American literary giant: 1974

The taxi stopped at the street corner, and the three people got out.

The nameless bar was still the same as before, with a dim yellow light leaking from the crack in the door, and the rusty wall lamp at the entrance was made even dimmer by the rain.

Lynn pushed open the door, and there was the white-haired black old man at the end of the bar, as usual, lying there with a bourbon whiskey beside him, his life hanging in the balance.

Then he froze.

A man was sitting on the second bar stool by the window—Miller!

He's actually here!

With round-framed glasses and a glass of gin and tonic in front of him, Miller jumped up from his stool as soon as he saw the three people enter, almost overturning the glass.

"I-I-I—I watched it at home!" He stammered excitedly, his voice twice as loud as usual. "The TV volume was turned up all the way! It was fucking amazing! I almost jumped off the sofa!"

The bartender tonight was a young white man filling in, not Elena. He nodded to them too: "Tonight, the whole of Manhattan is filled with Johnny Carson and your voices. You're celebrities now."

Lynn sat down at the bar, with Leia right next to him. Elena went around to the back of the bar; although she wasn't on duty today, that spot was her territory.

"What did Pratt say at the end?" Miller asked anxiously. "The camera cut away, and I didn't hear it clearly."

"He said, 'This country's reading tastes need time to be corrected,'" Leia repeated coldly. "And then the show ended."

"Ha!" Miller pushed up his glasses. "Freeman just called me. He said Pratt's like a cat whose tail has been stepped on!"

"Freeman watched it too?" Lynn was a little surprised.

"He said he never watches Johnny Carson, but today the whole of New York is watching him. His neighbor turned the TV up to deafening speed, and he couldn't sleep, so he just got up and watched along." Miller mimicked Freeman's gruff voice. "In the end, he called me at 1:30 a.m. and said, 'That old bastard is finished!' Then he laughed for five seconds before hanging up."

Lynn took a sip of the substitute bartender's gin and tonic—too much quinine, too little lemon, clearly not Elena's handiwork.

"Where is Mr. Koper?" Leia asked.

Miller's expression changed instantly. He pulled a piece of paper folded four times from his pocket, unfolded it, and slapped it on the bar.

"He sent me a fax." Miller gave a wry smile and awkwardly pushed up his glasses. "He went to bed at 7:30, but his wife watched the program and dragged... Mr. Kopper out of bed."

Lynn took the paper and looked at it—it was written with a ballpoint pen, crooked and messy, the handwriting of someone with presbyopia, with several letters connected together:

[Miller, is that publishing agency on TV our company? — Kopper]

"How did he know the company name?" Lynn asked.

"There are subtitles at the bottom of the screen..." Miller pointed, "'Noh-Miller Publishing Agent, Agent: Leia Noh, Steven Miller,' white text on a black background, very clear."

"What did you reply?" Lynn asked curiously.

Miller cleared his throat, his gaze drifting to the ceiling: "I said, yes, this is the new business segment I'm in charge of, it perfectly aligns with the company's diversification strategy, and... and it doesn't interfere with my main job."

There was a moment of silence in the bar.

Then everyone laughed.

Leia covered her mouth with her hand while laughing, Elena stopped with a "pfft," and Lynn laughed the longest—he pictured old man Koper in his pajamas standing in front of the fax machine: a seventy-two-year-old man who sold "Home Gardening Handbooks," being woken up in the middle of the night by his wife to see his company's name appear on TV.

"And then? Did Mr. Koper not ask any further questions?" Leia pressed.

"No," Miller shrugged. "He just told me to go fertilize the plants early tomorrow morning."

"..." Leia patted his shoulder. "Steven, you're a genius."

Miller took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. This was Miller's classic gesture; he did it when he was nervous, and he did it when he was happy. He always liked to fidget with his glasses.

It started raining outside, gently pattering against the glass.

“When I was a freshman,” Miller suddenly began, “I wrote a novel on a whim, but it didn’t even get published. Later I realized that being a literary agent might be more suitable for me.”

He looked at Lynn: "So the first time I heard you read 'Guts' at the reading, I knew I had to do this. Who cares what kind of shell it uses, who cares if Mr. Kopper is selling an orchid catalog or dog food!"

At the end of the bar, the white-haired black man turned over but still didn't wake up. A little bourbon spilled out and soaked into the tablecloth, leaving a mark darker than the tablecloth itself.

Elena pulled a bag of potato chips from under the bar counter, tore it open, and threw it among the four of them. The bar didn't sell food, and the chips were ones she had brought herself—plain, with a picture of a potato wearing a hat printed on the bag.

"During the last part of today's program," she said, leaning against the wine rack behind her with her arms crossed, "did you notice that an old lady in the audience was crying?"

"Who?" Lynn asked.

"He was in the middle of the second row, around sixty years old, wearing a floral shirt," Elena said. "The camera didn't capture him, but I could see him clearly from the side of the stage."

"Why are you crying?" Miller asked curiously.

Elena thought for a moment: "I don't know, I didn't ask her. But her expression didn't seem like fear, it was more like... she was remembering something from the past."

Lynn took a sip of his gin and tonic; the lemon flavor was stronger than usual. He recalled that when he said his last sentence, the entire studio was silent for a full two seconds before the applause erupted.

The rain outside was getting heavier, and you could clearly hear the sound of raindrops hitting the glass.

"What's next?" Miller pulled out his small notebook, flipping through it, a short pencil tucked under his hat brim. "Rhea, what do you think will happen to sales after today?"

"We'll see the results the day after tomorrow," Leia said. "I told Thompson to stare at the numbers all day tomorrow, and he agreed."

"Will he stay up all night tomorrow?"

He said drinking vodka could keep him awake.

Miller wrote something in his notebook, crossed it out, and then wrote another line. Lynn looked at the young man—round-framed glasses, freckles on his face, from Staten Island, who had dropped out of college to become Mr. Kopper's intern, secretly using the company's credentials to work as a literary agent, and still unsure if he was doing the right thing, but he always carried that little notebook and short pencil with him.

"Miller," Lynn called to him.

"Um?"

Thanks.

Miller glanced at him, pushed his glasses up, and continued writing without saying a word.

The rain was still falling. Four people sat around the bar, half a bag of potato chips remained, bubbles were still rising from their glasses, and the white-haired black man had a third of his bourbon left, wondering if he'd have another drink tonight.

Inside the nameless bar, the lights were dim, and the rain was constant. A few young people had just experienced a small victory.