Re: Quicklog: Jack & Newt at the B&B
[The world was still there, for all the turning. How Newt had progressed from the last time Jack had any relevancy in his life, he didn't know. He was clearly the same, if only in the fundamental ways Jack thought were the only ways he knew Newt whatsoever. It wasn't timidity so much as it was a conciseness of movement that Jack had grown unaccustomed to in the years in America. Christ alone knew people in America hugged. Newt looked like he might cough and offer to shake hands eventually.]
How long have you been working on the book? [Had Newt been a writer? Jack couldn't recall much of Newt's interests apart from muddiness. He hadn't read overly much, but if it was a factual treatise on animals, doubtless the words weren't all that important. And no, the town newspaper wasn't the bloody Guardian. It had been selected for the puerile nature of its content, and now it had a bank of computers that silently hummed at him.]
It's a living. [The smile was a spool of shadow, reeled in carefully and particularly. Did he miss the heady heights? Christ knew he wouldn't say anything about it.]
How small? A decent advance, or are you living off god knows what? [He'd been offered a book, once. Marched into a very posh office somewhere in Soho, drowning in the stench of lilies, a book accompanied by 'exceptional' photography. He was meant to write the words around them. This was not, Jack assumed, Newt's experience of publishing. Bukowski had gone to sleep.]