After a short break, I pulled myself back up. That bag now felt heavier than ever. Holding on to the handrail, I literally hauled myself up the last two flights, dragging the bag behind me. It bounced melodically off each step as the heavy chains clashed together, the sound ricocheting off the concrete walls in stereo.
Eventually, I reached the eighth floor and fell through the door into the quietest office on the planet. It would have made our library manager proud.
Gathering my composure and my breath, I closed the door quietly behind me. As I turned, I observed the office was full of people, and every eye fell curiously upon the bag now dumped at my feet. I realized they had no doubt heard me dragging it up every one of those last two flights of stairs. Pulling back my shoulders and wiping a new bead of sweat from my forehead, I tried to gracefully traverse the immense room toward a waiting secretary aloft in a marble tower. She eyed me all the way, a disapproving look already on her face as she fixed her eyes keenly upon the bulging mass I was now dragging toward her. Beyond her, I could see Dan and the group all seated together in a row, as if they were waiting for a bus. Even from a great distance, I could tell that Doris did not look happy to see me.
As I neared the desk, the secretary stepped out from behind it, and taking her eyes from my bag to me, she slowly looked me up and down. She was a gray, homely woman with an expression like a dried-up old teacher. Her face tightened.
“Can I help you?”
I tried to speak, but my voice was dry and rasping. I coughed to clear it. “I’m with my friends.” I absently pointed at Doris in between gulps of air. “One of them forgot her purse.”
I lifted the weighted bag and dropped it onto a nearby coffee table. As it hit the smoked glass, the chains clanged together in a mangled cacophony. The weight inside threw the bag over onto its side, forcing the zipper open and spewing the chains and bustier onto the floor. I didn’t dare look down and just fixed my gaze upon the secretary. Doris swore behind me as Flora scrambled to help, stuffing the contents back inside.
Eyeing the mangled heap with disgust, she said, “This group is for you!” in the direction of a thin mouselike woman who practically fell through a side door, scattering a pile of folders everywhere. Then she tripped and fell against a table, and Annie caught her by the hand to steady her. The poor creature pushed her enormous spectacles back up her nose, muttering, “Oh my, not again!”
We all sprang into action to gather up her scattered papers and steady her. The schoolteacher-secretary appeared again and harrumphed.
“All these people are here to see Mr. Gilbert?” mouse-lady asked as she double-blinked nervously.
“Yes, ma’am. Please remove them. They are clogging up our foyer,” the secretary demanded as she marched back to guard her granite castle. She made us sound as if we were a hairball in her sink.
With that, mouse-lady tried to choke back tears and ushered us toward an office. She opened a door etched on the front with the name Mark Gilbert.
We all followed, and Annie gave our grief-stricken maiden a flowery handkerchief. She motioned for us to sit down. “Forgive me. It’s already been a terrible day. I’m Andrea, Mark’s assistant,” she finally managed to say as she blew her nose.
As we waited for her to pull herself together, I looked around the sparsely decorated office. It had that new-furniture smell and was a mass of leather, black chrome, and glass, a retro eighties theme with a modern twist. Smooth and sleek, but dang uncomfortable to sit or be in. The sort of office you could comfortably fire people in. There were only two leather-and-chrome seats in front of an imposing smoked-glass desk and a tight black leather chaise lounge below a window. The only other adornments were odd modern art pictures and a smooth, black marble shelf with a single white orchid placed meticulously in a pink cut-glass vase.
Doris opted for one of the chairs, which, honestly, didn’t accommodate her bulk. It had high chrome armrests. As she sat down, some of her made it into the chair. The rest of her squished out under the arms. We were going to need WD-40 to get her back out, I thought to myself. Annie took the other chair and automatically settled down to knit. Dan wandered around the room, looking at the abstract art, which left Flora, Ethel, and me with the chaise lounge.
We all eyed it carefully, but when we turned to look at Andrea, she motioned for the rest of us to sit. So, like the three stooges, we all plopped down in unison, accompanied by an overwhelming squelch of tight black leather.
Andrea appeared to be getting her second wind and blew her nose again with determination. “Sorry,” she said, placing the files she was carrying on a table. “Where are my manners? Can I offer you some refreshments? Tea, coffee, juice?”
“No, we’re all fine,” said Doris before the rest of us could speak, oblivious to the fact some of us might need something after dragging a bag of chains up eight flights of stairs.
“I need a coffee,” Andrea said and then busied herself making one.
As she prepared it, she poured out her story without taking a breath.
She’d been working at this job for three months. She’d always wanted to work in publishing. Her boss was a dear, but often gone, leaving her to deal daily with the gray schoolteacher, who’d been trying to get her fired since the day she’d arrived.
She took a sip of her coffee, and Doris took the opportunity to speak.
“As you know, we’re here to see your boss, Mr. Gilbert,” said Doris.
Andrea swallowed nervously. “That’s impossible. There’s absolutely no way you can see him.”
Doris appeared to be about to say something brisk in response when a phone started ringing in a side office.
Andrea raised her hand apologetically. “Excuse me for a minute,” she said and went to answer it.
Doris jumped into action. Well, not jumped, exactly. She de-sandwiched herself from the chair, then snapped in a hushed tone, “Looks as if it’s going to be harder than we thought. We’re going to have to go straight to plan B.” Doris reached into the bulging bag, ferreted around, and threw the black bustier toward Flora. “Flora, go and put on the leather outfit. Ethel, to the toilet. And, Annie, you help her with the chains. We’re not leaving until we see Mr. Gilbert.”
Ethel jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and tried in vain to pick up the bag of chains, but it didn’t budge from where it was planted on the floor. In the end, Annie came to her rescue, and between the two of them, they dragged it out the glass door and down the hall to the bathrooms. Flora clung to the bustier like a scared rabbit. All the color had drained from her face. Dan, who’d wandered over to Mr. Gilbert’s desk, started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” snarled Doris under her breath.
“There’s no way Flora is going to put on that leather gear.”
Doris’s face tightened like a drum. “Oh yes she will! Everyone must play his or her part, and she is our femme fatale. It is her job to wow him with her seductive charm.”
“It will never work,” said Dan, continuing to grin.
“Never work!” said Doris indignantly. “Let me tell you, the art of seduction is the oldest and most trusted trick a woman has up her sleeve.”
“It will never work, because if anyone should put on the leather gear, it should be me.”
“You! You’re a man!” said Doris, incredulously. “Besides, the bustier would never fit you!”
“It should be me, because Mr. Gilbert’s persuasions appear to go in a different direction.”
Dan then held up a picture from the publisher’s desk. It was of two men holding hands, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. Doris took the photo from Dan, and all the blood seemed to drain from her face. However, all the blood seemed to return to Flora’s. I heard her let out a breath next to me. Dan took the bustier from Flora and held it up against his body. We all burst out laughing, even Doris.
Once we had all finished and wiped our eyes, there was a comfortable after-laugh silence as we collected ourselves again. Just then
, Andrea walked back in.
“Andrea, it is imperative that we see Mr. Gilbert and see him today! We have come all the way from Washington State, and we are not going anywhere until we meet with him,” said Doris.
Annie arrived back, breathless, and gave Doris a thumbs-up. Doris nodded and then turned her attention back to Andrea, who was wringing the hankie Annie had given her.
“That is most unfortunate. But you see, you can’t see him because he is not here at the office for the next couple of days. He’s at the San-Bay Writers Conference. He’s the keynote speaker.”
San-Bay, San-Bay. That name meant something to me. What was it? Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I knew that name.
“Well, how do we get to it?”
“Get to it? You can’t. They won’t let you in. That conference has been sold out for months.”
Doris looked bereft.
“And unfortunately, Mr. Gilbert leaves for a vacation right after the conference. You should make an appointment to talk to him after he gets back.”
“That’s impossible. We’re only here for a short time, then we’re driving back home.”
All at once, it came to me.
“San-Bay,” I said, jumping up. “That’s where I’m going to drop Stacy this afternoon. That’s the conference she’s going to.”
“I thought your daughter worked in advertising?” said Flora, speaking for the first time since the bustier incident.
“She does, but she was talking last night about this new publishing account her firm is taking on. She’s meeting with them this afternoon. Maybe she can get you in there that way?”
“What time is she going to leave?” Doris asked, her manner almost chirpy.
“One o’clock.”
“Great. That gives us some time to come up with a plan. Let’s go. We have no time to lose.”
I thanked Andrea for her time, and as she moved to see us out, she managed to knock over another stack of manuscripts that were tottering in a high pile on the corner of her desk.
“Oh my,” she said, blinking like a five-year-old. “Not again.”
I felt sorry for her, but she really was the clumsiest person I’d ever met.
As we got back in the elevator, Doris started barking orders.
“I was wondering,” asked Dan thoughtfully, “as you no longer need Flora as your femme fatale, if I could spend some time with her this afternoon?”
“I would love that,” said Flora, her eyes brimming. “I’ve never been to San Francisco before.”
“There’s lots to see.” He gazed lovingly down at her.
As the elevator doors opened on the ground floor and we stepped out into the lobby, Doris considered it. “It’s probably going to be easier to get fewer of us into this conference. So, I think that will be okay. If that’s what you really want to do?” Doris said it in a tone that implied, “I can’t think why that could be better than getting a rejection letter.”
But both Dan and Flora seemed oblivious to Doris’s disapproving tone as they stared lovingly at each other. He took her hand.
“Great. Let’s walk to the waterfront.”
Then off they went, giggling.
Chapter Seventeen
UNCHAINING ETHEL FROM THE TOILET
The car seemed empty without Flora and Dan as we started our drive back, just Annie, Doris, and me.
We were almost back at my daughter’s before Annie dropped her knitting and shouted, “Ethel!”
I screeched the car to a halt. The realization hit all of us at once. Ethel was still chained to the toilet back at the publisher’s office. How could we have forgotten her? I wheeled the car around and started back. Unfortunately, the traffic was terrible in the opposite direction. I gnawed on my bottom lip as I tried to steer the car through the traffic, weaving back and forth.
My telephone rang. It was my husband.
“I’m back from the doctor’s, and I thought I would check in,” he said, as bright as a button.
“I can’t talk now,” I barked back. “We have to rescue Ethel. She’s chained to a toilet.”
“I was just going to ask you if your day was interesting. Looks as if you’ve just answered my question. Call me back after you’ve finished with whatever it is you’re doing.”
As we arrived back at the building, a couple of fire trucks pulled up behind us. I gave Doris a sideways glance. She looked annoyed. We hurried into the building and up to the eighth floor, but having to wait for the elevator meant the fire service made it up there before us.
We hurried to the bathroom, but a police officer stepped in front of us.
“Sorry, ladies, you need to find another bathroom. We have a crazy woman in there chained to the toilet.”
“Stand aside, young man,” snapped Doris. “That just happens to be our crazy woman!”
Once we got inside the bathroom, it was a chaotic scene. Staff, a few medics, and Andrea fretting. One woman was quietly talking to Ethel through the locked door as if she were a small child.
“Now come on, dear, why don’t you come out? We can talk all about your letter once you’ve unlocked the door.”
Doris spoke abruptly. “Ethel, plan B is canceled. We now have a plan C. Unlock the door at once.”
Everyone in the bathroom stopped and stared at Doris. There was a long pause.
Then, Ethel’s strained voice floated back. “I’ve lost the key.”
Twenty minutes and a hacksaw later, we all stood sheepishly in the foyer while the same policeman gave us a talking-to. He made it clear that if we agreed to leave the building quietly and not attempt anything like it again, the publishing house would not press charges.
We shuffled back into the car. It was like a tomb.
Annie broke the silence. “Best road trip I’ve ever been on!”
And that was it. We all burst into laughter. We arrived back at my daughter’s house. She was standing in her doorway, waiting for us, and marched toward the car when she saw us. The look on her face was enough to sober us to silence.
“I’ve been waiting, Mom!” she said, scowling. “I have to be there by one, and it’s already after twelve.”
“I know. We had”—I coughed—“an emergency.”
With that, everybody burst out laughing again.
Stacy looked from one to another in bewilderment and then stomped off to fetch her jacket. When she got in the car, I noticed she was pretty pale. “Are you okay?” I asked gently.
“No, actually, I don’t feel very well today.”
“If you’re going to barf, do it out the window,” was Doris’s sympathetic comment from the driver’s seat.
I felt irritated by Doris’s insensitivity.
“I have a bag!” said Stacy defiantly. “I already threw up three times. I don’t think there’s anything left to come up.”
Annie stopped knitting for a moment to tap Stacy on the knee. “I bet it’s a boy. They’re the most trouble to carry,” she giggled as she hooked a new row.
“How was your meeting?” asked Stacy absently, trying to change the subject.
I looked around the car. Everyone was smirking.
“Interesting,” Annie snickered.
“Where are you all going now? Sightseeing?”
There was a sudden silence.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “We actually have something to ask you.”
Stacy’s brows furrowed.
Annie picked up the thread. “You see, dear, the man we wanted to see wasn’t available at his office because he was . . . gone today.”
“Gone?” said Stacy, distracted as she straightened her skirt.
“Yes,” said Doris, “at your conference. We want you to find a way to get us all in.”
Stacy collected herself for a moment, taking in the information. “My conference? Do you mean the San-Bay Writers Conference?”
“Yes, dear,” said Annie, trying to soften Doris’s forthrightness. “Do you think it would be possible to
go in with you?”
Stacy sniffed. “The conference has been sold out for months. I’m only going because my company is handling one of the publisher’s advertising. I don’t see how I could get away with taking in four of you.”
“You’ll just have to,” said Doris, reverting to her bullying tactics.
But if ever Doris had met her match, it was in Stacy.
“No, I don’t,” said Stacy. “I don’t have to do anything. You should have bought tickets like everyone else.”
Doris’s face reddened. She wasn’t used to anyone standing up to her.
I quickly changed tack.
“Could you get one of them in?” I asked quietly.
“No,” snapped back Stacy, now defiant. Then as an afterthought she said, “I had mentioned to my boss that you might be with me as my support, but that’s all.”
Doris’s face brightened a little. I could tell she was thinking.
“Okay,” she said breezily. “Sorry to have asked.”
I looked at her, bewildered. It wasn’t like Doris to back down so quickly.
“I do think your mom should go in with you, though, especially as you’re not feeling well.” Doris’s tone was sweeter than honey. She obviously had a new plan.
After a thankfully uneventful drive, we pulled up to the building, and Stacy got out and walked off.
I sighed and started to get out when Doris grabbed my arm. “Once you’re inside, you have to find a way to get us in an exit door or something—anything. It’s all up to you. Our whole rejection group is counting on you. Don’t let us down.”
I looked out the car window to where Stacy was standing by the entrance, waiting for me, her face set in stone. She was not happy to be kept waiting. Looking back at Doris, I wasn’t sure whom I was more afraid of. My head seemed to nod by itself as I got out of the car and hurried toward my daughter, who was now tapping her foot.
The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay) Page 19
