The Club

by Jane Heller

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said sadly. “Oh, Hunt. What am I going to do? I loved working at Charlton House. I feel lost already.”

  Hunt put his arms around me and held me. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said as he rocked me. “I have faith in you. I know you’ll find another job very quickly.”

  “Really? How?” I said. “The whole industry is downsizing. It’s the nineties, remember? There aren’t exactly a million jobs out there now.”

  “You’re good at what you do,” he insisted. “That has to mean something.”

  “It didn’t mean anything to Leeza Grummond,” I pointed out. “She told me I was good at what I did and then fired me.”

  Hunt shook his head. “I still can’t get over it,” he said.

  “Join the club,” I said. “What are we going to do about money?” I said. “No job, no paycheck.”

  “We’re not exactly destitute. I make enough to support us,” said Hunt.

  I nodded. Hunt was right, of course. His salary had always dwarfed mine, even with my yearly raises. But my salary had made me feel worthwhile, as if I were a true partner in the marriage. I didn’t want to mooch off him.

  “Look,” he said. “Give it a day or two to sink in. Then on Monday you can start networking and figuring out your next move. You’ll get another job, Jude. I know you will. You’re bright and clever and very talented, and talent always wins out.”

  I looked up at Hunt and felt a surge of love for him. Sure, he could be a boob sometimes. And sure, his obsessions with his pork bellies and his country club and his golf got on my nerves. But the man was loyal and true and a good husband. How could I even think of divorcing him?

  I spent the next twenty minutes venting my spleen about Charlton House and their new publishing program and Leeza—most of all Leeza. It felt so satisfying to be able to tell Hunt how I felt about the wunderkind of the Western world, sort of like having a really bad case of poison ivy and finally being able to scratch.

  When I’d said enough about Leeza for one evening, I suggested we rustle up something to eat for dinner.

  Hunt said he had to make a phone call but would join me soon.

  I kissed him (on the lips) and went into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he reappeared.

  “I found some leftover veal marengo in the refrigerator,” I said. “Want to nuke it?”

  “Sounds fine,” Hunt said, and I knew he meant it. Any kind of food was fine with Hunt, as long as it didn’t have anchovies in it. Here I was, a Jewish foodie who spoke of polenta and pancetta and penne puttanesca, married to a goyish guy whose idea of a gourmet meal was gorgonzola on his cheeseburger instead of Velveeta. What’s more, he didn’t care if he ate. He could skip meals and not even know that he skipped them, while I hadn’t missed a meal since I was nine.

  I heated up the veal and set the little table in our eat-in kitchen.

  “Who’d you call?” I asked Hunt as we ate.

  “Call?” he said.

  “Yeah. Before. You said you had to call someone.”

  “Oh, that. Just a client.”

  I nodded and went on eating. “New client?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Hunt. “How’d you know?”

  “Because you seemed like you were in a good mood when you first came home. That can only mean one of two things: you got a new client or you had a big day on the links. Since it’s March and you aren’t playing golf yet, I’m betting it’s a new client.”

  He smiled. “I’m that predictable, huh?”

  “ ’Fraid so,” I said and drained my wineglass. “Want some more wine?” I asked as I got up to retrieve the bottle from the refrigerator.

  “Sure,” said Hunt.

  I came back to the table and refilled both our glasses.

  “So who’s the new client?” I asked, a forkful of veal en route to my mouth.

  Hunt sipped his wine but didn’t answer.

  “Who’s the new client?” I asked again. Like his parents, Hunt wasn’t the world’s greatest conversationalist, but he usually held up his end better than this.

  He put down his glass and stared at his plate.

  “Leeza Grummond,” he said finally, looking guilty but not guilty enough.

  It took me a second to process the information. Then I exploded. “You’re telling me Leeza Grummond is your new client?” I laid down my fork and put my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t strangle him.

  “It’s your fault,” he had the nerve to say.

  “How do you figure?” I said.

  “Remember how you got that big Christmas bonus last year?” he said.

  “How could I forget,” I said. “It paid for this table we’re sitting at.”

  “Part of it paid for the table. The other part went into the commodities market, into an account at F&F that I set up for you.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Remember how much money you made from that account? And how you went around telling everybody at Charlton House that they should give me their money to invest?”

  I nodded. I’d wanted everybody at work to know what a smart commodities trader my husband was. So I shot my mouth off. So what.

  “Well, Leeza heard you. She called and said she wanted to invest in crude oil and natural gas and pork bellies, just like you did.”

  “That twit. That fucking twit. How dare she fire me and then hire my husband? Does that take the cake or what?”

  Hunt took a sip of wine. “She gave me a lot of money to invest, Jude,” he said. “And every time I get a new client I score points with the partners, you know?”

  I looked at Hunt and all I could see was traitor! Well, asshole also came to mind. “So you’d screw your wife just to impress the partners?” I said.

  “Of course not,” he said. “I took Leeza Grummond on as a client because I want to move up in the firm—for both our sakes. You like our lifestyle as much as I do. Don’t you want to be able to maintain it? Especially now that you’ve lost your job? Think about it.”

  All I could think about was that my husband would be making money for Leeza. It was too gruesome a thought to bear. I had to leave the room. I was afraid that if I didn’t, I’d say something really nasty and insulting to Hunt, something I wouldn’t be able to take back.

  “I hate today,” I said as I stood in the doorway. “If I go to sleep now, today will be over.”

  “Do you hate me too?” he asked.

  I considered the question. “Yes,” I said.

  Hunt’s face fell.

  “But I’ll get over it,” I added and went to bed.

  Chapter Three

  I spent Monday morning on the phone with my friends in publishing, all of whom expressed shock and indignation over my firing but none of whom knew of any job openings.

  Don’t worry, I told myself. Something will turn up.

  I was right: something, or should I say someone, did turn up—my loyal author and relentless suitor, Valerio. When he heard I’d gotten the ax, he was so enraged he called Leeza to tell her he was taking his next cookbook to a rival publisher. But he never got to deliver his message because good old Leeza wouldn’t even take his call! So what did he do? He turned up at my house, bearing gifts and lots of sympathy.

  “You’re sweet,” I told him as we sat in my living room one Wednesday afternoon, drinking Bellinis and reminiscing about our salad days at Charlton House.

  “Eeet has nutting to do weet being sweeta,” said Valerio, his accent thick with his native Italy. I had to hand it to the guy: he could turn that accent on and off at the drop of a hat. When he was in serious contract negotiations, for example, he could make the accent disappear. “Don’t you hondle me, buster,” he’d say, without a trace of the Old Country. “No escalator clauses, no deal!”

  “I’m not sweet at all,” he continued. “I am een love with you, Judy.”

  I had given up trying to talk Valerio out of his ardor. My current strategy was to ignore it. “Have you heard anything new a
bout Charlton House?”

  I bit my lip as I spoke the name of my former employer. I felt like some jilted lover who wishes she never met the guy who dumped her but asks everyone who knows him how he’s doing.

  “No,” Valerio said. “But you don’t needa that place. You will get a job with a publishing house that appreciates your brains and beauty.”

  He reached over and grabbed my hand, then kissed it.

  Such a Casanova, that Valerio. I looked at his hands, which were now on my thigh. The tips of his fingers were their usual bright pink, and the thought of them on my body made me laugh. I mean, would you take a guy seriously in the love object department if his fingertips were stained with pistachio nuts? Never mind that pistachios were the “secret ingredient” in his now-famous signature dishes. He was a terrific cook and an even more terrific talk show guest, but he wasn’t for me, not even in my present, highly vulnerable state.

  He stayed until Hunt came home. The two men chatted for a few minutes, while I went to the bathroom. When I came back, I walked Valerio to the front door.

  “Your husband is okay,” he whispered, minus the accent. Apparently, he was now in his deal-making mode. “I used to think he didn’t know a thing about food and wondered how you could be married to him. But you should have heard him go on about corn and wheat and soybean oil. He said corn’s the place to put my money now. He said he’d handle my account, no problem.”

  Leave it to Hunt, the commodities broker. The man never stopped hustling.

  “Maybe you two should have lunch,” I said as I ushered Valerio out the door.

  “Only if you come with us, my sweeta,” he said and kissed my hand.

  “Can’t,” I said. “Got to get a job.”

  I tried to get a job, I really tried, but nobody was hiring. I’m not saying there weren’t openings. I’d hear that this cookbook editor was leaving to have a baby and that cookbook editor was leaving to go into rehab. The trouble was, their companies weren’t replacing them; they were downsizing. God, what an awful word.

  Then one day I took the train into the city to have lunch with Arlene. She looked even paler and more haunted than usual so I asked her if she was taking care of herself.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “But I miss my job.”

  “I know how you feel,” I said. “I’m going crazy sitting at home.”

  “Same here,” she said. “If it weren’t for my six favorite romance novels, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Your six favorite romance novels? You mean you keep rereading the same books?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  I wanted to say, “Because you should find a real boyfriend instead of mooning over fictional men,” but I just shrugged and kept my mouth shut. The trouble with Arlene was that no mortal man could possibly live up to her favorite romance heroes. I’d tried to fix her up with a couple of Hunt’s friends from F&F, but she wasn’t interested in meeting either of them. “Just because they’re not dukes or counts or knights doesn’t make them bad people,” I’d pointed out.

  After we ordered lunch, Arlene told me she’d heard a rumor that Beach Reads, a paperback house that published the occasional cookbook, was looking for an editor. It seems the previous cookbook editor had gone to India to live in an ashram.

  “That’s great!” I said enthusiastically. “I’ll call them the minute I get home. Thanks for the tip.”

  “I just hope it pans out,” said Arlene. “Beach Reads isn’t a very classy outfit, so don’t expect much.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  Beach Reads published a lot of sleazy, pornographic novels. The employees the company attracted weren’t exactly the cream of the crop, but hey—a job was a job.

  The morning of my interview at Beach Reads, I regarded my reflection in the mirror and thought, Okay, you’re not twenty but you look pretty good for a girl who’ll be forty in three months. I was still a size eight, although my clothes were a tad too tight, what with my hanging around the house and eating way too many Pepperidge Farm cookies. My eyelids were drooping a bit, and my thighs had sprouted some nasty varicose veins, not to mention cottage cheese, but all in all, I was still a tenderloin. At least, I hoped so. There was my long, frosted-blond hair and my almond-shaped hazel eyes and my full, pouty lips, which had embarrassed me as a kid but were now all the rage. And then there were my very perky breasts, which were the envy of my friends and the pride of my husband, who had once suggested I have them insured the way dancers insure their legs. “Are you serious?” I’d said. “No, I was just kidding,” he’d said. That was the trouble with Hunt. As I told you earlier, he wasn’t the most humorous guy on the planet, so when he was making a joke, you couldn’t exactly tell.

  I was early for my interview, but there was no excuse for my having to wait forty-five minutes to see the Director of Human Resources.

  “Come on in,” she said finally, introducing herself as Ms. Rothstein. She wore blue jeans with holes in the knees, black high-top Reeboks, and a T-shirt that read: “Aerosmith—1992 tour.” Her long black hair was pulled behind her ears, presumably to show off her lobes, each of which had been pierced three or four times. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and she certainly wasn’t my idea of a personnel director, but I tried to maintain a positive attitude.

  It was difficult, though, especially since Ms. Rothstein didn’t even bother to look at my résumé.

  “Where are you from, Ms. Mills?” she asked.

  “Shirley, Ms. Rothstein,” I replied.

  “You want me to call you by your first name? That’s cool, Shirley. Call me Linda,” she said. “Now, where are you from?”

  “Shirley,” I said.

  “Right. So what town are you from?” she said.

  “Shirley,” I said again. The conversation reminded me of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First routine. “Shirley is a small town on Long Island,” I explained. “Not far from the Hamptons.”

  “The Hamptons. Oh, cool,” said Linda. “What was your major in college?”

  Did we really have to go back that far? I wondered. I had a dozen bestselling cookbooks to my credit. What the hell did my college major have to do with anything?

  “Greek and Latin,” I answered anyway, trying to stay focused.

  “Cool,” said Linda. “We have a bunch of cookbook authors who are Greek and Latin. There’s Arianna Stavros, who did Fun with Feta Cheese, and Pablo Bournino, the pasta guy who—”

  “I meant ancient Greek and Latin. As in the classics,” I interrupted. “You know, The Iliad, The Odyssey, stuff like that?”

  Linda gave me a blank look.

  We chatted for several more minutes. Then Linda took a phone call from her boyfriend, an aspiring rock guitarist named Pain (that was only his stage name, she explained; his real name was Howard).

  “Now,” I said when they hung up fifteen minutes later. “About the job. Is there someone else I should see? The publisher? Or maybe the editor-in-chief?”

  I didn’t want to spend another minute at Beach Reads, let alone work there, but I had promised myself I would take any publishing job that came along and I was sticking to it.

  “Not yet,” said Linda, who reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a half-eaten bag of trail mix, and offered me some.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “I’ll call you if anybody here wants to see you,” she said, giving me no indication whether I had made the first cut.

  She stood, shook my hand, and showed me out.

  That night Hunt asked me how my interview went.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “We barely discussed cookbooks. I never got to tell her about the bestsellers I had at Charlton House.”

  “She’ll find out about all that from reading your résumé,” he said. “Maybe for the interview she just wanted to get a sense of you as a person.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  We saw. Linda Rothstein never called. After two weeks, I broke down and ca
lled her.

  “It’s Judy Mills,” I said. “I was just wondering, have you made a decision about your cookbook editor?”

  “Oh hi, Judy,” said Linda. “Yeah, the publisher made a decision. He hired someone else.”

  I was disappointed and very relieved.

  “But I never even got to talk to him,” I said. I’d heard Beach Reads’ publisher, Sam Spellman, was a real cheepskate, the type who never pays people what they’re worth.

  “That’s because Sam decided to promote from within,” Linda explained.

  “Oh, you mean there was an editor there who’d already worked on cookbooks?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Sam gave his wife the job.”

  “His wife? Is she an editor there?”

  “No, she’s never worked in publishing. But he likes her cooking so he hired her.”

  Talk about promoting from within. I didn’t have a chance.

  I thanked Linda, hung up the phone, and tried not to be discouraged. It was only one interview. There would be others.

  There were others. There was the interview at Save the Manatee Press, publishers of books about the environment. They were looking for an editor to oversee their line of vegetarian and health food cookbooks. Hey, so I was a beef lover whose idea of heaven was a luscious, velvety filet mignon, charcoal grilled medium rare. So what? The people at Save the Manatee would never have to know, as in: “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell.”

  The good news was that the issue of my own eating preferences was never raised during the interview. The bad news was that the interview lasted only a minute and a half. I made the colossal and irrevocable mistake of showing up in my sheared beaver coat, the coat I’d bought with my Charlton House Christmas bonus two years before. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t a swift move to wear fur to an interview with a publisher whose name was Save the Manatee. But it was an absolutely freezing day in March, and the sheared beaver was the warmest coat I owned.

  After two months’ worth of dead-end interviews with cookbook publishers, I decided it was time to venture outside the book industry. I interviewed at Gourmet magazine. I interviewed at Bon Appétit. I even interviewed at Kellogg’s, where they were looking for someone to edit the little recipes they put on their boxes of All Bran. None of the interviews amounted to anything more than a “You’re not right for this job but we’ll call you if anything else opens up.” It was depressing, let me tell you.