The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  67

  For booksellers and publishers, [the ABA] puts us into a loop. It reminds us that we all love the business and that we’re all part of the intellectual society of books.

  —Bruno A. Quinson

  The ABA, the American Booksellers Association, holds a mammoth convention each year in late May or early June. Aside from the booksellers—from tiny independents with a gross of less than twenty thousand a year to the buyers for Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the other massive chains, every agent, every publisher, most important editors, and all the authors of the moment attend the grand institution.

  In the taxi on the way to the Chicago convention center, Gerald felt a headache coming on. In a way, the ABA was an anachronism. Despite the presence of national buyers whose pencils could write orders in the millions, nobody wrote orders at the ABA anymore. Now sales were all made long in advance through reps, computers, and catalogs. Gone were the days when booksellers gathered to actually press the flesh, judge the wares, and make their selections. But the ABA remained a kind of annual circus—in Gerald’s opinion—where publishers with much fanfare presented their fall list.

  It was a time for beating the drum and garnering publicity. In the last few years, particularly in light of some of the political books, it had also been more widely covered in the general press. Gerald supposed that the publicity had to be good for the book business, but the thought of personally marching down all those aisles filled with books, giveaways, agents, authors, would-be authors, bookstore owners, and all the related hangers-on and sycophants of the publishing trade made Gerald wince.

  But worst of all was the fuss that Archibald Roget of Peterson had created over that little pissant, Chad Weston. He was the cause célèbre, and Davis & Dash had been made to look like a repressor of the arts. Not that the ordure Weston had poured into his work could count as art with anyone but the American Civil Liberties crowd. So now a bad book that no doubt would have simply disappeared into the muck from which it came was being touted by liberals as a political rallying point. No wonder the Republicans had come down so hard on the National Endowment for the Arts!

  He’d avoid all the hypocritical hoopla that Archie had concocted. It would be easy—he had a killing calendar already—meetings, parties, the lot. And there were the speaker breakfasts each morning—another event Gerald abhorred and that this year he would certainly manage to miss. Life was far too short to spend time listening to Ivana Trump prattle on about the hardships of life as a single woman. When he had been forced to attend her speech he hadn’t listened to a word but had become fascinated with the woman’s hairdo. What a load! There was something there that defied gravity, mused Gerald, always conscious of his own hairpiece. It had turned out to be the most diverting breakfast lecture he had ever attended.

  Jude Daniel’s book had all the early indicators of a runaway hit, and Gerald simultaneously felt grateful for a shot at a megaseller and a stab of personal envy. Davis & Dash was throwing a big party for that. Booksellers—many of whom collected preprints—had been flooding the switchboard with calls for In Full Knowledge bound galleys. In comparison, despite the items that had been planted in columns and magazines, there was little early spontaneous interest in Twice in the Papers.

  Each year the temptation to simply hide in his hotel suite became stronger and stronger. In his father’s time, the ABA had been dignified, a gathering of book people. Now, like all other American businesses, it had devolved into nothing but a huckster’s heaven. Gerald, always despising the mob, prepared to join it.

  Pam turned over and lifted one eyelid. Jesus Christ! It was already nine-fifteen. Fuck! She’d missed the breakfast lecture that the vice president was giving. Not that she gave a shit about his book, his views, or anything else about him, but she had hoped to meet his wife, whom she was working on for a tell-all after the administration folded. Pam scrambled out of the bed and began pulling on her underpants. Shit! She had left her bags in her own room, and she didn’t have time to go up there now. She slipped off the old underpants and turned them inside out so that the stiff side was away from her body. She and Jude had been playing footsy for over an hour in the bar last night before they ditched the rest of the crowd and came up to his room. Her panties still showed effects.

  Pam walked around the bed, past Jude’s sleeping form, and went into the bathroom. She washed her face and ran his comb through her hair. It was a nightmare, but she didn’t have time for a blow job now. Not in either sense of the word. She used Jude’s toothbrush, deodorant, and styling gel, then left the bathroom in disarray.

  She had a meeting with Joy Dellanagra-Sanger, the fiction buyer for Waldenbooks and still the world’s most enthusiastic fiction reader. Christ, how could she face that double-barreled Italian-Norwegian energy first thing in the morning?

  She kept on the lookout for the most important book buyers. The fiction buying at Borders was shared between the soft-spoken, very literary Robert Teicher and the much younger, hip Matthew Gildea: Teicher handled the front half, and Gildea covered the back. Pam found it amusing that they split the responsibility alphabetically. She wondered where they divided authors; somewhere in the LMNO’s? No one had split them since kindergarten.

  She struggled into her dress, stuffed her panty hose into her bag, and slipped her bare feet directly into her heels. She went to the mirror over the bureau and did a quick makeup job. If she hurried, she could get a cab to the convention center and might just manage to catch the second lady before the breakfast meeting broke up. As Pam strode toward the door, Jude sat up, bleary-eyed from the wine, the blow, and the sex of the night before. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I have appointments,” she snapped. “So do you. You must have hung up on the wake-up call. Get yourself cleaned up and get over to the Davis & Dash booth.”

  “What am I supposed to do there?” he asked, his voice perilously close to a whine.

  “Try selling a book,” she told him. “And don’t forget the party tonight. Get yourself a haircut and make sure you have a good shirt.” Men! They never grew up, never took care of themselves. “I’m your editor, not your mother,” she pointed out and marched out of the room.

  Daniel walked up the entire first aisle of the convention center before he began to shake. In his dreams, in his nightmares, he had never imagined so many books. And this was only the first aisle! There must be thirty aisles, and every one was crammed with books, posters for books, light boxes displaying books, and walls of shelves of featured books. Somehow he had never imagined this. This river, this mountain, this avalanche of volumes in which his one small offering could so easily be buried.

  He wasn’t well. The night of drinking, sex, and cocaine was not what he was used to. He felt drained. The trembling in his hands moved up his arms. He had to sit down, get a breath, hold on to something, and get it all under control. Up to this very minute, Daniel had thought the success of In Full Knowledge was a fait accompli. Alf Byron’s support, Pam’s enthusiasm, their intimacy, and the sale to Hollywood had all made it clear that Daniel had a hit on his hands. Up to now, the only problem he’d foreseen was Judith—a thorny complication but not truly catastrophic.

  Now, confronted by all the competition at the convention center, Daniel felt both humbled and deeply frightened. Oh, he could charm Gerald Ochs Davis. He could even bullshit Alf Byron. He could screw Pam Mantiss, and—as long as he had to—he could manipulate Judith. But how in the world, Daniel thought, could he cajole store and chain buyers into picking out his book amid this juggernaut? How could he be certain they’d make his novel a bestseller?

  It was Emma’s first time at the ABA, and she was thrilled. Each year there were internal squabbles and jostling among the junior editors for the dubious honor of attending, while the senior editors tried like hell to avoid it. The Davis & Dash booth was one of the largest, with eleven enormous light boxes featuring the best—or at least the most commercial—of the fall offerings. Emma was impress
ed by the professional look of the booth, which actually included tables for meetings, shelf displays, and even half a dozen easy chairs, which weary booksellers seemed grateful to sink into. But it was the energy of the place that excited Emma more than anything else. It was a hive, a huge colony of booksellers and buyers who, if not all equally dedicated to the written word, at least made their living by it.

  Her only disappointment was that neither of the books she cared about had been chosen for a light box or a special display. A Week in Firenze had been quickly run into very inelegant advance copies—no special cover and no typesetting. A mock-up of the proposed cover was on a shelf toward the back of the booth. Other than that, not a lot was being done for it. Emma wasn’t really surprised. But it was the handling of The Duplicity of Men that truly upset Emma. A book as important, as beautiful as this one deserved more than the bit of shelf space and the page in the catalog that it had received. This was the reality of books as commerce, but seeing Duplicity here, treated so cavalierly by its own publishers, and knowing that of all the hundreds of thousands of volumes here that this was one of the handful of worthies was truly dispiriting.

  What Emma thought of as the “Creepy Crawly Trawley” was featured in the light box right beside her. Its lurid cover featured a three-dimensional element that made the sea of blood and the severed finger seem to flow off the cover. Emma noticed that in the ebb and flow of the crowd, one man stood staring at the display. Dark-haired, gaunt, and hollow-eyed, he remained like flotsam on the beach while waves of people came and receded. As if mesmerized by the blood, the finger, or something. Emma was just beginning to get nervous. It wasn’t just The Catcher in the Rye that attracted a following of disenfranchised kooks. Trawley’s work definitely had a fringe cult of admirers. She looked more closely at the man’s name tag: Stewart Campbell. He was a Davis & Dash author; he’d done a few mediocre mysteries for Pam. While his books were no worse than Trawley’s, Trawley’s sold in the millions and his sold remarkably little, and Emma wondered if this was at the root of his fixation. He seemed to be in so much pain that, for a moment, she considered telling him he shouldn’t take it personally.

  Pam had already made it clear among the cognoscenti that she had been the author. And it wasn’t worth her job to divulge the secret to Stewart.

  “Well, hello,” an unmistakably deep voice said.

  Emma looked up to see Alex surveying her with a cool grin. Emma couldn’t help it; she blushed and hated the feeling of her face going hot. She hadn’t seen Alex since they parted that night in the rain, though they had spoken once, briefly, on the phone. Neither had apologized, and now, standing opposite each other across the Davis & Dash table, Emma wondered how they’d bridge the impasse. And then Alex did it, as simply and completely as it needed to be done, with nothing more than a wicked smile.

  “You’re looking good,” Alex said, and Emma blushed again, but this time with pleasure.

  “You too. The Armani was worth it,” Emma told Alex, who looked down at herself and then grinned again.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At the Hilton. But Davis & Dash assigned roommates.”

  “You’re kidding! Who did you get?”

  “Nancy Lee.”

  “Ooh, I’m jealous,” Alex laughed. “How about dinner? I’m at the Sheraton, and I don’t have a roommate—yet.”

  “I’ve got to go to the dinner for Jude Daniel,” Emma said. “Come to that?”

  “Sure. He’s supposed to be the Next Big Thing. Who’s his agent?”

  “Alfred Byron.”

  “God! I thought he was dead.”

  “Wishful thinking. No, he’s still torturing me on Susann Baker Edmonds’s behalf.”

  “How’d he snag Daniel?”

  They talked industry gossip for a while, and then Emma gave Alex a tour of the Davis & Dash booth. They giggled over the flap copy for GOD’s new novel and sniped at the sell-out authors whose overblown accolades were on the back cover. Then they came to the shelves in the back. Alex lost her smile. “What the hell is this?” she asked, gesturing with a sharp jab at the shelf holding A Week in Firenze.

  “Not much, is it?” Emma admitted.

  “Jesus Christ, Emma. Is that all you have to say? Couldn’t you do something about it?”

  “I have nothing to do with the displays, Alex. That’s all the marketing department. It’s not even my book. Pam’s the editor.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Alex snapped. She grabbed the mock-up of the book and walked to one of the front shelves, clearing an armful of Gerald’s Twice in the Papers. “Here, even I can do this.” She walked to the back of the booth, setting Gerald’s books down on the floor. Then she proceeded to the display of A Week in Firenze and brought them all up to the prime location of the featured book display. “There. That’s better,” she said, surveying her work.

  “Alex, you can’t do that. They’ll only move them back.”

  “Well, in the meantime, someone might actually get a chance to see Camilla’s book. Maybe one will even buy it. And then I’ll get ten percent of the money—not enough to pay for my room at the Sheraton, but at least it’s a start.” She turned and started to walk away.

  “Will I see you at the party?” Emma couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “Sure,” Alex said, but her smile was gone.

  Roberta Fine was tired of schlepping. In her left hand she carried a tote bag from Houghton Mifflin, stuffed with a Random House poster, a Morrow calendar, and a plethora of advance copies. In her other hand she gripped a shopping bag provided by HarperCollins, almost as full.

  Roberta had made it a point to see some of the publishing movers and shakers. Linda Braun of Doubleday and Scribner’s, feisty, slimmed down, and coppery-haired, was terrific to deal with. She and Roberta shared diet secrets. At the Barnes & Noble booth Roberta had spotted the blond hair of brilliant Sessalee Hensley, buyer for the dreaded superstores. Roberta enjoyed listening to her Texas twang. Her last chat was with Karen Patterson of B. Dalton. Karen was not as commercial as Linda and Sessalee, which was a nice change. Roberta enjoyed her sense of humor.

  Roberta had already had her picture taken with the vice president and had waited on line for Anne Tyler to autograph her latest offering. She’d also had a cup of coffee with Neil Baldwin, the mustached, tweedy director of the National Book Foundation. He’d charmed her. Such a lovely young man. A full morning, indeed. Now, all Roberta wanted to do was find someplace to sit down. When she saw the Davis & Dash booth ahead, complete with inviting upholstered chairs—rare as a literate bestseller at the ABA—Roberta made a beeline for one of the vacant ones. It was good to feel the cushion at her back, which had begun to ache in that nagging way that only a visit to her chiropractor would fix.

  Roberta arranged her bags and packages around her feet and then had a chance to look around. From where she sat she could see the lurid cover for Twice in the Papers and the latest Susann Baker Edmonds. Roberta wouldn’t bother to stock either one—they were the kind of books that her regular customers didn’t buy and that the superstore down Broadway would sell at 30 percent off. She craned her neck to see if she could find the light box that featured The Duplicity of Men. But it must have been in one of the few beyond her view. Of course, she must take a photo of it and any other special part of the display so that she could give it to Opal when she returned to New York. If only she could sit here comfortably for just a few more minutes without feeling guilty. After all, she could sit when she got back home, but she’d spent more money than she really could afford to be here right now. She should maximize every minute. Roberta thought of the T-shirt that was popular at last year’s ABA—“So many books—so little time.” Well, it was true. And after all these years despite all the difficulties and the obvious financial problems she was facing now, Roberta still loved books passionately. At least some of them, anyway. And so she pushed herself out of the chair, fished her flash camera from her bag, and went looking fo
r The Duplicity of Men display.

  But there wasn’t one. She checked every light box and the front of the booth. There was nothing. It was only when she got to the back that she found the small display and the inelegantly bound advance copies. Nobody would notice the book back here. Was this all that Davis & Dash was planning to do for the most literary book on their fall list? Roberta spotted a young woman standing idly beside the shelf of catalogs. Her name tag identified her as Nancy Lee of Davis & Dash. Roberta approached her. “You’re publishing The Duplicity of Men?” she asked.

  “Publicity for Men?”

  “Duplicity,” Roberta corrected.

  “I don’t think so, but let me check the catalog,” the young woman said agreeably.

  “Never mind,” Roberta told her, and picked up her bags and strode away.

  It was really quite unbelievable! After all the work Terry had put in, all of the heartbreak and rejection Opal had had to face. And now, at last, the book was being published and even the publishers didn’t know it. Publicity for Men, indeed! There was no chance Terry’s book would be noticed and bought by bookstores, which meant that there was no chance it would be read.

  Roberta felt, for a moment, every year of her age. She couldn’t troll the aisles any more today. For a moment she thought that she hadn’t the strength to get on the shuttle and back to her hotel. She looked around at the faces of the other booksellers; then she got her idea. A letter cost only thirty-two cents to mail, and Roberta knew scores, maybe hundreds, of booksellers. She couldn’t talk to them here, but she would write to them. She would write to them all and tell them just how good this book was. How it deserved to live.

  Susann knew what to expect, but it seemed to her that every year it got worse. As she arrived a man had actually recognized her, but when he asked for her autograph and she agreed, he handed her a copy of Border Music. “But I didn’t write it,” she told him. “It’s by Robert Waller.”