Poplar Books! More Hits in Print than anyone else!

So roars the crimson banner with yellow letters hung above the front entrance with a cannon shooting books, sparks and stars all around. The drooping banner serves as a smile across the face of the gray, freshly painted no-nonsense building. A gargantuan red metal pretzel occupies much of the front lawn accompanied by the artist's inscription on a slab of stone.

Hector Gomez checks his watch. "Five minutes." He mumbles while stepping into the building and on to the lounge. He checks in at the reception desk and the receptionist buzzes the Manager about the three o'clock interview.

A short stout man in his late 30's with a buzz cut and manicured fingers briskly shakes Justin's hand. The man has on a bolo tie with a yellow quill for a pendant over a smug white rayon shirt and khaki Dockers.

"Mr.Fuller."

"My name . . . I'm Hector. Hector Gomez."

"Mr. Fuller is my name." The man says without blinking.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Hector bites his lower lip like he was sorry to have said sorry.

Mr. Fuller shows Hector a seat while he assumes the well broken-in oxleather chair behind the white marble desk with the brass name slab--Lionel Fuller, Publisher.

Hector looks around the room to see commemorative certificates, several encased millionth copy editions and half a dozen publisher of the year awards hanging in walls or placed on the wooden shelf extending across the side walls.

"See, Hector, I always make it a point to personally interview every employee in this place. A handpicked publishing house. So which job are you here for? Janitor or the Assistant Editor?"

"Assistant Editor, of course. You can see my resume."

"I never look at resumes. Don't want to color my perception before meeting the person. Let's start from the beginning. I started here as a janitor, fifteen years back. We published stuff that nobody reads anymore, the kind only found in libraries; you know the Russian writers, Latin writers, Thomas Hardies, Henry Thomases--all the old windbags that nobody read but everybody talked about. Naturally, we were losing money, getting close to filing for chapter 11. Then, the board members fired the then CEO George Throbred, and hired my mentor, Joe Horeson. His first day on the job, Mr.Horeson comes up to me and asks if I read any of the books published by Poplar Books. I told him I only read Hustler magazine and Harold Robbins. Mr.Horeson hired me as the chief editor right there and gave me full control. My first release was conservative, I released a whole bunch of Burroughs' books. Stuff that rich kids read in my school when I was growing up."

"William Burroughs is hardly conservative, Naked Lunch is . . ."

"William? Never heard of him. I'm talking Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan. It did better than anything before, but wasn't great. Then Horeson told me to pull all the stops. Go find me another Harold Robbins, he said. I net the biggest fish since Moby the Dick. Hell, I wanted to put there be Mo' dicking than Harold Robbins in the back cover blurb. But Horeson was such a professional, he wanted a gradual growth into no-holds-barred literature. Anyway, the fish I landed was Jackie Collins."

"It still sells millions." Hector said in mock surprise.

"No shit. Finally, someone decided to give the people what they want. Enough said, let's go look at our different product lines."

Mr.Fuller picks up the receiver and presses a button on the huge 2"x 4" phone and fax combo machine.

"Leanna, I'm going on rounds with our new supplicant. If Mr.Horeson calls, connect him to my cordless"

Mr.Fuller combs his hair with a wooden brush he pulls out of the desk drawer.

"I gave Mr.Horeson the top of the line Nokia with my number programmed in the memory, he still doesn't call this number. Hey, speaking of suppley-cunt, did you check out Leanna? I handpricked, I mean handpicked her too." Mr.Fuller laughs a jolting laugh.

"That was a slip. Honest. What do you call that, a . . ."

"A Freudian slip?"

"Yeah, that. What are you here for again?"

"Associate Editor position."

"Right. Our first floor has all our cash cows. Our back bone. This is where you want to end up. Top Dog. You write, don't you?. . ."

"Of course, I'm a volunteer at the Ashram, right here in Gallery. Been working on my writing for seven months there."

"Ashram, oh yeah, run by that Italian fella, what's his name. . .Isi. Shep told me to look out for him. I have to pay that guy a visit, let him know that my bringing the head office here is good for the local economy. I don't know what it is about small town folk. Poplar Books was always here as a quiet, out of sight estate. Now, that I bring the head office here and showed them my plan to expand the area, they are all up in arms. This town ain't exactly touristy you know. But at the city council, you would have thought they were giving up their kidneys, the way these people booed and hissed me when I spoke." Mr.Fuller gets his ears red.

"If you don't mind me asking, why did you pick Aliento to move your head office, Mr.Fuller?"

"Simple economics, kiddo. In the 80s it was Connecticut, later it was Delaware, and now among other places, there's good old Aliento. Generous tax structure for businesses, that's what."

"Figures."

Mr. Fuller turns his whole body sideways to look at Hector. The rubbing of his pants in the thigh area makes a frisky noise as he walks. They walk past a small lounge that smells of burnt coffee. Along the hallway there are soda and snack vending machines. Mr. Fuller stops near a metal door shiny like a bank's vault.

"Figures is damn right. That's what it's all about. This is the shrine you will worship. Take your shoes off before you enter. This is our Stephen King wing. Still our Numero Uno cow. But his wing is lagging behind lady luck, Danielle Steele. That woman can come up with ideas faster than anyone else."

"I'm sorry, Mr.Fuller but I don't understand why we need wings. This is not a library."

"You're young, I don't blame you. Let me give you the quick and easy rundown. The cash cows have their own wings because of the pace of their book releases. Four books a year is a very slow year for them. Top notch writers do research on everything that made money in the genre before. Each book has five or six teams dedicated to it. Each team has five or six members who are responsible for a chapter. After a month of rough drafts, these teams meet and exchange notes to make sure the product is heading in the right direction in every level. They report to a product manager who keeps them in line and makes sure they meet the release date deadline. They are working on seven novels this Spring, a record even for us. We did some productivity studies and improved on our ways."

"And Stephen King knows about this?" Hector's voice reaches a high pitch.

"He loved the idea. Why not, you know? Couple millions every time we put his name on a title, plus royalty. Moving on. Our next wing, as I said before, is Danielle Steele's. The pink wing. Most of the descriptions and romantic settings are thought up by bitter divorcees, widows and ugly chicks who never went to their high school proms. Yeah, I picked these women from Book Club lists and public transit. We're doing a trilogy, so it's slowing us down with all the damn technical details. Next year, she'll beat everybody in the industry."

"Next, the yellow wing, the lady who helped me make my mark, Jackie Collins. Gossip columnists, ex-hookers and women who work for the 900 number chat lines make up the staff of this wing. Moving on . . ."

"What's that woodshed there?" Hector, curiously.

"That's our social service wing. That's to store all the ambitious, good-sounding-but-tough-selling books, mostly by professors and journalists. These suckers write their own shit. We just need to release one every three months to put in our catalogues. One editor takes care of compiling that shit. Remember the previous CEO who got fired for throwing money away on the classics? Well, he took a pay cut and works in that shed now."

"The brick building you see there used to be big about 15 to 20 years ago. All the espionage stuff--LeCarre, Higgins, Forsyth, Ludlum used to come out of there. It had a late spurt during the Clancy years but we got out of the genre before peace started breaking out everywhere. With the Berlin wall coming down, we sold the rights to those books and ended our contract with those writers. Now, we have a team of retired lawyers, interns pumping out legal thrillers--Grisham, Turow, etc. It's been great for us. A growth industry. Lastly, we have the latest "the new growth" industry wing, the green wing: all the new-age books, spiritual quest, self-actualization stuff. You know the Chopras, the Ramdasses, the Castanedas, the Blys. I'm also working out a deal with Madonna. She's interested in doing a pop-up Kama Sutra. She is brilliant you know. She believes in sex education for the kids."

"Any poetry at all?"

"No bud. No money there yet, especially with the juicy Beat poets biting it one after another. Although I'm watching it. I'm thinking of coming to one of your open mike readings at that bar there. Maybe do a audio release of open mike poetry; will instantly sell a few thousand copies to public libraries. Well, that's the end of our tour. I like you, you listen well. I got a gut feeling about you. I'll put you on our usual two week trial plan, if it works out you will get an offer. What job were you here for again?"

"The Janitor position."

"Really? I would have thought you had ambition."

"You started as a janitor right, Mr.Fuller?"

"That's right, kid. But you ain't getting my job, hear? You can start tomorrow. Anything else you want to ask me?" Mr.Fuller asks gently amused.

"Will it be okay for me to check out the stuff in the woodshed after my shift?"

"You are a crazy kid. Most guys I hire want the cash cow wing first. Sure. Watch out for George Throbred though. He's a real crank. Many kids quit because of him." Mr. Fuller waves and gets back into the main office building.

Hector takes a long look at his portfolio with writing samples, resume and diplomas. In his face a look of stern resolution sets in. He crosses the street and heads towards Tabla Manners. On his way to the stop, Hector casually drops his portfolio in the public trash bin on the corner of King and Steele.