Free The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer

he had tried to face down Rowell Templen, could now see the hint of his deep, well-concealed rage.
    “Why would you think that would be worth something?”Roth asked. “Writing a book can be a profoundly optimistic act; expecting someone to read, buy, and publish it is always a phenomenally presumptuous one. Why would a marketing department put money behind anything you wrote? Why would someone who didn’t know you spend twenty-five dollars to read your stories of small people leading small lives? Your stories aren’t unusual, Ian, nothing happens in them. Your characters don’t do much; they rarely have anything of value at stake. You’re not famous, you’re not rich, you’re not outrageously talented, you have no platform. Tell me exactly what there is about you that anybody would want to sell or buy?”
    “So, that’s what it’s about now?” I asked.
    “That’s what it was always about,” said Roth. “Selling books. You thought it was about charity?”
    I glared at him, initially unable to speak. So this was where his story had led: some cynical advice given by an embittered man who thought he could apply his lousy experiences to the life of a total stranger. Who was he to judge me, him with his thousand-dollar Jay Gatsby suits and his cashmere gogol and his designer franzens. I went back and forth in my mind, cursing Roth and cursing myself, cursing Roth for his cynicism and myself for my naïveté, cursing him for what he said and myself for the fact that he might be right.
    Roth saw how angry and frustrated I was getting and started to laugh, as if he had known exactly how I would react. “What are you sniggering about?” I asked.
    He held up one finger, turned with a little flourish, then left the room. I finished my drink in one gulp and stood up, but before I could make a move for the door, Roth returned with a bound manuscript and tossed it on the coffee table in front ofme. I glanced at the title page—“
A Thief in Manhattan
, a novel by Jed Roth.”
    “Read it,” he said.
    “Yeah, maybe if you find someone who wants to publish it, someday I might,” I said.
    “Now,” said Roth, and then he said it again, slowly but forcefully:
“Now
. I want you to read it now, Ian.”
    “What time is it?” I asked.
    “Read it now.”
    “Why should I?” I asked.
    “Read it and I’ll tell you,” said Roth.
    “What for?”
    “Read it and you’ll know.” He saw my eyes settling back on the title page, then looking back up at him. “It doesn’t cost anything to read,” he said.
    “It costs my time.”
    “What’s that worth to you?” He reached into a pants pocket, pulled out his wallet, took out a hundred-dollar bill, and tossed it onto the coffee table. And when I didn’t say anything, he tossed another bill in my direction, then another. When there were five C-notes on the table beside
A Thief in Manhattan
, I asked what the five hundred bucks were really for.
    “A reading fee,” he said. All he wanted was for me to sit on his couch, read his manuscript, then tell him what I thought. For that, he would pay five hundred dollars, and afterward, if I chose, I could walk out and we would never speak about this again. I looked at the manuscript. I looked at the money. Back then, five hundred seemed like a lot.
    “All right,” I said, and flipped to the first sentence: “She was standing in a library.”

A THIEF IN MANHATTAN
    Jed Roth was making another pot of coffee, I was about half-done reading his manuscript, and out the window, dawn was beginning to purple the sky that was becoming visible through the nearly bare trees in Riverside Park. Roth asked if I needed to take a break or if I wanted to take a nap and finish reading when I woke up. No, I said, I’d keep reading until I was done.
    Looking back, knowing how long it had been since I’d gotten any sleep, I’m surprised I was able to stay awake. But once in a while, a story can work as well as coffee or speed. During my