The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  “Yes, and we’re meeting over it this week. May I take it with me? I want you to know that I’m here because I have every intention of doing my book with you, if you’ll have me. It’s just that I’ve been advised that it’s best to have an agent.”

  “Sure.” Pam paused. She thought fast. She had a good way to kill two birds with this stone. “You know,” she said, “if you’re selecting an agent, this might be a good time to meet with Alfred Byron. He’s one of New York’s best, and I’m sure he’d be delighted to represent you.” Yeah, delighted to take his cut and leave well enough alone. Alf owed her, and there’d be no bullshit about book-club bonuses or extra payouts for each week the book made the list. If this little book did succeed, it could be a bonanza for both of them and very little risk or trouble for either. After he’d blown it with Opal O’Neal, Byron better snag this one. Pam smiled at Camilla. “Why don’t I give Alf Byron a call? He’s very busy, and he represents some of our finest authors, but if I ask him to see you, I’m sure he’d make time.”

  “That would be very kind of you,” Camilla Clapfish said.

  53

  There’s only one thing more frightening than being asked to do a book tour, and that’s not being asked to do a book tour.

  —Gerald Petievich

  “Forty-two cities! Are you crazy?” Susann stood up and walked across the old Persian carpet on Alf’s office floor. She felt like walking right out but stood in the farthest corner instead. “You’re joking, right? They don’t really expect me to do forty-two cities?”

  “Expect you to? Susann, I begged them for this. This is exactly the strategy you need.”

  “I need forty-two cities like I need a coronary thrombosis! How many bookstores is that? Eighty-four? Or is it three in each city? One hundred and twenty-six stores to sit behind a table and sign stock in? I don’t know which is worse—when I have three hundred women who each want a personalized note, or when they throw me a party and nobody comes because the rinky-dink bookstore forgot to advertise or was too cheap.” Susann heard her voice rise. She wouldn’t cry or lose control, but she was upset and frightened. Since Kim’s call she hadn’t slept through a single night without a horrible dream of Kim’s threatened suicide.

  “Alf, it will take months. Months out of my life. And I have the next book to get on with.”

  “It won’t take months. It’s six weeks. That’s all.”

  Susann walked back across the room and gripped the corners of his fancy antique partner’s desk. Her money had bought it for him, along with the rug and the leather chairs and the ornate bookcases. She felt as if she could rip it all apart bare-handed. She lowered her voice. “Forty-two cities in six weeks. That’s one city a day! Not including traveling time. Did they get me confused with Naomi Judd? I’m not a goddamned bus tour, Alf, I’m a writer. Don’t get the Airstream customized for me.”

  “Calm down, Susann. I have their absolute guarantee that everything will be top-drawer. First-class flights, first-class escorts, first-class hotels.”

  “Oh, I know about first-class escorts: middle-aged women who work part-time and pick me up in Cleveland in their Honda Accords. Then they’re late to get me to the radio station because they can’t find the address, even though they had to bring Clive Cussler there last week and they’ve lived around the corner their whole lives. And what’s the name of the four-star hotel in Akron, Alf?” All at once her anger deserted her and all she felt was tired. She slumped into the chair across from his desk and looked at him. “I am fifty-eight years old, in case you’ve forgotten. It takes me over an hour to put on my face. That’s not counting getting dressed. How much luggage will I have to drag, how many outfits for forty-two days when I’m not staying over two nights anywhere and I can’t get anything dry-cleaned?”

  She looked at him, but she didn’t see his face. Instead she saw those unwelcoming hotel rooms, the blank television screen, the lamp beside the bed with a bulb invariably too bright or too dim to read by, a telephone with a blinking message light. She imagined forty meals with third-string journalists whom she would have to charm, twenty local interviews by radio deejays who had never read her books, a hundred bookstore managers whose names she would have to remember. “I can’t do it, Alf,” she whispered.

  “Of course you can. You have to. You have more than two million readers out there, and we have to remind them to get out to the bookstore and buy this book. They don’t just like your writing, they like your lifestyle. They like you. And if they come in to see you and hope that a little of your glamour rubs off when you sign a book to them, then you’re going to accommodate. Gladly.” He looked into her eyes. He was a compelling presence. “It will put you on the top again, Susann. You need this. It hasn’t been cheap and it hasn’t been easy to arrange, but it’s going to be great. And you won’t be alone.”

  Susann looked up. “Will you come with me?” That, she realized, would change the picture entirely. It would still be hard, arduous work and tiring travel, but with Alf along it might actually be fun. It would be like the old days, when he’d arranged every book signing, gone with her, and opened each and every book she signed. They hadn’t spent time like that together in the last few years. “Oh, Alf, are you coming with me?”

  He looked away. “Well, I’ll go to Boston and Chicago. And then you can go on from there. I’ll meet you in San Francisco, and then again in Los Angeles.”

  “While in between I do Bakersfield, Sacramento, and Oakland,” Susann said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. And Omaha, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Akron. She should have known better! She stood up, crossed her arms, and paced back to the corner again. Why did she always wind up in a corner? Why did it always seem to get more difficult, rather than easier? As she overcame each obstacle, another molehill turned into a mountain, right before her eyes. She’d left her beloved editor, negotiated this new deal against her will, was dealing with a hostile editor, and had rewritten the book according to direction. But this, this was so unspeakable, so tedious, so exhausting, depressing, and lonely that she wondered if even the number-one spot on the bestseller list was worth it. Susann stood absolutely still, her arms now hanging at her sides. She looked at Alf and wondered, not for the first time, whether her career was his attempt to take care of her, an outgrowth of his own ego, or—at this point—merely a paycheck.

  “This is important, Susann,” Alf told her.

  “What are you going to be so busy doing? If this is so important, this tour, why can’t you come?”

  Alf looked down at his huge desk blotter. Who used blotters anymore? Susann wondered irrelevantly. God, that was Alf. All for show. No real staying power.

  “I have to manage the business. Plus Jonathan is getting married. I have to be around for that.”

  “And I don’t?” Susann asked. She knew that Alf’s son had become serious about the woman he was dating, but she didn’t know anything about a wedding; obviously, she was not invited. Clearly, she was not supposed to know. She bit her lip.

  As if to distract her, Alf stood up and began to talk quickly, his voice raised. “It’s going to be small. I can’t tell you how small it’s going to be. Just immediate family. Nothing at all. And remember: You’re not my only client.” He came around the desk, drew her out of her corner, and continued holding her hand. “Of course, I love you and you’re my most important client, but Jude Daniel’s book comes out simultaneously and I have his first tour happening at the same exact time. Someone’s got to watch the store, Susann. You know I have business to attend to.”

  “How many cities is he touring?” she asked. “Where is he going?” Her voice had a nasty screech to it. She was shocked by the surge of jealousy she felt.

  “Uh, only four or five. Nothing like yours. You know, the usual: New York, Boston, Chicago—”

  “San Francisco and Los Angeles,” Susann finished. “Which are the cities you’ll bother to see me in. Two birds with one stone, Alf?”

  Susann knew w
hat she had to do—both to survive this and to punish Alf. “There’s only one way I’ll do it, Alf,” she told him. “I have to have two things.”

  He looked up at her, and this time his face had the attentive look, the look he took on when he knew she meant business. The bristly eyebrows had lowered, and he had his good ear cocked toward her.

  “I’ll do it if you make Davis & Dash drop the case against Kim.”

  “What? Now, Susann, you know—”

  “That’s the deal, Alf. I do the tour, you drop the case. Make it all right with her publisher, make it all right with Davis & Dash. Send them a letter, have the lawyers make phone calls. Let her use the name. Do whatever you have to do. Leave her alone and let her book come out. Stop torturing the girl.”

  “Susann, I don’t think—”

  “I know what you think. Now I’m telling you what I think. It’s the only way I’ll do the tour. Also, I’m taking Edith with me. That’s the other thing. And she has to have first-class accommodations, too. I’m not going to be sitting up in first-class eating a filet while she’s stuck behind the curtain with a stale ham sandwich.”

  “That’ll cost a lot of money, and Davis & Dash has already appropriated the budget. I can’t tell you how hard it’s been to negotiate it. We don’t want them to cut back on the ads or television commercials.”

  “Try to get them to pay for it, and if they won’t, then you pay for it. You should be with me anyway. And you can afford it: You’ll be getting a hefty percentage from this acceptance check.” She saw him wince. Alf was so predictable: Hit him in his wallet and he hurt. Susann almost smiled, but she was too sad and tired.

  Still, there was an appropriateness to having Alf pay for Edith’s first-class travel. It was Edith who had gotten her through, while it was Alf who collected the big checks. This might even things out, at least a little. “That’s the deal,” Susann told him. “Kim gets her book, and I don’t have to drag myself alone through America.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. She just turned and left the office.

  Susann would calm down. She always did. Alf buzzed his secretary. “Please send Susann some flowers. Seventy bucks’ worth.” Well, maybe he should do better than that. “Seventy-five,” he amended. “But don’t use that Park Avenue goniff. Call the guy on Thirty-fourth Street. You know what she likes. Have we heard from the West Coast?”

  “Not yet,” Natalie told him. “And you have a three o’clock.”

  “Right,” he snapped. Alf Byron hadn’t been this excited in years. At last he was in the action again. He’d actually hired another assistant because with Susann’s book tour and the buzz about Jude Daniel, Alf knew it was going to be a good year. He tried to imagine what it would feel like having two books on the top-ten list. He knew that some people in New York thought he was finished, that he was a putz from Cincinnati, but if In Full Knowledge hit big, and he was sure it would, who would be the putz?

  He lifted the phone and dialed the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills. In Full Knowledge was definitely movie material—and not some stodgy TV miniseries either. This was feature stuff, dark but gripping. He knew there was a bias against women’s stories for the big screen, but there was sincere interest from the biggest female producer in Hollywood.

  His call was answered by electronic voices. Alf hung up. He wasn’t leaving any message. They could call him. And they would. He didn’t want to look too hungry. So he called his pal over at Book News and fed him the latest: that Davis & Dash was planning a print run of 150,000 copies on In Full Knowledge and that two producers were already fighting for the screen rights. Meanwhile, he’d worked through his foreign agencies. If enough people believed it, it would become true. And the foreign sales would roll in, though not at record-breaking levels. At least not yet. The movie option would change that.

  He looked down at his list and realized he had to call Jim Meyer to pull them off the Kim Baker thing. He also had to see this girl that Pam Mantiss was sending over.

  He’d read her manuscript the previous evening. It was nothing with nothing. Pretty writing, no plot, and he certainly didn’t care very much about those annoying older women. In fact, they reminded him of his mother.

  But as a favor to Pam he would represent the old girl, this Camilla Clapfish. And who knows, there could be a few bucks in it—though Pam had let him know that this was not a deal for him to renegotiate. She scratched his back, he’d scratch hers. He’d caught hell from Pam for losing that stubborn Mrs. O’Neal. He’d just tell this English lady to take the offer, get the contract signed, and see if he could collect a percentage. Why not?

  “She’s here.”

  Alf grunted, reached into his briefcase, and pulled out the manuscript Pam had messengered over to him. Miss Clapfish turned out to be one-third the age that Alf had expected. She wasn’t some wizened old English spinster—she was a peachy young girl.

  “Well, well, well,” Alf said. “Miss Camilla Clapfish. Notable new author.”

  She held out her hand in response to his. He took it. It was cool and amazingly soft. Alf had the strangest impulse. He wanted to take this kid-soft palm and rub it all over his own leathery face. For a moment he thought of Susann’s hands—despite her care and surgery, they showed her age. And the arthritis hadn’t improved them. They were swollen at the finger joints and as spotted as his own. He looked down at Camilla Clapfish’s smooth, white skin. How long had it been since he had held young flesh? There was something about it that was more than seductive: It was invigorating, as if the life in her cells could rub off on his own. He looked up, into her fresh face. She looked a bit alarmed, and he dropped her hand. “So. Come. Sit down.” He forced himself to go back to his seat on the other side of the desk. No point in frightening the girl. It was back to business.

  “I read your book.”

  “And what did you think?” Her voice was fresh and youthful. Alf was a pushover for an English accent.

  “Very nice. Very nice. Not commercial, but nice. You can certainly write.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Those English always sounded so classy. He wanted to hear more.

  “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” he prompted.

  He let her talk for a few minutes while he listened more to the rhythm than to the content. This one would be easy. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, as I say, it’s very good of you to see me at all. What I have to do is retain an agent and get this business at Davis & Dash taken care of.” The girl paused and actually seemed to blush. “But do you think there’s a chance that they might raise their offer a little bit? I’m very grateful for their interest, and I mean to sign with them, but money is an issue.”

  “So, what else is new?” Alf asked, smiling. Now was his chance to make peace with Pam Mantiss. “Listen, can I give you some advice? This is not a very commercial book. I don’t think I could raise interest in it anywhere else. Pam Mantiss is um…unpredictable. She likes it. All well and good. But she has the luxury of a couple of giants like Peet Trawley and Susann Baker Edmonds to support an artsy-fartsy book like this. No offense intended.”

  The girl blinked but nodded. Her hair was smooth and shiny. Alf thought that every strand must be a slightly different tone of chestnut, red, and ash. It looked so alive and healthy. Unconsciously he ran his fingers through his own mop of frizzled white hair. He got an idea. Pam Mantiss would kill him, but he’d cope with that later.

  “I think you have two choices,” he told the girl. “And whether you sign with me or not, I believe this is excellent advice. I can’t tell you how many people pay me money to advise them like this. I think you either leave the book as it is and take this offer quickly, before it melts away, or you make some significant changes and we rethink it.” As far as he was concerned, the book was a lot like Listerine: 98 percent of the text was inert, though there were a few good scenes.

  Camilla Clapfish leaned forward. “What changes do you suggest?”


  “Well, first, we need more sex. Second, we need more plot. Third, we need these characters to be a lot younger. Think about it: Who’s going to care about a bus full of old broads—you should excuse the expression—that nothing really happens to? It’s not a story. It’s a sketch. Artistic, I grant you, but not engaging. You get my meaning?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Absolutely. But I think you’re talking about a different book.”

  “Exactly. A different book. A book that will sell. If they were college students, a bus full of girls from college. That could be a movie. Well, maybe a television movie.”

  “But I—”

  The phone rang, and Alf put up his hand. “I’m expecting an important call,” he said.

  He snatched up the receiver. “Is it William Morris?” he asked his secretary, and when she told him it was, he took a deep breath. Don’t be too eager, he told himself. He counted to twenty. “Put them through.”

  “Scott, how ya doing? What news?”

  “Good news, Alf. April Irons is interested. She sees it as a vehicle for Jodie.”

  Feature! Feature! At last he’d get something onto the big screen.

  “Uh-huh.” He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice.

  “Now, she’s not attached to the project yet, but April worked with her on Suddenly Sane. And she wants to have her husband, Sam Shields, direct.”

  “How much?”

  “Not much. A hundred thousand, against six hundred when it goes into principal photography.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding? That’s peanuts.”

  “Look Alf, April figures she could do this film without the book. The story is out there. But she likes the title, and if she attaches Jodie, you’ve got a real shot at this thing happening. Any money she doesn’t spend on the option she’ll pour into the script. I’m telling you to take the deal. If I shop it around, we’ll lose April, guaranteed. I need your decision by five o’clock my time.”