Robin Herzog’s flash fiction and short stories belong to literary fiction and are often set in the style of magical realism. Through them he whisks readers off to dreamy settings, far away from Stockholm, Sweden, his home. With a degree in journalism and numerous jobs as a reporter and within communications, he tells stories on and off the clock. Robin’s writing draws inspiration from historical figures and events, highlighting their unique struggles and triumphs, particularly in the pursuit of happiness. He seeks to immerse readers in these distant worlds.
I.
Back in New York City, a long time ago, when the D-train still arrived on time and every summer felt like an adventure, my best friend Fields and I decided to become each other’s managers to help us get published. These were the days when the black and white tv ruled the livingroom and I was obsessed with writing the next great American novel. I talked the big talk outside Crawford’s where the publishers boozed out every Friday to get my shot. I really went in head first with buttered-up lines and birch water-combed hair. My friend, Richard Fielding, who everybody just called Fields back then, was just like me. Or I was like him, I don’t know. When I met a girl he’d stay out late the same night to meet one too and then we’d go on double dates and everything would be swell for a time. Lots of popcorn and Coney Island rides and french fries. About three months later, when I usually got dumped or broke up, Fields would leave his girl just so that he could write better stories about love and so that we could go to the movies until we got bored and tried to find new dates.
Money was an issue sometimes, but I did alright. I studied literature at Columbia and wrote short stories for The New Enquirer that got published once every three or four weeks, if I measured up. My best stuff, however, I saved to enter in competitions. I’d win first prize about twice a year in some ragtag literary association or periodical in Idaho or Nebraska and collect a ten or twenty dollar check. Fields worked two jobs. One as a model for the art students at Columbia and another pouring drinks in the Village. He had short stories published in magazines and he won a few competitions too.
We’d wanted to become authors for as long as we cared to remember and we lived the writer’s life. To us it was eating a million peanut butter sandwiches and breathing with purpose. Fields was the night owl and he was obsessed with writing about all things mystical and far away, he lived in the greatest city in the world but his characters were from Egypt and India and had sheiks and talking fish in them. Whereas I put plumbers from Queens named Charles Kowalski in financial straits, chasing gutter dreams.
With those sorts of things taking up our time the days passed quickly. But when Fields suggested we could become each other’s agents or whatever you wish to call it, my eyes sparkled nonetheless. He joked around, saying it would make us cutthroat. I liked hearing it and we cast the dice. We began talking each other up in the big boy offices and when we could sneak inside and interrupt some fat cat’s lunch break to make our case. Diners, cafés and bars were targets too, where we just happened to run into publishers with manuscripts, storylines, synopses and offers to work weekends. We staked out joints every week like the cops in the movies, gulping cokes and inhaling doughnuts in Field’s father’s car, smoking and joking our lives away.
Most of our efforts were a bust, but a few times it actually paid off. With every meeting we burned each other’s names a little more distinctly in some boss’s brain, or so we chose to believe. We had spirit. And we each had one magnum opus that we worked on with a passion. Our debut novels. Oh yes, the sacred texts. Field’s book told about a shipwrecked Indian sailor boy, Junaid, who was cast onto the rocks in Andhra Pradesh as the only survivor after a shipwreck. It was a brick of a book and an epic where Junaid had to cross half the country to get home to Delhi again. On his journey he met everything that symbolized India’s old and new struggles in the cities and the countryside. It was British rulers, hindu and muslim beliefs, myths, betrayal, poverty, riches, temptation, fear and loneliness. I’d read it and I have to say, Fields had poured his soul into it. I believed he had a chance. I really did. Mine was about a young Brooklyn baker, Sarah, whose cancer put her out of a job and sent her into a fever dream of existence. It was a down and out story about righteous stealing, missed opportunities, odd friendships and surviving the next day. All in all, a surrealistic and dirty New York winter saga where nothing came for free. That was the gist of mine and Field’s novels, our hopes and dreams. We believed they could make the world a better place and through them we would live forever. So with steeled hearts we toiled on with our manuscripts and inevitable peanut butter sandwiches instead of getting real jobs and going to the Poconos with our girlfriends.
II.
We wrote intensely for a full year. Half the time I couldn’t even remember that I’d written what I’d written. And then, strangely, one day, all the pages were neatly stacked. It was about that time that I started having nightmares about getting rejected because of the big leap ahead, getting published. Understand, this wasn’t a poem or something I could whip up in two weeks. This was the Diamond of Africa, Buckingham Palace. But there was nothing to it and we began pitching the manuscripts around the city. Oh, what a nightmare it was. We broke off plans with dates and called off playing billiards all the time. Coney Island missed us but we missed it more and we deserted the movies altogether. All of this to stop by every publisher from A, which was Abner’s Publishing House, to Z, Zussman & Sons. I don’t know how many times we begged like dogs for receptionists to let us into their offices.
I finished my education around pitching time, I don’t remember much about it though, something about a diploma and the world at our feet. All I cared about back then was the manuscript. After graduation I began working in Papa Karim’s Bodega around the corner from where I lived. I still wrote for the New Enquirer from time to time, but less so, and Fields remained a model and barkeep around Bohemia and still poured a mean French 75. We entered works in competitions on the regular, too. But things weren’t the same as they had been before we began sending out the manuscripts, we wrinkled our foreheads and talked a little less about writing and a little more about money.
But even licking envelopes and zig-zagging around publishers ended eventually. When it did, everything became quiet. The telephone didn’t ring, mail was slow, Fields turned into a phantom, and I? I became a regular mute because no replies meant no book deals. Meaning we weren’t good enough, our biggest fear in life. So we unspokenly decided to live on like silent monks, being too hurt to do anything else. The plan, as I recall it, was to transition from shock into mourning before moving on with phase three, which was getting hammered on Boilermakers’ at O’Reilly’s happy hour and ripping our manuscripts into shreds at the bar. And then throwing our typewriters and notebooks in the dumpster out back, swearing never to write again, becoming bank clerks, raising babies with wives we weren’t crazy about and who weren’t crazy about us, and then, ultimately, being miserable for forty years before dying from coronary artery disease.
In reality, phase three was begging our distant but current girlfriends to forgive us so that we could go to Coney Island, eat cotton candy and make out on the boardwalk. Luckily it was the latter part that came true, so things weren’t all that bad. I won a humongous teddy bear from excelling with the BB gun, but afterwards, Fields and I still asked the stars what had happened to our manuscripts, if they were still on top of at least one publisher’s desk, or if they were already burned to a crisp. How time moved slowly for us as we waited, I swear a day felt like a month.
Not three real months after the return to Coney, however, I received a call. It was a rep from Harding Books, but I heard a honey-voiced choir. Then my heart cracked, the man wished to discuss Indian Promises. Field’s book, not mine. The publisher thought I was Field’s manager. I mean, I was, but it was a hell of a call to handle nonetheless. My novel, Sarah Lowers Her Expectations, wasn’t even mentioned. I’d sent my copy there as well. Son of a bitch, I thought, not knowing if I referred to the situation, myself, the publisher, Fields or all of it. But the call went well. They offered a deal with an editor, a production team, a cover designer and a sales team. Basically the dream. A pay advance and books on the shelf in nine months, if all went well. We talked terms and agreed to meet. The three of us. I said I would book the meeting very soon. The rep said time to tee up, and I wanted to feel that way. Only I didn’t. A couple of hours later when I had calmed down and Fields came through the door, I stood up to tell him about the offer. But out came words about Papa Karim’s appraisal of The Prophet and what the perfect bagel place would be like regarding everything from interior decor to sesame seeds. I couldn’t believe myself. The next day I still kept my mouth shut, and the next day, and the next day after that. Though all of a sudden I started treating Fields to dinners and drinks and I did the dishes at his place like a madman. However, after two weeks of that I didn’t like the way I looked in the mirror any more so I sat him down at Habana Sandwiches.
“I’m lousy, Fields, I know. I didn’t tell you about the deal because part of me was envious. Pretty pathetic, huh? Another reason—“
But Fields cut in before I could finish.
“Hang on.” He said, and put the mustard back on the table. “I think I got it. Things would change if I got a deal and you didn’t. I’d make money, move out and quit working the taproom probably.”
“Yup.”
“Well, you’re not the only one who’s an idiot…”
“What?”
“I feel like crap about it, but I talked to Samwell Publishing a week ago…they gave you a deal, but I…”
“You what?” I ran my hand through my hair.
“Don’t fret. It’s still in the works.” Fields said. I let out a breath. “Didn’t tell you ‘cos I’m a coward and a shit friend. You’ll get published, too, they said. Within a year. I kinda think you might’ve made it.”
We fell silent. Then we screamed out in ecstasy and the sandwich place shook and the chef looked at us as if we were crazy and Fields tried to order in a big ol’ jug of rum.
III.
We called our girlfriends and pilgrimaged to Coney the same night. That evening we had the best of times, I don’t think there’ll ever come a time again when I will have such a blast. The Cyclone, the book deals, Julia’s peppermint gum breath. Everything was spinning and it’ll last me a lifetime.
If you’re wondering about the books, the springboard to success and the future, that all sort of worked out, too. We got somewhat screwed on our pay advance, but a bit of money came in and neither Harding Books or Samwell Publishing overly dissected our babies so the chime of our words still rang honest and faithful. We were both published in the end and our dreams came true. Our novels were in our hands and the sun shone upon us.
The first thing that happened after the launch was that Fields and I each did one book signing. No one came. Strike one. Later on Fields did live readings in dust-ridden libraries and I tried to tour a bit of the east coast with horrendous results. Once again we hit air. There were reviews in the papers at least. Well, in one of them. The New Enquirer. And that was only because Edward, the Culture Editor, pitied us. The dreaded third strike.
People simply didn’t consider Indian Promises or Sarah Lowers Her Expectations the works we made them out to be in our minds. People didn’t seem to consider our books at all. We sold a few hundred copies each. But we’d done what we set out to do and used our advances and savings for down payments on new apartments. On the plus side they lacked cockroaches, but it wasn’t the same without my roommate. It was lonely. The rest of the money, well, we saved some of it and traveled with our girlfriends for the rest of it. Viva la Mexico. It was around that time that Fields and I took a break from our typewriters and noticed eight hours of sleep and solid relationships.
So, in our hearts there grew a shadow. We began to doubt what we had been doing up until then. Sure, we might not have said so if our novels had been very successful, or if we had gotten better deals with Samwell and Harding. But that’s neither here nor there. To be frank, none of us had the energy to go on writing a second book the way we had, with the long nights, big doubts and endless peanut butter sandwiches. And that was the only way we knew how. Pity. So we eased into comfort and began doing rain checks instead of writing at home or meeting up to discuss our work, and blamed our supposedly full calendars. Me in Papa Karim’s Bodega and Fields pouring drinks in the Village. I eventually stopped writing short stories for the New Inquirer to do better paying courtroom referendums instead and Fields ceased carrying his notebook everywhere he went and returned to college.
We could both feel it, we weren’t the same guys we had been. And we weren’t the ones we thought we would be. For a long time that put a pain in my heart. I was becoming well-rested and modestly content instead of being an artist. Our novels were supposed to be what started our lives, but it didn’t turn out that way. One day just turned into the next and there was no starting line or finish.
But one morning, however, many years later, my wife kissed me on the forehead as I lay on the sofa, and I understood something. The book sales had never been important. What had mattered to me was Fields. We lifted each other up and had our Coney Island days. Getting famous after one novel would have been cheesy anyway. The way it played out, it was art.
IV.
I still keep in touch with Fields, of course everyone calls him Richard or Rich now. We see each other about once a year or every two years and have dinner and a few drinks. He’s doing really well. He has a wife, Priya, and they have a kid named Jules. They settled down, way out on Long Island after they became parents. Before that Fields spent years abroad, some of them sailing the South Indian Sea and traveling through his land of mystery. That was where he met Priya.
“On the banks of the east coast was where I first saw her, she stood as still as a statue, looking at me”, Fields likes to say when he’s had a few.
They live two hours from New York but he rarely visits and says he doesn’t miss the city at all, in fact he says the Long Island coast makes him feel like he’s come home at last. Fields is still crazy that way if you ask me. He works as a high school English teacher a stone’s throw away from his house and he can see the ocean from the bedroom. Fields tells me that he writes his own stuff after hours, still going strong on djinns, treasures and bold quests, but that’s just for the desk drawer. Two nights a week he also holds an adult course in fictive writing. I like that. He hasn’t published any more books though, but he’s doing well, he really is. However every time I see him I get the feeling that we go out of our way not to talk about Coney and the novels and the old days. Not that we have to reminisce to a fault. It’s just that we never ever talk about when we were best friends and why things turned out the way they did and how everything has changed. We get along now too, sure, but as middle-aged acquaintances. We’re stiff and don’t talk at all the way we used to, or have as much fun, or in common. I guess things just change.
As for me, I lived in Brooklyn up until ten years ago. Now I have a wife, Natasha, and a son, Jason, he’s seven, and we’re out west in San José. I’m an editor at the Daily Sun and life’s pretty good. I had some ups and downs in New York before I turned things around though, there was a divorce and a few other things. Now things are different. I do a lot of barbecuing and we have money to travel and all that. Family life is good and takes up most of my time. But a few stray weeknights I write a little fiction, short stories about this and that. It’s mostly set in New York. I never attempted another novel though. Speaking of, I usually get hungry on those late nights, and ever since I moved from New York I find myself making a peanut butter sandwich before I sit down to write. It doesn’t really matter if I’m hungry, I eat it. Well, half of it. It’s stupid, but I always imagine the second half is for Fields.
Leave a Comment