The Agency

by Ally O'Brien

  Praise for The Agency

  ‘With an insider’s take on the book biz, and an appealingly foul-mouthed heroine, this debut is fast, funny and a bit nasty—not unlike Tess. A naughty, catty good time.’ Kirkus

  ‘The duo writing as O’Brien proves there’s nothing like teamwork. The book combines genres effectively, melding into one fantastic novel … Cleverness abounds, especially in the dialogue and plot twists.’ Romantic Times (4 stars)

  ‘One of the most fun books I have read in awhile. A mixture of racy chick lit, mystery, and adventure, you will find it hard to put this book down once you get started.’ BellaOnline.com

  ‘A surprisingly single-minded page-turner, packed with a colorful assortment of egomaniacs and more plot twists than Lindsay Lohan’s love life … the literary equivalent of a dry martini: salty, intoxicating and curiously delicious.’ New York Daily News

  ‘The gossipy and glitzy world of book publishing provides the perfectly irresistible setting for O’Brien’s sexy and acerbic story of a tough-talking, determined heroine.’ Chicago Tribune

  ‘A funny and salacious tale … it’s easy to get caught up in Tess’ glamorous, fast-paced world of lovers, parties and deals, wondering just what is going to happen next.’ Minneapolis Star Tribune

  ‘The Agency’s got bite—it sucks you in and leaves teeth marks.’ Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Hopper, coauthors of the New York Times bestselling Celebutantes

  ‘The Agency is brash, cheeky, and cuttingly smart. Move over Bridget Jones, there’s a new girl in town!’ Joan Johnston, author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Stranger’s Game

  ‘Sex, drugs, and literature … ’ Sarah Ivens, editor-in-chief of OK! Magazine

  the AGENCY

  the AGENCY

  ALLY O’BRIEN

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2010

  First published in the US by St. Martin’s Press in 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Brian Freeman and Ali Gunn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording

  or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in

  writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a

  maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be

  photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that

  the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration

  notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  O’Brien, Ally.

  The agency / Ally O’Brien.

  ISBN: 978 174237 229 7

  A cataloguing in publication record can be found at the

  National Library of Australia

  Printed and bound in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  I

  1

  MY LIFE.

  Eight thirty-seven in the morning, en route from Putney Heath to Piccadilly, first crisis of the day. People push the crisis button in my business like a lab rat pushes a lever to get pellets of food, but this is a big one. Lowell Bardwright was just found hanged by his Hermès tie, his fingers clenched in a death grip around his dick.

  Lowell is my boss. Well, not anymore.

  “Was it erotic asphyxia?” I asked my assistant.

  “Erotic what?”

  “Was this some kind of sex game?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Emma replied. “I assumed it was suicide.”

  Not bloody likely.

  “No, I’m sure it was an accident,” I said.

  When you are the managing partner of a successful entertainment agency, you don’t kill yourself. Lowell made millions of pounds on the ability of people like me to attract scribblers, footballers, Soho chefs, and other celebs who can be hocked to the public on grocery store book stands or on the eight million channels of satellite TV. He had a flat by the Thames and a weekend home outside Cambridge. God was going to have to come down to wrestle Lowell personally into the afterlife.

  “Was he alone?” I asked.

  “I guess he was.”

  “Don’t be so sure. If I know Lowell, he found himself a Julia Roberts look-alike who freaked when he stopped breathing.”

  “What’s erotic asphyxia?” Emma asked with an unhealthy curiosity.

  Emma is twenty-five, and what she lacks in her face she makes up for in the size of her breasts and the tightness of her drainpipe jeans. I remember what it was like at that age, when your sex drive revs like a Ferrari. Hell, I’m still like that, although I’ve down-shifted a little in my midthirties. Emma is into girls, however, and I play for the traditional team.

  “Some people say that the sensation of orgasm is heightened by lack of oxygen,” I told her. “So they try cutting off their air as they get close to coming. Unfortunately, a lot of them wind up like Lowell, so don’t try this at home, Emmy. I know you.”

  “Hmm,” she said.

  You want to watch every head snap around on the 14 bus? Say the word “orgasm” on the phone.

  “What does this mean for the agency?” Emma asked.

  Good question. Every entertainment agency boasts of having the most influence and the best connections, and they’re all quick as hyenas to pounce on any sign of weakness in a competitor. Right now, the phone lines of London are buzzing. Did you hear about Lowell? My God, what a shock. Of course, without him, they don’t have anyone who can reach the senior producers at the Beeb. Oh, it’s true, and he was their top man for Fleet Street, too. This may be the time to think about switching your representation, my dear.

  Meanwhile, inside the Bardwright Agency, where I work, they’re busy soft-selling Lowell’s importance. He was beloved, darling, but he was a figurehead. Hadn’t closed a big deal in years. Never missed an industry party. A “mentor” to every twenty-four-year-old girl in the agency, that scoundrel, ha-ha. No, we’ll miss him, but don’t worry, nothing will really change without him around.

  But that’s not exactly true.

  There will be one big change, and it affects me more than anyone.

  “Cosima will be in charge now,” I told Emma.

  “Oh, Lord.”

  In my head, I heard a blast of organ music. You know, like in silent films, when the mustachioed villain in a black cape abducts the blond virgin. Not that you’ll find many virgins in this business.

  “I hope the police checked for coral Dior lipstick around Lowell’s mushroom,” I said. “Cosima has been looking to send Lowell to an early grave for years. Maybe she was there to help him along.”

  “You are so bad.”

  I did feel a little bad, only because I wasn’t crying over Lowell’s death. I’d worked down the hall from him for ten years, after he’d hired me out of the book biz. Me, I thought the agents made the money, which was what I needed back then. No one told me that the partners who own the agency make the money, and the rest of us divide up the crumbs that fall from their smacking lips onto the floor. Lowell and
I had had our run-ins over the years, but he was a decent guy. Big, loud, with tobacco breath and roving hands. Fifty-five years old, a lifer in the biz, who remembered a time when bookstores sold more than the fucking Da Vinci Code and films didn’t rise or fall on the box office receipts from the opening weekend. He never pushed me to drop clients who had potential, even if their sales were underperforming. He indulged my fading ideals that it really meant something to find the next Ian McEwan or Salman Rushdie. On the other hand, I saw the numbers on the royalty statements from my clients, and then the numbers on my agency paycheck, and never the twain did meet.

  However, Cosima Tate makes Lowell look like Sir Gawain gallantly taking on the Green Knight. I admit I have my own reasons for loathing Cosima, but I’m not alone in feeling that way at the agency. She is our wicked witch—the kind of witch who would have bitch-slapped Dorothy and served up Toto sausages to the flying monkeys.

  “What does this mean for us?” Emma asked, which was the obvious question. I like that Emma says “us” when she talks about herself and me. She is as loyal an assistant as you can find. Organizing my life is not my skill set, and without Emma I would probably starve because I would never know when, where, or with whom I was having a single meal.

  “We’ll be fine—don’t worry.”

  “Yes, but Cosima hates you,” Emma whispered.

  True enough, but I am bulletproof.

  “We have Dorothy, darling, remember?”

  “Oh, well, that’s true.”

  Dorothy Starkwell, an American eccentric who lives in the Tribeca area of Manhattan, writes tomes about talking pandas that have become the biggest thing in children’s fiction since Pooh set foot in the Hundred Acre Wood. She is my client. She is my gravy train. As long as I write eight-figure deals for her—and the latest deal is in the offing—no one will touch me.

  And at that moment, I had my big idea.

  If I knew the pain that idea would cause me in the next few days, I wonder whether I would have handled things differently. Perhaps I should have been more paranoid and realized that people really were after me. Or I should have known how resourceful and vengeful Cosima could be. However, when you are thirty-six, you never think about being forced to start your life over; and the truth is, it is every bit as hard as anyone will tell you. Still, sometimes you have to wipe the slate clean and find out if you are truly the person you always imagined yourself to be.

  “Do I still have lunch with Guy on Friday?” I asked Emma.

  “Yes.”

  Guy Droste-Chambers is Dorothy’s editor, the man who makes the deals. He is a sleazy bastard, but Dorothy is infatuated with his wordsmithing. Or perhaps he reminds her of her panda hero, Butterball, with his porky belly and soup dripping down his chin. Regardless, Dorothy will not hear of switching editors or publishers, despite my advice that she could do better elsewhere.

  “Take the lunch out of my calendar, will you?” I said.

  “You mean cancel it?”

  “God, no, keep the appointment but delete it from the agency calendar right away, okay? Don’t mention this to anyone. Just remember to remind me about lunch on Friday.”

  “Okay.”

  Emma knew better than to ask me why. The truth is, I wasn’t entirely sure myself. All I knew was that I didn’t want Cosima to find out that Guy and I were close to inking a new contract for Dorothy that would gross around ten million pounds in advance money. In agency terms, that’s one and a half million to us. Not that I would see any of that myself.

  Which brings me back to that big idea of mine.

  I’m thinking of going out on my own. Launching my own agency.

  2

  THE BAR DWRIGHT AGENCY—named for Lowell’s father, the éminence grise of the publishing industry, who started the agency in 1960—is located on the south edge of Soho. We can lunch in Chinatown and walk to the premieres in Leicester Square. Forty of us are crammed onto a single floor with glass closets for agents like me, a rabbit warren of desks for assistants like Emma, and corner palaces for Cosima and Lowell. I can see Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square from my office window, if I lean out far enough. Never lean out a window when you work at an agency, however, unless you are certain no one is behind you.

  All hell was breaking loose when I arrived that morning. Everyone was jabbering into their phones and clacking away on their keyboards. I had fifty-one new messages on my BlackBerry. Lowell would have loved it.

  If there is one thing the entertainment world runs on, other than money, it’s gossip. Lowell’s death was the kind of wonderfully risqué event that will keep us all buzzing for days. Truth doesn’t really matter. I have no idea whether Lowell was found wearing high heels and women’s lingerie, but I’m sure that someone like me will make a joke about it, and a joke will become a juicy rumor, and a rumor will become fact. By Saturday, someone will parrot it back to me as gospel.

  I hurried down the hall to my office as quickly as I could, spinning the wheel on my BlackBerry and getting a crick in my neck as I browsed my dozens of messages. I was busy—but much more important, I wanted to look busy to avoid getting roped into bull sessions about Lowell and Cosima. I was too full of my big idea and how to make it work without screwing up my life.

  “Morning, darling,” I called to Emma as I ducked into my office. She waved back at me and held up three fingers, meaning she was on three calls at once.

  I draped my leather jacket on the back of my door and closed it. I took my phone off the hook. I hit a button on the stereo and started a disc by Eminem. (God help me, but I think he is a genius.) I sat behind my desk, grabbed a manuscript from the stack of seventy unread scripts on my floor, and leaned back in my chair and pretended to read.

  Nice try.

  Marty Goodacre drummed on my window with his fingernails and then let himself inside. “Are you busy, Tess?”

  “Would it matter if I was?” I asked.

  Marty laughed nervously. “I assume you’ve heard.”

  “Lowell. Dead. Dick in hand.”

  “That’s rather crass.”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  Marty was the agency’s business manager and handled the messy matters like salaries, contracts, and accounts. Cosima brought him with her from her old agency. He was thirty-two, had limp brown hair that lay in a greasy pile on his head and a long, narrow face on which he boasted a scruffy goatee. He wore a Marks & Spencer navy suit that hung baggily on his tall frame, and his Argyle tie was loosened so far that the knot fell below the second button on his baby blue shirt. He punctuated his remarks with a tittering laugh, which I imagine he developed while spending half his life on all fours, having Cosima spank his bum.

  “I know this is a difficult time, but Cosima wants me to assure everyone that life will go on,” Marty said. Titter, titter.

  “Be brave, Marty,” I said.

  “We’ll all miss Lowell very much, of course, but I’m sure you know that he would want us to soldier on. Every change is an opportunity. Cosima specifically wanted to be sure you know how much she values you in this agency.”

  “So much that she couldn’t tell me herself,” I said.

  “Oh, you can imagine it’s a busy morning—with banks and solicitors and reporters and editors and everyone else wondering what’s going to happen next. It’s important that Cosima demonstrate that someone is in charge. The agency isn’t going to drift.”

  “No drift. Got it. Is that all, Marty?”

  “Well, Cosima wanted me to check on one other thing.”

  Dorothy Starkwell.

  “Dorothy Starkwell,” Marty said. “Cosima thinks it would be a great morale boost—what with everyone being down over this tragedy with Lowell—if we could announce Dorothy’s new deal soon. Cosima feels this would send everyone a signal that we’re still on top and we plan to stay there.”

  “Tell me, Marty, when you’re wanking off, do you tell your dick that Cosima thinks it would be a good idea if you spurted some jism no
w?”

  Okay, no, I didn’t say that.

  I said, “No news to report yet, Marty. Sorry.”

  “Cosima was hoping that you and Guy Droste-Chambers were close to nailing down a deal,” Marty told me. Titter, titter frown.

  “We haven’t even started. Guy’s been busy. I’ve been busy. Dorothy’s been doing veggies-not-meat, free-the-bunnies kinds of stuff, so she asked me not to hurry. As soon as we sign a contract, she starts feeling guilty if she’s not writing, and she promised all of May to the animal rights crowd.”

  “Oh,” Marty said. “Well, yes, we do whatever Dorothy wants. I know that Cosima would love a timeline, though, for when you hope to wrap up the deal.”

  “You mean start the deal? Soon.”

  “Soon as in this week?”

  “Soon as in soon, Marty.”

  “Cosima thought she saw a note in your calendar about lunch with Guy on Friday.”

  God, that woman doesn’t miss a thing.

  “It was tentative. Guy had to cancel. But I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Oh, yes, please do that. Cosima calls this her number one priority.” Titter. Coffee-stained smile.

  Marty snaked his way out of my office, and Emma Strand passed him on the way in. He contorted his body like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat in order to make accidental contact with Emma’s tits. She closed the door and stuck out her tongue.

  “Any news?” Emma asked.

  “Just what I expected. They’re salivating over Dorothy’s deal.”

  “I take it you don’t want them to know about it.”

  “You take it right.”

  Emma smiled. She was smart, God bless her.

  “You look tired, darling,” I said. “Partying last night?”

  “Martinis at the bar in the Soho Hotel until two,” Emma said. “Sienna was there. The popzees had it staked out.”

  “Sienna is one of your faves, isn’t she?”

  Emma panted. “Are you kidding? Did you see Factory Girl? I don’t care what anyone says, I think they were really doing it.”