Desperation by Stephen King Page B

chance to publish his work; shit, no. He would be able to go on doing that as long as he remained capable of (a) putting words on paper and (b) sending them off to his agent. Once you’d been accepted as a bona fide literary lion, someone would be glad to go on publishing your words even after they had degenerated into self-parody or outright drivel. Johnny sometimes thought that the most terrible thing about the American literary establishment was how they let you swing in the wind, slowly strangling, while they all stood around at their asshole cocktail parties, congratulating themselves on how kind they were being to poor old what’s-his-name.
    No, what Terry gave him wasn’t his last chance to publish, but maybe his last to write something really worthwhile, something that would get him noticed again in a positive way. Something that might also sell like crazy . . . and he could use the money, there was no doubt about that.
    Best of all, he didn’t think Terry had the slightest idea of what she had said, which meant he wouldn’t have to share any of the proceeds with her, if proceeds there were. He wouldn’t even have to mention her on the Acknowledgements page, if he didn’t want to, but he supposed he probably would. Sobering up had been a terrifying experience in many ways, but it did help a person remember his responsibilities.
    He had married Terry when he was twenty-five and she was twenty-one, a junior at Vassar. She had never finished college. They had been married for almost twenty years and during that time she had borne him three children, all grown now. One of them, Bronwyn, still talked to him. The other two . . . well, if they ever got tired of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, he would be around. He was not by nature a vindictive man.
    Terry seemed to know that. After five years during which their only communication had been through lawyers, they had begun a cautious dialogue, sometimes by letter, more often by telephone. These communications had been tentative at first, both of them afraid of mines still buried in the ruined city of their affections, but over the years they had become more regular. Terry regarded her famous ex with a kind of stoic, amused interest that he found distressing, somehow—it was not, in his opinion, the sort of attitude an ex-wife was supposed to have for a man who had gone on to become one of the most discussed writers of his generation. But she also spoke to him with a straightforward kindness that he found soothing, like a cool hand on a hot brow.
    They had been in contact more since he’d quit drinking (but still always by phone or by letter; both of them seemed to know, even without discussing it, that meeting face to face would put too much pressure on the fragile bond they had forged), but in some ways these sober conversations had been even more dangerous . . . not acrimonious, but always with that possibility. She wanted him to go back to Alcoholics Anonymous, told him bluntly that if he didn’t, he’d eventually start drinking again. And the drugs would follow, she said, as surely as dark comes after twilight.
    Johnny told her he had no intention of spending the rest of his life sitting in church basements with a bunch of drunks, all of them talking about how wonderful it was to have a power greater than one’s self . . . before getting back into their old cars and driving home to their mostly spouseless houses to feed their cats. “People in AA are generally too fundamentally broken to see that they’ve turned their lives over to an empty concept and a failed ideal,” he said. “Take it from me, I’ve been there. Or take it from John Cheever, if you like. He wrote particularly well about that.”
    â€œJohn Cheever isn’t writing much these days,” Terry replied. “I think you know why, too.”
    Terry could be irritating, no doubt about