Quid Pro Crow

by

Steven Mayoff

WHAT MADE ME THINK THAT GOING TO MONTREAL in the middle of February would somehow shake me out of my seasonal depression? The free flight from Prince Edward Island? The free hotel room for the two days of this literary conference? The opportunity of networking with other writers, editors, illustrators, publishers, agents and educators from around the country? The moment I arrived at the massive conference room and sat at my assigned table, waiting for the nine others who’d also been assigned here to show up, I regretted putting my name in for the lottery to win the free airfare, registration cost and hotel room so I could put in my two cents on how to fix the state of Canadian publishing.

The lottery was sponsored by the national arts council that had organized this two-day shindig and available only to writers from PEI and the Northwest Territories, they being the two areas most under-represented at council meetings. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only Island writer in attendance.

I KNEW SHE WOULD BE AT THE CONFERENCE from the list of participants included in the emailed rundown of what to expect during these two days. I worried at first about the possibility of running into her, fretting for a few days, constantly changing my mind about whether I would go or not. When I kept seeing how many people would be at the conference, I convinced myself that it was a longshot we would run into each other and said what the hell.

There must have been thirty other tables spread out around the conference area, which was situated in the lowest level of a downtown off-campus university building used as a student residence. Each table accommodated approximately ten people. As the others who’d been assigned to my table brought their coffees, muffins and bagels and settled into their seats, I could see that there was still one missing. I stared blankly at an empty chair directly opposite me. Then my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of her heading toward the table. The next thing I knew she had stopped behind the empty chair and looked directly at me. By the sour twist of her puckered red baboon’s ass of a mouth you’d be excused for thinking I had pissed all over her patent leather pumps. She surveyed the rest of the participants and made a point of bidding each one good morning before seating herself.

Most everyone knew who Melanie Chinaski was by sight and certainly by reputation. I knew by experience. Before she agreed to sign me to her agency, almost five years before, on the strength of the early draft of my first novel (which she allowed had a “promising style”), I was aware of her nickname, The Crow, and the fact that she hated it. Most assumed the sobriquet’s origin lay in her physical attributes: the beaky nose and jet-black helmet of hairspray-lacquered hair. Others said the nickname originated from the nasal quality of her voice, with its unique pitchy inflections.

The strongest case, though, accredited the combination of persistence and aggression that marked her as one of the more successful literary agents in Canada. Some agents could be described as pit bulls, but there was something more avian than canine about Melanie. I’ve seen crows chase down eagles and foxes on PEI, so I knew how fearless they could be. She also had an almost legendary temperament, described to me once as “cold-blooded prickliness.” After I signed with her, I was sure I had finally made it to the end of the on-ramp where I would soon merge onto the super highway to literary success. When she unceremoniously dropped me from her roster a year later, after reading and hating the next draft of my manuscript, I felt like I’d been left wandering, dazed and naked, on the narrow meridian in the middle of that same super highway, trying to hitch a ride with bloody stumps for hands.

ONCE WE WERE ALL SEATED AND SETTLED IN, the team leader at our table, who was a representative from the hosting arts council, called the meeting to order. He asked us all to get the ball rolling by going one-by-one around the table to state our names, our positions in the literary community and the name of a current book we had read and enjoyed. I forget pretty much everyone’s name, including the team leader’s. There were a couple of educators, a bright-eyed young intern from a rising literary agency, an editor from a small press in Moosejaw, somebody who worked in a company that calculated national book sales (which many publishers and agents referred to before deciding which writers to woo and which to shun), a librarian, and an elderly gentleman who was the head of a writers’ federation in some other province. Sitting beside me was the publisher of a very successful mid-sized press in Toronto. I would have given my left nut to have her publish my first novel, if one of her editors hadn’t already rejected it as “derivative and predictable.”

As we went around the table everyone seemed keen to make a good impression, but stuck to what was asked of them. The bright-eyed intern went off-script to add that she just wanted people “to read more books.” I wanted to ask her why she wasn’t working in a library rather than giving away her time at a literary agency, but decided to keep that in my back pocket in case I actually found myself in conversation with her. When it came to my turn, I gave my name and identified myself as a writer, suddenly realizing I was the only one at the table. Obviously, it had been the organizers’ intention to have as wide a representation of the book industry as possible at each table. Nevertheless, I suddenly felt isolated (not surprising, given that I was still nursing a fragile state of mind due to my seasonal depression) and panicked when it came time to give the title of a book I had currently read and enjoyed. My mind went blank, but the elderly head of whatever writers’ federation he represented came to my rescue.

“I’m sure the current book you’re enjoying is whatever you’re writing now.”

Considering the book I was then working on was the final draft of the aforementioned first novel (which had been recently accepted by a small publisher on PEI), I feigned a grateful smile and replied: “Actually, that’s my least favourite book at the moment.”

The publisher from the Toronto mid-level press sitting next to me leaned over and said, “I understand. I’m married to a writer.”

Really? A note of sympathy? Maybe serendipity had positioned me well after all.

The rest of the table accounted for themselves with little fanfare until it was finally Melanie Chinaski’s turn. I can’t remember what book she named, but it was on the New York Times’ bestseller list, just to show us she was keeping up with the world. After she had spoken, the team leader was about to get us started when The Crow produced her phone, stared at the screen and stated aloud, “Oh, I’m getting a text. It says I’m supposed to move to the next table.” With that, she began to gather her things and rose from her seat. Most everyone else at the table paid little attention, although the Toronto publisher beside me said in an overly bored manner, “Aw, too bad. Good-bye, Melanie.”

I remember my initial reaction was confusion. She had received a text to change tables? Really? Then I couldn’t help wondering if she was moving because of me. I hadn’t done anything, but why else would she pull a petty stunt like this, especially after regarding me with such open disdain when she arrived? Judging by some of the stories I’d heard, this brand of spite was not unusual behaviour for her. Normally, I wouldn’t have been bothered, and to be honest, I found the situation bizarre and kind of comical.

Maybe that’s the reason I pulled my iPod Touch out of my pocket (I don’t have a phone). Nobody took any notice of me as I held it up to look at the black screen. I suppose I could have left it at that, a silent mockery of what she had just done, but some strange quirk in my brain pushed me to commit to what I had started and I suddenly heard myself saying, “Oh look I’m getting a text.” I could have left it there and maybe saved some face, or possibly elicited a chuckle, but I continued: “It says the rest of us will just have to muddle on as best we can.”

Rather than put the iPod back in my pocket, I stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, wondering if I should say more, but soon realizing too much time had passed and whatever had just happened was over now. I lowered the device and kept it in my hand, vaguely aware of my frozen grip.

I had no idea whether The Crow heard what I said as she was now sitting at the next table (not even two feet away from us) engaged in conversation with a young man. No one at our table spoke until the team leader finally broke the silence by saying something about how I might want to look into a new phone plan. There were a couple of smiles and then he launched into the business at hand.

This was meant to proceed as an industry think tank. There were various topics, such as “creativity,” “promotion,” “inclusivity” and some others, meant to be prompts for ideas. Each table had an easel with a large pad of blank paper, where all the ideas would be written down with a magic marker. The young woman who worked for the company that calculated national book sales was designated as the one to work the easel and condense the ideas into point form. As I remember, she was very adept at the task. With the team leader’s encouragement, the ideas were flying thick and fast. I occasionally weighed in, but for the most part sat sullenly and pretended to listen to what the others were saying.

After the ideas for each topic had been discussed and written out in bullet form on the oversized pad, the page was torn off and handed to the team leader, who then left the table to pass the page on to a group from the hosting arts council. This group took all the pages from all the tables and distilled the ideas into a key list, to be later shared with the entire conference. Once an idea session, which lasted about thirty minutes, was over, people were invited to line up behind two microphones situated at the room’s centre to address the conference. Some had specific issues they felt needed to be brought to everyone’s attention, while others wanted to represent whatever area they had travelled from to be there. Assuming I was the only one from PEI at the conference, I felt that perhaps I should also go up, since I had won a lottery to be there on the basis that the Island writing community was under-represented at council meetings. And yet, either from my natural fear of public speaking or just general apathy, I could not bring myself to leave my chair.    

LUNCH WAS NOT PROVIDED, but we were given ninety minutes to fend for ourselves among the many restaurants along rue Ste-Catherine and other downtown areas. I had all my favourite foodie hangouts, Montreal being my hometown before moving to Toronto in the mid-80s where I then lived for seventeen years until relocating, post-millennium, to PEI. In desperate need for fresh air, I opted for the twenty-minute walk through the slushy sidewalks to The Main for deux steamies tout garnie avec frites at my favourite hotdog joint, Frites Dorées, situated amidst the stripper bars, seedy taverns and ethnic grocery stores. It was my surest bet that I wouldn’t run into anyone from the conference.

And yet, sitting there alone at a booth with an all-dressed steamed hotdog and a can of Pepsi in front of her was The Crow. First of all, how did she get there before me? A taxi, was my only guess. But why was she there in the first place? I naturally assumed she’d prefer somewhere a bit more upscale. At first, I didn’t know what to do. My instinct was to leave, except we were on my turf now, so there was no way I was going to slink off because of some self-important industry snob.

I ordered two all-dressed steamies, fries and a Pepsi, all the while glancing over at my nemesis. She was scrolling through her phone. I took my tray to the counter and parked myself on a stool as far away from the booths as possible. I tried to concentrate on my lunch, resisting the temptation to look at her, but found my mind wandering back to the first time I met her in person, a few months after signing the contract she had emailed me. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall, so to speak, regarding my short tenure as one of her writers, when the last clause in the contract spelled out that either one of us could end our relationship at a moment’s notice by merely informing the other in writing. Whether this was common practice with all literary agents, I had no idea (and still don’t, never having had any other representation since, although it could be argued that Melanie never actually got around to representing me either).

If it was so easy to get out of the contract, I wondered what the point was of having one in the first place. Nevertheless, I printed up the agreement, signed it, scanned it and emailed it back to her.

In all fairness, I should mention that prior to sending the contract, she had emailed me a detailed critique of the novel draft I sent her, laying out all the problems with it along with suggestions on how it could be improved, which entailed a lot of revising on my part, the proviso being that if I was willing to do the work, she would sign me. After some consideration, it was clear that what she was asking me to do, arduous as it was, would indeed improve my novel. In the end, I told myself that no matter what happened, I would come out of it, at the very least, with a better draft.

Our first face-to-face occurred at her office in Yorkville, an area I knew well, having worked in a call centre there for far too many years before meeting my future wife and moving to PEI with her in 2001. It was eight years later and I was in Toronto to do some readings for my first book, a story collection that had been published by an indie press in Manitoba, reputed to be a launching pad for a couple of successful Canadian writers. At the time, it seemed to me that I was on the right trajectory: doing readings for my first published book, the next draft of my second book soon to begin, and now meeting with my new agent.

I was greeted by a receptionist behind a desk, who announced me by intercom, after which I was led into Melanie’s office. I took a seat. I can’t recall if she even said hello, but I do remember her sitting at a desktop computer, her attention fixed on the screen. Without looking up, she explained that she was on the website for a company that tracks the sales for newly-released books. This was the first I had heard of such a company, which, coincidentally or not, was the same one represented by the woman at my table who was working the easel these five years later at a conference where I came eyeball to eyeball with The Crow for a second time.

“I don’t see your book here,” Melanie said with some annoyance and still staring at her computer screen. I realized she was referring to the story collection that had only been released a month earlier. I had brought a number of copies (purchased from the publisher at a discount) with me to Toronto to sell at the readings. I knew that it was not being carried by many bookstores (one exception being the main indie shop in Charlottetown, a store that proudly supports Island writers). I mentioned all of this to Melanie.

“Well, that’s not going to help you,” she said. “How am I supposed to sell your novel to a publisher if this one doesn’t have any sales? Selling them at readings isn’t going to do you any good. None of those sales are going to show up here.” She tapped her screen with a polished red fingernail.

“It was a mistake for you to publish the book in the first place. It’s not going to get you anywhere. You only get so many turns at bat. If you haven’t connected with readers or made some kind of impact by your third book you might as well throw in the towel. No one will take you seriously. No agent will want anything to do with you.”

By this time, she was looking up from the computer screen. And she was actually smiling. Why, I’m not sure. Maybe she thought smiling might soften the blow of all this harsh reality she was slinging at me. After that, I believe there was something in there about me living on PEI and how there’s not much of a readership in the Maritimes for Jewish-themed novels set in Montreal (such was my work-in-progress), since (according to her) there aren’t large Jewish communities in the Atlantic provinces. While she talked, I listened and threw in a comment here and there.

At some point, I realized that my strained body language – the hunched shoulders, tightly crossed legs and the way I desperately clutched my shoulder bag to my chest like a security blanket – did little to conceal how her every word was chipping away at whatever optimism and confidence in my situation I may have had before I sat down. A semblance of distaste in her expression (a more muted version of what had greeted me at the conference) told me that she was aware of my vulnerable state and had already written me off as one more pantywaist failed author squandering her precious time.

After about half an hour, she declared the meeting over and told me that my best course of action was to go back to PEI and finish my novel, reminding me that she blocked off two months of every summer as her reading period. She hoped I would have the next draft ready for her at that time in the following year.

I looked down at my plate and was startled to see it empty. Apparently, I had scarfed down the two all-dressed hotdogs and vinegar-soaked fries in some kind of stress-related feeding frenzy without tasting a bite, so entangled was my psyche in the memory of that first encounter with the legendary Melanie Chinaski.

I swivelled around on my stool, and she was nowhere to be seen. I stared at the empty booth and wondered if she had been there at all. Or had I only imagined seeing her there? It was suddenly crystal clear that our second encounter earlier that morning – all the harsher for its brevity – was merely a grim reminder of how The Crow had been roosting rent-free in my head these past five years.

THIS IS SHADOW WORK. I see that now.

As I write this, it is nine years since that conference in Montreal. Thirteen years since Melanie Chinaski dropped me as a client.

It would seem to be a no-brainer to identify The Crow as the shadow I’m trying to confront and, I suppose, ultimately exorcise. And yet, I doubt it’s that simple. My gut tells me she is merely a symptom of something larger.

When I returned from lunch to the conference and was sitting once more in my place at the table, I learned something interesting. People were still straggling in and milling about the room, schmoozing or comparing notes with those who were not in their groups. I noticed that the publisher of the mid-sized Toronto press, who had yet to take her seat next to me, was talking to a man whom I vaguely recognized. Judging by their body language and the way she was touching his arm, they obviously knew each other well, possibly intimately. That was when it dawned on me that the man was the son of an internationally-famous Jewish Montreal novelist and essayist, who had passed away the same year I moved to PEI.

The son was also a writer, who had recently published a non-fiction book that was receiving much publicity and good reviews. I recognized him from many photos I’d seen online. It didn’t seem much of a leap to surmise that this was the writer-husband, whom the publisher had mentioned earlier.

Trying not to be too conspicuous, I watched them while pretending to scan the room. I confess to being momentarily star-struck, not that I was familiar with the husband’s writing, but I had devoured almost everything his father had written. Indeed, the father’s most famous novel, considered to be a modern Canadian classic (later adapted into a successful Canadian film that launched the career of a well-known Hollywood actor), was a book I had first read in my high school North American Literature class, and have reread many times since. It was the novel that first sparked what would soon become a burgeoning interest in literary fiction.

The image of the Toronto publisher and her writer-husband together somehow punctured my lingering seasonal depression and the dull dread of being in a roomful of industry professionals with whom I had nothing in common. In retrospect, I think I saw the Toronto publisher and her writer-husband as being two degrees of separation from a major literary figure and celebrated curmudgeon, whom I considered to be an important influence, not only on my writing, but also on my self-identity as a Jew growing up in Montreal.

Suddenly, being at this conference in the city of my birth seemed to carry a modicum of logic and allowed me to feel, if not a part of the proceedings, at least comfortable within my own niche of anonymity amidst the pervading drone of voices and faceless sea of animated bodies.

Alas, my sense of well-being within this newly-carved niche took a darker turn once everyone was settled back in their seats and returning their attention to the business of spit-balling ideas to reinvent Canadian publishing. I can’t remember what exact topic was up for discussion, perhaps opportunity or something like that, but the talk had turned to ways of motivating writers or writing programs to initiate projects. I listened to various suggestions, such as sponsoring competitions or widening the scope of grants and bursaries or instituting advance payments for works in progress, none of which I had any objection to.

But since I was the only writer at this table, I had a feeling that my perspective might be refreshing and raised my hand. The team leader, although initially surprised to see such formality amidst the verbal free-for-all the others were engaged in, ultimately seemed pleased that I was going to contribute something at last and eagerly recognized me. I started off by praising the ideas that had been put forth then added that, from a writer’s point of view, as welcome as these policies would be, they were beside the point when it came down to the creative process. The fact is, writers are going to write whatever they are compelled to, no matter what. All the suggested programs, as supportive as they were meant to be, would not engender more output. Simply put (and I feared I was possibly putting it too simply), writing usually comes from an internal impetus rather than any external opportunity. I drove my point home (or so I hoped) by quoting a well-known short story writer, whose only novel had recently won an international literary prize, and with whom I had taken two fiction workshops: “We write about whatever is bothering us.”

“So, you’re saying that writers are going to write one way or another, whether the infrastructural support is there or not?” the team leader said, as if this was a new and strange idea that he was trying to wrap his head around.

“Pretty much,” I said. “I know it’s a cliché, but in the end, writing isn’t only something you choose to do. In the end, it chooses you. Or that’s my experience at any rate. And when that happens, you’re going to write no matter what.”

“Okay.” He nodded with as much encouragement as he could muster. “Interesting.”

As pleased as I was to finally add something to the mix, the quizzical looks on the faces of the other participants around the table told me that my input was of no practical use. Apparently, the idea that some writers are compelled by an inner need to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard – a compulsion that has nothing to do with career strategies, standard fees or negotiated advances – made no sense to them at all. Some frowned. Others shook their heads. I merely slumped in my chair. Not even the writing federation old-timer nor the publisher spouse of the writer son of one of my literary heroes took the opportunity to offer me succour.

Whatever comfort I may have found in the niche that I had carved out for myself, it still wasn’t deep enough for me to fully disappear into.

It’s not like I was purposely trying to throw a wrench into the conference’s progressive agenda or undermine the book industry’s integrity by suggesting that writers were rogue actors unwilling to play ball in the established order of things. I suppose I merely wanted to remind everyone that the long-established machinery that all of us were there to take apart and fine-tune in the name of civilized culture was deeply rooted in a complex miasma of impulses, the very nature of which resisted all attempts at order and regulation, and was coupled, ironically, with the human necessity to hammer and shape said impulses into some kind of manifestation, whether in the form of words, music, paint or some other material.

WALKING BACK TO MY HOTEL under fat blue snowflakes at the end of that first day, I thought about the Toronto publisher and her writer husband. I had overheard her saying that they were going to have supper at Moishe’s, a swanky steakhouse on boulevard Saint-Laurent that was a Montreal institution, as well as being one of Leonard Cohen’s favourite haunts whenever he was in town. I wanted to tell her that it was also a place my father would take my mother, older brother, sister and me for special family occasions.

Deep in my heart I longed to join the Toronto publisher and her writer husband for supper. I even toyed with the idea of just showing up and maybe wheedling a place at their table, ingratiating myself with them by talking about how my father had cut smoked meat and made sandwiches behind the counters of every delicatessen in Montreal, including Schwartz’s (no more than a few feet away up the street from Moishe’s). Schwartz’s old fashioned smoked meat was apparently a favourite of the writer husband’s novelist father (whose most famous novel immortalized the kosher lunch counter Wilensky’s as a Montreal landmark), and who knows, maybe the writer husband’s father might have eaten a sandwich that my father had made. I wanted to regale them with all this cultural interconnection in hopes of recapturing a bit of whatever magical sense of belonging I was feeling when I first spotted them earlier that afternoon.

But since Moishe’s has a strict jacket and tie dress code and I had stuffed a backpack with only tee shirts, jeans and a hoodie, I got something to go at a nearby fast-food joint and opted for an evening of lone indulgence in the name of self-care by eating in bed and channel surfing.

The second day of the conference went off much the same as the first. More free associating of ideas, more bullet points, more line-ups to speak at the microphones (mostly by the same people, who had nothing new to add to whatever they had said the last time they were there). Much to my embarrassment, one of the speakers happened to be the publisher of the Manitoba press that had put out my first book, the story collection. His comment was an expression of gratitude to the national arts council for hosting the conference and to everyone in the room for coming together in a valiant attempt to “save Canadian publishing,” whereupon his voice actually cracked as if he were on the verge of tears. When the Toronto publisher sitting next to me let out a groan of exasperation at this shameless display of sentimentality, I admitted to her that the speaker was my first publisher. Why I would do such a thing, and risk humiliating myself by association, was unclear to me at first, until she offered me her sympathy and I realized (with some inner embarrassment) that it was exactly the response I was hoping to get from her.

Also featured were some guest speakers who were there at the conference, except for one (the publisher of a small American press) who gave his talk via Skype from an airport lounge, due to his flight being cancelled by a bad snowstorm. The Toronto publisher sitting next to me seemed to take great exception to whatever the guy on the screen was saying and made snide comments sotto voce and through live tweets, which she showed me. I found them amusing and openly grinned, feeling the old connection from yesterday suddenly renewed, and wondered if we were building a rapport that I could use to my advantage sometime in the future.

MEMORY, SOME MIGHT ARGUE, IS A KIND OF FICTION, due to its selective nature. And, I suppose a case could be made that fiction is largely made up of memories – the sense memory of one’s life experience that goes into creating characters and their situations. Either way, choices are made and a certain amount of invention comes into play when trying to fill those blank spaces.

There is a kind of trade-off between the struggle for fidelity and the solace of imagination, until they inevitably merge and eventually mutate into the fever of creation, becoming a playground for the fictional and the dead.

Among the dead are my father, my mother, my older brother and Leonard Cohen. Among the fictional are the Toronto publisher, her writer husband, the team leader and The Crow. And, of course, myself.

THE MORNING I WAS SUPPOSED TO CHECK OUT of my hotel and fly back home, there was a snow storm in PEI. I spent much of the morning checking the Air Canada web site on my iPad, refreshing it every so often to see whether my flight home would be cancelled, and messaging my wife who was updating me on PEI weather conditions. The hotel’s front desk assured me that they would extend the checkout time for as long as I needed and accommodate me as best they could. My hope was that, if my flight was cancelled, I could just stay in my room for another day. Possibly the arts council, which was already footing the bill for the two days I’d been there, would pick up the tab for the extra day as well. In the end, there was no cancellation noted on the AC website, so I quickly stuffed my things into my backpack and checked out of the hotel with just enough time to catch a bus to Trudeau Airport.

After waiting a good forty-five minutes at the gate to start the boarding process, it came as no real surprise to be finally told that the flight had been cancelled. In true Air Canada dick-the-customer-around-as-much-as-possible fashion, I had been given a number to call, entailing me to search for a free payphone, after which I was told when and from which gate my flight would leave the next day. No accommodation had been offered and it was obvious that I would have to head back into the city and book myself into an affordable hotel for the night. After a bit of web surfing on my iPad, I managed to secure a decent room and wandered through the airport to find the kiosk where I could purchase a round-trip ticket for the next bus.

The next bus would not be leaving for another hour and as I wandered through the airport, I saw Melanie Chinaski sitting at a table in a bar nursing a drink and scrolling through her phone. Was this really her, or yet another manifestation of my subconscious, similar to what I had most likely seen in Frites Dorées? I had barely been aware of her that second day at the conference and I had every reason to hope that my experience in the steamie joint had dispelled whatever hold she claimed on my bruised psyche. In any case, the smart thing to do would be to keep walking straight to the bus stop so I could be one of the first in line.

But of course, I had to know if she was real or if I was going to spend the rest of my life seeing her whenever I least expected it.

I decided it was best not to allow myself any time to muster up my courage, thus giving me ample opportunity to chicken out at the last minute, and walked into the bar and stopped at her table. She seemed oblivious to my presence, with her attention fixed on her phone (an echo of our first meeting in her office), but I merely stood my ground without even bothering to clear my throat to get her attention.

Finally, she looked up from her screen. A reflexive squaring of jowl and a slight squint was quickly replaced by a dismissive scowl.

“What do you want?” she drawled in her deadpan nasal voice.

Without hesitation, I dropped my backpack, pulled out a chair and sat.

“Excuse me?” she said. “I don’t remember inviting you to join me.”

“Never mind that,” I said. There would be no preamble, no dilly-dallying. Without benefit of any mental rehearsal of what I might say to her, I launched into my speech, as if I was a hollow receptacle allowing words from some mysterious source to come through me.

I spoke of all the hard work I had put into redrafting my novel by utilizing all her suggestions. The basis of the novel was the relationship between two women of different generations over a forty-year span. The narrative unfolded in a non-linear structure, using five specific timelines – 1923, 1936, 1949, 1962 and 1995. Melanie had suggested that I lose the 1995 chapters, which made sense since they were only peripherally relevant to the other timelines. But it meant that I would lose a large chunk of my novel. Melanie’s other suggestion was that I write the next draft in a linear structure while I filled in all the holes from the missing 1995 chapters, essentially creating almost half the novel from scratch. It took me almost a full year to complete the next draft.

Without going into too much detail, it was clear to me that the linear structure created too lopsided a narrative. I needed to reorder the chapters back into the non-linear structure that I originally imagined, except there was no time to do that because Melanie’s reading period had begun and I knew she was waiting to read this draft.

“So, I submitted that, thinking you would just tell me to continue with the next draft, the non-linear one. But no. Instead, you judged my linear draft as my final one and decided to drop me. I assumed that as my agent you would continue helping me develop the manuscript. But you just dropped me. I don’t understand it. What happened? Did you just lose interest or what? Why bother to sign me if you couldn’t commit to the job? Or do you think writers are just playthings for your amusement? I’m asking seriously. I think I deserve an answer.”

She stared at me with an expression that seemed to encompass both indifference and confusion, as if I was some whacko from the street fixating on her at random to give my hard-luck story.

“Deserve?” she finally said. “An answer for what? The draft you sent me was terrible. You knew that. And still you sent it to me. I don’t know what kind of hand-holding service you think I’m offering. But this is the real world. I run a business, not a charity. My time is money. I can’t go to Penguin or Harper Collins and say, ‘This is what he’s got now but he assures me the next draft will be better after I babysit him for another year.’ If you knew you were going to write a better draft, you should have sent me that one.”

“But your reading period had started,” I argued. “I would have had to wait another year. I understood that you wanted to read something, so that’s what I sent you.”

“Why do writers like to blame all their troubles on the agent? This is a business for professionals. Professionals take responsibility for their problems – they don’t blame other people. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a flight to catch.”

She signalled the waiter for the check and returned to scrolling through her phone. I merely sat there staring at her, not believing what I was hearing. Even now as I write this, I search deep in my writerly bag of tricks for some way to add dramatic punch to what is already a fictionalized account of a meeting that never took place. What if I pulled a gun out of my backpack and forced her to apologize for the way she had treated me? Or better still, what if she magically turned herself into an actual crow, thus giving some supernatural credence to her nickname, and flew out of the bar and disappeared into the airport?

Unfortunately, the promise of freedom that comes with the writing of fiction, is nevertheless curtailed by the limitations of whatever inner logic has already been set in place at the story’s outset. Maybe if I had set the story in a den of spies or a wizard’s convention rather than a gathering of book industry professionals, I might have been able to work out a splashier ending. But the factual aspect of this fictional memoir is that it is based on the real event of me attending a publishing conference. There’s just no getting around that.

After a few seconds, instead of turning into a crow, Melanie Chinaski looked up from her phone. “Why are you still here?”

I stood and took up my backpack and left the bar.

ON THE BUS HEADING BACK TO MONTREAL, I had a long time to think of all that had transpired over the past two days. It seemed all too clear that I had chosen a vocation (or had it actually chosen me, as I tried explaining to the team leader?), where personal success was bound up in the life-long work of self-discovery, while public success demanded unsparing conformity.

Was that the preordained point of schlepping my ass all the way out here?

Was that the hard-won nugget of wisdom at the end of this washed-out grey rainbow?

Was that the win-lose Möbius strip of a bargain, where one Escher-like self-replicating hand washes the other?

All I knew was that I was once more heading back to the city of my birth where I didn’t belong anymore and nobody was waiting for me. By the time we pulled into the bus terminal, something resembling quietude allowed me to look forward to an uninterrupted meal in the fondly-remembered foodie hangout of my choice, followed by a night of restful sleep in a strange, but hopefully clean bed.