Herman Mildew reminded me of Mr. Gunt. We had that love/hate, mostly hate thing. I actually brought the trophy tonight to give it to him. A symbol of respect and a promise to do better for him. You think I was going to bang him over the head with the marble base? Gouge out his eyes with the tip of the eagle’s brass wing? No. I was planning to make a peace offering.
When Jessica, Herman Mildew’s Assistant Two, called and said he wanted to meet me, I told her I was excited to finally meet the legendary publisher. But she sounded strange, sort of sad and apologetic, like she was turning me on to a new drug. “What does he look like?” I asked. I had quickly done a Google Images search for “Herman Mildew, publisher” but had found Mold & Mildew Contractors in Herman, Nebraska, a lady clown in the UK named Mildew, and a black and white cat named Mildew Herman, and nothing else. It was well known that he refused to have his photograph taken, which most people assumed was because he couldn’t stand the hideous sight of himself. But when Jessica later showed me what he made her do to his authors’ photos—plant fake mustaches on their faces—I knew it was because he knew the power of Photoshop.
“I’m a huge fan of your work,” Jessica said, again apologetically. “I think we went to high school together. You went to Bronx Science, didn’t you?”
“Yes!” I said.
“Well then you won’t have any trouble recognizing Mr. Mildew. Remember Mr. Gunderson?”
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Well, he looks a little like Mr. Gunt, but fatter.”
“Mr. Gunt is dead,” I said.
“I know, I read about that,” she said. “Anyway, I think you’ll see the resemblance.”
When I sat across from him at the restaurant, he flattered me. He offered me a lot of money if I would leave my editor and come to him. His little ponytail disgusted me but I thought we would be good together. He intrigued me. “If I fall asleep while you’re talking to me, it’s not that I don’t find you attractive. I have narcolepsy,” he told me. Then his eyelids drooped and I suddenly felt so strangely alone—like I would do anything to get his attention.
“I had a weird dream,” he said, when he had finished his entrée and mine, and a cheese plate for six.
“Do you want to tell me what it was?” I asked, not knowing if he’d had the dream during our lunch or previously.
“I no longer had my beautiful office. My office was a news kiosk on the street. ‘So this is the publishing industry now,’ I thought. I was so depressed until I saw that all my writers were homeless people lying on the sidewalk beneath me. That was a relief.”
When I handed in the book he said I was one day past my deadline so he rejected it and said I had to give back the advance. Money I had long spent on therapy to deal with the things he said to me like, “Belle, sit on my face and I’ll guess your weight.”
But, I couldn’t leave him. I did another book for him and then another.
Of course I’m going to be accused by all the writers here because I am ten times more successful than all of them. It’s like a book I once read aloud when I was volunteering at a library, a brilliant children’s book, a retelling of the Three Little Pigs from the point of view of the wolf. Of course pigs are going to accuse a wolf. Mildew made it no secret what he paid me. I’m probably more hated than he was.
And, as I’m sure Jessica told you, I was also a suspect in the Mr. Gunt murder, but that doesn’t mean I should be a suspect here tonight. Mr. Gunt died at a dinner theater in the small town he retired to. At a show starring Rue McClanahan, one of the Golden Girls, with a prime rib dinner. I had no idea he was a Rue McClanahan fan. I was there on my book tour. The police quickly determined I had nothing to do with it and the fact that I had my Nationals debate trophy on me at the time was simply a coincidence. A good friend of mine is an artist in Minneapolis, which was the next stop on my tour, and he’d asked if he could put the trophy in an art installation. I’d thrown it in my carry-on bag and forgotten to take it out before the theater. Hell, a guy died in my spin class the other day. No one discovered him slumped on his bike until the class had ended and the darkened studio had been lit. People must die in gyms and at dinner theaters and at parties all the time. It’s not my fault that I was his favorite writer. You’ll find DNA on the trophy all right—blood, sweat, and tears—but sadly, all of it is mine.
What? The business card for the YA Mafia? Never saw it before.
Will Whack For Lattes? It’s a joke. Sure, I’ve heard the rumors. You can’t step into a café in Brooklyn without picking them up. Cranky editors? Elusive agents? Booksellers who banish you just for moving your book to the New and Noteworthy table? Who ya gonna call?
But you’d have to be crazy to have a guy killed just because he hated your similes.
Mildew was my editor, but I never met him. He was just a voice on the phone, telling me that a really great book didn’t need a marketing campaign, or that digital books were a passing fad, so why bother to negotiate rights?
I have to admit, though, the guy could line-edit. If you didn’t mind the belching. And the whistle.
I’d hear it rattle when he put it between his teeth. “That simile is crap,” he’d say, and then the next thing I knew my ears would be bleeding. Did I care? Nah. I loved him like a puppy loves kitten-heeled slippers.
Oh—the card for Dabney Dorf, DPM? He’s my podiatrist! Sure, Herman gave me the referral. We liked to talk feet, okay? Last time I checked the laws of New York State, that wasn’t a crime.
Okay, okay, I did meet him once. At my last appointment, I noticed this hairy guy lurking around the medical waste. He had a huge head balanced on a chicken neck and a mouth the size of an earbud. I couldn’t look away. Maybe because he was shaking toenail clippings into his briefcase.
Did you just gag? Yeah. That was my first reaction. But there was something about the way this guy looked—intent, smart, disgusting—that made me look twice. Or maybe it was the whistle around his neck.
“You look as busy as a teenager’s thumbs,” I said.
His fingers scrabbled at the whistle, but he caught himself in time. “Got the wrong guy, lady.”
“Guilty as a nun with Beauty Queens stashed in her wimple.”
The scream of the whistle shattered the screen of my iPhone. “GOTCHA, HERMIE,” I shouted. Temporary deafness doesn’t last that long; I’d learned that the hard way. “NOW YOU OWE ME LUNCH.”
I asked for Jean-Georges, so he took me to Burger Heaven. I had the grilled cheese. He had the bowl of pickles. He picked out all the seeds and flicked them across the table. My glasses were speckled with dill seed by the end, but I’d scored a free lunch from Herman Mildew. Not many authors can say that.
“Here’s what I want,” I said. “A real book tour this time. I’m tired of going to Ho-Ho-Kus.”
“I’ve got contacts in Saskatchewan.”
“About time you got serious.”
He rubbed the pickle along my wrist and then buried his nose against my pulse. He must have felt it jump. “They’ll slurp you up like ramen in Moose Jaw,” he crooned.
We asked for more pickles, but instead, they threw us out. As we hit the street, his briefcase popped open. Papers and toenail clippings spilled onto the sidewalk. My royalty statement for An Abundance of Hermans fluttered out and landed on my shoe. I saw the numbers float before my eyes, and like a seagull eyeing a toddler’s hot dog, I dived. There it was, a perfect row of six figures.
I grabbed him by his scrawny neck. “You told me that book tanked! I got a royalty check for forty-seven cents!”
“That billion-followers-on-Twitter guy mentioned you on his blog. The next thing I knew, you were outselling that vampire chick. Or was it werewolves? So I held it against unearned royalties on your other books.”
“That’s illegal!”
He had the nerve to smirk. “Read your contract, sunshine.”
“Crook!” Maybe I squeezed a little bit harder. Who wouldn’t?
“Remember t
he book tour,” he croaked. “I’ll throw in Manitoba!”
Maybe I bruised his windpipe a tad before they separated us. And it’s possible that for a second or two I considered calling in the YA Mafia to arrange their signature hit—a little encounter with an exploding Sharpie. But I know about revenge. It’s like cereal for dinner. Lucky Charms may go down easy, but then you dream about meatballs.
I was about to get an all-expenses-paid book tour! You know those bathroom products you get in hotels? They’re as free as those ads for aftershave that you rub on your neck so that you can smell like cedar and confuse your cat. Here’s my point: I didn’t kill Herman Mildew. I’m almost out of shampoo.
Murder? How purrfectly awful.
Murder implies mystery, and I hate mysteries. Agatha Hitchcock, red herrings, clues, footprints—boring.
Now, comic books on the other hand …
Hang on, the cats are demanding their second breakfast. One second.
I have great respect for Herman Mildew. He is brilliant, methodical, ambitious—but very, very evil.
No 2 percent for you today, dear? All right, just a little cream though. You haven’t been getting out as much as you used to. Don’t want to get too fat and too slow, mmm?
It’s a little unusual to find someone of Mildew’s caliber in a field like publishing. Usually you expect to see his type of villain as a titan of Wall Street or holed up in his own laser-protected compound, issuing directives from a computer screen.
Herman and I first met in person when my own editor disappeared, taken off the series I was working on.
Everyone knows what a monster he is—so I entered his dark office prepared for the worst.
“Why, Miss Braswell. This manuscript is brilliant.”
All his yellowed teeth shone in the grimace that would have been a smile on anyone else.
I was completely taken aback.
“It’s ‘Ms.’ But…really?”
“Why, yes,” he said in that oily tone that’s been known to make agents put chopsticks through their own ears. “It’s really…quite…excellent.”
I was stunned. He had never, in the history of his career, said anything nice to anyone.
I’m sorry, let me just get Garfield off you. Your pants will be fine—the threads aren’t even torn.
How many? Oh, about six cats at current count. No, I’m not really one of those crazy cat people. I try to get them adopted.
Anyway, something was up. I didn’t trust him at all. So yes, I began following him. That’s absolutely true. After he left the office every night—usually around nine—I would tail him from above, running across rooftops with the freedom that the night brings. He had no idea I was there, watching from the shadows.
What? He did know? That’s why I’m a suspect?
Oh, I don’t believe that. I’m very stealthy.
I only fell through a skylight once. And didn’t I help the police raid that illegal loft party? OK, not help exactly, but I told them about it, right? I couldn’t stick around to aid our boys in blue. I had more important fish to fry.
Mildew’s routine never changed, like perfectly lubricated—but evil—clockwork. He always traveled from Midtown to the Lower East Side, where he would stop at the Pickle Guys for a kosher half sour.
Dill?
No, no, you have it all wrong. My powers of observation are honed to a nigh-supernaturally sharp edge. It was a half sour. No, I’m telling you …
OFF THE COUCH! BAD KITTIES!
Where was I? Oh right. Half sours. And from there I followed him back to his home in the ’burbs, or should I say lair, where no doubt he sipped his port and considered more evil plans.
I mean, I would have followed him, but it’s like forty-five minutes there on Metro-North, and another forty-five minutes back, and I have to give Mr. Scribbles his medicine or he wees all over the carpet the next day.
Then I slipped into my apartment by the side window so no one could see me go in and out—and also I lost the key—and I removed my…working clothes, and became the ordinary writer you see standing here before you.
Yes, I’m pretty sure all ordinary writers wear sweats and stained tees. Do you like it? I got the absolute last one at Comic Con.
Anyway, then one day Herman altered his routine.
I followed him to the west side, all the way to the river. He stood alone, on a pier, the salty wind blowing his greasy white locks about his face. Then he took out a stack of paper.
My paper.
My manuscript.
He peeled off a page, held it aloft, read a sentence or two aloud and then—
—Lady Grantham, could you kindly wait a moment for me to change the litter box? I’m right in the middle of a story—
—and then he giggled like an insane baby and CRUMPLED UP THE PAGE AND THREW IT INTO THE HUDSON.
Again and again and again. Reading my pages and then tossing them into the murky waters below. Muttering and chortling to himself the whole time.
“Said she was brilliant. ‘Excellent’ writing—HA! Best laugh I’ve had in years!”
Was I overwhelmed with epic rage? Did I feel the strength of a thousand strong cats flowing through my blood? Was I suddenly berserk with a tempest of self-righteous indignation?
Certainly. But I would never just push Herman into the river. That’s so…common. If I had descended to the rank of evildoer I would have attacked him in the way that suits me best, with razor-sharp claws. And as you can see, officer, there is no blood under them.
No. They’re not press-ons. They’re razor-sharp claws. See? I filed them. That would really hurt if I scratched you.
I hissed in anger and withdrew back into the loving shadows of the night, where my friends and I apparently belong.
No, my friends are CATS. Not rats. CATS. Shadows and CATS. Haven’t you been listening?
And anyway, the night he was supposedly killed I was at the shelter, helping give rabies shots. You can ask Sheila. I was totally there.
Meow.
What? No, I didn’t sneeze. I was just.…
Oh, never mind.
I did not kill Herman Q. Mildew. Don’t misunderstand me: I had every intention of killing him. Truly I did.
But as anyone who has ever worked with me knows, I have never met a deadline, not once. By the time I figured out whether I should bash in his skull with a pipe (too messy), sing in a pitch that would make his brain melt (interesting, but then there was the question of which song would do the trick and that meant a lot of time spent browsing iTunes), or simply shoot him in the back (you can’t go wrong with the classics), the thoroughly despicable Mr. Mildew had already been dead for ages, and his office (or so I’ve heard) turned into an arcade. (I totally KILLED at Pac-Man, so at least it wasn’t a total loss.)
Believe me, no one is more disappointed than I am about this unfortunate turn of events. Please accept my humblest apologies for not getting to Herman Q. Mildew before someone else did. Bummer.
In the good news department, I am now hard at work on a short story about a writer who fails to kill her editor on time. It will be completed in 2025.
Did I kill Herman Mildew? Not in any real sense.
In what sense did I kill him? It’s an amusing diversion to pursue this line of questioning, so I’ll play along. And I did kill HM, but only in a fantastic sense, and I’m using “fantastic” here as an adjectival form of “fantasy,” not in the modern usage that essentially means “quite good.”
It would be quite good, though, wouldn’t it? Excuse me, I mean it would have been quite good. Someone else has, apparently, beaten me to the punch—or gunshot, hanging, stabbing, defenestration, or whatever method was used.
Poison? Poison would be fun, though a bit impersonal. The killer needn’t even be in the room. There are other ways of killing with food, and by extension remotely. I once read something about an omelet prepared with chèvre, dill, and crushed glass. Fantastic—and here I do mean “quite good.”
I haven’t given it much thought.
But I admitted already that I’ve killed him in the fantastic sense. Here’s how that happened; it’s no doubt how I’d do it, if I did it, which I didn’t. Not really.
HM was fond of the little Szechuan place on Avenue Y. I’ve been there, speaking of ways to kill with food. If you ever have the choice, I’d recommend having that glass omelet instead. But I’m not here to criticize the man’s taste in Chinese food. The point is I’d tell him we should meet in person, as our conversations via email are so impersonal—rather like killing with food. I’d invite him to lunch—let’s say earlier today, for the sake of argument—and I’d imply that my agent would be there, because then HM would show up, because my agent is known to frequently pick up the check. He’s magnanimous that way. HM, despite well-established industry standards, not so much.
So he’d show, and he’d be early, because he always liked to sit with his back to the corner, where he could face the room and see the door and all the windows and encroaching writers. One member of the wait staff, it’s rumored, only took the job to get close to HM.
I’m fairly sure HM started that rumor.
I’d get there a little late. He’d eat dumplings while he waited. He’d drink a second tequila sunrise. He’d be heavy and slow, his judgment compromised, by the time I sat down. He’d be sweating, and I’d be able to smell the garlic ginger dumpling dip oozing from his gigantic pores. He’d gasp for breath and nod at me. My latest manuscript—a beautiful and succinct work, one which breaks genre distinctions and bravely explores untraversed regions of literature—would sit on the decorative plate at my seat. It would be my most important work to date. It would change American letters—at least some of them, like maybe g through r, for example—forever.