The Axeman's Jazz

a fifty-page proposal for the twelve-step debunker, and the assholes weren’t going to buy it. He couldn’t believe it.
    His agent said, “You know, I really don’t think there’s a market for this one.”
    “That’s what you said about the last one.”
    “Well?”
    “Jared, you’re such a know-it-all.”
    “Let’s put it this way. I think I know the market. People buy self-help books for a reason. They want help. They feel bad and they want to feel better. They don’t want to be told nothing works.”
    “But nothing does.”
    “Maybe not for you.”
    “Me?” What the hell was Jared talking about? “What have I got to do with it?”
    “Alex, you gotta consider therapy.” Just like that.
    Like Hollywood’s idea of an agent, not a thing like the real person Alex had worked with for ten years, who’d made him a pile of money and then slogged through rice paddies to sell his last book, which hadn’t made money, and who was wimping out just as Alex was on the verge of a comeback.
    “Jared, are you doing coke again?”
    “Do you realize I owe my recovery to these programs you’ve got so much contempt for?”
    “I bet you never took a teddy bear to a meeting.”
    “Alex, I like you, I really do. We’ve been together a long time. But I’ve got to tell you the truth. Something’s wrong with you. You’ve hit some kind of block of hatred in yourself and you can’t get around it.”
    What the hell was the man talking about?
    “You know what I think, Alex? I think you hate yourself. You need to get in touch with who you really hate.”
    He had actually said, “get in touch with.” Next, he would tell Alex he was “stuffing his feelings.”
    “You sound like Bradshaw and those other assholes.” Alex couldn’t keep the sadness out of his voice.
    That was what the book was about, of course—why it had to be published. Because the world was getting fuller and fuller of assholes who swallowed everything whole, who bought the same old party line, who believed anything any self-help author told them, no matter how big a charlatan he was. Alex should know. He’d been the biggest charlatan in the business.
    If you disagreed with somebody, you must hate yourself. If you tried to be honest for once, you needed therapy.
    Et tu
, Jared? Jesus! Maybe it was time to get another agent.
    “Elec, you done those dishes yet?”
    “Dad, say ‘Al.’ ”
    “Al.”
    “Say Alice.”
    “Alice.”
    “Your former wife is your what?”
    “Ex. I see what you’re gittin’ at.”
    “So why can’t you just say Alex?”
    “No such name. It’s Elec. I oughta know. I named you. Why haven’t you done those dishes?”
    “When I came here, nobody’d done the dishes in two weeks. Place smelled like a garbage dump.”
    “If that’s the way I want to run my house, how’s that any of your business?”
    “You treat me like I’m still ten years old.”
    “Well, you act like it.”
    “Look, let’s be adults, okay? I came here to help you out.”
    “Shee-it. You came here to leech. That’s all you been doin’, just leechin’, leechin’, leechin’! You can’t do a thing needs doin’, just out screwin’ day and night, day and night. What’s the matter with you, boy?”
    He picked up the telephone book, held it at waist level, calculating, and drop-kicked it at Alex’s chest.
    Shocked, Alex didn’t move, just let the thing hit him. Stood there stunned. What was wrong with the old man? He’d always been crazy, but not violent. This was the second time in a week he’d lost it. Two days ago he’d actually thrown a punch at him, and over something just as trivial. Alex had grabbed his wrist and then watched Lamar get this very puzzled look on his face, as if he couldn’t remember what he was mad about.
    “Hey, Dad,” he said now, “what’s going on?”
    His dad’s face was purple. “What do you mean, what’s going on?” He was yelling.
    Alex spoke softly, for once slightly humbled before his father. “It’s not really that bad, is it? I’ll do the dishes if that’s what you really want.”
    “You’ll get out of my house is what you’ll do! You’ll get yourself a decent job; you’ll quit fooling around with this book crap. Lies, is all that is. Lies, lies, lies! You couldn’t write your way out of a whore’s mouth! You ain’t never written a word in your whole miserable, worthless life.”
    He picked up one of the aluminum and yellow plastic chairs, seemed about to bring it down on