They had started in on the after-dinner drinks. Brandy Sangrees—E&J spiked with Taylor port on the rocks. It was the host's favorite drink, and he would say the name repeatedly, widening his mouth with clenched teeth as he pronounced the 'y'-like double 'e.' Dinner conversation had been extremely pleasant, a sort of rehash of topics covered in this month's New York Review of Books. Much was made of an article bemoaning the decline of cosmopolitanism. Heads nodded appreciably. All in all, extremely pleasant. Yet underlying the entire event there was a note of apology. The hosts had fallen on hard times, though they were not eager to discuss their change in fortune. The guests did not press the hosts on this point, not when they were presented with the sardines on toast amuse bousch nor during the ice cream sandwich desert, served in cut-glass saucers. The hosts and guests had all been classmates at a small Northeastern liberal arts college, where they had belonged to the same literary society. At the society they had enjoyed hearty discussions of contemporary literature, often times bemoaning the free-floating crises experienced by the characters.
"Where's the ambition," the host would often admonish. Whether he actually admonished or not is a matter of debate, but he always believed he was admonishing, and had you asked what he was doing, he would have said 'admonishing' without missing a beat. "Don't these characters want something out of life? Once upon a time people were desirous of the things this world had to offer: fame, fortune, elegantly brocaded chairs."
Once a junior member of the society had pointed out to the host that nine ambitious characters out of ten ended up dead. The host wrote this off to the well-known bitterness of writers, their personal failings at finding the aforementioned fame, fortune, wine, women, song. His exact words were, "if it were up to me, I would see them all put to work on a forced labor camp in West Africa while being forced to watch monkeys at typewriters compose works to be published under their names."
Hilarity ensued. Mock plans were made. The works to be produced by the monkeys were discussed, mostly thinly re-written versions of Robinson Crusoe. Most of the society went on, years after, to take up various positions at Goldman Sachs' [the men] and Harper-Collins [the women, married to the men], and while they diligently read their book reviews, none of them noticed the strange disappearances of aspiring authors. Not that anyone knew that they were authors. They were the sort of people who would hang in the back of 'author events' at their local independent bookshop fidgeting, or taking notes. Then they would approach the book-signing table and whisper in the author's ear, "I've written something." Seeking absolution. At this point, most of the authors whose events these were would forget their well-practiced signature and scribble meaninglessly on the inside flap of their book, like someone looking for change. Confused or hurt, these aspiring authors would walk into the parking lot only to receive a swift blow from a rubber blackjack. Their friends and family, having no notion that they were aspiring authors, would assume that they had finally snapped and embraced that life of wandering the Utah salt flats which they had always spoken of with nihilistic glee. Notices would appear in the paper. Never on the backs of milk cartons; these people were fully-grown. People across the country continued to enjoy their book reviews, happy to see the very same authors appearing in review after review.
The aspiring authors would end up in the cargo hold of the last tramp steamer in the world. It was actually a steamer, and after they had vomited a few times, the aspiring authors would be put to work shoveling coal to the coke ovens that power the old timey turbines. They were projecting themselves towards Lagos, but they didn't know it. Upon reaching Lagos harbor they were blindfolded and led into rail cars. Not bad railcars; the kind used to transport fragile canned goods, the ones with pneumatic suspensions. They were shipped off to Benin, a country only one percent of Americans could locate on a globe. There they were promptly employed picking cotton on a plantation on the banks of the Nokoué lake. Oddly, adjacent to their plantation, there was a chain link enclosure. Its construction seemed deliberate, but no one, after glancing inside could understand its existence. The enclosure was full of chimpanzees, typewriters, correspondence stock, and copies of Robinson Crusoe. The chimpanzees seemed to have separated themselves into two hostile factions, which was difficult considering their number and the size of the enclosure. They would huddle and jeer for the most part, occasionally exchanging volleys of shit and stock. Once in a while a particularly large chimp would heft a typewriter, an IBM Selectric, often braining an opposing chimp. At least one aspiring writer would look up from his hard labor, wipe his brow, and say, "well, the pen is mightier than the sword." Others would laugh. Weakly. The aspiring authors were overseen by two 'trusty guards;' failed romance novelists who rode through the cotton fields sidesaddle, bullwhips in hand.
One day there was an uprising, as there always is in situations like this. The romance novelists were pulled from their saddles and beaten. The chimps gibbered. The raggedy aspiring writers made their way to the plantation house, only to find a crumpled liberal arts college graduate overseen by several disinterested locals. Everyone had seen the movie version of Heart of Darkness, and decided they may as well let the place go to chaos in its own time. But, what the fuck. They were somewhere in west Africa, a place where their perceived skill set of trivia and copy editing had little value. So they wandered en mass across the boarder to Lagos. But there were no jobs for them. Many of them spent countless hours in Lagos' newly established internet café's, sending desperate e-mails to family and friends detailing the inexplicable situation they found themselves in. None responded. That's when one of the aspiring writers had an idea. Why not send e-mails to entirely random persons promising large sums of money. The rational was, as one of the writers put it, everyone believes that they are lucky. They are lucky because they were born as the main character in the story of their lives, and since no story ended without at least one good thing happening to the main character, this random solicitation could very well be it. The writers quickly drafted a stock letter. The parameters were generally these: the money must be offered on the condition of minor illegality; it must be vastly greater than the sum required to 'liberate' it; the Mark's upstanding character must be repeatedly complemented; notions that random death occurs more frequently in Africa should be reinforced; the letter should be from a woman referring to herself as 'Aunt' or a man referring to himself as 'Doctor;' every third word should be misspelled.
The aspiring writers began sending out chain-letters promising substantial breast or genital enlargement to those who forwarded the message along to their ten best friends [and the opposite to those who dared sit on the message]. A convenient line of code sent every e-mail address the letter reached back to the aspiring writer's new headquarters, a defunct Jell-O factory. Soon the writer's spam lists grew larger than any dreamed-of genitalia. Then the 'Dear Sir' or 'Dear Friend' or 'Dearest One' or 'Dear Trusted Foreign Partner' headed e-mails began to flood the world. The writers' up-to-then frustrated imaginations produced stories of civil-war orphans, corrupt commandants, anonymous millionaires dead in Cessna crashes, frustrated wives of assassinated dictators; scheming bank clerks; trapped diamond merchants. All of whom had bodies purgatoried in imaginary West Africa, along with a couple cool liquid millions eager to find new life as a plasma TVs. Money logically flees death, even as it makes it. The writers experience their first successes, overcoming natural skepticism with raw misspelling. Hilarity ensued. Soon the writers became genre experts, some specializing in military widows, others in freak accidents involving millionaires. Apprentices were drawn from the local population. One of these apprentices contrived a new variation on the scheme. He emailed the host [recall the host], an acquisitions editor at a major publishing house. The e-mail presented a young ambitious Nigerian novelist, and the first chapter of his novel about the fast lives lived by hip Nigerian Internet scammers. The e-mail requested a fifty grand advance and a travel stipend. Urgently, as the exposés in novel could cost its author his life. The host complied, touting the fresh perspective and topicality to his superiors and asking that normal editorial procedures be suspended. The money was wired. Several days later, another e-mail arrived. It wondered at the host's lack of interest in the novel, and hinted that his friend at the next publisher over had made an offer. The host was going to object, but thought better of it. Accounts payable was unreliable, and anything could happen in the dark third world. So he got on the phone with his bank. What was fifty grand, this novel was his big break.
