Until I Met Her (The Emma Fern Series Book 1)

by Natalie Barelli

  “I’m sorry, I’m going to stop you there a moment. Your previous books? I was under the impression this was your first novel. But crime fiction, did you say?”

  It was as if I had been turned and turned around and released and the world was spinning and I’d lost my balance. What had I said? Did I really get so confused that I’d started to speak as Beatrice rather than myself? My heart was beating, and I felt sweat pearling on my forehead. I stared at Gusek, still as a statue. He was waiting for me to go on, but his eyes registered something of my confusion.

  “I’m sorry, I interrupted you,” he said. “Please go on.”

  “No, that’s fine,” I replied, determined now to repair the damage and regain control. “It’s just that this is my first published novel, you see, but there are a few half-finished others languishing in the drawers of my desk, hardly unusual for a writer, but yes—I completely changed my own writing direction in Long Grass Running. As I said just now, I wanted to try something different, unconventional, and I figured, why not, since no one will publish me anyway.” I laughed.

  “Well, that change of direction certainly paid off.”

  “You know, Michael, I completely agree with you.” We both laughed.

  We chatted some more about the characters and the settings. I felt fine now, just. I figured that it would make more sense anyway if I already had a body of work, and if it were unfinished and unpublished, all the better. Because let’s face it, it would border on the unlikely to lay down a work of the caliber and originality of Long Grass Running on a first try.

  When we wrapped it up, we had gone over the allotted time. They’d planned to follow my interview with a long-ago-recorded filler of some kind for the second half of the book-review part of the show. The producer who had pulled strings as a favor to Frankie had been quite happy to keep it as short as possible. But in the end, they didn’t use it. They let me stay on for the duration instead.

  “Well done,” Gusek said, as he stood to shake my hand goodbye. “You know, I think I might even read the book,” he added with a smile.

  I was ecstatic.

  Frankie was waiting for me in the outer part of the studio, behind a pane of glass. I glanced at him, and he made a gesture to indicate we should meet outside. I felt lightheaded, exhausted, and dizzy with relief, my cheeks burning with pleasure. My face was frozen in place, bright red with a wide grin that I couldn’t control no matter how much I wanted to, and when I saw Frankie in the corridor outside, he looked almost as happy as me. We didn’t say a word, just walked side by side to the exit, like two children giddy with a secret, hurrying to be by ourselves so that we could dissect this thing that had just happened.

  When the doors of the elevator closed behind us and we were alone, Frankie pumped the air with his fist and I burst out laughing.

  “It was good, right?” I said, jumping a little on the spot.

  “Are you kidding? It was fantastic! You were fantastic!” He turned and grabbed me by the shoulders as he said it and I wrapped my arms around him. We hugged hard, laughing, and jumped with joy some more.

  “What now?” I said.

  “Let’s get a drink,” he replied.

  “Now? It’s not even noon yet!”

  “I don’t care, I need a drink, and you’re having one too.” He put his arm around my shoulders and I put mine around his waist, and we walked down the street, and I loved him. He was with me, all the way. He was my friend, he had made this possible for me, and he was proud of me, happy for me and with me, and we were doing this thing together.

  He took me to a bar around the corner and we sat on plush couches in a large, elegant room with frescoed cornices and a long semicircular bar against a wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. I thought it was perfect. I picked up the lunch menu from the small round table and Frankie asked the waiter for a bottle of champagne.

  We went over the interview, repeating certain particularly clever or interesting moments to each other, and Frankie said, “I didn’t know you were this funny, Em. How come I didn’t know that?”

  “What do you mean, funny?”

  “You know what I mean. You made Michael laugh out loud, and he’s a fairly serious guy. But it was so great; it was interesting and entertaining at the same time.”

  “I hope I didn’t screw it up, then. It’s not a funny book,” I said.

  “Oh, stop it.” He slapped my knee gently. “You know you nailed it. Don’t be so coy.” I smiled, and he paused for a few seconds before adding, “We’ll be seeing some good sales from this, you know, and not just from the people who listened this morning. People will talk; download the program. This is great.”

  I was thinking of what Frankie had just said about my being funny. I didn’t let on, but I was a little hurt by his comment. Did he mean to imply that up until that point he’d thought I was dull? But in truth I knew exactly what he meant, and it made me reflect on who I’d become over the last few years, as if looking at myself from the outside. I used to be funny—that is to say, I used to be comfortable enough in my skin to be spontaneous. But somehow, sliver by sliver, life had chipped away at that easy self-confidence, so that now I was always careful, walking on eggshells, to the point that this acquired self-censorship had grown into a second skin over me.

  But apparently the small flame had not been irrevocably snuffed out, and my old self had sprung out ready and whole. I felt great about myself.

  “Do you think that about me?” I asked.

  “Think what?”

  “That I’m dull? You said just now that you didn’t know I could be funny or something.” I didn’t say this with any trace of resentment, and I wasn’t trying to confront Frankie about it, but I genuinely wanted to know, and since an easy friendship seemed to have materialized between us almost instantaneously, I thought I could ask him that. And anyway, I didn’t want to pack the old Emma away just yet, the one who spoke her mind without hesitation.

  “I never thought about it,” he replied, “but no, I couldn’t possibly have thought of you as dull, not after reading that manuscript.” He smiled warmly. I could have been disappointed by that answer for obvious reasons, but I was gratified by it, without fully understanding why. “But you’re a dark horse. What’s this about crime novels gathering dust in the attic? You need to bring them out into the fresh air, Em—to me, I mean. I’ll dust them off, don’t you worry.”

  “They need a lot more work before they’re ready to see the sun, but yes, you’ll be the first to see them, when I’m ready.”

  He rubbed his hands together in mock anticipation. I hadn’t gone back in my mind yet to that moment when I’d literally confused myself with Beatrice, and I shuddered a little at the thought. Just as I was wondering what she would make of that, I remembered I hadn’t turned my cell phone back on, and I reached for it now to see whether I’d missed any calls or messages.

  There was no word from Jim. I wondered whether he’d heard the program; he’d promised he would listen, but who knows, he’d probably forgotten. There was, however, a voice mail from Beatrice.

  “Hello, darling, not bad, not bad at all. Call me when you get this, please?” I’d expected a little more gushing, so I ignored it, put the phone back in my handbag, and helped myself to another glass of bubbly.

  We spent the next hour making exciting plans for more publicity, and each time Frankie brought up numbers and sales that seemed in the realm of the fantastic to me, I hushed him, at one point going as far as putting my hand over his mouth as he continued to talk nonsense through it, and we laughed. It was wonderful.

  The brightness of the day made my eyes water when we left the bar, and Frankie put me in a taxi, but instead of going home I decided to go to Beatrice’s apartment instead, on the spur of the moment.

  “Darling Emma, congratulations,” she greeted me, as warmly as ever, and planted a kiss on each cheek.

  “Not bad, hey?” I said, dropping my bag on the narrow table in the hall. I hooked my arm through
hers and we walked down the corridor.

  “Not bad at all,” she replied, tapping my arm gently with her hand, but I sensed a slight reluctance in her gesture, as if she were going through the motions only because she had decided to do so.

  “Is everything all right?” We sat down.

  “Everything’s wonderful, but I must say . . .” She hesitated. So there was something after all.

  “Yes?”

  “I thought we’d decided on that other passage,” she said, finally.

  I shrugged. “I just went with the moment. It felt right to read that one. Does it matter?”

  She shook her head. “No, not at all.” But I wondered whether she was disappointed. I had hoped she’d be pleased, impressed even, and would agree with me that it was a good choice after all.

  I let it go. “I’m glad,” I said, leaning forward and putting my hand on her knee so she would look at me, “because I really appreciate the trust you’ve put in me, and I intend to do my very best to live up to it. I want to make you proud, I really do, Beatrice.”

  She smiled, took my hand into her own, and nodded. “I know you do, and I’m thrilled with how it went today, I really am. You did a brilliant job, darling.”

  “I did, didn’t I!” I exclaimed happily, clapping my hands once, like a child. I gave Beatrice a recap of what Frankie and I had discussed earlier, analyzing everything. I’d almost forgotten about my little slip-up when she said, “So what was that about? That business about your earlier books and all that?”

  “I thought of it on the spur of the moment,” I said. “Let’s face it, the novel’s structure is fairly complex; the whole thing is really accomplished. Was anyone really going to buy it? That I could pull something like that out of thin air? On a first try? And I have been writing, you know that.”

  She looked at me, her head slightly tilted, one corner of her mouth raised in a kind of amused condescension.

  I continued, undeterred. “So it made sense, right? To draw on my own experience. Isn’t that what they say? To make a lie as believable as possible, keep it as close to the truth as it can be? So to say that this novel is unlike anything I have written before injected a sort of truth in the proceedings; that’s what I thought.”

  She shot her head back and burst out laughing. “Emma, my dear, that’s so clever of you! But the crime fiction part? That could get confusing, you know. You’ll be asked about this again.”

  “Like I said, stick to the truth as closely as possible.” And we both laughed.

  “Well, since imitation is the best form of flattery, I’m all for it,” she said warmly.

  But I thought back to that moment when Gusek had stopped short my ravings about my process as a crime fiction writer, and I knew I hadn’t meant to imitate her. I hadn’t meant to pretend I was talking about my own body of work, obviously. No, it was more complicated than that: in that moment back there, I’d forgotten that I wasn’t her.

  She gave me a couple of notes, as she called it, but I was barely paying attention. I just wanted to go home. I’d done great; I knew that. I was excited and I wanted to see Jim, to hear what he thought. I couldn’t wait to hear the pride in his voice.

  17

  It was nagging at me, this thing, this slight annoyance I felt toward her. It was creeping under the surface of my skin like an itch. She could have been more appreciative. I’d done a good job out there. I’d chosen a good passage to read, better than what she’d suggested, and anyway, it was up to me now, surely. I replayed in my mind the moment when she asked about my slip-up—except she didn’t know it was a slip-up, of course. Was she annoyed that I’d put myself out there as a crime writer, or a potential one anyway? I tried to remember her tone, her eyes. She was all right about it once I’d explained; that was the main thing.

  On the way home, I decided I was going to sit down right away and work on my own novel. I was going to need a follow-up to this, we had both agreed, and the sooner the better.

  If I started now, then by the time the circus of Long Grass Running had left town—which is to say when the publicity opportunities had dried up and the sales started to dwindle—I’d be ready. Beatrice herself had pointed out early on that it would be so much easier the second time around. I wouldn’t be a first-time author anymore.

  I had my own little study at home—more of a nook, really—that extended from our bedroom upstairs, but I’d never used it. I’d meant it to be a space for me to catch up on paperwork when I was away from the store, but I did most of that sort of thing at work, and if I really needed to go over orders or invoices, I did that from my laptop at the kitchen table. It was all computerized; I didn’t even own a filing cabinet.

  But I now had a dedicated desk where I could spread out my index cards and my notes—only the last part of writing should be on a screen, I had decided. All the work that came before needed to be tangible for my brain to make sense of it. And I’d purchased a small stack of beautiful notebooks, bound in soft velvety leather, the ruled pages just waiting for my unwritten stories. I’d upgraded my laptop, and traded my small modern desk for a beautiful model that I sold in the store. It was made from reclaimed hardwood and had a variety of grains and patinas, with thin legs that tapered at the bottom.

  I sat down, all ready to go, and spent the next half hour organizing my nook. I could use a large corkboard too, I decided. I could pin tidbits of ideas and inspirational quotes on it.

  Jim was still at the office, so I had an opportunity to work uninterrupted, although considering how much time he spent in his own study, it wouldn’t have made much difference if he were here. He had seen me hunched over my laptop for hours at a time, typing frantically what he thought was my first novel as if guided by divine inspiration, without needing to pause for reflection, so this time it was better to get started without him around. He’d have made me feel self-conscious. And, anyway, I was feeling a little miffed that he still hadn’t called to congratulate me on the interview.

  There was nothing languishing, gathering dust in drawers, for me to pull up and revisit. Obviously, I’d long since thrown away the few scraps of ideas from years ago, and I couldn’t possibly start on the story that Beatrice had so thoroughly dismissed—just the thought of those lines of red ink made me cringe—so I set out to write something brand new. Something fresh—yes, that was it, something exciting.

  I opened the first notebook to the first blank page and cleared my thoughts, willing myself into a state of inspiration.

  Two hours later, I had written approximately half a page of notes, all of which I’d subsequently crossed out, so this was going to take more time than I’d thought. I’d been sure when I first sat down that a novel would spring forth on the page, whole and perfectly formed, as if it were simply a matter of taking dictation from an unknown source, so when no such thing happened in the first half hour, I’d decided to take a more pragmatic approach and write a storyline in one or two sentences. Some of those scribbled attempts were ridiculously close to the plot of Long Grass Running, and everything else I’d come up with—all two ideas—had come across as insipid and ordinary when I read them back to myself.

  I told myself that it was silly for me to attempt this now, after everything that had happened today, with my mind understandably bloated with Beatrice’s novel, so it was with a somewhat guilty relief that I heard the door open downstairs and Jim walk in.

  “Hello! Anyone home?” he sang out.

  “Coming down!” I closed the notebook and the laptop—not much point in keeping going—and joined him downstairs.

  “Sweetheart, there you are! How did it go?” He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his arms open in greeting and a happy expression on his face, holding a bottle of champagne with a big red bow. “How’s my favorite author?”

  I jumped from the bottom step, threw my arms around his neck, and laughed in his hair. “It was great! Did you hear it? What did you think?”

  “Not yet, but Jenny came in to tell
me all about it.”

  “Jenny? From Admin?”

  “Yep, everyone heard it down there, and I’m told you were terrific! Here, let’s celebrate!” He lifted the bottle, and we walked together arm in arm into the kitchen.

  “Well, I wasn’t bad, even if I do say so myself.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze and I knew I’d be able to write the next day. It would be fine. One should always write when one is happy, I decided. It was so simple: how we judge the work we do is bound to be affected by how we feel about ourselves, by our mood. That little tinge of annoyance I’d felt toward Beatrice had stolen the afternoon from me. I needed to be careful not to let these things get to me.

  Days later I was still walking on air, thinking about my interview with Gusek. I had been transformed from the reluctant, accidental author into a confident, talented professional. I felt great. No, I felt fantastic. Beatrice started to take me shopping, to places I used to only dream about, in neighborhoods I’d never had any reason to visit, with price tags that once would have given me a coughing fit. “It’s my treat,” she would invariably say. It was embarrassing. “Let me, please. Think of it as an investment on my part. That’s what it is, after all,” Beatrice would argue.

  It was amazing how quickly I got used to it. There was something about wearing soft fabrics elegantly draped on your body, and once I started, it became impossible to go back. I caught Jackie staring at me one day; one of those rare occasions when we both happened to be at the store.

  “What’s wrong? Do I have something on my face?”

  “No, it’s just, I don’t know, you look different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know, just different.”

  I wanted to say, Of course I do, I’m wearing hundreds of dollars’ worth of fashion. My haircut costs more than your handbag. But I didn’t, of course.