The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Gerald followed his father into the library, one of the four rooms that overlooked the Central Park reservoir. Oddly, at least to Gerald, his father had situated the desk at the window, with his chair behind it so that he sat with his back to the splendid view. For a moment, Gerald thought of T. S. Eliot and his desk—resolutely facing the blank wall. But Senior was no poet. Ever the devoted reader, Senior had once explained that the western light over his shoulder best helped him peruse a manuscript. Gerald took the seat opposite him and decided to lead with his strongest punch.

  “So, do you think as highly of The Duplicity of Men as I do?” Gerald asked, stopping himself from grabbing at his cuffs. He forced his hands to lay in his lap and looked across the desk at his father, backlit by the glare of the setting sun.

  “Of course I do. It’s a wonderful book. A truly wonderful book. You should be proud of it. I only wish your mother could—”

  Somewhere, at the other end of the apartment in a room that faced east, Gerald knew his mother continued to deteriorate. Alzheimer’s had stricken early and hard, and she hadn’t recognized any of them for more than a decade. The joy that his parents had shared in reading and talking and long consultations over the Times crossword puzzle had long ago dissolved, along with her frontal lobe. Senior must have cared very deeply for the book for him to even mention her.

  “It’s a shame the author is dead. It could still be nominated for the Tagiter, but winning would be a long shot. I think it could be a National Book Award winner, but I believe to be nominated it has to be a living author.”

  Gerald had forgotten that, then wondered briefly about whether the rule actually meant only contemporary authors were eligible. The O’Neal woman was so recently dead as to make a posthumous award possible, wasn’t it? Gerald couldn’t help but smile. The National Book Award. Senior thought it was worthy indeed, and Senior was no fool. Plus, he still had connections. Just getting a nomination would help with sales, not to mention selling the paperback rights, along with increasing Gerald’s status and credibility this difficult year.

  “Couldn’t we see if that stipulation could be waived in this case? She isn’t, after all, long dead.”

  Senior’s face tightened. “Dead is dead, Gerald,” Senior said. “It’s binary. Length of time dead is no factor at all.” Gerald felt as if he had been set up to be chastised. He’d acquire the book. He had to, or face his father’s contempt. He’d tell Pam she had to buy it, though she’d had difficulties of some type with the author’s mother. Senior turned to the other corner of his desk and slid over what Gerald recognized, with a sinking feeling, as his own manuscript. He wasn’t surprised; he didn’t expect his father to like it. He’d listen to the lecture, try not to look like a whipped schoolboy, and then life would go on.

  Senior leaned forward, his shoulders hunched against the light, his white hair haloed by it. “Gerald, we must talk about your book. There is no way I can allow you to publish this. It’s a monstrosity. Whatever possessed you? It was one thing to allow that disgusting, tasteless, psychotic book by Chad Weston into the house. But he was your author. His first book had shown some promise. There was a contract. A moral dilemma. I think you should have turned it down, Gerald, but I understand why you didn’t.” Gerald tried not to flush, wondered if his father had read the Horace Bent column, and if he’d secretly enjoyed the David Morton fiasco. “But this book, Gerald. A family tragedy recycled and transposed into tabloid trash? It will shame you, the family, and the house. Publishing doesn’t need any more irrelevant tell-alls. You cannot publish it. If a Davis has to do that sort of thing, leave it to Patti.” He shrugged in distaste. “Next you’ll be doing sequels!” Senior shook his head. “Sequels, prequels! Disgusting! The shameless Larry Ashmead came out with Cosette. Can you imagine? A sequel to Les Miserables? What’s next? The Penultimate Mohican? Would Salinger’s estate sell Catcher in the Pumpernickel?”

  Gerald tried not to visibly squirm. He was actually considering a sequel right now. Not that he was alone. Partly inspired by the huge success of Scarlett, the Alexandra Ripley follow-up to Gone with the Wind, publishers and agents had signed up authors to write continuations of everything from Star Trek to the novels of Jane Austen. Recently, Vagrius, one of Russia’s most respectable publishing houses, had signed an author to write a sequel to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Would it be called Truce? Gerald wondered.

  Despite his resolution, Gerald shot his cuffs and blinked. He had been prepared for disapproval but not for this blanket contempt, nor the restrictive command. Senior had overstepped himself. Was he prohibiting publication as Gerald’s father or as the past chairman of the firm? Did he refer to the SchizoBoy scandal because he would talk with David Morton or simply to humiliate his son and heir? In either case, Senior had no real power to stop the presses. Still, despite his anger, Gerald felt his stomach drop and the empty place fill with a frightening hollowness. “I think you might be overreacting,” he said. “First of all, this is fiction. Secondly, any events that might have inspired me happened nearly fifty years ago.” Gerald thought of his mother. “Those who might care won’t remember, and those who might remember won’t care.”

  “I beg to differ with you,” Senior said coldly. “Your uncle is still alive, and so, I believe, is Mrs. Halliday. Not to mention those left in my circle of friends.” Senior shook his head, sending rays of fading light into Gerald’s eyes. “What in the world would possess you to rattle this skeleton? It reflects badly on everyone. The only possible advantage is that it might make you a few ducats. But surely, Gerald, you can’t possibly be thinking the book has any merit or that any merit would be reflected on you. What could you have been thinking? It’s never going to make Harold Bloom’s Canon.”

  Gerald squinted and turned away. The sunset was hurting his eyes, and he couldn’t see his father’s face. In the room around him, beautifully bound books and first editions stood on mahogany shelves next to his father’s Chinese porcelains. The carpet was a precious silk Tabriz, a campestral pattern that, though worn, was still magnificent. The furniture was American Hepplewhite, all museum-quality. His father had bought this sumptuous twelve-room apartment—complete with three working fireplaces and three maid’s rooms—for ninety thousand dollars almost forty years ago. Today Gerald was barely managing the mortgage on his apartment—half the size—at twenty times the price, and there was no Tabriz on his floor. His first wife had their rug collection, his second wife most of the paintings, and both had better addresses than he did. How dare his father sound so contemptuous about “making a few ducats.” All of Senior’s needs had been taken care of perfectly for decades. No, Gerald corrected himself, for Senior’s whole life.

  For a moment, Gerald felt tremendous self-pity. It had been so hard to find a legitimate place for himself in the world his father had created, a world his father had both inherited and expanded during a time when there were no inheritance taxes, when income tax was nominal, when a million dollars was a lot of money. In those days you could buy an original Philadelphia highboy for a few thousand dollars. Now a few hundred thousand wouldn’t guarantee it at a Christie’s auction.

  Gerald looked around at the immaculately beautiful room. It had been his privilege to grow up here, disciplined by his father and ignored by his mother, but it wasn’t his fate to get a room like this of his own. Or the respect his father had gotten. Or the autonomy. His father had sold out his birthright and now despised him, Gerald, for surviving as best he could.

  There was no way he could not publish the book. Senior was mad. It was on the list, about to be featured with a two-page spread in the catalog, and Gerald would receive the acceptance check in a matter of days. For a moment Gerald thought about changes that could be made to the galleys; but that, too, was madness. He looked across the desk, directly into the sunset, and squinted again. Just as well. There was no need for Senior to see what was in his son’s eyes.

  “Well,” Gerald said. “I hear your point of view. Stephanie a
nd I have a dinner this evening.” He rose, though he hadn’t yet been dismissed, and walked to the door. Let his father think what he wanted; that his word was still law, that the publishing world as a whole—and his son in particular—trembled when he spoke. The fact was, Gerald was trembling, but more from rage than from fear.

  Senior was up and across the room with him. The old man was surprisingly spry. He’d live forever, and if he didn’t, his wife would. With his sisters still alive, Gerald knew he’d inherit nothing but the valuable first editions anyway. He glanced once more at the perfect room and turned to leave it. His father followed him into the gallery. Never a bright space, it was dim now, lit only by the smear of bright sunlight that poured from the library’s open door. Gerald stepped out of the light and strode the long, dark walk to the elevator. He was determined to say nothing, nothing at all. But his father broke the silence.

  “By the way, Gerald, I really like that little Italian book. It has a je ne sais quoi, a certain charm.”

  My God, Gerald thought. Now he’s reading manuscripts I haven’t even gotten to! It was ridiculously insulting. His father was muttering on. “I know the business has changed, that there’s no visible market for a book like this, but I think that its optimism, humor, and wisdom might have a broad comfort and appeal. Anyway, at least it’s literate. You could do a whole lot worse.”

  “Yes. I understand. You’ve already told me I have,” Gerald said icily. He pressed the button for the elevator while he and his father stood together in the wide and empty entrance gallery.

  44

  Everyone needs an editor.

  —Tim Foote

  Camilla lay on the bed that Frederick had deserted. She hadn’t moved since he’d told her that he couldn’t undertake a relationship right now and it was wrong of him to try. Though it was a warm afternoon, Camilla felt so cold that her body trembled and her teeth chattered. Every part of her seemed to hurt, except her eyes. They roved, taking comfort in the view out the window, in the Canaletto reproduction over her desk, and in the still life that her vase full of pinks and oranges made. But her brain wasn’t really making sense of what her eyes took in. She was shattered. To have been held so closely, loved so deeply, and then discarded was more than she could bear.

  After their coupling, Frederick had told her all about macular degeneration. She’d never heard of it, but he had haltingly explained that it was a leading cause of central-vision loss. He still had some peripheral sight, but he was rapidly going blind. Most people who developed the illness didn’t begin to lose vision until their late fifties or sixties, but for some reason Frederick’s eye problems had begun early. He’d made this trip to Italy as a kind of visual good-bye—the rate of degeneration had been increasing lately—and he’d needed his mother to assist him.

  Going blind! It was such a tragedy. Yet it didn’t give Frederick the right to sleep with her and discard her! She felt sorry for herself, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t also feel pity for Frederick Ashton. How wretched he must feel. But that was no excuse for his behavior. He had used her, deceived her, and then rejected her. It was the last straw—her back was broken and she could no longer bear her burden of loneliness and self-care. She’d lie in bed for a long time. Then she’d return to Birmingham. She’d been a fool to think she could ever escape.

  For what else could she do? This guide job would take her nowhere. She had no life, no community of friends here. She’d seen that before Frederick’s arrival, and only more clearly since. The affair with Gianfranco had been hurtful and ill-advised; now this misadventure with Frederick had ended everything. Even this room in this beautiful city had become dangerous. The only thing left was to go back to the drabness she had come from. The thought was unbearable, and, worse, Camilla could barely imagine a step beyond her defeated return to her mother’s flat. She could go to ground there for a while, live on high tea of beans or canned spaghetti on toast and an egg, return to her childhood survival ploys of visits to the library and the Birmingham Museum, but then what? Beg Sister Agnus for a teaching job? Visit her “patroness,” Lady Ann, and be patronized? Never. Camilla’s tears turned bitter.

  Perhaps the worst part of it all had been how very good it had felt to be in Frederick’s arms. Ah, the comfort of touch, of skin on skin, and the human need for congress. He’d been a wonderful lover, far better than anyone she’d ever slept with. Bastard! He had opened up that need, that female side that now, once again, would have to go begging.

  In bed with him, after she had recovered from her mute surprise at his disclosure, she managed to ask him to leave. He’d seemed shocked by that. Whatever had he expected? He had apologized over and over again, but that was hardly the point. Only several hours after he had left did it occur to Camilla that he may have needed help getting back to his hotel in the dark. He’d been horrid, but she supposed she had, too.

  Why had Frederick assumed she was so negligible? Was being a guide the same as wearing a signpost: “I’m here to help”? Was it because he was from a patrician class, used to being serviced? Camilla’s eyes teared up. How could she have let herself believe that a normal, able-bodied, well-off, healthy man from a good family would pursue her in a serious way? How had she let herself think that? “Her kind,” as her mother had put it, was sought after merely as a mistress, a nurse, a paid—or in this case unpaid—companion, a guide, a governess. Weren’t these the only roles suitable for nineteenth-century women who had been educated beyond their station? Things hadn’t changed for women like her in a hundred years.

  Finally she was cried out. Camilla could almost imagine herself lying under the high flaking ceiling until she ceased to exist. But life, more’s the pity, didn’t work that way. She was not Lily Bart, and this was not The House of Mirth. Unfortunately, those women with the taste and desire to live amidst beauty who didn’t have the wherewithal to do so didn’t just tragically expire nowadays, as they did in Edith Wharton’s time. They soldiered on, usually at some nasty job of work. Camilla admitted defeat. She couldn’t look forward to the future—a job in a High Street bookshop, or whatever was next on the agenda—but she would move on to it because she had no choice. Slowly, and only because she had to, she rose.

  She looked around the room and sighed. What she needed was a removal man. How had she collected so much flotsam? Packing up would be a trial. She would have to either get more cartons or buy another suitcase. She could go to the straw market tomorrow and see if there was something decent Emilio would give her at a knocked-down price, since she’d sent so many visitors to him. She’d never taken a kickback or a percentage, just as she had refused to drag trusting tourists through a “tour” of cameo factories or other rubbish, even though owners had offered her significant bribes to do it. So she could only afford a cheap case. That was her in a nutshell—a cheap case. She was, as usual, short of cash, but if she left in two weeks, she needn’t pay any more on her room, and she could sell the little clock Gianfranco had given her. It was the only valuable thing she had. She stood up and took the clock off her table, wrapped it in newspaper, and put it in her purse.

  It was then she saw the envelope, lying on the floor half under her door. Frederick had already sent one note—almost illegibly written—full of apology and pain. He had asked to see her again—just as a friend—and she had not responded. She couldn’t. She was far too shy to tell him how she felt, and far too honest to lie. She kicked this new note across the floor—she didn’t need to decipher another one. Apparently, in the five days since their night together, he had neither left Florence nor quite given up. For a moment, Camilla was tempted to kick the note back under the door, or to pick it up, and, unopened, tear it into a thousand tiny pieces that she could sprinkle out the window as her confetti arrivederci to Firenze. But she couldn’t quite manage to do it. Ah, that was her problem. She was weak. What can I possibly be hoping for, she asked herself? She took the envelope over to her desk.

  It was, as she knew it must be, from t
he Helvetia & Bristol. But once she opened that envelope, there was another enclosed. Confused for a moment, Camilla looked at the printed return address and the postmark. Davis & Dash, New York, New York. Had Frederick returned to New York and written her already? But the envelope was addressed to him in Florence and the seal already torn. She pulled out the one-page letter inside.

  Dear Frederick,

  Mother told me you had remained behind in Italy, and I hope you’re doing well. Can you manage? How are you reading this? Anyway, in hopes that you have some help, I’m writing to tell you that while architecture is out of the question for you now, you seem to have a pretty good nose for literature. An alternate career, perhaps? I truly enjoyed the Camilla Clapfish manuscript. I think a lot of other readers will as well. I won’t go into all the gory (and they are) details, but I’m almost certain we will make your writer an offer. I suspect it won’t be much—twenty thousand dollars or so, but a first novel is not usually a good bet and this is probably the best we can do. Needless to say, Ms. Clapfish is free to go elsewhere, but we would like to hear from her as soon as possible should she be willing to accept our terms.

  Entre nous, I should say that an agent has read the manuscript and is willing to represent her with us or elsewhere. The agent is certain of a sale. If Ms. Clapfish can possibly come to NYC, it would also aid in the process. Needless to say, it’s a bit of a conflict of interest for me to recommend this, but Alex Simmons is an aggressive young literary rep and truly enthusiastic about the book. If Ms. Clapfish does decide to contact her, just have her promise that she will never mention at D & D that the recommendation came from me. I do this only because Mother led me to believe you had a personal interest in the author. Way to go, bro.