by John Jaffe
This morning, Katie Couric had interviewed McCain about her new book, Shadow on the Shenandoahs. “I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun figuring out who the murderer was,” Couric had said, flashing her Kewpie-doll smile.
Annie almost spit out her latte when she heard McCain’s response. In an exaggerated Appalachian twang and a look that could make a baby cry, McCain said, “And I bet you figured out who done it in the Bible, too?”
Unfortunately for Annie, Couric was just one of many McCain had offended on her latest book tour. At its start, the head of Simon & Schuster publicity told Annie she was through mopping up after McCain. “Five book tours of abuse is enough. I just don’t have the staff or budget to make nice after her anymore. She’s your client, handle her.”
And so Annie tried. So far, Annie’s assistant had sent $780 worth of flowers to irate bookstore owners, radio reporters, and magazine writers.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Monday morning got worse. The editor at Scribner’s backed out of the auction on a book by an author Annie was sure would be the next Alice Hoffman. And just when she thought things had bottomed out, she learned that her hottest author, Eda Royal—aka the She-Devil—had gotten arrested the day before in Nashville, Tennessee. She’d taken off her underwear at the Centennial Ladies Club luncheon and set them on fire.
Now Laura had some guy at the Star-News she was trying to pawn off on her.
She felt as stretched as saltwater taffy, the kind she used to eat on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. It made a pop when it broke apart if you stretched it too hard, what she thought her brain might do any second if she had one more problem with an author or an editor.
She tried not to think about snapped taffy or finicky authors or lying editors. Instead she thought about the Mr. Planters Peanut Man who used to strut back and forth across the sea-grayed planks of the Boardwalk, tapping his top hat with the tip of his black cane to all the ladies in their spike-heeled shoes. Once, her mother got her heel stuck in a crack, and it was Mr. Peanut who so gallantly pulled the glossy black patent shoe back from the Boardwalk’s unforgiving bite.
Saltwater taffy. Mr. Peanut. Summers in Atlantic City. Days on the beach. Singing Sam the Ice Cream Man and his nickel chunks of dry ice. Her mother baking in the sun; Annie frying on the sand. Her father? She knew what memories came next. Sitting on the steps crying. Her father on the sofa crying. Thank God the phone was ringing.
“Annie Hollerman.”
“Xena? Warrior Princess, is that you?”
“Yes, my faithful subject, it is I,” Annie said. “All ready for this weekend?”
Annie heard a giggle on the other end. “Yeah, sorta. But Mom called me to tell me to call you to tell you to read your e-mail right away—whew, I can’t believe I got that out. She also said that you have no choice. If you don’t do as she says, she’ll make your life miserable. And Annie, she can do it, believe me. I know better than anyone.”
They both laughed because they knew how true that was. “Okay, I’ll check it. Now, tell me who you’re reading these days. Moved out of the horse books yet?”
“Sort of,” Becky said. “Does The Horse Whisperer count? It’s not completely about horses.”
“Ugh,” said Annie. “Stick with Black Beauty, it’s better written. For the life of me I’ll never figure out what it is about girls and horses.”
All the other lights on her phone were blinking, but Annie ignored them. She didn’t have an auction today. So much for the next Alice Hoffman. To hell with them all, she could afford the luxury of ten minutes with her goddaughter.
When they hung up, Annie turned away from the blinking phone and looked through the little round window near her desk. Her office was the second floor of a small art deco building on P Street in Dupont Circle. The building’s theme was nautical, hence the portholes and the stone-carved ropes at the entrance. On the first floor was Diego’s Hollywood Barbers and the Firehook Bakery, and on the third floor the National Hellenic Society.
Annie thought about the last time Laura had tried to fix her up with a man from the Star-News. She’d lost it. She’d acted like a jerk, slamming the phone down, and refusing to talk to her. Annie felt like such an ass that she showed up at Laura’s door three days later with two bottles of Yoo-hoo and a half dozen sticky buns from Firehook. “Forgiven?” Annie had said.
The funny thing was, after she’d made Laura back off, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. When she was married, she thought it was worse to be lonely with someone than without. Now she wasn’t so sure. Her nights were blurring into one long run of gym, take-out dinner, and books.
When Monday night salsa-boxing class became the most exciting part of her personal life, she knew things were seriously out of balance. But Washington isn’t an easy place to meet single men, especially where she lived: Dupont Circle—the Fruit Loop, as her gay friends called it.
A few of her friends had met men on the Internet or through the classifieds in Washingtonian magazine. One time, Annie even circled three of the ads but couldn’t bring herself to call.
So now that Laura had started in on her again about going out with someone from the newsroom, a part of her wanted to say yes. But there was always another part, a bigger part, that warned her to steer clear of her past and anyone who might pry it open. And if that weren’t enough to keep her away from journalists, there was the good-bye scene with Andrew Binder to make her say no to Laura’s fix-ups.
It wasn’t particularly dramatic. A big blowup would have been better. That way, there would have been a definite end, a border, a knife’s edge delineation between A-Squared and A-Alone.
They were sitting at a corner booth at the Park Road Deli. Pastrami for him, a Reuben for her. She’d driven in for the weekend; he had tickets for a Leon Redbone concert at Spirit Square.
She’d been living at her mother’s house in Greensboro since that horrible morning at the Charlotte Commercial-Appeal. For the first week, she and Andrew talked every day. He said all the right things—“I’m with you Annie”; “You can work your way back”; “We’ll be fine.” But she’d heard it in the silence when she first told him what happened, and she heard every time he called—he was already gone.
Over the next few weeks, they talked less. He was busy working stories. In the past, they’d talked shop for hours. They’d give each other blow-by-blow descriptions of interviews; she’d pull out her reporter’s pad and read him quotes; he’d describe the flattened a’s of his source’s Michigan accent; she’d tell him how she unearthed a slumlord’s fraudulent tax returns.
Now she had nothing to tell him.
“Could I get another cherry Coke?” Andrew said to the waitress who’d just brought their sandwiches. He’d been fidgeting with the straw, looking for something to do with his fingers—and his eyes. Only a few sentences had passed between them while they’d waited for their food, mostly about a news show WBTV had pulled because it had zoomed in on two men holding hands.
Annie looked at him. As always, he was weeks overdue for a haircut. Brown curls looped down his face. When he wasn’t noodling the straw, he was pushing the hair from underneath his wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes were the most surprising pale blue she’d ever seen on a Jewish guy. The glacial blue of a Siberian husky.
They ate their sandwiches. They’d been going to the Park Road Deli since they’d met. It reminded them each of home, her of the Forum 6 Diner in Paramus, New Jersey, and him of Hymie’s Deli in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Three-quarters of the way into her Reuben, Annie couldn’t stand it any longer. “Heard anything from the Inkie?” she said.
Andrew looked down, as if his pastrami sandwich had the answers. Annie took his hand in hers—did she feel him pull back just a little?—“Andrew?”
He kept looking at his sandwich and said, “Yeah, they offered me a job. It’s the Montgomery County bureau, but it’s a start.”
The Inkie, the Philadelphia Inquirer. At that time it was rega
rded as a Pulitzer Prize factory. A month before everything came crashing down, they’d both applied for jobs there.
He left two weeks later. She never heard from him again. Damn Andrew Binder and his downturned eyes. How long was she going to let what happened in Charlotte control her life? Or, at the very least, whom she had a glass of merlot with?
Maybe she wouldn’t fight Laura this time. Maybe it was time to stop pushing back. Annie was tired of pushing people away. Truth be told, she was getting tired of her Monday night salsa-boxing class.
She typed in her password on the computer and listened to the modem’s chipper little song.
Laura’s e-mail, entitled “Great asses of civilization,” said the following:
“What you need, Annie Hollerman, is a man with a good ass. And I have just the one, I’m watching it as we speak. But there’s more to him than that. Trust me on this one. And stop scrunching your face up. You’ll get even more wrinkles. Really, sweetie, this guy is fabulous. He’s smart, funny, screams across the news-room, ‘Hey, Goodbread, are we gonna edit this fucking story or not?’ AND…. he actually improves my brilliant copy on occasion. You know there aren’t many people I willingly let fondle my words. This guy’s good. He’s divorced, has a grown son and the gossip around here is that his heart’s been tromped by a woman meaner than Cruella DeVille. He needs you. But more to the point, YOU NEED HIM, you just don’t know it. It’s time to get past this journalist bullshit. Andrew was an immature little ass-hole. Jack, on the other hand, is a mature asshole (only when he cuts my copy), so why would he care about something you did when you were a kid?
“Besides, he’s kinda cute. Looks like Richard Dreyfuss or Steven Spielberg, one of those gray-haired bearded guys. I know I promised I’d never try to fix you up again. But you didn’t really believe that did you? Please go out with him as a personal favor to me. And to Becky. I swear this is the last fix-up from me if you do it. We all want to see you happy.
“xoxo Laura
“P.S. It’s too late to say no. I already gave him your e-mail address and told him you couldn’t wait to hear from him.”
CHAPTER 3
Jack DePaul eyed Laura suspiciously. “Goodbread, I know your tricks; you’re trying to divert me. You know exactly why I’m here. It’s City That Reads time and guess whose turn it is to cover it?”
He paused, then said, “What do you mean, ‘Do I have the woman for you’?”
“You asked me if I know anyone you could meet. Remember? It was just last week. Early Alzheimer’s is a terrible tragedy, Jack.”
“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten… about Alzheimer’s. So, who’s the woman?”
“Her name is Annie Hollerman. She’s a literary agent in D.C. She’s great. She’s smart and funny and has fiery red hair that goes down the middle of her back. She got divorced a couple years ago from the world’s most exacting and unpleasant man. I told her about you and she said she was very interested. By the way, she’s my best friend. If you mess with her I’ll break every one of your appendages—and your glasses.”
“Mess with her, or mess around with her?” said Jack, leering. “You know what I mean, buster.”
“She said she was interested in me?” asked Jack, the bantering tone suddenly absent. “What did you say about me?”
“I said you were nice—for a slime-sucking editor type.”
“Laura!” exclaimed Jack. His horror was unfeigned. He knew Laura’s general position on the subject of editors.
“Oh, relax, Jack. I just told her who you were and what you did. And she said she couldn’t wait to meet you. So e-mail her right away. Right now, this very morning. She’s waiting to hear from you.”
“Did you really say I was nice?”
“Do I really have to cover the City That Reads festival?”
CHAPTER 4
It wasn’t until 3:45 that afternoon that Jack DePaul summoned up the courage to send Annie the following e-mail:
“Annie,
“Laura Goodbread tells me you’re fabulous. I trust her in these matters, she is a very careful reporter. If you, too, trust her in these matters, would you care to meet for lunch? I know this e-mail stuff is pretty impersonal, but it’s also less embarrassing if you just want to say no. In any event, I’ll now have to read the authors you represent to show you what a great guy I am.
“Jack DePaul”
Laura had called Annie three more times that day, asking if she’d gotten anything from Jack. Finally, on the fourth call at 5:30, Annie reported that indeed she had gotten something from a [email protected].
He was funny, Annie gave him that. But what would she tell him when they got to the résumé part of the lunch? She couldn’t tell him everything. With other dates, it was easy. She’d say, “I used to be a reporter,” and they’d smile and move on to another subject—themselves. But a fellow journalist would want to play Journalist Geography: Where, when, who owned the chain, and why’d you leave the calling?
What to do? A polite no, or should she take a chance?
The nagging voice in her head started again. But then she thought about Monday night salsa boxing. Plus, it had been more than eight months since she’d gone on a date. And worse, her underwear was getting tattered and she didn’t even care.
She hit the reply box in jdepaul’s e-mail and a blank form appeared. She put her fingers to the keyboard, but they didn’t move. Should I answer him? Maybe I’ll just lie, never mention I was a reporter. He doesn’t have to know every minute of my life.
It wouldn’t actually be a lie, more like an omission. Hell, it’s lunch, not an interrogation. Maybe it won’t even come up. Where’s the damn J key anyway? For that matter, where is the A, or the C, or the K?
Her hands poised over the keyboard. Should I, shouldn’t I? Twenty years ago, her fingers had hesitated the same way over the send button. One push of her finger had sent a story to her editor, a story that changed her life.
Should I, shouldn’t I?
Her index finger found the J key.
“Jack,
“Yes, I trust Laura about most things. And yes, you must read my authors. I suggest starting with ‘Confessions of a She-Devil.’ Would you like to call to make arrangements?
“Annie”
To which Jack replied:
“I will read ‘She-Devil.’ Why don’t we make arrangements this way: I like the notion of meeting you sight/sound unseen/unheard. It’ll force us to set up a rendezvous involving black fedoras or pink carnations in the lapel and secret passwords. Don’t sit down to lunch with anyone who doesn’t say: ‘There are storm clouds over Lisbon.’
“Jack”
Sight/sound unseen/unheard. He was a romantic. Annie liked that. She replied:
“Jack,
“There are many wonderful things about being in my 40s, one of them is not memory. So if a woman with red hair comes up to you and says in a fake cockney, ‘The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plain,’ do not call the police; all she could remember of the passwords is that they had something to do with weather in Europe. If you want to make Laura a fulfilled person, lead this woman to a table and order lunch. If you’re curious to see what I look like, you can check my agency’s web page.
“Annie”
Within minutes of receiving her e-mail, Jack DePaul wrote back.
“Annie,
“Alright then, meet me Wednesday at Donna’s at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 12:30. You’ll know me in this way: I’m of average height, maybe on the short side. Short brown beard and hair shot through with white. People say I look like Steven Spielberg. I’ll be wearing the newspaper editor’s uniform: tie undone, sleeves rolled up, cheap sport coat slung over a shoulder. Friendly smile, wary eyes. I’ll say: ‘If you’re not Annie Hollerman, this is very embarrassing.’
“I haven’t visited your web page yet. I probably won’t before we meet. Why have preconceptions? Though, truth is, I already have at least one: this will be fun.
“Jack”
“Hey, DePaul.”
Jack, startled, looked up from his screen a little guiltily. Standing by his desk was the regal figure of Kathleen Faulkner. She was carrying a black briefcase in one hand and a gray jacket in the other.
“I’m heading out a little early today. Wondered if you had thought any more about that Washington lobbyist story.”
He appraised her coolly. She looked down at him with brown eyes that hinted at absolutely nothing.
“I want it for next Sunday,” said Jack. “But it’s going to take some work. The concept of illuminating details hasn’t made it to the D.C. bureau yet. And you know my feeling about illuminating details.” He curbed his desire to glance ostentatiously at Kathleen’s ring finger.
“That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Jack—you know what you want.” She said this with a slight smile. “I wish I could be so certain.” She placed her coat across the briefcase and, as she moved past him toward the exit, touched him lightly on the shoulder with her free hand.
“I’ll ship the story over tomorrow,” she said. “By the way, Alex Beyard called. He’s not going to this year’s management conference. His paper’s cutting back on trips, and everything else. He couldn’t believe the Star-News was still sending us all. Anyway, have a good evening.” Kathleen walked briskly away.
CHAPTER 5
Jack stared at Kathleen Faulkner’s back as if trying to read hieroglyphics. What the hell was that all about? It had been six months of peaceful nothing. Now this sudden bit of ominous innocence.
Three days ago, she had offered him a piece from the Washington bureau. A day later she had e-mailed him: “Need to talk to you about the lobbyist story and other things.” From anyone else, it would have been completely normal newsroom business. But this was how it always started and restarted with Kathleen, when she wanted to worm her way back into his life.