Made in Heaven

by McGoldrick, May

  Evan didn’t answer. There, at the bottom, inside of a coffee colored ring, that same ad peeked up at him.

  Pulling out the paper, Evan stared at the advertisement. Damn. What were the chances of him running across the same section of a paper three times like this?

  Without warning, Evan reached over and dumped Phil’s unfinished portion of food on the table and yanked out the newspaper in his basket. He looked at one side and then the other. No sign of any circle and no ad. He looked again at the piece of paper in front of him.

  Experienced Editor...

  Evan had always considered himself rational if not wise. He’d always considered himself a perceptive man. But never, never had he considered himself superstitious.

  “And would you care to tell me what the hell this is all about?”

  Evan glanced over at the mess he’d made of Phil’s food. “What’s wrong? You don’t like your food served a la carte?”

  “I think your French is a little rusty.” Phil snatched the paper out of Evan’s hand and scanned it, front and back. “What’re you looking for?”

  “For all the years you’ve been having fish and chips in this place, have you ever seen them serve it on top of the Sunday New York Times?”

  “How the hell would I know? I come here in for the food, not for any intellectual enrichment.”

  “Just look at this.” Evan snatched back the paper. “Yours is served on the birth announcements of the Newport Daily News and mine is on the Book Review section of the New York Times.”

  “So what? Is that supposed to be some kind of a sign? Oh, I get it! I’m to be cursed with faulty condoms, and you’re to get yet another glowing review in that paper. Is that it?” Phil sat back in his chair. “Evan, it means one of two things. Either Ray the short order cook is starting his own fortune cookie-horoscope routine...or you’re in the market for a Prozac dealing shrink.”

  “Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on.” Evan again glanced down at the paper. “All I know is that three times today, I’ve seen the same ad from the same paper with the same goddamn ring around it.”

  “Maybe it’s a national brand or something. What’s the advertisement for?”

  Evan took a slug of his beer and looked again at the already familiar phone number. “An editor...looking for freelance work.”

  “In the book section. Gee, that’s pretty strange.”

  “You’re such an asshole. See this ring?” Evan pointed to the stain on the paper. “There are advertisements above and below it. People advertising the same thing. But the ring keeps showing up around this one ad.”

  “Maybe something went wrong during the printing. Maybe, every one of the papers they printed has that mark on that ad.”

  “Maybe,” Evan said absently.

  Or maybe, he thought, he wanted to believe that there was some magic left in his life. Maybe he even hoped that the ad had some connection with Meg. He knew from giving it to his lawyer that the phone number wasn’t hers, but it was a Boston number. And Jada had said something about Meg changing her number.

  He took another swig of his drink. No, there had to be dozens of would-be or ex- editors in Boston. Maybe he should just pick up a phone and call the number. That might be one way to figure out what the hell this thing was all about.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Evan looked up to find Phil pushing his chair back and standing up. “Where are you going?”

  “Order me another beer. I’ll be right back.”

  Evan watched as his friend walked out of the bar. Throwing the paper aside, he decided that maybe he was getting too weird for his own good. First, it was all his sulking over Meg, and now it was hallucinations with extraterrestrials and an evil plan to brainwash him with coffee stained tabloids.

  He would leave for New York tomorrow. That would certainly put an end to all this nonsense. Over the past year, his housekeeper had spent more hours in his apartment there than he had himself. It was time to get back to normal routines.

  Hell, he had a deadline to meet and a book to push out. Maybe it wouldn’t turn out to his liking--there was no way to know that beforehand--but at least he still knew how the hell to finish a book.

  Phil walked back in with a newspaper tucked under his arm. “Here, take a look at this one. I’m betting you’ll find the same circular stain.”

  “I can’t believe you went and got another paper.”

  “Hey, it was worth it to prove my point.” He sat down and began to rummage through the sections. “Here it is. You want to do the honors?”

  His curiosity getting the best of him, Evan reached for the book section and opened it to the appropriate page. The advertisement was there.

  No sign of any ring.

  “Nice try, Sherlock. No stain on this one.”

  “Could be a different edition.”

  “Forget it. I have.” Evan folded the paper and pushed it away from him. “I didn’t order you another beer. I’d just as soon be getting back to the house.”

  “So you are definitely leaving for New York.”

  “Yep. But I want to take care of the business stuff in the first couple of days. Then I focus on nothing but writing.”

  “Hey, don’t stay away too long.”

  Evan nodded appreciatively. In his gruff way, Phil was the most loyal friend he’d ever had.

  “I’ll be back.”

  As they left the pub, Evan tucked the folded book section from the paper under his arm. Back in his apartment, he dropped it on the table without giving it another glance until a few hours later when he was talking on the phone to his agent in New York. Absently, he started thumbing through the section until he reached the page. He froze mid-sentence.

  There, on the page where there had been no stain, a coffee colored ring circled an ad offering the services of a certain Experienced Editor...

  “I’ll have to call you back, Henry.”

  “Evan? Evan, are you alri...” The receiver dropped into its cradle, and Evan ran his fingers over the page.

  It wasn’t possible. Since coming back from the pub that paper had not been touched, and unless somebody was playing a very elaborate prank on him, Evan couldn’t imagine how the hell that same ring could appear where it hadn’t been before.

  Thinking over the whole thing again, there was no doubt in his mind what he had to do. He picked up the phone and dialed the number in the ad.

  He frowned, feeling his own heart hammering away as he waited for the phone to ring. On the first ring she answered, and there was no question in Evan’s mind who was on the other end.

  He hung up without speaking, and a pall quickly descended on his soul. But what, he thought, could he have said? How could he explain that his subconscious was in overdrive? How could he tell her that silent vibes were coming to him long distance?

  It took Evan only a couple of minutes to go downstairs and rifle Nan’s drawer of room keys. The registration book showed that someone had stayed for three days in the same room that Meg had occupied, but that the room was empty now. Grabbing one of the keys, Evan climbed the stairs and unlocked her door.

  He leaned his back against the door and gazed into the tidy room. It was the strangest sensation to see in his mind’s eye the two of them arguing in the middle of the room. To remember the way they’d kissed. To see himself backing her toward the bed. To recall how they’d tumbled on that mattress.

  He crossed the room and ran his hand over the wooden bedpost and then walked to the windows. Pulling one open, he stepped back as a rush of autumn air suddenly filled the room. But as he breathed in the air, he frowned. She was still here. He could sense her presence.

  He turned around and again let his eyes roam the room. No, it was his imagination. The room was clean and empty. There was nothing for him here.

  The puff of breeze blew in, lifting the bedskirt, and Evan spotted a little triangle of white peeking from beneath it. He bent over and pulled out a piece of paper that had
somehow wedged itself up between the bedskirt and the boxspring.

  It was a handwritten draft of a note to someone named Mrs. Wilson--a response to a submitted manuscript. It was from Meg.

  Evan poured over the letter, devouring it like someone who had been isolated from any contact with humankind for half a lifetime.

  Firmly, but with a lot more tact than she’d ever used with him, Meg was rejecting the manuscript, and not simply because of Elgin Publishing’s demise. She commended the author for her talent and her persistence in the subject, but told her that the material lacked an audience. Evan read on. Considering the fact that for so many years Mrs. Wilson had tried to sell her work unsuccessfully for a mainstream market, perhaps it was time, Meg argued, to switch genres. Evan continued to read, smiling at the convincing way that Meg tried to talk the author into writing children’s stories using the same material. She even referred to story lines that she’d obviously seen in Mrs. Wilson’s past submissions.

  He looked away, trying to put himself in this Mrs. Wilson’s place. The encouraging tone of the note and the extremely viable suggestions Meg made were enough to make anyone feel good about their work. And Meg had finished the letter with the names of potential editors at houses which might very well be interested in this type of work.

  Evan folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

  “One in a million,” he murmured, turning to go.

  Reaching the door, he turned, remembering the open window. As he walked back, he looked over the room once more. And this time his eyes were caught by something on the dresser. He stopped dead. Even from this distance, he could see it was a business card. He worked his way around the bed and picked up the white card.

  Meg Murphy...Senior Editor...

  He looked up and stared in the mirror above the dresser. Someone else had stayed in this room. The room had been cleaned. More to the point, this card hadn’t been here when he looked around only minutes before.

  The incoming breeze swirled around Evan, and a movement in the mirror drew his eye to the windows.

  He wasn’t alone. There was someone else here. Something present.

  And it wasn’t Meg.

  He wasn’t mad. He could feel it. A presence. A force that was making itself known. And suddenly, Evan knew who it was.

  His question was a mere whisper. “So what else are you planning to pull out of your sleeve?”

  This time the wind gusted about the room.

  Angrily, Evan stalked to the other two windows and threw each of them open wide as well.

  “If you are real--if you’re not just a figment of my overly active imagination--then show me something. Prove to me that you’re really here...or go to hell!”

  The full blast of the wind came with a suddenness that took him by surprise, pushing him back a step with its power. It had been a fairly calm day when he and Phil had walked back to the house, but now a veritable hurricane seemed to be taking place in the room where Meg had slept.

  The pictures on the wall rattled and the mirror on the far wall banged ominously under the rushing wind. Evan pushed toward the windows, intending to close them. But when he reached for the first one, a scrap of paper rocketed in and smacked him squarely in the face. He knew what it was before he even looked at it.

  Page 10 of the Times Book Review section. Meg’s ad in a coffee-colored ring.

  “Is this the best you can do?” Evan shouted. “Is this the extent of your tricks?”

  The gusting wind encircled him, pushing him toward the bedside table with the phone sitting on top.

  “No! I won’t do it, Robert. Not until we’ve had it out--you and me!”

  Nearly yanked from his feet, Evan found himself sliding across the floor. Fighting with all his strength, he still ended up beside the bed, fingerprints from some unseen hand suddenly visible on his wrist as his clenched fist was dragged toward the phone.

  “Not yet, dammit! You can’t force me do your will. I fell in love with her all on my own. You had nothing to do with it. You hear me, Robert? Nothing!”

  The next powerful surge had his hand on the receiver. With one swift move, Evan yanked the phone cord out of the wall and threw the entire thing across the room.

  “Now cut the shit and start listening, pal. I’ve had just about enough of your second-rate special effects.” He stalked toward the window and slammed the middle one shut. “You’ve already made me a believer. Fine, I admit you exist. But I also know now that you’re a coward. A pitiful, indecisive spirit who can’t let go?”

  The breeze gentled a bit but still swirled about the room.

  “It’s time, Robert, that you and I had a talk.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The 10:45 train from Boston’s South Station was twenty minutes late arriving in New York.

  Shifting her briefcase from one hand to the other, Meg ran practically all the way through Penn Station to the 32nd Street exit. She must have been crazy to think that she could jam three interviews into half a day. At least, she thought with chagrin, she could have listened to Rebekah and come into the city last night.

  There was a line of cabs waiting when she burst out of the building, and Meg leaped into the first one. As soon as she gave the address for Morgan Publishing Company, though, the car coughed and stalled.

  “Oh, no! Not again!” she murmured, with a quick look at the driver. But before she could make a decision of whether stay or find another taxi, the cabby cranked the engine back to life and took off like a shot into the surging traffic.

  As they pushed uptown, Meg kept reminding herself that everything would be just fine. This was only an interview, and they would understand her reason for being late.

  But then again, she knew that wasn’t the only reason why she was so wound up. What would happen if they actually offered her the job? She shook her head. More than likely, it wouldn’t happen, and even if they did offer her something, she was by no means obligated to take it.

  The second call from Morgan Publishing Co. had come in the wake of two other phone calls requesting interviews. All in New York. She had even been able to schedule them back to back. So when one of the managing editors at Morgan had called her again, Meg couldn’t bring herself to say no right away. With the sudden departure of one of their top editors, he’d told her, they were in dire need of someone with her background.

  Meg glanced at her watch. Her interview with the publishing house was scheduled for 11:30. She was going to make it. Then, at two, she was supposed to meet up with the lawyer with an itch to turn author, at his office on Madison Avenue. From there, she was to meet Mrs. Stenerud at her apartment on Fifth Avenue at five o’clock. Pretty hectic day, she thought, noticing that was 11:20 already. But in seven minutes, Meg walked up to the receptionist at Morgan Publishing.

  Personnel had forms to read and sign, and then, after declining the offer for lunch--to the shock of the human resources director--she spoke for twenty minutes with one of the senior editors and then spent another half hour chatting with the managing editor who’d called her.

  During both interviews she was at first amazed and then delighted that she wasn’t being interviewed, but instead openly courted. The ultimate shock, however, came when she was taken to a spacious corner office overlooking Rockefeller Center, to be interviewed by the publisher, Fred Shaw. There, Meg was told straight out that she had the job if she wanted it, and all they needed to agree on would be her salary and benefits package.

  Meg sat, straight-backed and dumbfounded, listening to the older gentleman speak of all the years that the company had been a leader in the publishing. He reminded her of the outstanding line of authors that they continued to nourish and support. Authors like...Drew King, for instance.

  She tried to keep her face expressionless. There was no way these people could have any idea about her brief affair with their goldmine of author.

  “In fact, this is part of our new strategy, Ms. Murphy. May I call you Meg? Established authors like Dre
w don’t feel comfortable working with the new generation of young editors. They want stability. They demand to work with people who have considerable experience.”

  He was calling her old and hackneyed to her face, but Meg still didn’t even flinch. In fact, to hide her discomfort, she brought the cup of coffee to her mouth.

  “So how would you feel about working with Drew King?”

  It was a miracle that she didn’t splutter the entire mouthful down the front of her white shirt.

  “I...hmm...” She carefully put the cup back on the side table. “I was...I thought...I heard someplace that he already had a new editor. Wasn’t that just a couple of weeks ago?”

  “It was! It is! But that’s just the point.” The seasoned publisher took a book off the crowded bookshelf and handed to her. Meg looked down at Drew King’s oversized name on the cover. This book, ready for release, hadn’t hit the bookstores yet.

  “We went through five editors on this one alone. And to tell the truth, I don’t think Bill Maxwell, his present editor, has what it takes to see Drew through the book he’s working on right now. I mean, the word is that he’s already too intimidated even to call and see how he’s making out. Bill’s a good man, thought--don’t get me wrong--and we really don’t want to lose him.”

  Meg began to say something in support of the editor but then quickly closed her mouth again. She wasn’t supposed to know the man. She was supposed to be clueless of Evan’s temper tantrums and his distaste for talking on the phone.

  “Anyway, we’ve decided on a new approach this time.” Fred Shaw started pacing the room. “We’ve already invested a lot of money, and there is a great deal of potential for the novel that Drew is working on right now. So, to get to the point, we’re not waiting until we get to the crisis point. We’re not going to wait until Drew’s complaints --and he’s certain to make them--about another competent editor begin. No! We’ve decided to take a more proactive role. We’re determined to find the right match for Evan and get an editor who will not be bullied.”