Free How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely Page A

counter Patriots Parka was picking at a chunk of Curry Cheeseburger that had wedged in the space between his dentures and his gums.
    “So listen, Pete. When a Roman legionnaire retired after distinguished service, he would be given a plot of land. I can’t give out land, bro. Real estate’s a sucker’s game. But that’s something,” he said, as he slid an envelope across the table.
    I opened it and counted $320 in twenties.
    The situation wasn’t ideal. But Jon Sturges had employed me for three years, and now he’d given me an arbitrary amount of cash. I owed him something.
    “Jon, I’m reminded of the emperor Augustus and his words to the Senate. You may know this speech. ‘Fellow Romans,’ he said, ‘we bleed the same blood. Our hearts beat with the same fire. When I strike, we strike together. When I rest, we rest together. We are borne together by the same wind, always.’”
    Those were lines I remembered from The Centurion’s Concubine . The centurion says them to his woman. I committed them to memory all those years ago, because they had a powerful effect on the concubine. And they had a powerful effect on Jon, who stood up.
    “When ancient Romans swore an oath, they would place one hand over their testicles,” he said. “That’s where our word testimony comes from. Bet you didn’t know that, bro.” He gripped his testicles tightly. “You’ve done great work for us, Pete. You’re a gifted writer. And I swear to you, we’ll work together again.”
    He then ungripped and stretched out his hand, sideways. With great reluctance I shook it.
    Jon turned and walked toward the door, slapping the old man in the Patriots parka on the shoulder.
    “We got Pittsburgh to worry about. That’s it. Maybe Buffalo. Gonna be a hell of a season.” The old man was baffled but charmed. Jon looked at the posters on the wall.
    “Hey, cool posters. Is this Ghostbusters ? Pete, you see these posters?” Jon yelled into the kitchen. “ Ghostbusters, bro, Ghostbusters .”
    In a Nepalese fast food restaurant where the sanitary conditions were suspect and the food was near poisonous, alongside a highway laid across a bed of brackish marshes, I’d been fired from my job as a forger and plagiarist of application essays by a man whose “business” philosophy was based on gladiator fantasies and epic self-delusion.
    That night, as I drank myself to sleep, I heard Hobart through the wall, talking to his girlfriend or his ex-girlfriend or whatever. I couldn’t make out words, but his sounds grew more and more pleading, until they were followed, inevitably, by long, deep sobs like the moans of a wounded manatee.

6
    The Secret Service agent turned, and surprised him with a smile. “Good luck, Mr. President.” He walked out, closing the door behind him, and Mike “Mac” Tipton was alone in the Oval Office. President Tipton .
    This was where it had all led, from Little League games in Ohio, through the Naval Academy and the combat missions in an F-16 over Kuwait, the lonely campaigning in shopping malls and on street corners, and the ugly haggling of eight years in Congress. And then the campaign, the nights of bad coffee and bad jokes, throat sore from speeches, stomach stuffed with a thousand chicken dinners, face burning with the heat of television lights. Then the longest night of them all, in November, as he watched the states on CNN turn green and he knew he’d entered history as the first independent president since Washington.
    As the January morning sunlight streamed in through the windows, the music of the Inaugural Ball still rang in his ear. But Mac Tipton—President Tipton—was finally alone. Not even his blonde wife Lizabeth could understand how he felt as he looked at the telephone and knew that in under a minute he could reach the premier of China, the South Pole, or—God forbid—the Nuclear Launch Center.
    Mac looked at the portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln. “I