Secret Agents . . . Continued

(continued . . . )

Early the next week, I find my way to the Evansville public library and make the mistake of asking the librarian a question. "Hey, Ladieeee!" I yell in my best Jerry Lewis impersonation. "Where are your reference books?"

The librarian, an even older version of my ninety-year-old grandmother, directs me to a pile of humongous books. I find The Literary Marketplace and begin reading about literary agents. After a few minutes, I discover an entry for a New York agency that touts itself as "one of the oldest, most prestigious agencies in the publishing industry."

That's what I need, I says to myself. Prestige. Anyone living in Indiana needs a little higher living now and again, and, growing up in a town where swimming in the local creek and bobbing for raccoon poop was deemed a sport, I know this agency is for me! I write down the address, drive home, creep down into the damp basement and write a cover letter. I tell the prestigious New York agency about my novel, about how it will change the world as we know it, about how I am the newest sensation to come out of small-town-Indiana and, by godamighty, they'd better represent my book.

Then I wait. Weeks go by. I'm still writing down in the basement, stomping crickets, feeding children, hearing my wife's lovely voice call to me from upstairs, "Hey, what's going on down there?" I stay warm by huddling against the tiny pilot-light flame on the furnace. I pray to the god of diapers and handiwipes.

And then hope comes. I am sitting in the basement making myself a cricket sandwich when the phone rings. I answer.

"Is this Todd?" the voice asks.

"Yeah," I say, "What's it to yah?" (I think it's a parishioner calling me about Sunday School curriculum.)

"Todd, I'm calling from New York, from the Big Apple, from the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street, from that prestigious literary agency you wrote to. And hey, old buddy, I love your novel!"

(Continued)