Because She Can

by Bridie Clark

  “What exactly are we doing?” he muttered. I looked at Vivian. Her brash grin disappeared.

  “What do you mean?” she sneered, lip curling. “This party is fabulous! A huge success! Where’s Betsy? She’d love it!” Betsy, Sonny’s wife, was a buttoned-up, ultra-conservative woman who largely kept to herself—or Sonny’s side—at book parties. I honestly couldn’t imagine anyone less in her element at a strip club.

  “Actually, she’s expecting me home for dinner,” Sonny said.Then he bade us both a quick good-bye and shuffled off in the direction of the door.

  “So pussy-whipped,” Vivian laughed bitterly, “My wifie’s expecting me home for dinner! Jesus. What kind of man leaves a strip club because his wife’s making meat loaf? Not the kind of man who should be running this company, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve got the biggest balls of anyone at Mather-Hollinger.” She blinked at me, as if she’d forgotten that I was standing next to her. Then, hoisting up her boobs for added cleavage, she stormed back into the fray.

  “Would you like a dance?” an Asian woman with double-D breasts asked me with finishing school politeness.

  “No, I’m on my way out,” I said, and headed for the coat check.

  Then I saw him: Stanley Prizbecki, wearing a black leather jacket and several gold chains. He and Vivian eyed each other seductively across the room as a Barbie-doll blonde writhed all over him.

  Suddenly I knew that if I didn’t get some fresh air immediately, I’d be sick in the lobby’s fountain of pink champagne. I grabbed my shearling coat (a Christmas gift from Randall) from the girl behind the counter and ran to the door, barely making it to the curb before losing my lunch. For the second time that week.

  “I told you to take Lexington!” Vivian barked at the driver, leaning into the front seat of the Lincoln Town Car to get right up in his face. He veered quickly to follow her instruction, the sharp turn slamming Vivian and me to one side of the car.

  “Motherfucker! Are you trying to kill me?” she screamed.

  I saw him raise his eyebrow in the rearview mirror. The idea had probably crossed his mind.

  It was 8:00 a.m. on Friday of the longest week ever. Vivian and I were heading uptown for a meeting with a hot young nutrition expert, Rachel Barnes, who’d gotten press recently for transforming many already thin women on Manhattan’s Upper East Side into the fat-free twigs they longed to be. Her secret? A life-consuming, U.S. Navy SEAL–inspired exercise program, coupled with a five-hundred-calorie-a-day diet that she swore was healthy. For the low, low price of $10,000 a month, Barnes’s clients learned that eating nothing and working out like an Olympic athlete would reward them with a skeletally thin look—so in this season.

  “Three best sellers this month alone. Can’t argue with that kind of success!” Vivian brayed into her cell phone as the driver, who’d been instructed to get us there as fast as humanly possible, wove through traffic at a death-defying speed. I stared straight ahead, trying to keep my bearings. It was all I could do to avoid getting sick yet again. Lately I couldn’t trust my own stomach.

  Vivian looked up sharply from her phone call. “What are you doing, Claire?”

  “I’m not feeling all that well. I just need to—”

  “Ew, you’re sick? Stay away from me, I do not have time to be sick right now.”

  “I’m not sick, I just—”

  “Well, sick or not sick, don’t just sit there staring out the window. I’m not paying you to fucking enjoy the scenery! I want three new ideas from you before we reach Eightieth Street. You’re on my time.” She returned her focus to the phone. “I swear, I don’t know what my staff does all day! If I don’t crack the whip constantly, they’d all sit around mooning and twiddling their thumbs. It’s an absolute chore. Okay, babe, I’ll call you next week. Can you do lunch at the Ivy on Wednesday? … Fabulous. Ciao.”

  So Vivian would be back in L.A. again next week—great news. I got so much more done when I didn’t have to respond to her bells and whistles every ten minutes. She finished her call and tucked her phone into her Fendi bag.

  “Actually, Vivian, I do have a few submissions that I’d like to talk to you about,” I said, consulting my notepad and trying to suppress my growing nausea. “The first is a historical novel set in 1920s Chicago… .” Vivian held both hands together and laid her cheek on them, indicating that the setting alone put her to sleep. “Okay, then, I have a great submission in about a chronic pain management program developed by two doctors at Harvard Medical School—”

  “My God, Claire, I need chronic pain management to listen to your lame-ass ideas,” Vivian groaned. “You’re so … so academic. Such a snooze. Like the rest of the deadbeats in our business. You’ve got to come out of your ivory tower and think about books in a more commercial way, or you’re never going to find best sellers. Smut sells. Whether you like it or not, that’s what people want to read these days. So get it through your head. There’s no room for myopic snobs on my ship.”

  A myopic snob? A deadbeat? Sometimes Vivian’s abuse came so rapid-fire, it took a moment for it to sink in.

  “Now take Lulu’s latest acquisition—a sexy, super-provocative guide to getting away with adultery. Now there’s a book seven out of ten married people will want to read. Lulu gets it. She just gets it. And I can’t teach those instincts, Claire.” We slowed down for a red light, and she yanked on the back of the driver’s collar, jerking his head back. “I told you we shouldn’t have taken Lexington! Learn to do your fucking job. It’s not rocket science!”

  I sank back in my seat. The driver turned the corner to head back over to Park Avenue.

  “Now, Claire, when we meet with Rachel, I expect you to let me do all the talking,” Vivian declared. “I’d like her to use me as the test subject for her book. You know, show how effective her program is by walking me through it for the next ten months. I think readers will appreciate seeing a model going through it.”

  Ah, of course. I should’ve guessed. Much like the design book in which the author renovated Vivian’s house—for free—or the book on “do-it-yourself hair care” written by a famous stylist who now came to the office once a month to do Vivian’s hair, Rachel’s book deal would no doubt come attached to some big perks for Vivian. My boss was always embarking on one diet or another, looking for a magical eating plan that would somehow right her chemical imbalance and slim her hips. Maybe publishing Rachel’s book would allow Vivian to sidestep that hefty retainer.

  A few months ago, Phil told me Vivian had once paid an exorbitant half-million-dollar advance to a chef who, weeks after signing his contract, happened to move into her apartment and cook for her the remainder of the year. Had she paid him a salary on top of his book deal? Nobody who knew Vivian would guess that she’d doled out an extra penny.

  “I’ll let you do all the talking,” I agreed.

  My phone vibrated in my bag—Randall’s office number. I hated having personal conversations in Vivian’s vicinity, but I picked up anyway, eager to hear his voice. Tomorrow I was moving into Randall’s apartment, but between his trip to London and my hectic week, I’d barely exchanged a word with him in days.

  “Hey,” I whispered, shifting as far away from Vivian as I could for privacy.

  “Claire? It’s Deirdre, dear. Calling to let you know that Randall had to extend his trip, so he won’t be back until Tuesday. He told me to tell you he was very sorry and would call later. But it won’t affect the move, Claire, I’ve worked out all the details for tomorrow. The movers will be at your apartment at ten a.m. on the dot. And don’t worry about packing, they’re going to take care of that for you.”

  My stomach sank. My first weekend living with Randall … and he wouldn’t be there? What a drag. I thought about asking Deirdre if we could postpone the move, but she’d already put so much effort into it.

  “Tomorrow at ten. Great. Thanks, Deirdre.”

  “Oh, and dear? Randall’s mother has offered to spend the weekend with you, helping
you get organized. So you don’t feel lonely, I suppose.”

  I thanked Deirdre, my stomach lurching yet again. The car pulled up outside Rachel’s office. I slid out after Vivian.

  “Working out those weekend plans?” she asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Gee, Claire, I’m so glad you’re not letting work get in the way of your social life!” She scoffed in disgust as we walked up the stairs.

  I remembered something Phil had told me the first time we’d gone out for drinks after work. “Working for Vivian,” he’d said, “tends to make people one of two things: homicidal or suicidal.”

  I’d laughed at the time. Now I realized he hadn’t been kidding. I felt a little of both.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE TURN OF THE SCREW

  Sally Jones was just your average suburban housewife. That is, until the day she swapped her Windex, casserole dish, and PTA meetings for handcuffs, sex toys, and orgies….

  I couldn’t continue. I’d reached my desk early this morning with high hopes of pulling together a few catalog pages that had been back-burnered for days, but it was too depressing. Instead I stared at my calendar. Just a few days until my weekend in Iowa. Almost there. And Randall would finally be home tonight, thank goodness. I’d spent my first three nights in his apartment with his mother and Svetlana—not exactly how I’d hoped to inaugurate this new chapter of our relationship.

  You’ve got new mail.

  I clicked open my Outlook, powerless to resist distraction, and found a message from Mara asking how the move had gone.

  I really missed Mara. She’d recently acquired two fantastic cookbooks—one by a Beard Award finalist, another by a Napa Valley favorite—and she’d been hard at work, coordinating with the photographers, authors, and recipe testers to make sure every detail was perfect. She’d also, to my great relief, taken on Chef Mario’s book after he’d been dumped so abruptly by Grant Books. I’d seen her only a few times since starting at Grant, but we e-mailed regularly—a poor substitute for our daily conversations, but it was better than nothing.

  I had just started to write back when a second e-mail from Mara popped up on the screen.

  To: Claire Truman

  (ctruman@grantbooks.com)

  From: Mara Mendelson

  (mmendelson@petersandpomfret.com)

  Subject: uh-oh

  READ TODAY’S LLOYD GROVE. Then run for cover…. I am scared for you.

  I quickly pulled out the Daily News that I’d stashed in my bag on my way to work and flipped to Grove’s column. In the past few weeks, the columnist had had an ax to grind when it came to my boss. Apparently, he’d been seated next to Vivian at a recent PEN literary gala—close enough to be in earshot, which was usually enough to fuel the horrified fascination. Last week, he’d written about Vivian’s “unorthodox” publishing approach and about the routine exodus from the imprint—which, needless to say, made her mood more vicious than usual. Today, he’d gotten down and dirty about one of the books Lulu was working on:

  YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU …

  DON’T WANT?

  Horace Whitney, the renowned left-wing political pundit and former Clinton adviser, says he’s “never seen such dirty, underhanded, self-serving, morally corrupt behavior in [his] life—and I’ve worked in Washington for 30 years.”

  The object of Whitney’s rage? None other than Vivian Grant, his hotheaded publisher, who, according to an e-mail from power-agent Tami Simons, “commissioned him to write a book in two months, which he succeeded in doing. Then we didn’t hear back from [editor] Lulu Price for three months—not a word. Finally, after countless unreturned calls, I receive a 20-page letter with editorial changes from Vivian. At the end of it, she declares the manuscript ‘unpublishable’ and in no uncertain terms states that she is canceling the contract and refusing to pay the advance.”

  Whitney and Simons were outraged. Of course, it’s hardly the first time Grant has backed out of a contract upon delivery of a full manuscript. The plot thickens in this case, though, as it took Simons less than 2 hours to find several interested publishers eager to take ownership of the project. And Grant, having apparently changed her mind about the manuscript she allegedly described in her e-mail to Simons as “a pile of horse s- -t,” is now suing Sampson and Evans for the right to publish.

  Next to the column, the Daily News reprinted an old publicity still of Vivian—pouting, dolled up with heavy makeup, her hair in big, glamour-girl curls.

  I groaned and took a gulp of my coffee for strength.

  “Claire?” David buzzed over the intercom. “It’s Candace, line one. Do you want to call her back?”

  “I’ll take it, thanks,” I answered, picking up the line. “Hey, Candace. What’s up? Have you made a decision about our offer?” Yesterday, I’d given Candace—the former supermodel penning a salacious memoir of all the Mr. Wrongs she’d known—our final offer on her third book, and I desperately hoped we could finally move forward with the contract. Unfortunately, “I deserve more” seemed to be Candace’s three favorite words—not bad ones to have on hand, I suppose, when dealing with a perpetual user-and-abuser like Vivian, but more than a little frustrating for the editor caught in the middle.

  Candace and Vivian had an unusually charged love-hate relationship, stemming from the fact that they had on occasion splashed in the same dating pool and were each magnetic, beautiful, and certifiable. Apparently, they were currently in a hate cycle.

  “Tell that motherfucking see-you-next-Tuesday you work for that there is no way—no fucking way—I am accepting such a measly advance for my third book,” shouted Candace through a scratchy cell phone reception. I held the phone away from my ear. They also spoke the same language, I’d forgotten that. “Does she think I don’t know how much money she made off the first two? A hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars is a fucking joke. Does she think she’s the only publisher in town? Just because I’m loyal—God, I’ve put up with more than my fair share of shit from that power-drunk bitch—doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’m not going to just sit here and take it. Tell her I need at least double that, plus I’m going to need a budget for hair, makeup, wardrobe … Oh, and we’ll all be flying first class. Those are my terms, babe, make ’em happen.” Then she hung up on me.

  Yeah, I’m going to have to rephrase that, I thought. I forced my thoughts back to the catalog. I’d deal with the Candace headache later.

  But before I could write another word, my office door was slammed open, and Alice—a sweet-natured temp who’d been filling in as Vivian’s assistant for a week now—stepped inside, shutting it quickly behind her. Her pretty face was flushed and contorted with panic. Sweat beads had formed above her upper lip.

  “You’ve got to help me, Claire,” she choked out. “She’s going to murder me. Vivian’s leaving her apartment to fly to L.A. in twenty minutes. She just called and asked me to bring her two files from her office. I asked her where they might be, and she took my head off for it. But I can’t find them anywhere. …” Alice looked down at her watch, which only made her more panicked. “Please, Claire, can you help me? She called me a fucking imbecile and said she would write such a scathing report about me that the temp agency would never send me out again… .”

  Alice wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and I held her shoulder to steady her. Why did Vivian have to be so cruel? Couldn’t she just tell poor Alice where to look, the way any normal person would?

  “Of course I’ll give you a hand,” I said. “Please don’t let her upset you. She’s like that with everyone. We’ll get her the files in time, don’t worry.” Phil had given me similar pep talks countless times. He was usually able to calm me down—but I knew from firsthand experience how hard it was to “not take things personally” when someone was berating you so harshly.

  “Please don’t tell anyone about this,” Alice whispered when we were in Vivian’s office. “Vivian’s really funny about the privacy of her files. She’d kill me if she knew I
’d asked you to help.”

  “I won’t say a word. Now what does she need?”

  “The folder that has all the marketing team’s notes from the most recent sales conference. And the one about the Prime Publishing Program.”

  I rummaged through the manila folders on Vivian’s desk and found one labeled “Fall Sales.” “Okay, here’s the marketing one,” I said, handing it to Alice, who looked so grateful that you’d think I’d just pulled her from a burning building. The Prime Publishing Program wasn’t on the desk, so I moved over to the wall of file cabinets and pulled on drawer N–P. Locked.

  “Hang on, I’ll get the key!” Alice dashed off and returned a nanosecond later with the key.

  I unlocked the drawer and yanked it open. It was stuffed to capacity. “Personnel” … “Presentations” … “Printers, Overseas and Domestic” … there we were, “Prime Publishing.” It was an initiative designed to market and sell books directly to consumers, building the company’s brand recognition to a degree that a reader would actually check the spine of the book when deciding what to pick up at the bookstore. An interesting, if grandiose, concept, and one that Vivian had helped to marshal at Mather-Hollinger.

  I wiggled the folder out of the drawer, dislodging everything around it. Alice grabbed it like a sprinter taking a baton in a relay and was out the door with an over-the-shoulder, “Bless you, Claire, please lock up!”

  As I shoved things back into the drawer, the folder behind the one I’d pulled caught my attention. It was labeled “Prizbecki.” Did Vivian keep a file on her married boyfriend?