36 hours in NYC (the novel is submitted!)

Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost. – Dante, Inferno

So it felt walking up the broken escalator at New York’s Penn Station last week.

I had an address, 271 W. 23rd Street, where I was to meet my agent at a restaurant called “Trailer Park.” A week earlier, upon arrival in New Orleans, I had sent off what I hoped would be the final version of The Alaskan Laundry. Justin and his fiancée Dana stood by, popping the cork on a bottle of Champage as the Send button was hit. And then it was just waiting – until this dinner.

I felt dressed for the occasion as I stepped into the joint, with my ratty backpack and jeans and camo hat. Imgine a double-wide parked into NYC’s hip downtown, strung with Christmas lights and Formica tables, red plastic baskets for sloppy joe and waffle fries. The charade came tumbling down when I ordered a Michelob and the bartender tried to give me an Ultra. Seriously?

Anyways – down we sat, and Kent said, fairly promptly, the book is ready. From what (very) little I know about this business of publishing, it’s the agent who is supposed to be pushing for a release, in hopes of making a quick buck. But such is not the case with Kent – and to hear him say we’re going out with the novel on Monday, June 3rd, was – thrilling. And scary.

And then the conversation turned to whether to give an exclusive to one house in particular. (I might very well be revealing too much here, but I still have the distinct feeling that it’s only family and very close friends who read this – Hi Jen, Chris, Justin, Katey, Sarah, Mom, Dad, Uncle Fred and Mary Jo!) An “exclusive” would mean sending the manuscript to one editor – who is amazing – and giving this editor first crack.

So we had a couple drinks, Kent patiently walking me through the advantages and disadvantages of such a move. We parted ways at the Union Square subway stop, and, armed with this knowledge that the book would soon be out into the world, it felt like floating. Monday was in five days.

I decided to spend the night at my stepsister’s on 14th Street. We walked from tree-well to tree-well, in hopes of getting her whippet, who was spooked by the recent rain, which washed away all the good smells, to pee. We got a six-pack and kicked it. Lisa crashed. Unable to sleep, I found a place in the East Village that had Cuban salsa. How wonderful the city! And walked the ten blocks to Favela Havana, where a bunch of Cubans and a few talented white dudes danced to timba music and rueda, and, watching from the bar, I thought on the importance of dance and carpentry to writing but my mind just felt tired and I just wanted to have another drink and move. Then walking back at 1 am through the streets, muscles cooling down, that familiar nervous tingle of dancing with a crew you don’t know, and stopping off at St. Mark’s at a basement Yakitori grill, where I ordered a squid pancake and ramen and watched the Japanese men sweating and grilling pig liver, laughing and cursing.

The following morning walking with my backpack to meet Alex and considering hijacking a maple syrup truck and bringing all the bottles back to Sitka, where the stuff sells for 20 bucks a pint. And then, farther north, gawking at a truck delivering kiln-dried wood in neat saran-wrapped bundles, and thinking of bucking up wood for the tug boat, how wondering how many splits it took to heat the space through the winter – excuse the detail in all this but everything in these 36 hours  in such garish color, every facet, every small event catching the light. Meeting Alex at his start-up, library-quiet despite the conga drums and amps and electric guitars arranged in front of low-slung couches. Walking with him to Union Square to meet his buddy Will, this force of nature from Texas who had somehow barged into HarperCollins and gotten a book deal for his novel “A Brave Man Seven Stories Tall.” After comparing notes on writing and jiu-jitsu and boxing we hit up Old Town, apparently the oldest bar in NYC, for beers and burgers. While my favorite outhouse is in Tenakee Springs, Alaska, my favorite urinals must be at this bar. Just magnificent – I swear it’s the setting for the strangling scene in Boardwalk Empire. Slightly drunk, we decided the best thing to do would be to box. Will was a member of Kingsway, just up the street. I had shorts and a tanktop in my backpack – and off we went, to do padwork in the ring and jump rope and wack on the bags, which hurt my separated shoulder like all hell but the Guinnesses sloshing in the stomach took  the edge off.

God how I love the narrow hallways plastered with the collage of boxing photos leading to city gyms, and that stale sweat-smell of wraps and the snap of rope on the maple floor, and the soft thump of guys moving around in the canvas ring, the squinch as they go up on the ropes, and the ding and buzzer of the 3-minute timers. And then Will and I parted ways and I scrounged up a 3-day pass at Equinox gym off Union Square – thank you Haley one day when I have money I will actually join I promise –  which is magnificent with its razors and mouthwash and boxing room where you can plug in your IPhone and the dudes who come around with fresh towels still warm from the dryer. Flushed from the steam room nostrils cleared by eucalyptus oil and showered and content I shouldered the backpack once more and walked the 20 blocks to meet Suzanne whose gorgeous book The Other Typist was catching fire – upon deboarding in Seattle there it was, propped up at the airport bookstore. And then at Barnes and Noble off Union Square – everywhere, this manila-covered book with its enigmatic, blurred picture of a flapper in double. And we ate a fine meal in that oak-treed fairy tale land of the West Village where everyone has full heads of hair and speaks with an indistinguishable European accent and beams healthiness despite the sophisticated sweating cocktail clasped in a soft hand. In another downstairs restaurant dark-lit where I ate the collar of a black cod, which struck me as hilarious because I’ve worked the slime-line at a processor in Alaska and we toss the collars or keep them for the locals. And Suzanne, as she so often seems to do, completed my thoughts on writing and dance by taking from her purse a slim volume of Anatole Broyard, Kafka was the Rage, an elegant remembrance of life in the West Village. A section that began “I liked it better when writers danced.” And following with a majestic scene of Afro-Cuban music. And then Will appeared having texted me to get a pint started but I didn’t want to interrupt Suzanne’s clear thinking and discussion and it was all for the better as the waitress made it clear that with our expanding party we should be moving on. We ran into Alex coming down the stairs and went to another nearby bar and found a table in a carroll in the back and Alex and I joked about the novel he would one day write as Will and Suzanne compared notes, each performing that particular tap-dance unique to writers, palpitating, that slow efflorescence as they simultaneously understood they were in safe company. And then Will departed to tutor and I ordered a Rittenhouse Rye and the Irish bartender sent back an absurd amount of a different type of rye I don’t recall the name of but it was smoky and smooth and I am thankful for his overruling. Suzanne departed and Alex and I returned to Brooklyn. The following morning the sun pushing through every window of the small apartment, and I headed back down to Union Square to meet the author of Frances and Bernard, a gorgeous novel written by a gorgeous author who, I learned, is a killer Skee-ball player, and enjoys the classic feel of the boardwalk in Ocean City over the quiet streets of Avalon, or the craziness of Wildwood. To be sitting across from this woman at City Bakery, drinking sour coffee, this woman whose prose is like a northern pike, how it comes up so silently from below, catching you unawares, was – at the risk of abusing the word – thrilling. And from there Equinox and hopping up on the eliptical, feeling like a happy rat watching CNN and daytime soaps and dripping rye-scented sweat. And then Penn Station for the trip back to Philly, through that corridor of abandoned, window-smashed factories. And one day later, on the way to Avalon, charged with providing my sister’s fiancé with a bachelor party on the shore, speaking with Kent, losing him through bad reception, cursing, calling again, and making out that  he had had drinks with the aforementioned editor, and the exclusive was requested. And the novel, as we spoke, was out in the world. It would be read, in all likelihood, over the weekend – and a decision would be made by June 10th.

Months ago that straightforward path seemed marked out, so clear, like a landing strip, lit up by violet lights on both sides. There was that brief touching down, so brief – three months, let’s call it – and then re-acceleration, lifting back off into the dark.

Thrilling.