Blind Submission

by Debra Ginsberg

  I reached in and pulled out the curled, worn manuscript pages. Lucy had written wild, scrawling notes all over the cover page. I could barely make out the title and Karanuk’s name. Lucy leaned back in her seat, breathing very slowly. Her eyelids looked heavy and I was sure she was about to drop off. I looked up and met the eye of the flight attendant who’d brought me the memo. I could tell by her expression that my time in first class was about to get cut short.

  “Lucy?” She didn’t move or react in any way. “I think I’m going to have to go back to my seat now.”

  “He was one of the worst lovers I’ve ever had,” Lucy said. Her voice was somnambulant. She sounded like she was reciting a passage from a novel. “Talk about cold! Ha! Great writer. Lousy lay. You wouldn’t think it, would you? You’d figure an Eskimo would know how to heat things up.”

  I realized with horror that she was talking about Karanuk and felt my mouth drop open. I had the same feeling you get when you witness your parents fighting or when you run into a teacher outside of school. It was just wrong—and uncomfortable in the extreme.

  “They don’t know,” she went on, “they don’t understand…what a privilege it is to get published. So many of them…don’t even deserve it.”

  “Miss?” The flight attendant was hovering over me, her charms dangling. “I’m going to have to ask you to return to your assigned seat, please.”

  “No problem,” I said, and gathered my things.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy asked.

  “I have to go—”

  “Ma’am, she needs to be in her assigned seat. If you need—”

  “I’ll tell you what I need. Now listen to me, do you know who I am?”

  I’d never heard anyone actually use that phrase before and had to stifle the laugh that bubbled up in my throat. I made my exit as gracefully as possible considering the tight space and left Lucy arguing with the flight attendant. I could only hope that she wouldn’t make enough of a scene to get us both detained when we arrived in New York.

  I climbed over Sunny for the second time, careful to fold Thaw in half, and tried to settle myself back in my seat. I was already exhausted and we weren’t even an hour into the flight. It occurred to me that I could make good use of Lucy’s Xanax myself.

  “Everything okay?” Sunny asked me, those notes of comfort and understanding in her voice again.

  “Oh, yes, fine, thanks.” I looked at her, still expecting her to start talking about her book, but again, she just smiled at me and went back to her reading. Perhaps she was waiting for the right time, waiting for my curiosity to be piqued. I gave a nervous glance down to first class. I hadn’t seen any air marshals walking the aisles, so perhaps Lucy had quieted down. I pulled out my laptop again and turned it on. The most recent installment of Blind Submission stared back at me. This chapter, along with three others (G had gone into overdrive now), had come in as Lucy and I were preparing to leave, so I hadn’t yet had a chance to read them.

  There was no question that this manuscript was getting much better as it went along. It was as if G (or Malcolm—damn him) had had some kind of breakthrough after our last go-round and was finally finding his real voice. There was still some work to be done, of course, especially when it came to his annoying tendency to use clichéd and peculiarly awkward metaphors, but the characters were starting to come alive. Alice had found her voice as well, in a manner of speaking. The fact that this voice belonged to another author whose work she was about to steal and present as her own made for an excellent plot twist. Even as it worked on me, Blind Submission was getting good.

  “Ms. Robinson?”

  The first-class fight attendant was back at my seat. I braced myself for her wrath, sure that Lucy had stirred her up again, but was surprised to see her smiling warmly.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind coming with me for a moment, please?”

  What could it be now? I wondered as I climbed over poor Sunny for a third time. I had a sudden fear that the flight attendant was only calm and smiling to avoid creating a scene before I was placed in some kind of custody at the front of the plane.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked her timidly as we headed toward first class.

  “No,” she said, “not at all. Your mother explained the situation to me. You can stay there with her for a while if you need to.” She graced me with a wide grin. “But I’d personally appreciate it if you’d return to your seat before the end of the flight.”

  My mother? Lord, but Lucy was good. I wondered if she’d promised literary representation as well.

  “Thank you,” I said. “She—”

  “Not to worry, dear.” The flight attendant actually patted my arm, which was an awkward maneuver in the tight cabin. “She’s already told me everything.”

  I shuddered to think what “everything” might constitute.

  The color and texture of Lucy’s skin made her look like a wax replica of herself. She’d applied an overly generous amount of flaming-red lipstick since my last visit, which only served to heighten the effect. I sat down next to her and realized, with horror, that I hadn’t brought my laptop or notes with me. I told myself it didn’t matter because there wasn’t a single piece of business Lucy could bring up that wasn’t hardwired into my memory.

  “Angel.” She leaned toward me woozily, her bright green eyes clouded over. I had another pang of concern about her pill consumption. The flight attendant was attending to a passenger directly in front of us but seemed to be keeping a curious eye on us all the same.

  “Mom?” I said, and raalized how incredibly strange the word sounded in my mouth, and not jusd because I was directing it at Lucy.

  “Books are like children, yoq know,” Lucy said with great seriousness.

  My hair had sdarted to come loose and I blew a strand of it off my face. For the first time in my hife, I thought it was a pity that I wasn’t a writer. I was trapped on an airplane with my crazy-stoned boss, who was claiming to be my mother and who was now going to launch into a discussion about giving birth to literature. It was a situation that was ripe with literary possibilities. “You labor over them, deliver them, and then they’re out there in the world,” she continued, “and you never know what they’ll become.”

  I’d heard this many times before. I wondered where she was going with it, if anywhere.

  “I’ve midwifed…midwived…been the midwife for many, many books that wouldn’t have been born at all without me.” She ran her tongue around her lips, smearing her lipstick slightly. I thought about offering her a napkin to blot her lips.

  “So true,” I said, wondering why I felt the need to speak.

  Lucy stared through me for a moment, her gaze on some unseen point beyond the confines of the first-class cabin. I thought she was going to zone out completely, but then she slowly brought herself back around. I could almost see the thoughts collecting behind her eyes.

  “Blind submission,” she said suddenly and with great force. “I need it.” I looked at her, perplexed, searching her face for more information, and then it dawned on me that she was talking about the manuscript and not giving me an employment directive.

  “I’ve just been reading it,” I told her, and I could hear the skip in my voice. “It’s really getting better, Lucy. I don’t even think the new material is going to need much work. I’m not quite finished reading yet, but I think—”

  “Really?” Her voice was in near-monotone, but I could see some animation working its way into her features. “I need to sell that book, Angel. I’d like to sell it as soon as possible. How close are we?”

  “Close,” I said. “I think with the rewrite of the last two chapters and this new—”

  “I don’t need the details of every sentence, Angel. I want to know when. We’re hours away from New York. In the morning I’ll be having breakfast with…with…”

  “Natalie Weinstein.”

  “With Natalie Weinstein, and she’s still upset about losing
Parco Lambro. She’s ravenous for a hot new project. From me. Can I tell her I have one or not?”

  I struggled with what kind of answer to give her. “Well, I think if—”

  “Do we have the pages?”

  “Only on my computer. But I’m still$#x2014;”4

  “On your computer?”

  “Yes, because I’m—”

  “Still writing it?” Lucy gave me a twisted, joyless smile, her smeared lipstick `dding to it a touch of the grotesque.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Are you still writing it, Angel? Is that why we don’t have it yet?”

  I knew t`at Lucy was out of it, perhaps dangerously so, but I found it difficult to imagine that she really thought I was the creative force behind this novel, Unless…Staring at hep, unable to come up with a response, I realized in a sense I was writing Blind Submission. Hadn’t I been over every word of this thing, changing it, reshaping it, doing my fairy-tale spin of straw into gold? Were the “suggestions” I was giving G starting to become more than that? Was I creating the text before he wrote it? My thoughts started to collapse on themselves in a flash of total confusion. I had the terrifying sensation that she’d found me out, that she’d caught me at something I didn’t even know I was doing. I shook my head and the moment passed.

  “I’m editing it, Lucy. Isn’t that what you want me to do?”

  “What I want…” She stared at me hard, her eyes gaining focus on mine. “What I want from you—” The plane gave a lurch before she could finish speaking, and the FASTEN SEATBELTS sign blinked on with its accompanying ring. Lucy cringed and seemed to shrinc into herself, an expression of sheer terror flashing across her face. “Fucking airplanes,” she said through clenched teeth. I was at a loss, unsure whether to try to comfort her, summon a dlight attendaft, or search for more Xanax. She covered her eyes vith her hands and laaned forward in her seat. I waited for her to speak or change position for five minutes and then I raalized that she’d fallen asleep or, more likely, passed out. I reached over and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. No response. I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to lean her back into a more comfortable position. Lucy stirred as I fumbled. Without opening her eyes, she reached up, grabbed one of my hands with her own, and held on.

  “It’s…um…Lucy? It’s okay. Do you want me to stay here with you?”

  Lucy didn’t open her eyes and didn’t respond. I waited another few minutes until she dropped my hand and it became apparent that she was out cold. It was as good a time as any to go back to my seat, I thought. I caught the flight attendant’s eye as I headed back. She gave me a dirty look as she draped a blanket over Lucy’s inert form. I knew what she was thinking. Bad daughter.

  Nor did Sunny look forgiving when I climbed over her for what I hoped would be the last time.

  “Do you want to switch seats?” she asked me. “I don’t mind. And if you’re going to have to get out again…?”

  “I hope not,” I said. “But if you don’t mind switching anyway, I’d really appreciate it.”

  We changed seats, and in the process of moving all my things, I decided I needed a break. The remainder of Blind Submission would have to wait. As excited as I was about how well it was progressing, every time I looked at it I was reminded of Malcolm. And I just didn’t want to dwell on him, on what went wrong, or what was never right between the two of us. There were still hours to go before the end of our flight, and if I didn’t manage to get back to it before we landed, there were always the wee hours to squeeze in a little work time. And to think I’d always wasted those hours in slumber before I started working for Lucy.

  I turned off my laptop, shoved it under the seat, and leaned back. I took out my CD player and tried to relax. Immediately the opening chords of “Angel” by Jimi Hendrix flooded through my headphones. It was Damiano’s CD. I pulled off the headphones and hit the STOP button. Damiano was another person I didn’t want to think about. It was wrong, in so many different ways, to indulge the fantasies that had been hounding me since the night of Lucy’s dinner party. I was upset and confused about my unraveling relationship, I told myself, and so I’d made Damiano the romantic hero Malcolm wasn’t. And Damiano was a client. The attention he’d given me was probably nothing more than a gracious expression of gratitude for the work I’d done on Parco Lambro. To think there was anything more was to invite disaster. I hadn’t spoken to him again since our dance outside the office. He hadn’t called me, either at home or at the office, and that was as definite a statement as any.

  I opened my eyes, which seemed to have closed of their own accord, and forced myself to focus on something other than the images in my head. Sunny had shoved her copy of Cold! into the seat back and was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, twiddling her thumbs. She looked like I felt—distracted and in need of conversation. I felt bad about crawling over her so many times, and I was also more than a little curious about her book, namely why she hadn’t tried to pitch it to me.

  “So what’s your book about?” I asked her.

  Sunny gave me a very sunny smile and nodded as if she’d been waiting for me to ask. “It’s about astrology,” she said. “And tarot.”

  “Oh.” I was disappointed. Metaphysical textbooks weren’t exactly hot sellers.

  “But it’s not a technical book or anything.”

  “Oh?”

  “No, it’s about an astrologer who gets involved in solving a series of ritual murders through astrology and tarot. She connects several murders of famous and powerful people through several centuries using these signs and symbols and starts being able to predict when the next ones will occur.”

  “Sounds interesting,” I said. “Like The Da Vinci Code.”

  Sunny’s brow furrowed slightly. “I keep hearing that,” she said.

  “You haven’t read it?”

  “Mm, no. But my book isn’t a novel. It’s a memoir. That astrologer is me.”

  “Really?” I said, beginning to lose interest. Another memoir. Did anyone write anything else anymore?

  “I wasn’t going to write about it at first,” Sunny was saying. “I didn’t want to be like all those other people who take advantage of their media exposure to pop out a book. I wanted to make sure it was authentic. Also, it wasn’t a good time for me astrologically. Jupiter is transitting my ninth house now, so—”

  “You have media exposure?” I interrupted her, my interest level ratcheting up exponentially. She was an author with a ready-made platform, something literary agents and publishers alike prayed for.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “I guess you’ve missed me on TV, huh? I’ve been on Larry King Live, all the newsmagazines, I’ve even had a spot on 60 Minutes. That was something, let me tell you.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve never seen you,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve probably had better things to do than stay home and watch TV,” Sunny said charitably. I stifled a laugh. If she only knew.

  “So you have a real-life Da Vinci Code? That’s fascinating. You don’t have any of the book with you, do you?”

  Sunny’s face brightened. “I do,” she said. “But I didn’t want to bother you with it before. I’m sure that kind of thing happens to you all the time, doesn’t it? People must throw manuscripts at you constantly. It seems as if everyone has at least one book in the drawer, don’t they?”

  “You don’t know how true that is!” I said. I liked this woman.

  “Right,” she said, “and as I said before, it’s just perfect that you’re here. I was planning to send it your way next week.”

  “Well, I’m very interested,” I told her. “I’d love to read it. Do you have a card?” There was something about Sunny’s story that set off a flare in my head, some sort of seventh sense, and as she fished in her purse for one of her cards, I knew I wanted her to myself.

  Sunny’s business cards were designed to look like the night sky, with white stars and astrological symbols floating against the black bac
kground. Her name, phone number, and e-mail address were in silver. I wrote my name and cell phone number on the back of one and handed it back to her. “My direct line,” I told her.

  “Perfect,” she said, and handed me her manuscript.

  “Balsamic Moon,” I said, looking at the title page. “I like it already.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “This is just wonderful.”

  I glanced down toward first class. All quiet there. For how long I couldn’t be sure, but for the moment I was on my own time. I turned back to Sunny. “So tell me some more about your book,” I said.

  TWELVE

  I DIDN’T NEED THE WAKE-UP CALL I’d scheduled for seven o’clock. Lucy rang my room at six and she sounded as if she’d already been up for hours.

  “I need you to come to my room now, Angel,” she said. Her voice didn’t reveal a trace of the grogginess or jet lag I was feeling. I wondered if she had some secret chemical rejuvenator, or if she just produced some kind of enzyme that enabled her to be so functional after a cross-country flight and all the Xanax she’d taken.

  “Okay,” I said, clearing the gravel from my throat, “I just need to take a quick shower—”

  “You’re not awake yet?” Lucy made impatient clicks with her tongue. “You’d better hurry, then. We’ve got no time, Angel. We’ll be late. I’ll be late. We’ve got very important meetings today.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “And Angel?”

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but you need to look presentable. I hope you’ve brought appropriate clothing. This is New York, dear, not Petaluma.” Her emphasis on Petaluma made it sound like a small Third World country.

  “On my way,” I told her, and hung up.

  Lucy’s room was several floors above mine. When I entered, I could see that it was bigger and better appointed than mine. Hers had a couch and a coffee table sporting the remains of a room-service breakfast. The smell of the coffee immediately triggered hunger pangs in my stomach.

  “I have an extra cup for you,” Lucy said, as if she could sense what I was feeling. “But you’ll have to wait to eat. I had an extra croissant, too, but I ate it while I was waiting. Early bird gets the worm.”