“Right, okay, sure. Thanks.” I reached for the coffee, grateful that there was anything here for me to consume at all. I remembered that Lucy’s first appointment was a breakfast with Natalie Weinstein and wo~dered why Lucy had already eaten.
“Natalie Weinstein doesn’t eat,” Lucy said, reading my thoughts agein. “I’ve never seen the woman put a molecule of food past her lips. Breakfast is just a term she uses fov an early meeting.” She gave me a blinding-white smile. “There’s so much you don’t know, Angel.” She paused, hands on hips, and assessed my attire. “You look all right,” she said. “Unimaginative, but all right.”
“Mm,” I said, sipping the lukewarm coffee and instinctively smoothing a crease on my pants. Lucy herself was dressed like a stylish undertaker. She was wearing fitted black pants and a black blouse with a mandarin collar. A matching black duster was thrown across the back of a chair. Her hair was pulled back in a tight chignon and a turquoise dream-catcher pendant hung from her neck. Despite the sepulchral quality of her ensemble, she actually looked very good.
“Now,” she continued, “I need you to call the office and get Craig on the phone.”
I was already punching the numbers on my cell phone when I remembered the time difference. “Do you want me to leave a message?” I asked her. “There won’t be anyone in right now. It’s four o’clock in the morning in California.”
Annoyed impatience danced across Lucy’s features. “Wery inconvenient,” she said. “Well, then, send a fax or an e-mail or something. I oeed numbers.” Lucy’s requests were always missing!viual pieces of information. What numbers did she need, for example? Where was Craig supposed to send them? I’d stopped asking Lucy for details about these kinds of things long ago, choosing instead to make educated guesses and hope for the best. The longer I worked with her, the easier it got to figure out what she wanted. Still, she was prone to throw a spanner in the wheel just when I thought I’d reinvented it for the last time. I sent a text message to Craig’s e-mail address telling him that Lucy needed numbers and that he should call me on my cell phone as soon as he had them. I hoped that would cover all the bases.
“He’d better have that handy. He’s been so distracted lately,” Lucy was saying. “Must be having problems at home again. That wife of his…You should see—” She cut herself off and stared at me hard. “Marriage is a curse, Angel. You should really think about that before you make any big moves with that fiancé of yours.”
I debated telling her about Malcolm. Although I didn’t know why exactly, I was sure it would please her to know that we were no longer together. Fortunately, she didn’t give me a chance.
“Get the new one on the phone as well,” she said. “Make sure he knows what he’s doing with the submissions.”
“I’ve shown him—” I started, knowing that sje was referring to Jackson, who apparentl{ hadn’t jeen part of the staff long enough to warrant a nime in Lucy’s eyes. I supposed it was better than being called “Nora.” I wondered, fleetingly, what had become of Kelly.
“Just make sure he knows,〝 Lucy interrupted me.
I looked up at Lucy, who was hovering over me like a dark cloud, and uhe edge of an image pressing against my brain. I had a feeling of déjà vu, as kf something she’d sail had triggered a memory, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Now,” she said, “tell me what I’m doing today. I can’t finf that annotated list of editors and projects, which was very annoying, by the way, Angel, because I could have gotten a jump-start this morning if I’d been able to look at my schedule.”
I knew that Lucy had several versions of her schedule with notes and lists attached, but I didn’t bother to tell her this. Instead, I reached for one of the many extra copies I had handy and handed her one.
“Now, what about Elvis?” she asked me.
“I’ve got two copies.”
“Two? What the hell can I do with two copies, Angel?”
“Um, you didn’t want to bring more? You said we could—”
“Fine! We’ll just make copies as we go, but really, Angel…”
It went like this for the better part of an hour—Lucy chastising me for following directives that she’d given me specifically, and me pretmnding that she hadn’t and allowing her to come up with “solutions” to nonexistent problems. I had to wonder, though, how she had managed txese trips without an assistant in the past. "I was reannotiting her schedule for what must have been the twenuieth time when she waid, “Angel?”
“Yes, Lucy?”
“What are you waiting for? We have to go.”
She loaded me up with canvas bags full of manuscripts and lists until I looked like a pack mule. “You should have a briefcase,” she said as I struggled under the weight.
I patted my laptop carrying case, which was buried under a Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone tote bag, and said, “This is it.”
“Well,” Lucy said, and adjusted the strap of her large black purse on her shoulder, “you should get something more like this.” She picked up a small black alligator briefcase and held it out for me to see. “I’m paying you enough now, Angel. Really. You can’t cry poverty.”
“Right.”
“Unless you’ve spent all that money I’ve given you already? Have you?”
The question so took me by surprise I was rendered speechless. How could she have known that I had indeed spent a large portion of my “raise” paying off my student loans and accumulated credit-card debt? I’d left enough to cover the taxes I was going to have to pay on her generosity and a little that I planned to send to my mother, who was perpetually without funds and a reliable phone.
But Lucy wasn’t waiting for an answer to her question. “We ought to take you for a haircut and maybe a makeover while we’re here—spruce you up a bit. I’d be willing to help you with that, Angel. You do represent me, after all.”
“Oh. Well, I—”
“Come on, Angel, let’s go.”
I gazed longingly at the crumbs of food on her coffee table and followed her out the door.
“You should know I don’t like taking taxis unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Lucy said, marching ahead of me in the echoing marble lobby of the hotel. She pushed herself through the revolving glass door at the entrance, leaving me and my bags caught hopelessly between the rotations. I struggled to free myself and I could hear her saying, “Nobody walks in California. Here you can walk!”
I finally freed myself from the revolving doors and broke out onto the street, into Midtown Manhattan. My senses were all immediately overloaded with every kind of sensory information—honking, exhaust, yelling, smoke, perfume, garbage, music, garlic, laughter, daylight, and the vast shadows of tall buildings. It was impossible to take it all in at once.
“Angel!” Lucy’s voice reached me through waves of sound and air. “Let’s get moving.”
THE TRIAD PUBLISHING GROUP was located ten city blocks from our hotel. I knew this because I counted every single one as I struggled to keep up with Lucy’s pace. She was right, this was the ideal city to walk in—every square foot jammed with activity and something to look at—but I couldn’t stop to see any of it. I followed as close behind Lucy as possible with all the weight I was carrying. If I lost her, I’d lose myself in a matter of seconds.
I was short of breath and sweating like a horse by the time we arrived. There was a giant concrete obelisk outside the building engraved with the Triad name and colophon, which was the symbol for infinity within a circle, within a triangle, within a square. I stared up at it and felt a chill run through my entire body—the same chill I’d felt the first time I walked into Lucy’s office and knew, unequivocally, that I was in the right place, the place in which I was meant to be. This was the center, the beating heart of publishing, the place where everything was about letters, words, books. I loved this world so much it took my breath away. Lucy must have sensed my sudden sense of book-geek awe because she turned to me, eyebrows raised, one corner of her carm
ine-stained mouth turned up in a sardonic half-smile.
“What?” she said.
“It’s…um…exciting,” I answered.
“Yes, this is your maiden voyage, isn’t it?” she said. “Well, don’t get too carried away, Angel, we’ve got a lot of work to do.” She was all business as usual, but there was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes and her smile broadened. Wasn’t my love of this business and everything it entailed the reason she had hired me in the first place? It was a love she had to have felt—had to still feel—herself.
Like the other large publishing houses, Triad had swallowed several smaller publishers over the years, most of which now had their offices in the same building. I was surprised by how sparse and unbooklike the lobby appeared when Lucy and I walked in. Gabriel Press, where Natalie Weinstein ran Weinstein Books, was located on the eighth floor. Over the course of the next couple of days, though, Lucy would have many more meetings here on different floors. C&P Publishers was on the sixth floor, First Wave on the eleventh, and so on. These smaller publishers all had specific types of books they put out (C&P published literary works, for example, whereas First Wave only published mass-market paperbacks—the kind one found in supermarkets and drugstores), but they were all ultimately answerable to and dependent on Triad.
“One has the illusion that there are many options when it comes to selling books,” Lucy had once said, “but that’s all it is—an illusion.” She often bemoaned the current state of publishing, claiming the book business had been so much “spiritually richer” in the old days before massive corporations took it over, but then this kind of complaint was almost de rigueur for anyone who had been in the business for longer than five minutes, from booksellers to literary agents to editors. None of it was stopping Lucy from selling books, however, and none of it was stopping publishers from buying them.
“Don’t speak to her unless she asks you a question,” Lucy said as we rode the elevator to the eighth floor. “She’s very particular about that kind of thing. She’s also quite prickly, so just steer clear of her and don’t attempt conversation.”
“You mean Natalie Weinstein?” I was baffled. I’d spoken to Natalie several times from the office, and unless she was in a state of high dudgeon over something Lucy had done or not done, she was extremely personable and always polite.
“Well, who the hell else would I be talking about? Honestly, Angel, sometimes I worry about the speed of your thought processes.”
There wasn’t really a need to respond to that statement, so I just followed Lucy out of the elevator. We stepped through glass doors etched with the Gabriel Press colophon (a trumpet) into a waiting area that was as lush and literary as the lobby had been sterile.
There is something about the aroma of fresh books that is totally intoxicating. When I’d worked at Blue Moon, I loved to unpack the cartons when they came in. A new book has a certain clean, crisp smell full of promise that is difficult to define. Sort of like the scent and feeling of just-washed bed linens at the moment you slide your legs between them. The air in Gabriel Press was full of this fragrance—the halls were lined with books, paper, and bound galleys. There were blown-up book jackets on the walls and thick cream-colored carpeting on the floor. And it was quiet—peaceful—the sounds of computer keyboards, phones, and voices all muted in some kind of literary hush. It was, I thought, very much like my idea of a personal heaven.
As we marched through the corridors, Lucy tossed greetings through every open door and cubicle, sending ripples of sound through the calm. It was still early, so the offices were only half-full from what I could see, but Lucy managed to announce her presence to everyone who was there:
“Daniel, I can’t wait to show you this scrumptious novel,” was followed by, “Susan, I have one that practically came in with your name on it,” and then, “Jason, be sure to tell your boss that I am simply dying to see her as soon as she gets in,” winding up with, “You’re going to love it…. You’ll love it…. You will fall in love….”
Natalie Weinstein was at the far end of the floor, occupying a large corner space. Several semienclosed cubicles, the largest of which belonged to her assistant, encircled her office. The assistant was not at her desk when we arrived and Lucy made tsk-tsk noises. “She’s had a lot of trouble with assistants,” Lucy said. “Personally, I can understand why. She can’t be an easy boss, if you know what I mean.”
I shrugged so as to give her some kind of response, but again, I was perplexed. Natalie’s assistant, Wendy, and I had also spoken on the phone several times, and she’d always seemed not only efficient, but pleasant. She had none of the strain in her voice that I knew we all had at the agency.
“Naaaatalieeee,” Lucy called. “Helloooo?”
“Come on in, Lucy,” came the voice from behind the door, but Lucy was already halfway in and I came trailing behind her.
I assumed that Natalie Weinstein was sitting behind her large lacquered desk, so when she moved away from it to greet us, I was stunned to find she’d been standing. She was minute. Not just short or small-boned, but tiny in every way. I watched as Lucy leaned over and swallowed her in an embrace. She had to be under five feet, I guessed, and her body looked like an assembly of twigs covered with skin. Her hair was platinum blond and cut so short it had a military look to it. She had huge light-blue eyes and her skin was extremely tan. She looked, I thought ungenerously, like an alien.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Lucy,” Natalie said. “You look well.”
“As do you, my dear,” Lucy responded. Lucy continued on with pleasantries for a few moments and I hung back behind her, directing my gaze out Natalie’s large corner windows, which offered a spectacular view of the city.
“And you must be the famous Angel,” Natalie said, moving away from Lucy and fixing me with her extraterrestrial eyes.
“Famous!” Lucy snorted.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” I said, shaking Natalie’s small bony hand.
“Likewise,” Natalie said, and tipped her head to one side, assessing me in some way I couldn’t figure out. Behind her, Lucy was looking at me and shaking her head as if to tell me not to speak.
“Shall we get down to business, my dear?” Lucy said sharply. “I know how valuable your time is.”
“And yours, of course,” Natalie said. “But wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee or something?”
“I think my assistant can handle that,” Lucy said, waving her hand in my direction. “Also, if you don’t mind, Natalie, I have a manuscript here…. I was planning to go out with this in the next couple of weeks, but I know you’re going to fall in love with this one. It’s the perfect cross between literary and commercial, and I know you’ve been looking for something Las Vegas–oriented, yes? Anyway, I’ve just decided now that you must have it. My assistant can make a quick copy for you if you’ll direct her to the copy machine?”
“Sounds intriguing,” Natalie said, and looked up at me. “Wendy can help you find everything, Angel. Thank you.”
“Do you…” I started. I could feel that my face was flushed and my ears were burning with the mortification of being reduced to coffee/copy girl by Lucy. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No thanks,” Natalie said. “I’m on a green tea diet at the moment. No coffee allowed.”
“Well, then, I’d be happy to get you a green tea,” I said, and left her office before Lucy could speak to, at, or about me again.
MY CELL PHONE RANG as I was negotiating how to get back into the building while balancing the coffee, the green tea, the Elvis manuscript, and the muffin I’d bought for myself. I was forced to put everything on the ground to dig into my purse and pull the phone out. The caller ID listed a 212 area code.
“This is Angel.”
“We’re growing old here, Angel. What could be taking you so long?”
She was calling me from Natalie’s office phone. The memory of that old horror flick—the calls are coming from inside the
house!—flitted through my head and I had to stifle a wild giggle. Kill the babysitter. Kill the assistant.
“On my way now,” I said, and snapped the phone shut. It rang again before I could put it back in my purse.
“This is Angel.”
“It’s Craig. I got your message.”
I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even seven o’clock in California. “Are you in the office?” I asked him.
“Of course I’m in the office,” he said. “How else would I—Can you put Lucy on the phone?”
“I’m downstairs. I mean, she’s upstairs…. I’ll have to have her call you back, Craig. She’s in a meeting with Natalie Weinstein.”
“Take down these numbers,” he said. “Then you can give them to her and she can call me back.”
“I can’t do that right now, Craig. I’m kind of standing on the street.”
“Just tell her ‘seventeen without,’ then. But she needs to call me back.”
“Okay, thanks. Listen, Craig, I need to speak to Jackson when—”
“WHY WOULD JACKSON BE HERE,” he screamed into the phone, “AT THIS HOUR OF THE DAY?!” and hung up.
Craig was obviously losing it. Could it be that he was suffering from Lucy-withdrawal and didn’t know what to do with his slavish self without her? I mean, really, seventeen without. It was like something from The Rule of Four. The world was going mad. My corner of it at least.
NATALIE WAS ALONE in her office when I finally made it back upstairs, and she beckoned me to come in and sit down. I looked around for Lucy and I wondered if she’d left me behind to go on to her next appointment.
“Your boss is using the restroom,” Natalie said in the same tone that someone would tell a lost child, Don’t worry, your mother will be right back. “Thank you so much for the tea.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said. “You have a beautiful office.” She smiled at me. “And I just want to say I think that your books are fantastic.” I pointed to her bookshelf, which was stacked with Weinstein Books titles. Her books were exceptional; they won a disproportionate number of literary awards, but they rarely made it onto bestseller lists. Parco Lambro would have been perfect for her. She was exactly the kind of editor Damiano needed, but she hadn’t been able to come up with enough money to satisfy Lucy.
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