by Brea Brown
At this point, Gus has no idea he’s “casting” real people, because I’ve flat-out told him (okay, lied) that Rose’s family is a complete figment of my imagination. So he pins his eye to the blazing skyline and rabbits away, “And then the sisters. Hmm… That’s a tough one. I’d say Dakota Fanning and Abigail Breslyn, but that’s probably because they’re the only two actors of the right age whose names I know, which is probably a depressing sign that I’m getting old and out-of-touch with the younger generation. But even they’re probably too old. I pictured them as the young versions of themselves when I read the book the first time.”
My silence draws his attention, and when he sees that I’m simply nodding and trying not to cry out loud, he says in the southern-accented Ebonics he often slips into, despite originally being from New York and being one of the whitest people I know, “Oh, snap! Whatsamatter, Sugar? Are you thinking about that mean Mr. Editor again? Don’t let him upset you! Do I need to go down to that fancy office of his and bitch-slap him?”
He sounds a bit too hopeful that I’ll take him up on that offer as he flops his arm around my shoulders and pulls me up against his side. I shrug him off and add a couple of feet of space between our bodies.
I don’t correct his incorrect assumption for my sudden emotional state. “It’s fine,” I insist, following up my claim with a brisk clearing of my throat. “It’s been a long day, that’s all.” I leave it at that, unwilling to admit to him—or anyone—the true reason for my tears, that thanks to tabloids and entertainment magazines, I can picture those two actresses more clearly than I can my sisters’ faces. All of our family photos were destroyed in the fire, so all I have are my memories, which are fading more and more every year, despite my desperate efforts to cling to them.
Thankfully, Gus’s allergy to silence and his innate narcissism compel him to keep talking. “So what are the chances I’ll get to meet Nicholas Hoult when he’s playing the literary version of me in the movie based on your book?” he asks at his usual thousand-words-per-minute pace.
“Hard to say,” I reply vaguely. “The only things standing in your way are the long odds of this movie ever being made, coupled with the fact that I probably won’t have a say in casting, and even if I do, Mr. Hoult may not be available or willing to be cast in our movie.”
“Well, as long as you keep such a positive attitude, I’d say it’s a sure thing,” he jokes.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
He snorts. “Yeah. God forbid I have something to look forward to in life!”
I link arms with him as we walk in the dappled shade of adolescent trees lining the walk. “Oh, poor you. Your life is so rough.” When he mumbles his insistence that his life is rough, I defend my cynicism. “My biggest focus right now—as fun as it is to fantasize about Hollywood—is to get this thing to print. Then I’ll worry about other things.”
“You’re no fun,” Gus gripes.
“If you met my esteemed editor, you’d realize that fun has no place in this process from here on out.”
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about him.” His pensiveness lasts about four seconds. “Well, Honey, you can hardly let him get you down. Not after you’ve come this far. Anyway, I think what you need is a bowlful of Gussy’s world-famous tiramisu.”
I have to admit, his suggestion sounds wonderful. And it may not solve all the world’s problems, but it’s a good start.
Chapter Four
“I won’t do it,” I say stoutly, at first barely loud enough for it to be technically deemed “aloud.” Then, emboldened by saying it once, I repeat myself, this time turning around and facing the person to whom I’m directing the statement.
He sighs and cocks his head, but he sounds more resigned than angry when he replies, “I knew you were going to say that.”
Because he knows me so well already. After being in the same room with me for a total of twenty-five minutes. Right.
I hold up the manuscript, which is saturated with red ink. “It won’t even be the same book if I do what you’re suggesting.”
“True. It’ll be better.”
The only thing that stops me from crossing the room and strangling him is that he didn’t say it as smugly as he could have said it. But he’s still very sure of himself, which has the same effect on me as the grating sound of bagpipes.
Rather than give him the satisfaction of showing that I’m annoyed (which I’m starting to believe is his goal), I coolly flip through the sheaf of papers in my hand, a bundle that was delivered to me at Gus’s place via bike messenger earlier today, and state coolly, “Your insights are interesting. But that’s not what I’m going for.”
His jaw tightens. Then he plops himself into the huge leather chair behind his desk, grabs a large pen, and furiously clicks it. He starts to say something, seems to think better of it, but then opens his mouth again and says, “Funny… at this stage, I assumed you were going for whatever it took to get your book on store shelves.”
The threat is more than implied. I don’t know how to respond, though. I feel like every conversational opening he gives me is actually a crude trap. No matter how poorly-disguised it is, though, I have no choice but to step into it. Or my unwillingness to respond becomes its own, more sophisticated trap, as is the case in this instance.
He slides into my silence, “More accurately, I thought you’d want your book to be flying off the shelves. Which it’s not going to do, the way it’s written now.”
As he waits for my reaction, one that I’m struggling to moderate, he studiously avoids my eyes. I wonder if he can see how much I’m blushing as he purposefully types something on his computer and hits “enter.” Soon after, I hear a musical “ping,” and then he appears to be reading from his monitor. His features soften, but he reins in his expression before it becomes a smile.
Now he seems to remember I’m still standing in the middle of his office, doing my best impression of a statue of the patron saint of open-mouthed breathers. Glancing up at me, he lifts his eyebrows quizzically, creating a washboard effect on his forehead. “Hmm?” he questions, as if I may have said something he merely didn’t catch while playing Words with Friends with his mom, or whatever he’s doing besides paying attention to me.
That thought makes me blurt completely off-topic, “Would you be acting like this if you were in the middle of a meeting with Tom Ridgeworthy?”
“Excuse me?”
I have his full attention now. But I have to admit, I liked it better when he was half-ignoring me. Under his stern glare, I stutter, “I mean… it’s just… you don’t seem to be… focused on…” Reconsidering this suicide mission, I try to back out. “Whatever. Never mind.”
Coldly, he says, “No. Please, continue. I’m curious to know what you mean. Because, obviously, you’re not Tom Ridgeworthy. So…”
“I still deserve some respect!”
In a flash, he’s on his feet, crossing the room in two quick strides and standing inches from me. As he towers over me, he says, “You ‘deserve’ nothing. Got that? I know you’re from a generation that wasn’t taught that, but allow me to enlighten you. Respect is earned. And so far, you’ve done nothing to earn mine. So you’ve managed to string a few sentences together into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into a novel, but so what? That gives you something in common with millions of other people.”
I edge away from him, but the back of my foot bangs up against the leg of one of the chairs under the antler chandelier, and I almost fall backwards over the arm and into the seat. This doesn’t distract him at all, unfortunately.
I can smell his soap (or is that aftershave?) as he looms ominously. “I’m giving you exactly the amount of attention you’ve earned in your thirty-minute writing ‘career.’ When you prove to me that you’re not a flash in the pan, like I suspect, then I’ll reevaluate the amount of time I budget to deal with you.”
“You’re not that much older than me,” I mutter sull
enly. When he straightens and stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, I skirt the chair to put some distance—and a very solid object—between us and explain, “You mock my ‘generation,’ but I’m pretty sure yours is the same… or very similar.”
“We might as well be from different planets,” he says with a sniff. “I don’t identify at all with the norms and values perpetuated in my peers.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, buh-rother!” I drawl. “Excuse the hell out of the rest of us.”
“I’m simply stating the facts.”
“Well, good for you. You know, I don’t appreciate being reduced to a stereotype by someone who’s less familiar with me than he is with the barista at the Starbucks downstairs.”
Dismissively, he waves his hand and returns to his desk chair. “Can we get back to discussing your book? Your raison d’être? Your raison d’être in my face?”
His rudeness momentarily stuns me into silence again, but I recover more quickly this time. “My reason for being in your face is that you summoned me here,” I remind him. “And I was trying to discuss it with you, but you seem to confuse ‘discuss’ with ‘dictate.’ As I was saying before, I’m not comfortable with some of the changes you’re demanding.”
“Be specific. Name one.” He points to a chair. “And, please, sit. You constantly look like you’re about to sprint for the door.”
Probably because I am.
I hesitate, but since he used the word, “please,” a word I didn’t think existed in his vocabulary, I feel obligated to reward him by honoring his request. I choose one of the armless, fabric-covered seats directly across the desk from him. He leans back in his own chair, folds his hands, and rests them on his flat tummy. His expression is one of both boredom and tolerance. I guess I’m supposed to feel grateful that he’s granting me an audience.
“The biggest problem?” I begin, waiting for his terse nod. “Well, this suggestion about changing the fire to a tornado…”
When I falter, he prods, “Yeeeees…?”
Truth is, my only defense of the fire is that it’s what really happened, but he doesn’t know that. And I don’t want him to know it, either.
Plus, fiction isn’t about what really happened; any writing teacher will tell you that. And simply because something happened in real life doesn’t mean it makes for good fiction or that it’s even believable, in some cases. If you can’t sell it to the reader, it’s worthless, whether or not it happened. I know all these things. Sometimes it feels as if I was born knowing these things. But just as my writing skills feel innate, my instincts tell me it would be wrong to change the fire to a tornado. I don’t, however, think Mr. Editor Supreme Douchebag Edwards will defer to my intuition.
Finally, I settle on, “It changes so much.”
He smirks. “That’s kind of the idea, Jayne.”
“But if it’s change for change’s sake—”
“It’s not! Trust me.” When it’s obvious by the mutinous look on my face that I don’t trust him and probably never will, he sighs. “God! You’re going to make me explain every single proofreader’s mark in that fucking manuscript, aren’t you?”
I bristle. “No. I’m a professional; I can take constructive criticism. I know a good suggestion when I see one.”
Tossing his hands in the air, he retorts, “Obviously not. Or else you’d realize that fires are so… so… cliché.” He leans forward, his hands splayed on his desktop. “Jane Eyre. Faulkner. Jack London. Fire, fire, fire. It’s the only tragedy that writers seem to know how to write about. And if it’s used symbolically, it’s somewhat excusable, but in your book, the fire is simply a means to kill off characters and yet another fire to get confused with all the other fires that have come before it in literature. Boooooring! ‘Flames licking’ and ‘smoke choking’ and ‘beams collapsing.’ Yawn City.”
During his rant, my eyes fill with tears as if the room is filling with smoke. I even clear my throat a couple of times before a full-blown cough explodes from my lips. The noise brings him up short, but I turn my head and bend over, pretending to dig for something in my computer bag, which is resting on the floor at my feet.
With a flat, emotionless voice, I say, “I take it you’ve never experienced a house fire. Or lost someone in one? Because it’s not boring. Probably,” I add hastily so as not to give too much away.
“Well, it is on paper,” he quickly claims, oblivious to my anguish. “At least it is on your paper. It’s like you imagined what it would feel like and then sucked out all the emotion from your imagination and typed it up, like a robot. Frankly, it left me… underwhelmed. And it doesn’t make any sense, considering there’s so much raw emotion in other parts of the book—maybe too much. The imbalance is jarring.”
Confident that the tears have passed and that I can face him without giving him any clue as to how close to a nerve he’s hitting, I straighten, holding the pen I was ostensibly searching for, and sniff. “That’s what I was going for,” I inform him. “I wanted it to be remarkable to the reader how clinical the description of the fire is. Because that’s how the authorities describe it to Rose. Without feeling. She’s expected to take in the information as fact, never mind that her family members died horrific deaths in the fire. It becomes a part of her history, her life story, but a part that she’s never allowed to be emotional about.” I tilt my head and narrow my eyes. “Seems like a discerning reader like you wouldn’t need something like that spelled out for you.”
Not at all fazed by my insult, he points to me and says, “Bingo. If a discerning reader like me doesn’t get it, then you’ve failed.”
Aw, shit.
“But—”
“Enough!” He says it loudly enough to drown me out but without any heat. Digging around on his chaotic desk, he comes up with his own copy of my manuscript. “Either rewrite it so that the fire makes me feel something, or change it altogether. Your choice. Next.”
I hate this fucking asshole.
Chapter Five
I’m not going to reach my goal. I’m not going to see one of my books on a shelf in a store before my thirtieth birthday. And I have someone in particular to thank for that. I hardly need to even give you his initials, surely. It’s obvious who would stand in the way of a dream I’ve had since I was old enough to realize it would probably be more realistic to shoot for “thirty” than the original “twenty-five” goalpost I’d set in high school. And there was nothing (or no one)—until now—to make me think it wasn’t a completely attainable goal, despite the challenges I came up against time and again.
I blew off friends, eschewed romantic relationships, and told myself that human contact in general was overrated. Sometimes I worked for so many hours on end that I couldn’t even see the computer screen clearly. Eating became a chore that I tried to do as often as possible in front of my computer, with bites in between long passages of prose. I wrote like a woman possessed, as if I could erase the pain with a few million keystrokes or, at the very least, put my grief to bed like an edition of a newspaper. I slept in two-hour intervals, but only when it was physically impossible to sit, type, and think.
Once, before I became religious about backing up my work in three places after each prolonged writing session, my computer contracted a virus—I was “researching” uncircumcised penis pictures, having never seen one in real life, and I stumbled on a site that had a cyber STD—that wiped out a solid week of writing, including the scene in which Rose finds out her sisters and parents have all been killed in the house fire. In reconstructing those chapters—which still aren’t as good as the originals—I had to go through the emotional sandblaster yet again.
I also felt the sting of rejection over and over again as every agent I queried told me, “Not for me.” Gus, and everyone else who was familiar enough with me to know that I was trying to publish a novel, told me to forget conventional publishing and self-publish or e-publish. Every time I opened my email, it seemed there was a message in there from Gus about an
other unknown author who had given the publishing industry the middle finger by becoming a bazillionaire via Kindle or NOOK or both. But I persevered. I was as relentless as a millionaire thrill-seeker with too much time on her hands, obsessed with climbing the world’s highest mountain the old fashioned way, simply because she wants to cross it off on her Bucket List.
Because my dream is to hold a hardbound book, complete with shiny jacket and delicious-smelling paper pages, bearing my name on the cover and my little author’s blurb on the inside jacket flap. Not to see my name staring coldly at me from a computer or phone or tablet screen. I’ve already seen that a hundred times on my own laptop. It isn’t the same. Despite how old-fashioned and outdated the concept is, I want something more tactile than what the e-publishing world can offer me.
“There’s nothing more tactile than cash, Sweetie,” Gus said to me when I tried to explain my obsession with having my novel made into a “real” book. It would have been hard to argue with that, if I was strictly in it for the money. But bigger, more nebulous motivators were pushing me along.
And now, elated and oxygen-deprived, I’m standing on the apex, and my Sherpa, Mr. Lucas Fiddlefart Edwards, is telling me I haven’t toiled or sacrificed enough for his liking, and I need to do more before I can celebrate and enjoy my accomplishment. He actually wants me to climb down all by myself to get back to base camp. I was hoping for more of a helicopter lift.
What’s worse is that the climb down seems like it’s going to take almost as long as the climb up, and with my thirtieth birthday in less than a month, there’s no way I’m going to realize my dream. The disappointment is crushing. But I think I’m being fairly adult about it.
“Fuck him! Fuck him and the horse that inseminated his mother to conceive him! He’s a rotten, stinky… shithead! I want a new editor! I’m calling Tullah and telling her I’m not going to do a single one of his lousy edits, and I’m not going to do another thing until she finds me a new editor. Period. End of story.”
