The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “I know, but I just thought you might have heard something. Like, through one of your many friends.” Emma didn’t like Pam’s tone, but then there were so many things about Pam that she didn’t like. “Anyway,” Pam continued, “call production about Gerald’s cover art, and make sure they don’t go ahead with Jack’s piece of shit.”

  Emma hung up, then sighed when the phone rang again. It might be Alex, but it also might be Jack Weinstock, ready to argue or to weep.

  The bar at the St. Regis was deliciously cool. Pam Mantiss sat in the midst of true luxury actually enjoying herself. Jude Daniel was really a very attractive man, in a professorial way, and he knew how to fence.

  “I understand your point,” he was saying. “But I’m not sure that I can completely agree. It’s a given that Elthea won’t be sympathetic to all readers. There’s no way. So why try and water down the character in the small hope of gaining a few more readers? Think of those we might lose. After all, she is a murderess. And not just a murderess, but a child-killer. And not just a child-killer—she’s killed her own children.” He paused. “Strange as it may sound, some people just won’t warm to a woman like that.”

  Pam laughed. “Yes, I know. But I have a child. And sometimes I feel I could kill him,” she admitted. “We all have that unspoken guilt we have to work against. Know what I mean?” Jude nodded. “You know, I actually think you do. That’s the insight that’s going to sell this book.”

  Jude smiled. “Well, I do have a daughter. But she doesn’t live with me.”

  “Oh, divorced, huh?” Pam paused. “Me, too.” This was getting interesting. She simply had to find a way to make him see her point of view, do the editorial changes, and then…well, she’d see. He was really rather attractive. Now, what could she use as an incentive? She crossed her legs, and in the coolness, her thighs slid one over the other. Her left leg touched his. Suddenly Pam got an enormous craving for a drink, though she’d absolutely forbidden herself booze at lunch. “Have you got a cigarette?” she asked.

  “I don’t smoke anymore,” he told her.

  “Not even after sex?” she asked. It was an obvious line, but she pulled it off.

  He smiled. “I never looked,” he told her, turning her come-on into that old joke. His smile warmed. “But I think I produce a sufficient amount of heat.”

  “I bet you do.” Pam lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “You know, I really loved the sex scenes you wrote, especially Elthea’s last fuck with the boyfriend. When she’s reduced to begging him for it.”

  “I worked a long time on that,” Jude said. “I wanted to be graphic but not pornographic. It was very hard.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Pam said with a leer. She knew what game they were playing now. God, she’d have to lose some weight! No way she could get on top of him—everything would jiggle.

  The waiter came over and asked if they wanted another round. Jude was having white wine, while she was only drinking Pellegrino, but the hell with that—she asked for a dry white. “And a cigarette,” she told the waiter, “if you can get me one.”

  “My pleasure,” he told her. Thank God they still allowed smoking in New York bars.

  The waiter left, and Pam realized there was still someone standing beside her. She looked up into the young but wasted face of Chad Weston. “Remember me?” he said.

  Oh, Christ. She didn’t need this now, not when she was wooing a new novelist. The Weston imbroglio was becoming a real liability. She glanced quickly at Jude Daniel, hoping he didn’t recognize the little yuppie prick. Thank God, Jude was out of the loop. He probably wouldn’t know anyone or anything. Still, she’d have to shut Chad up any way she could. “Did you get my message?” she asked.

  “What message? Don’t bullshit me, Pam. You haven’t called.”

  She widened her eyes as best she could. “Chad, I did call. And I put my career on the line for you.”

  “Yeah, and I’m Marie of Romania,” Chad said bitterly. “Will it be published?”

  “I give you my word,” Pam said.

  “If it isn’t, I walk.” Weston stood silent for a moment, then turned and walked away. It was as if he was too tired or beaten to fight.

  Well, it could have been worse. Pam looked at Jude and shrugged. “Another novelist,” she said. “I pushed the hell out of his first book, but his second book sucked. I bought it anyway, out of loyalty, but it went nowhere. Now he’s angry because there’s some concern about his third.” She shrugged again. “Nobody else liked the book but me,” she said honestly. “What can I do? I told him how to fix it, but he wouldn’t listen. Still, I’m fighting for him.” She sighed deeply as if with regret. Jude, she noticed, looked down at her chest when she heaved it. Oh, he was interested and scared.

  Pam loved mixing business with pleasure. It made both of them so much easier. She reached out and took Jude’s hand. “Listen,” she said, “I really love the book, and I want the best for it and you. It’s your book, and I’m not telling you what to do. I don’t work like that. It’s just that I want to see the widest acceptance, the widest possible readership. This book could be really big, but only if we get it right. And if we get it wrong, well…” She paused and gave the silence enough beats. Enough beats for the fear to set in. She shrugged, and as she did, her left breast brushed his right hand, just for the slightest moment. She let his other hand go. “Well,” she said, “I don’t have to tell you how tough the competition is or how many first novels fail.”

  Had his eyes widened? She couldn’t tell, but she did see his Adam’s apple move. He was really kind of sexy in a geeky Jewish way. And his hand had been sinewy, with long fingers. Pam narrowed her eyes and looked meaningfully at Jude Daniel. She was sure now that he’d make her revisions. She wondered about the size of his dick.

  Pam walked down the long hallway and stuck her head into Emma’s cubicle. She was feeling that feeling—tingling with energy—and she wished she was back with Jude Daniel instead of here. “Move it,” she said, though Emma had her head down and was clearly busy with some paperwork. “Come on.” Pam turned before Emma could answer and continued to her office, sailed past her secretary, and threw down her coat. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Snapple bottle just as Emma walked through the door. She didn’t offer her any.

  Pam sat down at her desk, swiveled the chair so she could get her feet up, and swigged at the iced tea. “Listen,” she said, “we have to sign that old bitch to a contract. We have to do it right a way.”

  “Which old bitch is that?” Emma asked.

  “The O’Neal woman, for chrissake. The O’Neal woman. GOD has taken a shine to her daughter’s fucking doorstop, and we’ve got to publish it. But I’ll be dipped in shit before I call her.”

  “You mean we can publish it as it stands? The whole thing?”

  “The whole fucking thing. If it doesn’t sell one fucking copy, I don’t want to hear about it.” Pam was afraid that Emma might be enjoying her discomfiture. That was all right; Pam had a perfect punishment for Emma. “And I really have to question your judgment about that little Italian book. You shouldn’t have passed on it. Somehow it got passed up to Gerald. Not only do I really like it, so does Gerald. Anyway, we’re going to stick it on the fall list, to fill in some of the holes. That means that you’ve got to edit it quickly.”

  “All right.” Emma, who usually had her feelings written all over her face, seemed surprisingly calm. Pam just shrugged and took a long sip of her iced tea. “Well, get to it.”

  Emma turned to leave. “Oh, and by the way,” Pam told her, “I’ll handle all the Jude Daniel stuff myself. I’ll leave the girls to you.”

  49

  Writers and readers are expected to kneel before the latest hardware gods.

  —Herbert Mitgang

  Judith looked down at the wrinkled, stained manuscript. It had a thick brown rubber band cinching its middle and what looked like hundreds of yellow Post-it notes blooming around its margins. The look of
it offended and upset her, as if somebody had drawn a mustache on or otherwise defaced a child. She leaned both elbows against the card table and put her head in her hands.

  “Oh come on, Judith,” Daniel said. “It’s not a tragedy; it’s only an editing job. You just need to go through the manuscript and fix it.”

  She had to fix it? Judith sat open-mouthed, struck dumb. That had never occurred to her. Wasn’t it enough that she had written it? Wasn’t it more than enough, now that Daniel had taken In Full Knowledge as his own? The lumpy typing chair was pushing into her back and thighs as if she weighed a thousand pounds. And the dust in the turret room seemed to be choking her. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak. What was happening to her? She tried to get a few breaths down into her empty lungs and realized Daniel was staring at her. She must be gaping like a fish, but she didn’t care.

  When she managed to breathe again, she spoke for the first time. “You’ve stolen the book,” she said. “You’ve stolen the book from me. And now you want me to fix it for you? It’s not enough that you’re taking all the credit? You also don’t want to do any of the work?” That had taken all of her air. She gasped. She couldn’t believe that she’d said her thoughts aloud. But all of this was making her feel crazy, absolutely crazy. Was she being unreasonable and oversensitive, or was he out of his mind? And if it was him, if it was Daniel who was crazy, how had she made the horrendous mistake of letting him become the only person in her life? She must be crazy. Though she had just turned twenty-two and knew she should feel very grown-up, she suddenly felt as lost as a child.

  “Come on, Judith. Don’t go crazy on me,” Daniel said, and she froze again. Could he read her thoughts? Was he controlling them? He certainly had been controlling her actions. What in the world had she been thinking? Had she been thinking at all this last year? Or had she been in some kind of sex dream, some spell from which she was, at last, awakening? But unlike waking up to reality, she was waking up to a nightmare. For a moment, everything seemed perfectly clear, and then, like the heat mirages that wavered over the highway but disappeared when you got there, reality shimmered and was gone. Or came back. Judith simply couldn’t tell. She tried to take another deep breath. She trusted Daniel. She had to trust Daniel. But she looked back at the manuscript, and her lip trembled.

  “Look, honey, you’re making this all too personal. This isn’t about you or me. It’s about us. And the first thing we’re going to do to make this easier is we’re going to move. This place is a rat hole. I know you hate it. There’s a really nice garden apartment available outside town. Fox Run. We’re going to get you out of this dump and into a place where it will be really comfortable to work. A real office. And I’ll help you.” He paused and patted her shoulder. “I mean, I still have to teach—can’t give up the day job yet,” he laughed, though it sounded forced. “And I’ll probably have to meet with Gerald Ochs Davis and other publishing people.” He paused. “Listen,” he continued, “we’ll get a nice place, and then you’ll meet with them too. I’ll tell them you’re helping on the editing. If we can just get these changes made, they’ll really get behind this book. That’s the critical thing now: for them to get behind the book. Because if they don’t, we might as well have not bothered to write it, Judith.” He sighed and leaned onto the dusty windowsill.

  “You can’t imagine how competitive it is. Once you get these edits done, it’s all going to be about marketing and how much money and effort they’re willing to put into this. I saw something really scary in New York. This author came up to the editor I was with. Davis & Dash had done two of his books, and now they’ve dumped him. The guy looked like a zombie. He wouldn’t make the changes that they wanted. We can’t afford to take that risk.” He smiled, came slowly toward her, and gently rubbed her cheek. “You remember the plan: First we get rich, then we get famous.”

  Judith took a few more deep breaths. She flipped through the yellow-stickered mess on the table before her. He was probably right. But look at all the changes they demanded! How much work? Judith felt tears coming. Better to be angry. Daniel had just assumed that she’d agree. She gestured at the pile of yellow-stickered papers. “It’s not a manuscript, Daniel. It’s a goddamned forsythia bush. You’re taking the credit, you do the edit.” She stood up, disturbing Flaubert, who slept at her feet, and walked to the other turret window. “Anyway, it’s not just the manuscript. It’s the concept. They just don’t get it. I should have known a male publisher would never allow it to be printed as is. These changes aren’t right. I mean, I understand wanting to soften Elthea a little, not that I agree. But most of it doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t behave the way she did if she was softer, if she was stronger. And the ending! I just can’t see—”

  Daniel came to her at the window. He lifted her chin with his hand and made her look at him. “Listen. I know it’s hard for you. Editing is hard for anybody, and when it’s a work about to be published, there’s this extra feeling, pressure, because of the irrevocability of it.”

  For a moment, the thought that he knew nothing about what he was telling her flashed through Judith’s mind. Daniel had never had a book published, so he’d never edited one. This “pressure of irrevocability” or whatever he was talking about was something he’d made up or read. She looked up at him for the first time, eye to eye, and she saw that he didn’t know Elthea. Or, if he did, he didn’t really care. The knowledge shocked her, and as if embarrassed, she slid her eyes to the right—but she said nothing.

  “Look, I know it’s daunting,” Daniel said. “I know it’s a lot of work, but it’s for our future. We get through this last part and we’re home free.” He put his arms around her and hugged her to him, his chin resting on the top of her head. Before, always before, Judith had liked when they stood this way. But today, her face pressed against his chest, his head holding hers down, she felt smothered.

  Yet he was right. This book wasn’t the best she could do. It was only meant to be commercial, so why was she so conflicted? Was it because she was still so angry over the way he was taking the credit? Maybe she shouldn’t make such a fuss. They’d written a book to be commercial. And weren’t these people the experts? They published dozens of bestsellers each year. What did she know? Maybe she was being too sensitive. And maybe she was expecting too much of the reading public. All of those things were possible. But what she did know, down to the very last molecule in her body, was that these editorial changes—which very well might sell books—made no sense as far as the character went and would spoil whatever had been good and authentic in Elthea. Judith sighed and pushed herself off Daniel’s chest.

  “I brought you something,” Daniel said, and despite herself, Judith felt a small thrill of pleasure. Daniel so rarely bought anything and then only when he had to. He didn’t believe in birthday gifts or Christmas. Now his excitement showed. He was proud of himself, like a little boy.

  She couldn’t help it. “What is it?” she asked.

  He took her hand and led her down the three little steps into the kitchen and through to the living room. A wrapped flat carton sat on the wooden crate that they used as a coffee table. The wrapping was blue, and there was both a stick-on bow and a card attached. Silly as it seemed, Judith felt as if it were Christmas. Daniel was thinking of her, and though he had gotten all the attention so far, he had not forgotten her. Here was her reward. Relieved as well as curious and grateful, she approached the carton. A winter coat? She needed one. It was too big to be jewelry—her first choice—but as soon as she touched the box and felt its heaviness she knew it wasn’t clothing. No sexy nightgown or silky underwear. It weighed at least ten pounds. Books, she thought, and tried to keep the disappointment out of her face. She did not want a new thesaurus or the American Heritage dictionary. She wanted something deeply personal, something luxurious and special. Well, it might be. Making the moment last, she picked up the little card and opened it. There was a drawing of flowers and a mortarboard. Acro
ss the front, in purple lettering, it said, “For Your Graduation.” It was the kind of card that every shop in this university town carried at all times. Nothing special or appropriate about it. In fact, it seemed as if Daniel had just grabbed the first thing he saw. She blinked and opened it. Inside, Daniel had handwritten the message: “Now that you’re a real writer, I thought it was time for you to graduate to real writer’s tools. Love, Daniel.” She put down the card and began to remove the paper carefully. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Have fun with it. Tear the goddamned paper.”

  Surprised at his language—Daniel rarely swore—she did as she was told, and the picture on the laptop-computer carton became visible. It was one of the newest models, the really portable ones.

  “You’ll need it now,” he said, handing her a diskette that Cheryl had given him. “You’ll need it to make the corrections. You can get the editing done much faster this way. I’ve gotten you two programs: one for word processing and a dictionary. It’s supposed to be really great.” He paused, proud. “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “It’s just peachy,” Judith said.

  50

  To me and my kind, life itself is a story, and we have to tell in stories—that is the way it falls.

  —Rumer Godden

  Emma never looked forward to Sunday dinners at her mother’s, but her curiosity about Camilla Clapfish, both as an author and as a companion to her brother, made this Sunday evening different. She had actually put on a dress—not to please her mother, but because for her this was almost a business meeting.

  She stood before the full-length mirror and surveyed herself. “Will you zip me up?” Emma asked Alex, who was stretched across the sofa watching Emma’s preparations. Emma had told Alex about the evening on Friday night, but now, two days later, Alex seemed in no hurry to leave, instead watching Emma dress. It felt both cozy and a little stifling to Emma. “Come on,” Emma said, “help with the zipper.” Languidly, Alex pulled herself up from the sofa, came up behind Emma, and put her hands on Emma’s shoulders. But instead of going for the zipper she bent her head and nibbled at Emma’s neck.