Free How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

to a place you dreamed of as a child, a bend in a tree worn from climbing—can open those chambers again. Suddenly your soul fills up, like warm cow’s milk filling a pail on a chill November morning.
    I jotted all this down.
    When I was done reading, and the applause had died down, and I’d signed copies, the cute girl would be waiting, standing in a corner. She’d come up to me, awkwardly. She’d say she never did this, but my book just meant so much to her. You’re my favorite novelist, she’d say. I thought Preston Brooks was good, but you, you . . . Then she’d screw up her speech and dissolve into blushing. I’d smile and invite her back to my hotel for a drink.
    Anything cut out of the novel I’d have saved for bar patter, over Dewar’s and soda at the Ramada lounge. The piano guy would sign off for the night, and I’d invite her up to my room. Maybe on the pretense of “I’d love to get your thoughts on something I’m working on.” She’d come. She’d sit on the bed, unsureeven of what strange hypnosis was keeping her there. With a few deft redirects, I could turn her nervous tremblings into sexual availability. And the next morning I’d be on to Nashville or Trenton.
    Then I thought about a reading in D.C., where Polly would sit in the back, her eyes awash in tears as admirers scrummed around me—
    “Nice jacket bro. I think we’re gonna have a good season next year, real solid midfield.”
    Thus interrupted I looked up to see Jon Sturges himself, founder and CEO of EssayAides, talking to the old man in the Patriots parka, giving him the kind of sideways handshake that white dudes who say “bro” give.
    Jon Sturges had eyebrows thick as cigar stubs, beneath a bald spot that spread like a spider across his scalp. Although he was ten years older than me, he cornered and weaved like an athletic eighth-grader playing dodgeball. I walk with the lethargy of a gout-ridden spinster, so I was always impressed to watch him move.
    Jon slapped Patriots Parka on the back. The old man looked thrilled as Jon pointed with both hands at me and glided over.
    “Broseph! Bronaparte!”
    He pulled up a chair and straddled it, tossed his yellow tie over his shoulder, and took a sip of my nut soda.
    “Great that we can meet here like this, outside the office. Roman patrons used to meet their clients in the Forum, the marketplace. They weren’t constrained by offices. They thrived on that bustle, that energy.”
    The only bustle at the moment was Sree, who was attacking his stove with an ice scraper.
    “You’ve got to respect the Romans. That was the original business culture. They completely got it. All this”—Jon waved his hands at our present circumstances—“the Romans established all of this. We’re just replicating their systems. The Romans were brilliant at infrastructure. That infrastructure—their word, from the Latin—that let them shift resources.”
    He took another sip out of my can, appeared stunned, and turned to call back to Sree.
    “What are you working here? Some kind of nut flavor in here?”
    “Yes,” said Sree. “Nepalese nut soda.” He smiled. “Pete, my daughter Martha is going to a roller-skating party this weekend.” I nodded. Sree retreated to his kitchen.
    “Good times,” said Jon. Then he formed his fingers into a triangle under his chin. “So, admissions is in a soft cool. You’ve been doing a great job bro, no question, but I tell ya, I just can’t make the math work anymore. I’ve got other enterprises I’m trying to get off the ground.”
    “I see.”
    “I’m sorry. I gotta let you guys go.” Jon drained the last of my nut soda. “Alice sent me here, I just told her.”
    “So, wait—I don’t have a job anymore?”
    “Sorry dudely.”
    Here—I’m pretty proud of this, actually—my first thought was about Alice.
    “How’d she take it?”
    He crushed the can against the table as he shook his head. “Not well.”
    So now I was unemployed. At the