Novelista Girl

by Meredith Schorr

  Hannah cocked her head to the side. “This book you wrote. It’s good?”

  Nodding, I said, “Yeah. I think it is. Everyone who’s read it really liked it.”

  “And you’re not related to, codependent on, or screwing these people?”

  I laughed, despite myself. “No. I’m not related to, codependent on, or screwing any of them, actually.” The one person I was sleeping with would have to read it in order to like it. “Although my mom and Bridget both read it, I was referring to the three authors who beta read for me and one blogger friend. Even Ginny Webber liked the first three chapters.” Just not enough. Realizing I was babbling, I silenced myself.

  Hannah looked pensive as she chewed her lower lip—of course not smudging her lipstick—and contemplated me. We engaged in a staring contest for a moment until I couldn’t take it any longer and broke eye contact. While Hannah paid the bill, insisting it was a tax-deductible business expense, I cursed Caroline’s brilliant idea once more.

  Facing me again, she asked, “Do you have a copy of the manuscript with you?”

  “Not on me, no. But I was hoping you could simply give me advice on my query letter and a way to get past the chick-lit-doesn’t-sell curse. I don’t need you to read the novel.”

  Exhaling loudly, Hannah said, “I have no desire to read your novel, Long. Although I’m sure it’s as cute as a bug.”

  I rolled my eyes as discreetly as possible.

  Hannah continued, “The reason I asked is because I’m meeting with my agent after this. I’m sure she’d agree to read some of it as a favor to me. I am one of her more profitable clients.”

  “You would? She would?” My heart rate increased exponentially. Keep it together, Kim.

  Keep. It. Together.

  With a bored expression, Hannah said, “Yes.” Then she leaned over the bar as Rafael came scurrying over.

  With only a short window of opportunity available to me, my brain worked double time until an idea sprung to my mind. I tapped Hannah on her toned arm.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s a Staples around the corner. I can access my manuscript from the Cloud and print out as many pages as you think Felicia would want to read, along with the synopsis.”

  Without taking her eyes off Rafael, she said, “You might as well print out the whole thing. You have twenty minutes.” Pointing at the door she said, “Go.”

  And like my little black dress the first time I hooked up with Nicholas, I was off.

  Chapter 13

  I miraculously managed to walk (okay, run) to Staples, print out my manuscript and synopsis, and walk (okay, jog, as by then, I was too tired to run) back to Forcella in twenty-five minutes. Even more miraculous, Hannah was still there. She credited Rafael’s charming company for keeping her around the extra five minutes. I was both grateful to Hannah for offering to pass along the book to her agent and paranoid she would dump the papers in the closest trash can as soon as I was out of eyeshot, and Felicia Harrison would never actually see them. Nicholas thought I was being silly.

  “What would be the point in that?” he asked the next morning as we sat at our breakfast nook drinking coffee.

  “When it comes to Hannah, I’m not sure there needs to be a point.”

  I wanted to believe Hannah was capable of committing a random act of kindness with no expectation of any personal gain. There was no evidence to suggest the twenty-first-century Hannah possessed the streak of evil held by her fourteen-year-old self.

  The “old” Hannah felt no remorse after surreptitiously staining the back of another girl’s white pants with a red Sharpie while she was in gym and then pointing it out to other students in the crowded hallway when the girl, completely unaware, walked to her next class. The modern version of Hannah, although full of herself and more than a little condescending, didn’t seem interested in reviving her former vicious ways. But I was hesitant to let my guard down. What if she altered the book and made it completely unreadable?

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nicholas said, bending over to lace his Converse sneakers.

  Not realizing I had spoken out loud, my face heated up. “I know,” I mumbled. “You don’t understand how important this is to me.”

  Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Considering you’ve talked about nothing else since coming home last night, I think I do. And besides, she’s only one agent.”

  “You said the same thing about Ginny Webber and the fifteen agents who rejected me before her,” I muttered. And as I had received yet another rejection earlier in the week, the rejection count was now at sixteen.

  Pouring his leftover coffee into a to-go cup, he said, “Just relax. It could be a long time before you hear anything. Try not to think about it.”

  “A much easier task with you here to distract me,” I said with an exaggerated pout.

  “Sorry, Kimmie. I have a ton of work to do.”

  “What time will you be home? Should I wait for you to eat dinner?”

  As his phone rang, he said, “Hold that thought,” and walked into the living room.

  My mind continued to conjure up various ways in which Hannah could use my book against me. What if she posted some of the more risqué scenes on our high school’s Facebook page out of context to humiliate me? I would rate the novel PG-13 due to language and mature themes, but the two brief sex scenes were arguably R-rated.

  Returning to the kitchen, Nicholas said, “I will. Bye,” before placing his phone in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Who was that?”

  Nicholas looked at me with dull eyes. “My dad.”

  “What did he want?”

  Nicholas walked to the kitchen sink. With his back to me, he said, “You know my dad.”

  I knew I didn’t like him very much but didn’t dare say it out loud. “Not really,” I mumbled. “Did you tell him about the award you’re getting?” Nicholas had recently found out he was named one of Law360’s top intellectual property lawyers under the age of forty for that year. He was one of a hundred or so attorneys chosen from over one thousand nominees.

  “Uh huh.”

  I stood up from the table and brought my coffee cup to the sink. “What did he say?”

  “He said congratulations before telling me Neil was recognized with a Giants of Cancer Care award for his continuing contribution to the cause.”

  “Wow.”

  “Can’t compete with cancer research.” Nicholas shrugged.

  “Who said it was a competition?”

  Nicholas didn’t respond.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “I have an idea. Let’s go to Brinkley’s for dinner. You’ve been touting their wings since I moved in.”

  Stiffening against my embrace, he said, “Better not wait for me for dinner. I’m not sure what time I’ll be home.”

  Leaning into him, I said, “Okay. How about tomorrow night?”

  Extricating himself from me, he said, “I don’t know, Kim. It depends on how late I work.” He removed his wallet from the kitchen table and placed it in his jacket pocket. “I gotta run. I’ll see you later.”

  As he walked to our front door, I called out, “No kiss goodbye?”

  “I gotta go. Smooches,” he said as the door closed behind him.

  Chapter 14

  As fond as I was of my pink loveseat, I quickly discovered Nicholas’s suede gray couch in the living room was significantly more conducive for both engaging in X-rated activities and binge-watching television. Since Nicholas wasn’t available for the former, I settled for the latter, hoping to distract myself from the way he had bolted out the door earlier. I had several books in my queue for review, and the time would have been wiser spent reading or working on a blog post, but I was jonesing big time for bad reality TV. I threw a blanket over my legs and got cozy for an afternoon of back-to-back episodes of The Rea
l Housewives of New York on Bravo. I was especially interested in Carole’s story line since she was a published author long before she entered the world of “unscripted” television. When Bethany had two meltdowns within the first ten minutes of my viewing session, I dialed Bridget’s number to see if she was watching too.

  Bridget answered after one ring with an enthusiastic “Hi!”

  “I’m bored,” I said in response while examining the ends of my hair. I was in desperate need of a haircut.

  “Come over. Jonathan’s not here. We can watch Housewives.”

  “The thought of getting on the subway right now does not thrill me.”

  “Your fault for moving downtown. This time a couple of months ago, you could be here in five minutes.”

  I heard her take a drag of a cigarette. I opened my mouth to nag her, but decided to save my breath. Jonathan smoked too, and I had a feeling they enabled each other’s nasty habit. “Hey now. I like downtown. I’m finally an expert outside the grid.” The majority of Manhattan was easy to navigate because the streets were numbered, but once you got below First Street, it became tricky because the streets had real names, like Broome (where I lived with Nicholas), Spring, and Bowery. There was no rhyme or reason to where the named streets were situated. Until I started dating Nicholas, when I ventured to his neighborhood, I either needed the aid of a map or friends who were more directionally inclined, like Bridget.

  Bridget snickered. “About time you stopped relying on Citymapper.” Citymapper was my handy go-to website when I needed directions off the grid. “So what’s new?”

  “I gave Hannah a copy of A Blogger’s Life to give to her agent.”

  Bridget gasped. “What possessed you to do such a stupid thing?”

  “She offered.”

  “This conversation requires face-to-face contact. Come uptown. We can order from Uva later. My treat.”

  Uva was one of my favorite Italian restaurants and the venue of my first real date with Nicholas. I pushed the blanket off my legs and stood up. “Be there in half an hour.”

  Forty-five minutes later, I was curled in the corner of Bridget’s purple couch, telling her about my meeting with Hannah. Bridget was on the other side of the sofa with her feet resting on the coffee table. After cracking a peanut and tossing the shell in the ceramic bowl on her lap, she turned to me, her eyes narrowed in doubt. “What’s in it for Hannah?”

  Twirling a strand of hair around my finger, I said, “Dunno. Maybe she did it out of the kindness of her heart?”

  “Unless Hannah met with the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, she doesn’t have a heart. What if she tossed it in the closest garbage can?” Her face draining of color, she said, “Or worse, what if she took your book and changed it so it reads like a sixth-grader wrote it?”

  I reached over to scoop up a handful of peanuts. “Exactly what I said to Nicholas. Great minds.” I giggled, although the thought of Hannah manipulating the novel I put so much time and effort into made me want to cry, not laugh. Back in middle school, Hannah was the mastermind behind a “harmless” prank resulting in her friend Jax unknowingly reciting a sex scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover out loud in class rather than a scene from the designated reading assignment, Of Mice and Men. I didn’t want to underestimate her evil prowess.

  “What was Nicholas’s response?”

  “He told me I was being ridiculous,” I mumbled.

  With a shake of her head, Bridget said, “I never did like that Nicholas fellow.” The twinkle in her shamrock-green eyes showed me she was teasing.

  “I’m worried about him, to be honest.”

  With a crease in her forehead, Bridget asked, “Trouble in paradise?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think so, but he’s been preoccupied lately.”

  “How so?”

  “With work stuff. He’s been putting in crazy hours at the office—even more than normal. And he’s on call twenty-four seven even when he’s home. He hoofed it out of the apartment this morning after a phone call with his domineering dad without so much as a kiss goodbye.”

  “His dad probably stressed him out. He’s something else, huh?”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Sounds like Jonathan’s mom. She’s constantly packing on the guilt about how much more often his sister visits even though she lives much farther away than a twenty-minute ride on the Long Island Railroad.”

  “Does Jonathan ever take it out on you?” Cocking my head to the side, I added, “For instance, by leaving the apartment without kissing you goodbye?”

  “Never,” Bridget said assuredly. Blushing, she added, “But as the only son, Jonathan can get away with almost anything when it comes to his mother and he knows it, which makes shrugging off her comments easier. It seems like Nicholas’s issues with his father run much deeper.” She frowned. “I’m sure his brushing you off was a one-off occurrence and has nothing to do with you. He’s crazy about you.”

  I dropped my chin toward the floor unable to shake the paranoia. “And I’ve been talking nonstop about the agent stuff and whining about my rejections. My annoying him probably isn’t helping things.”

  “I doubt he’s annoyed, but if you’re concerned, just lay off of the book talk a little. When you’re freaking out, text me instead. I’ll never get irked with you. And I’ll always kiss you goodbye. I’m a great kisser too.”

  “But Daddy says I’m the best at it,” I joked, quoting a line from National Lampoon’s Vacation.

  Bridget smiled. “But seriously, I’d stop wasting time worrying about your imagined problems with Nicholas and devise a plan for getting even with Hannah when she posts your book all over the internet.”

  “I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.” I bit my cheek, not entirely believing my own statement.

  “You aren’t going to be friends with her now or anything, are you?” Bridget picked at an invisible loose thread on her t-shirt.

  I patted her leg. “Friends is a stretch. This is merely a business transaction.”

  Bridget gave me a slow smile. “Okay. Let’s put a wager on it—although it pains me to bet on something that will cause you sorrow. If…When Hannah proves herself to be the same ole Hannah, dinner at Gina’s on you.”

  “And if I win?”

  “Anything you want.”

  I pondered my options for a moment. “Okay. If Hannah pulls through, we can have a real heart-to-heart about Jonathan’s aversion to marriage and kids.”

  Bridget grimaced. “This again?”

  Raising an eyebrow, I said, “You got to choose dinner at Gina’s. I choose this.”

  “Fine,” Bridget said with an exaggerated sigh. “But it’s not much of a gamble, considering I already told you I’m fine with it. Seems like a win-win for me.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, shaking her hand firmly.

  I really wanted to win, but since doing so meant putting my trust in Hannah, I suspected there would be a dinner at Gina’s—my treat—in the near future.

  For the umpteenth night in a row, Nicholas was working late, leaving very little to distract me from obsessing over what Felicia Harrison thought of my manuscript. For all I knew, the minute she removed it from Hannah’s expensively moisturized hands, she passed it off to her assistant who then buried it at the bottom of her slush pile. But I was in no worse a position than if I queried her directly.

  Putting my preoccupation with Felicia to good use, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about her. With my laptop in front of me—a glass of water on one side and a notepad with a list of websites on the other—I sat on my couch and got to work. The first page on my list was the Harrison & Gold website, where I discovered Felicia represented not only Hannah, but Lizzy Pelk, another powerhouse in the chick lit genre, and Christine Bannah, a popular writer of romantic comedy, whose latest no
vel was recently optioned for film rights. Based on her client list, Felicia believed chick lit was a viable market and she had bestselling clients who helped pay her rent (or mortgage) and feed her faith in the genre. I pictured my name and photo on the page alongside those other authors, and I allowed myself a moment of confidence. According to the second website on my list, Publisher’s Forum, Felicia had sold an impressive twelve novels to the major publishing houses in the last year. Why not mine?

  But even with a “dream” agent in their corner, only a small population of the authors with books being pitched to editors at any given time would be on the receiving end of the words, “I sold your book.” So why mine? I sat back and sunk farther onto the couch, a sick feeling rotting at the pit of my stomach. I needed to be realistic. The likelihood of a debut author obtaining an agent was meager, and the chances of securing a big publishing deal, even with an agent, was even more miniscule. Sure, it could happen to me, but the odds were not in my favor—with or without a referral from Hannah Marshak.

  Reaching once again for my laptop, I opened up a new document and got lost in my still-untitled next novel. I might never be a published author, but I was forever a writer.

  Chapter 15

  “Nicholas should be here soon. He was coming straight from work,” I said to my sister and her husband Gerry as we stood in the buzzing bar area of Artisanal Fromagerie Bistro. We had planned to meet at the restaurant at seven for our seven thirty reservation so we’d have time for a quick drink before dinner.

  “Is he always late?” my sister asked with a note of disapproval.

  “It’s only 7:05, Erin. Don’t get your curls in a knot,” I said, referring to my sister’s head of tight spiral curls, the color of coffee with only a hint of cream.

  “Should I get us a round of drinks? It will make the wait go by faster,” Gerry asked while scratching his goatee.

  I took in my brother-in-law, who perfected the part of a young hipster, wearing a plaid beanie atop his ruffled ginger locks, a buffalo checkered shirt, skinny jeans, and weathered sneakers with mismatched shoelaces. I wondered, not for the first time, how he came to fall in love with my perfectly tailored sister—who coordinated her lipstick with her nail polish—and vice versa. “Sounds like a great plan.”