“Thank you,” he said. “My first compliment.”
“Second,” said Carrie. “After Nora.”
They exited the lift into yet another reception. Todd was beginning to feel that New York was nothing more than a mass of reception areas and lobbies, each leading to even more reception areas and lobbies. But in this one stood a middle-aged woman, dressed elegantly but not, as Todd thought of it, wealthily.
“Todd Milstead,” she said, extending her hand like a man. “Nora Franklyn.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Todd, wondering if there was anyone writing down these amazing bon mots of his.
“How was your flight?” said Nora.
“Fine,” said Todd, Illinois’ own Oscar Wilde.
“Excellent,” said Nora. She turned to Carrie.
“For a writer, he’s a man of few words,” she said, then beamed at Todd. “I like that in a man. Norman Mailer, he just won’t shut up.”
“You know Norman Mailer?” said Todd.
“God, who doesn’t?” said Nora. “Word of warning. Don’t ever get in an elevator with him.”
She laughed, and Carrie laughed too. Todd thought of rolling out his stock Mailer opinion, but decided against it. He’d only read Mailer: these people knew him.
* * *
Nora’s office was a masterpiece of dissimulation. Even Todd could see that. Here, on the fourteenth floor of a modern block, some genius of an interior designer had recreated the interior of a Cambridge English tutor’s study, complete with worn-out desk, shelves of jacketless books, and deep armchairs made of leather cracked like a riverbed after a drought. The whole room screamed TRUST US and WE LOVE BOOKS. Only the presence of an electric typewriter, discreetly placed on a side table behind a couch, indicated that Todd was still in the twentieth century.
“Thank you for coming all this way,” said Nora.
“Not at all,” said Todd. “It’s a great honor to be here.”
“Let’s get to it,” said Nora. “We have lunch in an hour.”
“Oh,” said Todd. “You have a busy schedule.”
Nora and Carrie laughed.
“Todd,” Carrie said. “The lunch is for you.”
“Oh,” said Todd again, reduced to talking in vowels.
“I’ll be brief, and not just because I’m hungry,” said Nora. “We would like to publish you, Todd. We think All My Colors is not just fantastic, it’s a surefire commercial success, and that’s a great combination.”
She leaned back in her seat.
“Naturally, you are free to entrust your work to another publisher, but we are the best.”
“She’s not kidding,” said Carrie. “We’re great.”
They both laughed. Todd looked around the office. There were signed photographs of most of his literary heroes. Awards. Framed book jackets. The odd autographed menu.
“And you’re sure you’re not crooks?” he said.
Nora and Carrie laughed again.
“We’re not crooks and this isn’t a dream,” said Nora.
“I don’t have an agent,” Todd said.
“We’re happy to wait until you find one,” Nora said.
If there was one word Todd didn’t get along with, it was “wait.” He figured he could delay giving someone fifteen percent of his hard-earned royalties.
“No need,” Todd said. “Where do I sign?”
* * *
Barry was outside already when they came out of the Schirmer.
“Looks like you’re one of the team now,” he said.
“How did you know?” Todd said.
“I can always tell. They got a look.”
“What kind of look?”
“The kind you got.”
“Fair enough.”
* * *
“Even for a writer, you’re extremely quiet,” Nora said. “Would you like a drink?”
Todd decided that he would like a drink and told Nora so. It seemed a shame not to, as the restaurant was as close to Todd’s fantasies of sophistication as possible, without actually building a time machine and returning to the 1930s. Waiters brought actual Martinis and Manhattans (Manhattans in Manhattan, thought Todd, and immediately felt like a farmer), the menus were huge and oysters seemed to get into everything.
“I’ll be honest, Todd,” said Nora. “We don’t do this for everybody.”
“Why are you doing it for me?” said Todd, immediately wondering why he didn’t just stick a piece of straw in his mouth and be done with it. Perhaps he should have worn his dungarees as well.
“Because,” said Nora, an actual twinkle in her eye, “you are about to become our number one author, Mr. Milstead.”
The food arrived. There was meat and fish and oysters. Todd put his hand over his wine glass the second time the wine waiter passed by, then changed his mind. He had a feeling that this would be the only time anything like today would ever happen in his life, and he intended to savor it.
“Has any other publisher expressed interest in All My Colors?” asked Nora, and Todd fancied he could see a new steel in her eyes, like an adding machine under the skin.
Todd thought of the returned manuscripts. “No,” he admitted.
“Readers,” said Nora. “Half of them just skim the synopsis, and the rest can’t even do that. This one—” and she indicated Carrie as a dowager lady might acknowledge her timid companion “—can read.”
“We receive hundreds of manuscripts every week,” Carrie said. “All My Colors just stood out immediately.”
She waited to see if Nora was going to take over, then continued, “The first page—the scene in the hardware store—it’s such a great opening. And then when she—”
“I don’t think Mr. Milstead needs to have his entire novel told back to him,” said Nora, and Carrie returned to silence. “One thing Carrie did say that we all agreed on is how well you write women.”
“Thanks,” Todd said, who had no memory of writing anybody.
“It’s very unusual to meet a man who can convincingly portray women as well as men,” said Carrie quickly, before gazing down into her salmon again.
“And we feel that’s a major part of your appeal,” said Nora. “All My Colors is one of those rare novels that both sexes can enjoy.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Todd, who at that moment wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the book was also one of those rare novels that featured a fight between a giant squid and a robot. The more he struggled to recall the book that had literally occupied his life all those weeks, the less he could remember any of it. It was as if that famous eidetic memory of his had been wiped like a cassette tape.
“I know this is an obvious thing to say,” said Carrie, looking at Nora to make sure she wasn’t going to squish her again. “But it’s such an unusual novel, for any author to write. So I’m going to ask it anyway.”
“Fire away,” said Todd, draining the nearest glass to him.
“Where did you get the idea from?”
Todd paused. He lifted his glass to his lips, remembered that he’d just emptied it, then smiled.
“Where does anyone get their ideas from?” he said. “Sometimes they’re just in the air, aren’t they? And sometimes we draw on personal experience, always changing it, always tuning it so it becomes art, not autobiography. But always there is the idea at the core.”
“Yes, that’s very true,” said Carrie. “But you’re talking about ideas in general. I meant in this specific case, where did you get the idea?”
I stole the whole thing from a book that nobody else had heard of, thought Todd angrily, and when I realized I could get away with it, I copied the whole thing out while crapping in a diaper in my own house. You know, like every writer does.
Todd realized that the booze was making him feel a little bit too much like his old self again.
“I honestly don’t know where it came from,” he said, then added, trying not to sound too cautious, “Why? Does it seem familiar to you in any w
ay?”
Carrie, anxious now lest she had gone too far, said, “No! Not at all. It’s just such a fresh concept I…”
She tailed off. Nora smiled a smile that Todd had seen somewhere before. Oh my God, he thought, it’s Endora from fucking Bewitched. Todd smiled back, a Darren eager to please.
“I’m sure Todd doesn’t want to spend all day dissecting his own work,” she said. “We can leave that to the critics. Now who wants dessert?”
* * *
By the end of the meal, which had left Todd both dizzy and bloated, he was even more convinced that Nora Franklyn was the ideal person to publish him (the fact that she was the only person who wanted to represent him was long forgotten). He was ready to sign up on the spot and must have indicated as much, because, as the coffee cups were taken away, Carrie said nervously:
“We love the book unconditionally, Mr. Milstead, and we are very, very keen on being part of your future as an author. But I feel—” and here she exchanged a look with her boss “—that, as with every novel, we’d like to engage an editor.”
“An editor?” said Todd. He felt the cold hand of terror on his throat.
“There are moments in the book which we feel could be usefully trimmed,” said Nora, efficient now. “It’s a marvelous book but we tend to find as publishers that every new manuscript benefits from a fresh eye. An eye ready to make cuts, and changes.”
“I thought you said you liked it,” he said.
“Oh, we do,” Carrie hastened. “We love it. But—”
“We’re not talking swingeing cuts,” Nora butted in. “Just a few trims here and there. It’s a big book and we like it that way. Also,” she beamed, “There are sections we feel could be lengthened. For clarification.”
“Some moments are obscure,” agreed Carrie. “Which is charming, but in the current climate, we don’t want to be obfuscatory.”
“You do see what we mean,” said Nora.
Todd was silent. His mind was racing. I’m not editing this fucking book, he thought. I wouldn’t know where to start. Or stop.
He imagined himself in a butcher’s apron, blindly slashing at the manuscript, with no idea if he was improving the novel or just hacking the life from it.
“I’m not sure,” he said finally.
Nora crushed a cigarette Todd hadn’t even noticed she’d been smoking.
“Todd,” she said. “I hate to come over—heavy—but this is the twentieth century. A publisher has a duty to the retailer as well as the reader. We have to make sure the product—awful word—is as near to perfect as we can make it. This is a world of markets, Todd, and publishing is as much a market as anywhere else.”
“No,” Todd said, almost regretfully, “I get all that, I really do. But it’s not that I don’t want to change the book. It’s that I can’t.”
And by can’t, he thought, I really do mean can’t.
Now Nora looked impatient.
“Not allowing an editor to work on your book is the kind of privilege we’d afford one of our long-standing clients,” she said. “Someone who’d been with us for a number of years, someone who was selling decent amounts of books over a long period of time.”
“And even then,” said Carrie, “we’d have to be very, very careful. Authors are not always the best judges of their own work.”
“Short version, everyone gets edited,” Nora said. “Everyone.”
“I feel like I’m being ganged up on,” said Todd, laughing nervously.
“If we are, it’s for your own good,” said Nora. “We want to make sure that your work is interpreted the way it should be, and not misunderstood.”
“I can assure you I spent a considerable amount of time making sure that my work is easy to understand,” said Todd. He felt affronted that the book he’d ushered into this world was under attack. After all, wasn’t he the only begetter of this novel? Well, maybe not.
Nora was looking at him sternly. Carrie was looking at Nora looking at him sternly.
“I’m going to be frank with you, Todd,” said Nora. “We never, ever publish a manuscript from a new author in the state in which it was submitted to us.”
“Well then,” said Todd, and maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe it was something else, “I’m going to be frank with you. There is literally—and I am aware of the meaning of the word ‘literally,’ I’m a writer, you may recall—there is literally no way or circumstance in which I would change or allow to be changed a word of this book. It is what it is.”
Silence fell. A waiter hovering for the check went and hovered somewhere else. Nora crushed out the already crushed-out cigarette some more. Carrie looked a little bit sick. Todd ran out of things to do with his hands and just let them rest flat on his lap.
“Excuse us a moment,” said Nora. She flashed a look at Carrie and they both stood up. “Order yourself a cocktail, Todd. We shan’t be a minute.”
Nora and Carrie left the table. After two minutes, Todd waved at the waiter and asked for another Manhattan. He figured, why not, it could be the last time he ever had a free drink in New York.
* * *
Todd was just wondering if he could stretch to a third Manhattan when Carrie returned to the table. “Nora won’t keep you,” she said breathlessly, then, “This has never happened before.”
“Is that right?” said Todd, wondering exactly which part of this had never happened before. “I don’t mean to cause any trouble.”
“Between you and me,” Carrie said, “I think it’s a smart move. Showing her who’s boss. But you’ve got to be careful, Mr. Milstead. She’s very good. And remember, her grandfather started the business.”
Todd was still trying to work out the specific relevance of this last remark when Nora came back. She sat down, smiled like Agnes Moorehead in a hurry, and turned to Todd.
“Well, this is a first,” she said.
“Carrie was just telling me,” Todd said.
“We don’t like it,” said Nora. “And when I say we, I mean me. I don’t like it. I have a way of doing things, a way that’s worked for several years. Everyone benefits and nobody has ever questioned it.”
“You make me sound like a troublemaker.”
“Oh, you are a troublemaker,” said Nora. “It’s no good looking innocent and pretending you have no idea what you’re doing. I know exactly what you’re doing.”
Perhaps you’d like to tell me, then, thought Todd.
“I just want to protect the integrity of the book,” he said.
“Oh, surely,” said Nora. “And we appreciate that. But we also appreciate a little power game too. Most of our authors are so simple. They come here, they eat the lunch and drink the cocktails and they don’t say a damn thing when we mention editors, or rewrites. They just nod their heads because they’re not listening. You know why?”
“Because they’re drunk?” said Todd, and wished he hadn’t. Nora’s gaze was beyond steely now.
“Because they’re waiting for us to mention the money. The advance. The royalty. They just want to know about their cut. But with you—we didn’t even get that far.”
She reduced the steeliness of her look by about fifty percent.
“Which is refreshing, Mr. Milstead. Because it means we can work together.”
“It does?” said Todd, confused now.
“I called my grandfather,” said Nora. “He’s retired but he’s also kind of a… a resource. And he said, and I quote, if the guy doesn’t care about the money, he’s an idiot.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t care about the money,” Todd said hurriedly.
“But if he doesn’t care about the book, he’s more of an idiot,” finished Nora. “He advised me to offer you a pathetic advance, Mr. Milstead, as a tribute to your mulish tenacity, in return for which we will present your book to the world just as you wrote it.”
Todd took a moment to realize what Nora had just said.
“Thanks,” he said, then, “Thank you very much.”
“It really will be a risible advance,” said Nora.
“But advances are loans anyway,” Carrie pointed out.
“You know what?” said Todd, suddenly elated. “I don’t care.”
And he didn’t. For the first time in his life, Todd Milstead had followed his dream and his dream hadn’t told him to go home.
“How about another Manhattan?” he said.
* * *
That night, Todd called Sara. She was, if anything, more elated than he was.
“So what happens now?” she said.
“I sign the contract tomorrow morning in their office and fly home,” said Todd. “And then I guess I’m a published author.”
“Published author.” Sara savored the phrase. “That sounds sexy. Which reminds me, you going to hit the strip joints tonight?”
“No,” said Todd.
“What? A night in New York and you’re not going to Forty-second Street?”
“I am not.”
“No titty bars for Todd? Not even a porno theater? I hear those places are bad.”
“I’m sure they are,” said Todd. “I’m just going to watch some TV and go to bed.”
“Good for you, scout,” said Sara. “Well, goodnight, author man. And hurry home.”
“I will,” said Todd.
And to his amazement, he did.
* * *
Waiting for something to happen is the surest way to make nothing happen. Waiting for someone else to do something is the longest haul in the world. Every day Todd would get up, have breakfast, call Mike (Joe having disappeared from the scene), and maybe drive down to Legolas Books.
Todd would later realize that he had little or no memory of this time. It wasn’t the quiet time—there was too much anticipation for that—but it wasn’t a memorable time either. Even Janis seemed to have—disappeared wasn’t the right word, but she wasn’t on Todd’s personal radar. Todd pictured her with her mystery lover—for some reason he wanted to say demon lover—going to bars, watching strange specialty acts, and then maybe slowly vanishing into a kind of demi-monde underground about whose details he was enormously vague.
Mostly what Todd remembered about this time was the tension. Todd and Janis had never had kids—Todd never saw himself as a dad and after the first couple of years, Janis didn’t see him as one either—but he found he could suddenly sympathize with expectant fathers in old movies, pacing around outside the delivery room, waiting for the happy event to occur so they could faint or hand around cigars. Except in Todd’s case, the happy event wasn’t going to be a bouncing baby but a big fat Great American Novel. And he was secretly worried—no, terrified—that the last few weeks had been nothing more than a phantom pregnancy.
All My Colors Page 9