tickling the ol’ ivories,” said Anthony morosely.

“The what?”

“Never mind.”

“Where you hiding out, anyway?”

“Who says I’m hiding?”

“Word on the street,” said Huxley. “I ran into Shelly Salazar the other day when I was at lunch with an author.”

Both the word lunch and the word author hit Anthony where it hurt. He used to eat lunch; he used to be the author. He wondered what bright young thing had taken his place, but was too proud to ask.

“If you must know . . .” said Anthony, “I’m in an undisclosed location.”

“Oh, come on, now.”

“I’m in a cottage where time stopped in the 1820s.”

“Ha!” said Huxley. “Ha, ha!” The sudden, barking laugh startled Anthony like a gunshot. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking, exactly,” said Anthony.

“The Old West?”

“Something like that. The Old East.”

“Well, wherever you are, I hope you’ve brought your checkbook. I’ll need it by September first.”

It didn’t cost Anthony anything at all, not a penny, to hit the end button and bring the call to a stop. Huxley might have been in mid-sentence; hell, he might have been in mid-word! Anthony would never know.

Outside the window the beach grasses were dancing up a storm. Personification. Also: cliché. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Onomatopoeia. How far he had fallen. Once he had been “a young master of both plot and human emotions” (Kirkus, starred) and “a writer not only to watch, but one to savor, word by word” (Publishers Weekly, starred) and even “simply put: simply stunning” (The Washington Post). Now he was a recreational grammarian.

Anthony took two steps toward the decanter on the sideboard with its mysterious golden liquor. Brandy? Sherry? Nectar of the gods? The two glasses set out beside it looked so inviting, so much more inviting than just one would have looked. He supposed this was why staging by realtors was so effective.

He couldn’t cut Huxley a check for twenty grand, because he didn’t have twenty grand. Was this the time to fall on the mercy of his parents? His mother might give it to him; his father might not. He dialed his parents’ number, and when his mother answered he said, “Mom, hey.”