Everyone's a Critic

by Jennifer Weiner

  Laurel makes herself smile and nod and makes herself ignore Tess’s jab at her longevity.

  “Besides,” Tess adds, her voice dropping into a purr, “some of those boy writers are pretty delicious. I mean, Cal Hardinger . . .” She gives Laurel a broad wink. “Yummy, yummy! I’d review his book any day!”

  Laurel feels as if she’d swallowed a stone. Her lungs freeze; the breath she’s drawn goes icy in her throat. She knows, she thinks. Except Tess couldn’t, she tells herself. No one could.

  The waiters are bringing their food, indifferently dropping plates on the table heedless of who ordered what. Laurel’s steak arrives sitting in what looks like a puddle of congealed blood. She excuses herself and goes to the bathroom. She’s rummaging in her purse for the emergency Vicodin she’s tucked into her wallet, but when she opens her bag there’s a copy of Tess Kravitz’s book there. Its cover glares redly as it catches the light.

  Laurel makes a furious mewling sound. She yanks the book out and shoves it in the trash, deep down into the litter of used paper towels and sodden tampons. She feels so violated that she can barely think, furious at the notion of Tess Kravitz’s hands in her belongings, Tess looking at her private things, and her rage collides with shame and settles in her temples, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Her head aches, as does her bladder. She wants to go home. Fuck TripAdvisor.com. Never mind what the sheep will say.

  Back at the table, she means to confront Tess, but Tess and the rest of the sheep are already clustered at the front of the restaurant, waiting for her. Laurel mutters something about a migraine and a prescription she needs to fill and sends them on their way. She staggers back to the hotel through a haze of pain and sinks her key card into its slot, desperate for privacy and rest.

  The first thing she sees is another copy of The Comfort Diet on her bedside table. Laurel stares at it for a moment, brow furrowed, mouth slightly agape. Maybe Tess had it sent up. Maybe the maid fished it out of the trash and put it there. Whatever. Laurel sweeps the book into the trash can, kicks the can out into the hall, and removes a mini bottle of wine from the minibar. She chugs it down, collapses on her bed, and sleeps, with her shoes still on.

  • • •

  The next morning, peeing is agony. Everything below her waist seems to burn. Laurel calls down to the front desk and is connected to the single hotel employee with absolutely no English. She’s repeating the word doctor into the phone and Google-translating urinary tract when there’s a loud knock at her door. “Are we going?” a male voice demands. “It’s almost nine thirty.”

  Shit. Laurel hangs up and hurries to the elevator. It’s raining again, the streets gleaming in a way that makes them look coated with something unhealthy and slimy. Today, they are scheduled to visit Père Lachaise, where Lord Byron is buried, and the Maison de Victor Hugo in Le Marais. The sheep are assembled in the lobby, waiting for her. The Chamberlain girl has her gleaming hair gathered in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing short shorts that display the lower curves of her impeccable ass and a T-shirt that says READ MORE WOMEN. The gays, Salt and Pepper, are in cravats—one gray, one blue—and sport coats of heathery wool. The cluckers and the old couples wear orthopedic walking shoes and ponchos that look like trash bags with head holes. Ugly Americans, thinks Laurel, but her chic Burberry raincoat no longer buttons. She’s forced to accept an extra poncho before she leads them out the door.

  As they walk, Tess Kravitz sidles up beside her, moving soundlessly over the cobblestones in her little white sneaks. Before Laurel can say anything about the book Tess put in her purse, Tess starts to talk. “Hey, so listen, I don’t like to gossip,” she whispers. Laurel restrains herself from rolling her eyes. “But Sarah Quinlan is one of my dear, dear friends, and she told me that this morning she saw Lisa Bell having coffee with Gregory Plontz.”

  Laurel’s mouth goes dry, and her heart starts to thud. Sarah Quinlan covers theater and ballet for the Examiner. Gregory, of course, is Laurel’s colleague, ostensibly her friend. And Lisa Bell is a young freelancer, a popular Bookstagrammer (or so Laurel has been told). Lisa Bell runs an account that posts beautiful pictures of books, often arranged by color, or in cafés beside lattes, or facedown on artfully mussed beds. Whether Lisa Bell has actually read any of the books she photographs, or has anything intelligent to say about them, Laurel does not know.

  “We’re always looking for new writers to contribute to the Review,” she says through numb lips.

  “Well, Lisa would be great. She’s super plugged in to the literary scene. She’s launching a podcast, and she knows all the hottest writers.” A broad wink, a nudge, and a giggle. “Some of them intimately.”

  Laurel forces her frozen lips into a smile. “As I said, we’re always looking for new voices.” They sent me here so that they could replace me, she thinks. Her brain spins in panicked circles, as she considers her rent (high), her savings (nonexistent), and how there’s no one she can count on to help her if she does lose her job. She is sixty-six years old. Her parents are dead. Her one sibling is a stranger who lives in Arizona. Her one friend is Gregory Plontz, and he’s back in New York City, conspiring against her.

  “Hey, you know what helps me when I start spinning out?” Tess has the nerve to sound sympathetic as she nudges Laurel and presses yet another copy of The Comfort Diet into Laurel’s unresisting hand. “Getting lost in a really good book.”

  • • •

  Laurel bears down. She herds her sheep to the cemetery. She escorts them to the sixteenth arrondissement, where they browse the bookshops, and finally she takes them to lunch at another loud, smoky bistro. When that’s over, she leads them to the Louvre. By four o’clock, her feet ache as much as her privates. Back in her room, there’s another copy of The Comfort Diet sitting on her pillow, like some lurid, overlarge mint.

  Laurel snatches it off the bed and throws it against the wall. She shrieks in mingled frustration and fear. A moment later, there’s a tentative knock at the door. “Madame?” It’s the maid, timid in her black uniform. “Doctor,” Laurel says, “I need to see a doctor,” but the woman just stares before rattling off a sentence in French that ends with silence s’il vous plait. Laurel glares, nods, and closes the door. She kicks the book under the bed, reminding herself to throw it in the trash the next morning, and calls Gregory Plontz. After her calls go straight to his voicemail six times in a row, Laurel kills two wee bottles of minibar vodka and one of Scotch and passes out on top of her bed.

  • • •

  The next morning, her eyes are gummy, and her mouth tastes vile. After another call to Gregory goes to voicemail, Laurel tries to think of someone else at the paper she can ask about the Lisa Bell sighting. She realizes there’s no one there whom she trusts, no one she’d call a friend. I should have gone into the office more, she thinks. She pulls the latest copy of The Comfort Diet out from under her bed and stuffs it in her purse. Maybe she can’t keep her job, maybe she can’t banish the infection from her body, but she can at least put a stop to this particular bit of outrageousness.

  In the lobby, she marches over to Tess Kravitz, who’s sipping a cup of coffee and holding a large white paper bag. “Good morning!” Tess twinkles, bright-eyed and cashmere-swathed. “I got up early and bought croissants for everyone!” She waggles the grease-spotted bag back and forth in Laurel’s face. “They’re still warm!”

  Laurel makes herself speak instead of growl. “Tess. Enough with the books.”

  Tess’s dimples flash as she frowns. “Beg pardon?”

  “No more books in my purse. No more books in my room. Please. It’s enough.”

  Tess draws back from Laurel, looking confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her expression is innocent, her eyes are wide. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Laurel thinks. One of her mother’s old expressions.

  “I gave you two copies,” Tess is saying, holding up two sausage-y
fingers to demonstrate. “One on the plane, and then one yesterday, when you were feeling down. That’s all! I’d never dream of going into your personal belongings.” She gives a dramatic shudder to demonstrate her horror at the very thought. “Or into your room!”

  Laurel is aware that people are listening—Salt and Pepper, the cluckers, the Chamberlain girl. She pulls the book out of her bag.

  “So where did this come from?”

  Tess pulls the book out of her hands. She opens it to the title page, then tilts it so Laurel can read what’s inscribed there: To Laurel, my literary idol, with best wishes for a wonderful Parisian trip! Tess’s signature is scrawled underneath, along with the date the trip began.

  Laurel stares. She swallows hard. She doesn’t understand how this book could possibly be the original, unless the cleaning lady pulled it out of the trash can again and put it back on her pillow. Or Tess did. Or the Chamberlain kid. Or maybe this is a different book, and Tess has written the same inscription. Whatever the explanation; she’ll deal with that later. “I apologize,” she says, and forces herself to look conciliatory. “Jet lag, I guess.”

  “No big deal,” Tess says with a smile. “I completely understand. I just hope you’ll give it a try!”

  I’d rather die, thinks Laurel, herding the sheep toward the door. Today it’s foggy, warm, and humid. Laurel feels herself start to sweat by the time they climb into the vans. They’re off to the Left Bank, and Shakespeare and Company, with its brightly painted façade glowing in the scant light that makes it through the morning’s clouds. As they get off the vans, Laurel tells the sheep that the shop still extends hospitality to aspiring writers who offer to shelve books in return for room and board. “Love it!” says Tess, her loud, merry voice like a spike through Laurel’s forehead. “What’s better than a good quid pro quo?” Is she looking at Laurel? Are the gays? Is Little Miss Chamberlain’s expression knowing, or is Laurel imagining things?

  For lunch, they go to Les Éditeurs, where the walls are lined with bookshelves. The Hemingway guy smiles shyly as he finds a first edition of A Farewell to Arms. The cluckers pull books off the shelves at random, the palsy guy knocks over his water, spilling it into Laurel’s lap. “MURRAY, now look what you’ve done!” his wife shouts, and tries to mop up the damage with her napkin. Politely, then less-politely, Laurel hauls the woman upright and away from her. “It’s FINE,” she tells the old man, and thinks, This will never end.

  “I have an idea!” Tess says once they’ve ordered. “How about we go around and talk about what we’re reading right now!”

  Mr. Chamberlain is reading the latest John Grisham. Mrs. C is reading a bestseller by an author who publishes a book every year, all of them set in beach towns, all featuring a woman who endures some tragedy and finds a happy ending. This one’s about a widow who inherits a beach house in Nantucket. “I bought it at the airport,” Mrs. C says, enticed, she sheepishly admits, by the waves and sand depicted on its cover. “I think maybe I might have read this one already,” she says. “But it’s fine. It’s entertaining.” When one of the cluckers launches into an enthusiastic description of the mystery she started reading on the plane—“It turns out, the cat solves the crime!”—Laurel excuses herself. Christ, she thinks. Doesn’t anyone read actual books anymore? In the bathroom, peeing is agony. She has to bite down on her fist to keep from moaning.

  When she’s finished, she sits on the toilet, pulls out her phone, and dials Gregory’s number. The call goes straight to voicemail. “Call me back,” she says. She’s adding up the hours that remain on the trip when she hears the papery whisper of something sliding over the tiled floor.

  She looks down. There’s a copy of The Comfort Diet on the floor, right beside her feet.

  “Tess?”

  No answer. She looks to the left. The stall is unoccupied. Same with the stall on her right. Laurel stands, unlocks the door, and storms out of the stall, heart beating hard. But the bathroom is empty. There’s nobody in there but Laurel, and Tess Kravitz’s terrible book.

  • • •

  That night, Laurel sets the sheep free for dinner and drags herself to the elevator, which smells of stale cigarette smoke. Two Frenchmen, in beautifully cut suits, give her a brief glance, before their eyes dismiss her. One rattles off a string of French to his companion, and both men laugh. Laurel’s head is hanging as she plods to her room . . . where she finds not one, not two, but three copies of The Comfort Diet: One centered on the coffee table in her suite’s little sitting area. One on her bedside table. And the third on her pillow, taunting her.

  “That’s it,” she says. Her voice is raspy in her ears, a weak, old-ladyish voice. She clears her throat. “That’s it,” she repeats, only louder. “We’re done here.”

  Laurel snatches up the pillow copy and flips to the acknowledgments. She doesn’t have to search far for the name she needs. A hundred thousand thank-yous to my angel of an agent, the divine Will Presser, who made this story possible, Tess Kravitz has written. And now my tale is told. Laurel shudders without knowing why. Will’s numbers, work and home, are in her contacts, along with the information for the other top New York City agents, and even though it’s going on midnight in New York City, she calls his cell.

  He picks up on the second ring. “Laurel Spellman!” he says, his voice as clear as if he was standing in the room beside her. “What an unexpected pleasure!” She can picture Will Presser—his coal-black goatee, his snapping black eyes with their crinkled corners, his puckish expression, his gym-trim body and still-sharp jaw. Gay, Laurel has always assumed. Either that, or an atypically well-groomed straight guy. Will dresses well and barely looks older than he did when she met him, when they both were bright-eyed up-and-comers, so many years ago. Only Will is still bright-eyed. He still looks young. And he’s gotten rich. He heads the literary department at one of the big, Hollywood-based agencies, and his clients are some of the biggest bestsellers around, including the lady who writes the beach books, and the author of the series where the cat solves the crimes. Will takes a fifteen percent bite out of each plummy contract he negotiates. He’s got a town house on the Upper East Side, which has been photographed in Elle Decor, and a house in the Hamptons, which has appeared in Architectural Digest, and he holds a party per house every year: one the Friday before Christmas and one on the Fourth of July. There’s mistletoe, and fireworks, passed hors d’oeuvres and open bars, and everyone who’s anyone in publishing attends. Meanwhile, Laurel is barely hanging on to her one-bedroom walk-up . . . and, it seems, to her job.

  Still, though, she has power. Will still represents plenty of literary writers, and those writers need her.

  “Call off your dog,” she tells him.

  “Beg pardon?” says Will in his courtly way. “What dog is that?”

  “You know!”

  “No, Laurel, I don’t.” Laurel’s voice is loud and shrill; Will’s voice, in contrast, is calm. “Are you all right? Forgive me, but you sound a little off.”

  “Your client,” says Laurel. “Tess Kravitz. I’m in Paris. The paper made me lead a trip,” she says before Will can congratulate her or talk about his regular forays to the City of Lights. “Tess Kravitz is part of the group, and she’s harassing me.”

  “Tess?” Now Will sounds confused. “Tess is harassing you? In Paris? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re her agent, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Laurel plows on. “She gave me a copy of her book at the airport, and she’s had them sent to my hotel room every night.”

  Will has the nerve to sound like he’s laughing, or trying not to laugh. “Oh. Oh dear.”

  Now that Laurel has said it out loud, it does sound a little silly. “She slipped one into my bathroom stall at lunch today. She put another one in my purse. I will not be bullied into reviewing some . . . some drivel just because your client’s paying off the concierge to put it on my pillo
w.” She makes her voice icy. “Tess Kravitz’s work,” she says, “does not belong in the New York Examiner.”

  “Well,” says Will, his voice deadpan dry, “you can’t blame her for asking for it.”

  Laurel sucks in a breath, intending to start yelling—is he teasing her? How dare he! But before she can start, Will says soothingly, “We can agree to disagree on the quality of her work. I’ll speak to Tess, of course. And I apologize. Writers, you know.” His voice is light. “They’re all a little nuts.” He pauses. “Although . . .”

  His silence gives Laurel a chance to hear noises in the background—voices, music, even the clink of glasses. She wonders where Will is, and who’s with him. Her stomach plummets as she thinks, He’s got me on speakerphone. Who might have heard her complaints? What are they saying about her? She imagines the rumors whipping around the city by the next morning: Laurel Spellman is losing it.

  Will is still talking. “You could do worse than giving her book a look,” he’s saying. “Tess was on the Today show. We’re talking with The View. It’s fiction, obviously, but there’s a biographical element.”

  “Is Tess the chef or the soldier?” Laurel asks. Her laughter sounds shrill and a little loony, even to her own ears.

  “And, of course, it’s never a bad thing these days to review a female writer. Hashtag ‘strongwomen,’ ” he says suggestively. “Hashtag ‘metoo.’ ”

  Laurel doesn’t respond. She gets enough of that brand of nonsense from the Swedes. “I’m not reviewing her book,” she says, and hangs up when Will is still midplea. In the bathroom, she splashes cold water on her wrists and cheeks and looks at herself in the mirror . . . and, again, sees her mother looking back. Unbidden, a thought flickers through her mind: I am too old for this. Not I’m getting too old, but I am too old. She longs for her own bed, in her own apartment. She’d tuck herself in and sleep through the night, and when she’d wake she would feel herself again, strong and capable and attractive. I have won a Pulitzer, she thinks. I have won the Nona Balakian prize for criticism. Thus encouraged, she stacks up Tess’s books, dumps them in the closet, and crawls into bed. She’s just drifted off when her phone buzzes with an incoming text. She squints at the message and groans out loud. Somehow, Tess Kravitz had gotten her number. Probably from her fancy-man son-of-a-bitch agent.