He pulled out faster than he should have, spraying gravel bits into the night behind him, but I could tell that he was in complete control. I stood there watching, purse in my hands, my eyes stinging with fatigue, until his taillights disappeared down the road.
TEN
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Blind Submission pages
Dear Ms. Robinson:
As usual, your comments have been most useful. May I say that I am beginning to truly enjoy working with you. I understand the need to make the prose more “vivid,” as you say, and, no, I don’t take offense. Please review the attached pages and let me know if they fit the bill. I believe you will find them most stimulating. I do hope that they will continue to please Ms. Fiamma as well. I look forward to hearing from you as always.
G.
Blind Submission, p. 102
Alice waited naked on the bed.
The hotel was in Midtown Manhattan and nice, but not too. It wasn’t so fancy that it would draw too much attention. Nobody would suspect that Vaughn Blue would stay in a place that was just “nice.” Here, disguised, he would be someone who looked like Vaughn Blue, not “the” Vaughn Blue, sex-godrockstar. And that was exactly the way Alice wanted it. She wasn’t about to become some groupie slut with her face in the tabloids. She had much bigger plans than that.
Still, it was true that when they’d had that first lunch at Michael’s, at Carol’s request, Alice had found him almost irresistibly attractive. His skin was olive colored and his eyes were the color of ripe plums. He was in some twelve-step program due to an obligatory rock star addiction to heroin, so he didn’t drink any alcohol and remained happily coherent. But it was his undeniable charisma that appealed to Alice the most, and her excitement grew to the point that she could hardly stand it. It was a happy coincidence that Alice found herself physically attracted to a man she planned to seduce. Attraction was unnecessary but in this case it was a definite bonus.
Vaughn hadn’t wanted to talk about his book at first. He seemed annoyed that Carol Moore hadn’t come herself. It took little time, though, for him to warm up to Alice. Alice knew the power of her looks and how to make the best of them. But more than that, Alice knew the power of power and that power was the strongest aphrodisiac there was.
Vaughn was intelligent and he could write, which set him apart from almost every other celebrity author. Alice ignored that aspect of him—the writerly part of him that she couldn’t help but detest—and focused on her growing attraction.
She soon got Vaughn off the topic of his book and on to better things, like when he might meet her again and where. He wanted some more feedback about his book, Vaughn said. Alice said, of course, and pointed out that there were several hotels where they could have such a discussion.
The first time had been amazing—a surprise to Alice, who was hard-pressed to allow herself any pleasure at all. They hadn’t talked at all—they’d just gone at each other like two animals. Then there was a second time—slower, deeper, and afterward, Vaughn had talked a little about his life. There was another book, he told her. One he had written long ago. Nobody had read it. Nobody. Until he’d met Alice, he’d never felt he could fully trust anyone. Would she consider reading it?
Yes, Alice had told him. Oh yes.
Now here she was again, every bit of clothing stripped from her lithe body, her hair laid out like a golden net on the pillow, the insistent throb of anticipation in her loins.
She didn’t have to wait very long.
A tapping came on the door and Alice opened it. Vaughn Blue stood in the doorway wearing a hat, sunglasses, and a false beard. He looked ridiculous, but he didn’t look like Vaughn Blue. He licked his lips when he saw Alice and told her she looked like Lady Godiva. Alice asked him what he was waiting for and why wasn’t he already naked?
Celebrities were always smaller than you thought when you saw them in person, Alice thought as she tore Vaughn’s clothes from his body. But not Vaughn, who crashed into her larger than life.
They rolled on the bed together, their musky sweat blending and dripping onto the sheets. Vaughn bit Alice’s breasts and licked her neck. Alice dug her fingernails into the flesh of Vaughn’s shoulders. She pushed her hips up to meet his and he reached around to her back, pressing in with the palms of his hands, tickling her skin with his fingers. Alice moaned with pleasure. She grabbed his huge manhood and drove him inside her where she was wet and steaming. It was so good, she thought, as he plowed her like a ripe field. So very, very good as he filled her and honeyed fires coursed through her body. She wanted it to never stop, even as wave after wave of ecstasy crashed against her.
Vaughn pulled out of her trembling body and raised himself, glistening, on the pillows. He laced his fingers into her hair and held on.
“Don’t stop.” Alice panted.
“I have to look at you—I have to.” He sighed. He ran his hands along her breasts, cupping them. He took one finger, traced it around the circle of her right nipple, and stopped.
“I never noticed this before,” he said.
Alice quickly raised her hand to her breast as if to rub it off—the tattoo she’d had put there long ago when she was so much more hopeful about everything. It was a small but exquisitely detailed tattoo of Alice in Wonderland, sitting under a magic mushroom. “It’s nothing,” Alice said. “Nothing.”
“It’s beautiful,” Vaughn said, “like the rest of you.” He leaned down and kissed the Alice on Alice’s breast.
“Let me in now,” he said.
And Alice did.
So. It had been Malcolm all along.
He was due to show up at my apartment within the hour and I was finding it difficult to sit still and wait for him. I could feel anger vibrating through my body, working its way into the muscles of my jaw and shoulders, forming knots so tight they felt like bone. I watched the clock, counting off the minutes as a way of distracting myself. For perhaps the hundredth time, I felt my hand go up to my breast and curl around that cursed tattoo—the biggest mistake I’d ever made—as if I could tear it out with my fingernails. I forced my hand down but couldn’t do anything about stopping my mind from going back there—to the tattoo and everything it had come to mean.
I suppose I must have known from the beginning—from its very first pages—that the literary agency in Blind Submission was modeled on Lucy’s. It was such an obvious conclusion but I wouldn’t allow myself to draw it. It could have fit the profile of dozens of other literary agencies as well, I told myself. Having only worked with Lucy, how could I be sure?
When the chapters first started coming in, I was so focused on the clumsy prose that I didn’t see how clear the links were between the characters and their real-life counterparts in Lucy’s office. But as the writing started to improve with my notes—and it was getting better—it became apparent that Carol Moore was based on Lucy, that Jewel was based on Anna, Ricardo on Craig, and Alice on me. But these were parallel-universe versions. Anna, of course, looked nothing like the beautiful and graceful Jewel. Craig was miles away from the suave sophistication of Ricardo. Like Lucy, Carol Moore was a brilliant and powerful literary agent, but in every other respect she was exactly 180 degrees removed from Lucy. Carol Moore was pleasant, even-tempered, magnanimous, gentle, and philanthropic. Lucy was…well, none of those things.
But it was the character of Alice that became the most disturbing to me. She was conniving, rapaciously ambitious, mean-spirited, and manipulative. And she was a writer. In all respects, she was the exact opposite of me. In my edit notes I’d been prodding the author to create a more nuanced version of Alice. It was one of the first rules of fiction that one couldn’t have an entirely unlikable protagonist and expect to have a successful novel. But even as I told the author this, I started to wonder if I wasn’t just trying to defend myself. Because my hunch was proving true: Whoever was writing the novel knew me. And not just in passing.
/> All this was compelling at first. Perhaps, in a narcissistic way, I even found it a little thrilling. But by the time I went to Lucy’s party, the parallels were just too close and too many for comfort. And even as I tried to get in touch with Peter Johnson, I had the sinking feeling that it wasn’t him after all.
I’d called Mr. Johnson at home after Jackson unearthed his number for me, only to hear the phone ring and ring, nobody picking up, no answering machine to take a message. I tried again the next day and the day after. On my fourth attempt, somebody finally answered, but it wasn’t Peter Johnson, it was a woman who identified herself as Mr. Johnson’s nurse. Peter Johnson had passed away, she informed me. He’d been ill for some time. She asked me who I was, and when I identified myself, she gave a sad sigh. He’d been waiting for so long for a call from my agency, she said, it was all he ever talked about. How very unfortunate that his ship had come in after he’d taken leave of this world. I offered hurried sympathies and got myself off the phone as quickly as possible. Although it was completely irrational, I couldn’t help but feel that I was somehow responsible for Peter Johnson’s demise. Anna’s comment, “If only all our annoying writers would die as conveniently,” only made me feel worse.
Along with regret that I hadn’t been nicer to him the last time I’d spoken to him, Peter Johnson’s exit left me totally confused. I told myself to just work on the manuscript like I would any other. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have enough going on at the office or, after Lucy’s horrendous dinner party, in my own life to keep my mind occupied. Besides, Blind Submission was only a book. No, not a book, a manuscript. Hardly even a manuscript, for that matter—it was mostly a series of e-mail attachments. Plus, it needed work. It wouldn’t be readable, much less salable, without my help. Whoever was writing the thing had to know that—better than he knew me.
But there were all those “coincidences” between the events in Blind Submission and the corresponding ones in my life. There was only one person who knew all the details well enough to write them. Alice’s work was rejected—and so was Malcolm’s. I got a raise—and so did Alice. I worked with Damiano—Alice worked with Vaughn.
Still, I wasn’t sure—didn’t want to admit it—until I read that scene and knew that Malcolm was the author of Blind Submission.
There could be no other explanation, no other author. Alice’s torrid (and purplishly overwritten) sex scene with Vaughn perfectly mimicked Malcolm’s accusation that I was sleeping with Damiano. Vaughn himself seemed like a copy of Damiano, down to the heroin and the color of his eyes. But that wasn’t all—not by a long shot. What made my heart race and the tips of my fingers go cold was the description of the sex itself. Who else but Malcolm would know exactly how I—and, by extension, Alice—liked to be touched? But it was the tattoo-kissing that really got me. That little intimacy was ours. He’d given Alice an Alice in Wonderland tattoo to mimic my “Angel’s wings” that he had kissed so many times. Reading it made me feel physically ill. If Malcolm was writing this novel—and it had to be him—everything I thought I knew about him and everything I thought I understood about our love for each other was wrong.
The funny thing was, before I read those pages I was actually feeling bad about the way I’d been treating him.
A day or two after Lucy’s party from hell, Malcolm had called me, contrite. He said he was sorry, that he shouldn’t have had so much to drink, he didn’t know what had gotten into him, it was an awkward situation and he felt uncomfortable, surely I could understand that, couldn’t I? And I could. What I couldn’t understand was why he was suddenly so apologetic. The Malcolm I’d known before I started working for Lucy might have admitted he was wrong, might even have been conciliatory after a disagreement, but would never have groveled, especially before me.
He suggested that we have dinner together and I agreed. I asked him to give me a week or two and then we set a date. He seemed pleased and a little surprised, as if he hadn’t expected it to be that easy.
And why had I made it so easy? I told myself that it was because I loved Malcolm and I wanted to mend the tears in our relationship and keep it together. But the real truth of it was simply that I felt guilty. I felt guilty that Lucy had rejected Malcolm and that I’d put him in the position of being humiliated. And I felt impossibly guilty about my feelings toward Damiano. Nothing had actually happened between the two of us or had even come close to happening, but Damiano had crept into the space inside me where only Malcolm had been for so long. I couldn’t deny that attraction or its power. I’d been physically faithful to Malcolm, but the accusations he’d thrown at me the night of Lucy’s party stung with the ring of truth. In my desire, I had cheated on him. And that was a betrayal of the man I loved.
But then I read the scene and everything I thought I believed went into a mad tailspin.
My first impulse was to call Malcolm and pour out my outrage over the phone, but I forced myself not to. I let it simmer for a couple of days, turning it around in my mind, looking, again, for reasons why he couldn’t be the author, trying to recapture my trust in him. I was hoping that by the time he came over for the dinner we’d planned I’d have had some kind of revelation, but I didn’t. Instead, I just felt my anger and confusion grow until my entire being was saturated with it.
This was the state I was still in as I waited for Malcolm to show up for the dinner that was supposed to mend all our fences. When, finally, I heard his knock at my door, I found my legs so stiff with tension, it was difficult to even walk across the room to open it.
The first thing I saw when I opened the door was the giant bouquet of I’m-so-sorry flowers Malcolm was holding in front of his face.
“What’s the matter?” he asked before he’d even gotten both feet inside.
“Why are you doing this?” I said, sounding much more dramatic than I’d intended.
“Doing what?” he said, but his face paled immediately and he looked as guilty as sin.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I said. “Don’t make me go round and round with it, okay? I just want to know why. What do you think you’re going to get out of this ultimately? How long do you think you can keep it going?”
“Angel…” He hesitated and looked down at his feet. The flowers seemed to visibly wilt in his hand. “I really don’t know what you think…what you mean.” He shrank away from me. The sight of it made me sad and furious at the same time.
“Come on,” I said. “Stop it. When were you going to tell me? Were you going to tell me at all? She wants to sell it. She’s going to sell it. You know that! How long do you think you can be anonymous?” My voice had risen to a screechy pitch.
I watched as Malcolm’s face changed from pale to flushed. His eyes, which had been downcast and clouded, snapped and sparked. He’d been almost cowering but now stood up straight, filling his chest with air. “What the hell, Angel?” His voice was angry, no longer hesitant. “I. Do. Not. Know. What you’re talking about! Make some sense.”
“Blind Submission,” I said. “I know you’re the author. I’ve read that chapter, okay?”
“Say what, Angel?” Malcolm looked at me, his face a wild mix of competing expressions, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up. He opened his hands and raised them palms up, dropping the flowers on the floor. They landed heavily, making a splayed pattern of stems and blossoms at my feet. “You’re crazy,” he said. “‘That chapter’? Do you hear yourself? You’ve gone nuts, Angel.”
I went on, fueled by days of compacted anger, insisting that he was the only person who could have written the manuscript. He remained adamant that he hadn’t and forced me to go over every detail of it with him. He made me say it out loud—made me talk about Damiano and how I was sure that the sex scene between Vaughn and Alice was another accusation. His face grew darker when I brought up Damiano and then twisted into a grimace when I stumbled over the description of the sex scene and, finally, the irrefutable evidence of the tattoo.
; “You think you’re the only woman who likes it a certain way, Angel? And please, can you possibly believe that you’re the only chick with a tattoo on her tit?”
I was stunned. I felt like those cartoon characters that have the floor give way underneath them but remain suspended in the air for several seconds before they fall. But Malcolm didn’t need a response from me; he wasn’t finished with his own commentary.
“Do you think I’d have such little pride that I’d send an anonymous novel to be edited by you?” he said. “Do you think I have as little faith in my own talent as you do? I’m an artist, Angel. You’ve never understood that. How could you think, even for a moment, that I’d do something like that?”
“Because—”
“How do you know it’s not your boy Damiano? Maybe that’s your mystery author. Seems he knows quite a bit about you, doesn’t he?”
“You can’t still think—”
“I’m not sure what I think anymore.”
“Damiano doesn’t need to sell another book!” I spat. “He’s already writing a very good one for very good money.”
“Unlike me, right, Angel? Isn’t that what you meant to say?”
We stood staring at each other for several long seconds. I didn’t know how to answer him or whether or not he was right. My eyes started to fill, but I was so confused about what was going on, so unsettled by all the strange turns my life was taking, that I didn’t know whether I was crying or whether my eyes were watering at the strain of being open too wide and too long. I looked away from him, down at the mess of spilled flowers at my feet. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know how I felt anymore.
“You think I need you, don’t you, Angel?” Malcolm said. The edge of indignation in his voice was sharp and grating. “Well, I don’t. I don’t need your help and I don’t need your pity.”
“No,” I said softly. “You certainly don’t.”
Blind Submission Page 21