“I might,” Wendy said, sighing.

“And you know what I say to them? I say, ‘Fantastic! Once you’ve written it, send it to my office.’ And guess how many of them ever have?”

I’m going with zero, Jake thought.

“Not one! In almost twenty years as an agent! So let’s say there’s somebody out there who came up with the same plot. Just say! Only he didn’t get around to actually writing his own damn novel and now he’s annoyed because another person, a real writer, did! And probably a lot better than he ever could have. So, tough. Next time maybe do the work.”

“Matilda.” Wendy sighed again. (Despite their current frustration, the two were old friends.) “I completely agree. That’s why we’re here, to protect Jake.”

“But, we can’t stop people from saying crap on the internet,” Jake said bravely. “There wouldn’t be an internet if we did. Shouldn’t we just ignore it?”

The lawyer shrugged. “We’ve ignored it so far, and the dude doesn’t seem to be stopping. Maybe not ignoring it will work better.”

“Well, what would not ignoring it look like?” Jake said. It came out sounding a little harsh, as if he was angry. Well of course he was angry! “I mean, we don’t want to poke the bear, right?”

“If it is a bear. Frankly, a lot of the time, these guys are more of a deer in the headlights than a bear. You shine a bit of a light on them and they run away. Some underachiever might have keyboard courage but if he states or implies a provably false statement of fact, not just an opinion, that’s defamation. They don’t want to get their names published, and they definitely don’t want to be sued. We don’t hear from them again.”

Jake experienced a faint pulse of hope.

“How would you do it?”

“We’d write something official-sounding in the comments. Defamation, invasion of privacy, portrayal in a false light—all viable bases for a lawsuit. At the same time we contact the host websites and the ISPs and ask them to remove the postings voluntarily.”

“And they’ll do that?” Jake said eagerly.

Alessandro shook his head. “Usually they don’t, no. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 says they can’t be held liable for defamation made by third parties. They’re considered a vector for other people’s free speech, technically, so they’re in the clear. But they all have content standards and none of them want to go broke standing up for some anonymous loser who probably isn’t paying a dime for their services, so sometimes we get lucky and it stops there. We like to get the host on our side if we can, because we’ll still want to clean up the metadata, even if we get the posts taken down. Right now if you Google ‘Jacob Finch Bonner’ plus the word ‘thief,’ this comes right up at the top of the results. If you Google Jake’s name and ‘plagiarism,’ same thing. Search engine optimization techniques can mitigate some of that, but it’s much easier if we have the host helping out.”

“But wait,” said Roland, the publicist. “How can you even suggest that you’re going to sue him if you don’t know who he is?”

“We file a lawsuit against ‘John Doe.’ That gets us subpoena power. We can also serve on the ISPs to try to get the guy’s registrant information, or even better, his IP address. If it’s a shared computer, like a library, we’ll be out of luck, but it can still be useful information. If this is coming from bumfuck nowhere maybe it turns out Jake knows somebody who lives in bumfuck nowhere. Maybe you stole his girlfriend in college or something.”

Jake tried to nod. He had never stolen anyone’s girlfriend in his life.

“And if it’s a work computer, that’s the best news of all, because then we can amend the complaint not just to add the person’s name but also the name of his employer, and that’s quite the powerful lever right there. He’s brave enough when nobody knows it’s him, but if he thinks we’re going to sue his employers, you better believe he’s going to shut up and go away.”

“I certainly would!” said Roland cheerily.

“Well, that’s … encouraging,” Matilda said. “Because it isn’t fair that Jake should have to be dealing with this. Any of us, but Jake especially. And I know it’s been worrying him. He hasn’t said so, but I know.”

For a moment Jake thought he might cry. He shook his head quickly, as if disagreeing, but he didn’t think they were fooled.

“Oh no!” said Wendy. “Jake, we’re on this!”

“Right,” said the attorney. “I’m going to do my thing. That sound you’re about to hear is a deer in the headlights, running away through the woods.”

“Okay,” Jake said with a blatantly false heartiness.

“Honey,” his agent said, “like I said. It’s pathetic, but it’s a point of honor. Anyone who accomplishes anything in this life has someone out there dying to tear him down. You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. You are not to think of this as your problem.”

But he had. And it was. And that was the ongoing hell of it.

CRIB

BY JACOB FINCH BONNER

Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 43–44

Samantha’s father drove her as far as the front door of the hospital. Her mother walked her into the lobby but declined to go farther. It was all a regular ABC After-School Special, except for the absurd amount of physical pain she was in. She’d been hoping for some drugs, but there was a distinctly punitive aspect to the way the nurses, in particular, seemed to handle her labor. In the end, she got nothing until somebody told her it was too late, at which point she got more nothing. To make matters worse—and worse was hardly what she needed—the mother of one of her classmates was in labor at the same time, which meant that the boy, a wrestler with raging acne, was on site, in and out of his mother’s room, walking her down the corridor, and sneaking fascinated looks in Samantha’s direction every time he passed her open doorway.

It was a long and interesting day, punctuated by indignities and agony and the very new and fascinating attentions of the hospital social workers, who seemed especially interested in the question of how she’d be filling out the Baby’s Father line on the forms.

“Can I say Bill Clinton?” she asked between contractions.

“Not if it isn’t true,” said the woman, who didn’t even smile. She wasn’t from Earlville. She looked like she came from money. Cooperstown, maybe.

“And you plan to remain in the family home after your child is born.”

It was a statement. Could it be a question?

“Do I have to? I mean, could I leave?”

The woman put her clipboard down. “Can I ask why you would want to leave the family home?”

“It’s just that, my parents don’t support my goals.”

“And what are your goals?”

To hand this baby off to someone else and finish high school. But she never got that out, because the next contraction hit her like a boulder, then something started beeping on the monitor and two nurses came in and after that she couldn’t remember much. When the pain stopped she was just waking up, it was the middle of the night outside, and next to her bed was something that looked like a portable aquarium, inside of which a red and wrinkled creature was squalling. That was her daughter, Maria, apparently.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

An Unfortunate Side Effect of Success

About a week after their meeting, the attorneys representing Jake’s publisher inserted the following notice in the comments section after several of TalentedTom’s known appearances:

To the person posting here and elsewhere as TalentedTom: I am an attorney representing the interests of Macmillan Publishing and its author, Jacob Finch Bonner. Your malicious spreading of inaccurate information and unfounded suggestion of bad actions on the part of the author are unwanted and unwelcome. Under the laws of the State of New York it is unlawful to make deliberate statements with intent to harm a person’s reputation without factual evidence. This serves as a pre-suit demand that you immediately cease and desist all verbal attacks on all social media platforms, websites, and via all forms of communication. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit against you, this social media platform or website, and any related or involved responsible party. Representatives of this social media platform have been contacted separately. Sincerely, Alessandro F. Guarise, Esq.