The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  For a moment Opal thought he might strike Roberta. He pulled back his hand and in a fury pulled a book off the shelf, throwing it across the bookstore. “Censorship!” he yelled. “How would a dried-up old bitch like you know literature anyway?” he sneered. “You wouldn’t feel it if it was shoved up your tight, pathetic ass.”

  Roberta walked across the room calmly and picked up the book Chad Weston had flung. It was a novel by Susan Jedren. “Mr. Weston, this writer—whose book you’ve just damaged—is a hundred times the artist you’ll ever be. You, young man, have made the terrible mistake of believing your own PR. Political issues aside, your books are simply bad and heartless. Apparently, so are you.” Roberta was pale. “Not only that, but in the interest of frankness I also have to tell you that your sales technique leaves something to be desired.”

  “Like you know about sales techniques, or anything else,” Weston spat.

  “Mr. Weston, I wouldn’t stock your book on principle, but if a decent author came in and asked me to carry their first novel, and did so in a pleasant way, I assure you I’d be willing to accommodate.” The young man looked at her with obvious contempt and disbelief.

  “What the fuck is with you?” he asked. “You talk like a character out of Dickens or something.” He shook his head, but Opal had had enough. In a moment she was standing beside him. She took him by the arm. Before he seemed to know what was happening he was propelled down the aisle to the door. He tried to pull his arm away, but Opal was strong—stronger than some skinny little city-boy drip.

  “What?” he cried. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re leaving. Good-bye.”

  “No, I—”

  Opal pushed him out the door and closed it in his face before she could even hear what he was attempting to say. “Good-bye,” she repeated through the glass, and locked the door behind him.

  “You fat old fuck,” the young man screamed. He screamed other things, but Opal ignored his ravings.

  “Thank you,” said Roberta, clearly shaken. “When you think about it, it’s surprising that authors don’t start behaving like postal workers. You know, spraying bookstores with machine-gun fire.”

  “Perhaps,” Opal said to Roberta, “we could learn something from this little experience.” She pointed to her stack of letters to bookstores. “We might be going about this Duplicity marketing thing the whole wrong way.”

  The afternoon was long and silent, with only a few lookers and no buyers to break up their mailing. When the phone rang at four o’clock, both of them jumped—it had become that quiet. Roberta lifted the phone and spoke briefly. Then she handed it to Opal, covering the receiver with her hand and mouthing, “It’s Pam Mantiss.”

  Opal shrugged. She hadn’t heard from Pam, nor had Pam returned her calls in more than three weeks. It was, Opal knew, one of the early indicators that The Duplicity of Men was not selling even as well as the modest expectations Davis & Dash had had. “Opal O’Neal,” she said, as if the bookstore were manned by two dozen people and someone else might have inadvertently picked up the extension.

  “Opal? I have great news. It’s finally happened.”

  Opal blinked. “Yes?” she asked. Had Lehmann-Haupt reviewed the book? Had it been nominated for a prize? Had one of the chains finally decided to stock it?

  “You’re on Oprah” Pam said. For a moment, Opal was left silent. What was the woman talking about? Opal had never been on television in her life.

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re going on Oprah. They want to do a show for sweeps week about devoted mothers of suicides. We’ve got you on the first segment. You talk about Terry, her book, and how difficult it was to get it published until you met me. They’ve promised to use at least one still shot of the book. We’re negotiating to have Oprah hold it up herself, but they aren’t promising that yet. Still, I think she’ll like you. Now that she’s cleaned up her act, this is her kind of story.”

  “It’s not my kind of story,” Opal said coldly.

  There was silence for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing I’ll do.”

  There was a longer silence at the other end of the phone. Then, “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Pam asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Opal told her.

  “Writers, publicists, anybody would give their left tit to get a chance to push their book on Oprah. It guarantees success. Well, at least a couple of hundred thousand books. She made Marianne Williamson. You remember her first book? Return to Love. It went into so many editions that they started calling it Return to Printer, and she followed it up with A Woman’s Worth. It should have been A Woman’s Net Worth. You are not going to turn this down.”

  “You are not going to turn my daughter’s life into some kind of spectacle,” Opal responded. “I wasn’t doing this so people could mock Terry or judge her.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Pam Mantiss said. “Nobody is going to judge her. What they’re going to do is buy the fucking book.”

  “Well, then they’re buying it for the wrong reason.” Opal heard Pam gasp at the heresy. It seemed she’d finally managed to shock the woman. Opal supposed everybody had a religion of sorts, and apparently one of Pam’s commandments was that there was no wrong reason to buy a book.

  “Jesus Christ! Have you any idea of how goddamned hard we worked to get this opportunity? Are you crazy or stupid?”

  “Neither one,” Opal said. “Just bored with this conversation.” Then she hung up the phone.

  The fact was, The Duplicity of Men wasn’t selling, not even modestly, according to the informal reports Opal got from Emma. “It’ll take a while for the independents to kick in,” Roberta reassured her. “It’s not over till it’s over.” She calmly dished out some rice and beans. They were having dinner at Flor De Mayo on upper Broadway, where you could eat rice and beans and barbecued pork and fried plantains and still leave with change from a ten-dollar bill. The afternoon had been filled with calls from Wendy Brennon, Emma Ashton, an Oprah Winfrey producer, and even Gerald Ochs Davis himself, all trying to change Opal’s position. They hadn’t.

  “More plantains?” Roberta asked.

  “Yes, please.” They ate for a while in silence. “Do you think I should do it?” Opal asked.

  “It’s a lot to give up,” Roberta said, honest as she always seemed to be. “The sales would be very nice. But, no, I don’t think you should do it, and I don’t think you should let it worry you.”

  “I don’t think Terry would want me to, do you?”

  Roberta shook her head. “Terry had a lot of dignity,” Roberta said, and Opal felt reassured and much better than she had since the disturbing calls had begun.

  “It’s too bad there isn’t a dignified television show that wants me,” Opal said with a sigh. “I suppose dignified television is an oxymoron.”

  Roberta paused. “But there is,” she said. “God, why didn’t we think of it before? Why don’t you do the Elle Halle show? If Oprah wants you, Elle probably would. And she could do the show with sympathy and some class. She only does one guest per episode. No mothers-of-suicides garbage.”

  “Would she have me on?” Opal asked. “She’s really fancy.”

  “Well, instead of calling you, all of those fools over at Davis & Dash could be calling her and finding out.”

  “But doesn’t Elle Halle always try to make people cry? Isn’t that her trademark?”

  “It might be her trademark, but it doesn’t have to be yours.” Roberta paused. “It’s an evening show. Prime time. It’s an audience that can read. If you do anything, it should be Elle Halle.”

  Opal nodded. “Roberta, you’re brilliant,” she said and reached for another fried plantain.

  76

  In today’s media culture, the actual book is becoming an incidental by-product of a writer’s career—something to keep his or her name in circulation.

  —James Wolcott

 
“What do you mean, you’re not going to make it?”

  Susann turned from the window and the splendid view of the San Francisco harbor to gesture to Edith, who had just entered the suite. Edith looked at Susann on the telephone and raised her eyebrows before she made herself scarce.

  “I have dragged myself through twenty-two cities,” Susann said to Alf, her voice low. “You promised me you’d meet me here in San Francisco and go on to Los Angeles with me. Two cities out of more than forty. It wasn’t a lot, Alf, but it was something.”

  At the other end of the line Alf began his litany of excuses—the problem he had back at the office, the difficulty with his son, and the slightly disappointing performance to date of Jude Daniel’s book. But Susann didn’t need to hear any of it again. She hadn’t needed to hear any of it the first time. The only thing she needed was for Alf to be here, in San Francisco now, glad to see her, comforting, strong, and capable—as he used to be. Susann was tired of excuses, tired of lies, and, she realized all at once, tired of Alf. Alf began with his new promises—how he’d meet her in Los Angeles, how he’d take her to Morton’s for dinner, but Susann wasn’t interested.

  Instead she simply hung up. She turned to the stunning view. She could see both bridges from here, her favorite suite at the Mark Hopkins. There was no fog, and blessedly, her hands were not hurting. She told herself that there was no reason for her to be unhappy. Nothing had really changed. Alf would not be here, but he had not been there for a long time. She had gotten through a rough landing in Houston; a night in a limo in the desert; a signing in Austin, where only a dozen readers showed up; and close to fifty interviews where everyone asked the same questions and she gave the same answers. Despite all these efforts the book, for the third week, still languished at seventeen, just below the cutoff point of the published New York Times list, and had only moved up to twenty-seven on the USA Today list. It hadn’t made Publishers Weekly’s list at all! And Susann knew she was running out of time. Well, the national television satellite campaign would begin this week, and she would do that, too, alone. The radio and television advertising would also begin this week, and that would be the final push. It had to do the trick. It just had to. The book hadn’t failed, she told herself. It simply hadn’t succeeded yet. She looked out at the breathtaking view and told herself again that there was no reason not to be happy.

  The telephone rang, and Susann let Edith pick it up. She wouldn’t speak to Alf. Edith poked her head into the room. “The escort is waiting downstairs,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  Susann picked up her purse and nodded. Silently they left the suite, took the elevator downstairs, and met Kathi Goldmark, the queen of the author-escort business. Always carrying books, press kits, schedules, and the like, Kathi was famous for both her organization and the canvas bags she had made up. She carried one now that said, “Cheerfully schlepping authors since 1983.”

  Kathi took them out to the car and got them settled, or as settled as Susann was going to be. She consulted her schedule, informing Susann of a slight reshuffling. Susann merely nodded, and Kathi pulled the car into the traffic going down Nob Hill. Susann tried to relax. Kathi was a real professional—Susann had worked with her many times before. She would get them to the signings and the radio stations on time. But although she hadn’t seen Kathi since her last book tour, Susann was too tired and disappointed to try to make small talk.

  “I met your daughter last week,” Kathi volunteered. “I took her to a Marin bookstore.”

  Susann sat up. “You saw Kim?” she asked. She hoped there would not be a horror story—syringes left in Kathi’s car, or worse.

  “Oh, yeah. I guess talent runs in the family,” Kathi said warmly. “She was very nice too, unlike some of the first novelists I’ve trekked around.”

  That was good to hear. “I would think that first novelists would be grateful,” Susann said.

  “Well, some are. But more than a few are worse than divas. You know, they’re novices. They just can’t put things in perspective. It’s taken them their whole lives to get that first book out, and they think everybody else’s life should stop to appreciate it. What did Dickens call it? Great Expectations?”

  Susann laughed. “They’ll get over it,” she said grimly.

  “Which authors are easy?” Edith asked, knitting away in the seat beside Susann.

  “Norman Mailer. He’s a real pro. He’s always on time, and he knows exactly what’s expected of him. E. L. Doctorow is great; so is Amy Tan. They know how to give to their fans without draining themselves dry. Anna Murdoch was a real lady. Some old woman asked what her husband did, and she smiled and told her he sold newspapers. The old woman said she had a brother-in-law with a newsstand and it was a tough business. Anna agreed.” Everybody laughed, thinking of Rupert Murdoch’s immense wealth and influence. “Charlton Heston toured with his book. Man, he was wooden. A whole lumberyard. He had two kinds of fans: old women who told him that they loved him in Ben Hur and kids who loved him in Wayne’s World. He was a trooper though. He knew the business. I guess that’s why Kim was so good—she already had learned the ropes from you. Anyway, she left me something to give to you.” Kathi began shuffling through papers and bags on the front seat beside her. Susann squirmed. Oh God, what next? A writ? A severed ear? A letter bomb?

  “I guess you’ve carried all kinds of packages,” Edith said, as if she too was imagining the possibilities.

  “Sure,” Kathi agreed cheerfully. “I’ve transported just about everything but hazardous waste. Unless you consider Peet Trawley in that last category.”

  Susann laughed but waited nervously. What was it that Kim had left for her?

  By then they had arrived at the radio station, and Susann had to prepare for Alex Bennett—the deejay who did clever interviews with a live audience and a sidekick—a different comic every week. Each hungry comedian was trying for the most airtime possible, and in the past Susann had sometimes found it difficult to get a word in edgewise. She also occasionally found herself the butt of their youth jokes, but she got through this morning unscathed. Then there was an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle and after that the book signings.

  At last it was over. Kathi took them back to the hotel. She still hadn’t presented Kim’s package, and Susann decided to let the matter drop. Gratefully, she got out of the car and turned to go into the hotel. “Wait. You forgot this,” Kathi said and gave her a package: Susann took it gingerly.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Susann and Edith went up the elevator, the parcel almost ticking between them. “Well, open it, for heaven’s sake,” Edith said at last.

  Susann handed the package to Edith. “You do it,” she coaxed.

  Edith rolled her eyes, and once they were safely in the suite, she tore off the wrappings and opened the box. “It’s her book,” Edith said, and handed the volume to Susann.

  Taking it seemed to use up her very last bit of energy. “I’m going to have dinner in bed,” Susann told Edith. “But don’t let me stop you. Go out if you would like.”

  “I would like to see Ghirardelli Square,” Edith admitted. “And take a cable car.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Edith left her, and Susann soaked her weary bones in the huge bathtub, using almost half of her Chanel bath salts. Then she crawled into bed, but she didn’t sleep. She picked up Kim’s book and began to read. She didn’t put it down until she had read it from cover to cover. It was a tidy piece of work, and there was even some really good writing in it. The plot could have been tighter, but as Susann got to the end and was surprised by its little twist, she realized that she was proud of Kim. She did have talent.

  On the last page was a message handwritten by Kim herself. It made Susann stop and hold her breath.

  Dear Mother,

  I don’t know if you’ll think this is any good or not. I don’t even know if you will read it and see this note, but I hope you’ve done both. I want to thank you for yo
ur generosity in letting me use the name. I know the book wouldn’t have been published without it, but I think it’s no worse than lots of other books.

  It’s also taught me how hard you have had to work all these years. I’ll try to forgive you if you can try to forgive me.

  Love,

  Kim

  77

  The successful editor is one who is constantly finding new writers, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.

  —A. Scott Berg

  Pam sat in her office, like a she-spider in the very center of her web. She was waiting for the last little fly to buzz in—a fly it would be a pleasure to wrap in silk and hang up as a trophy. Today was the day that they announced the Editor of the Year, and Pam couldn’t leave her desk. She was afraid to show her anticipation to anyone, just in case the award didn’t come through. She wanted to be at her phone to hear that bitch who chaired the committee give her the news.

  She got up from her desk and walked over to the refrigerator. It was only ten after ten, but there was no way she’d get through this morning without help from Dr. Snapple. She took out a bottle, walked back to her desk, and was just popping it open when Emma’s voice startled her. “Have you heard anything yet?” She was standing in the doorway in one of her typically disheveled arrangements—Pam couldn’t call them “outfits,” they were too nonfashion. She seemed to select her clothes by throwing them against the wall; anything that slipped to the floor in a wrinkled mess was wearable.

  Pam looked at her with a narrowed eye. Did Emma resent her? Correct that; she knew Emma must resent her, but she wondered how much. After all, it was Emma who had found Duplicity, which was beginning to get a lot of critical praise. And the Clapfish book, overseen by Emma, was giving Pam a touch of class and showing that she could still do literary fiction. And Emma had practically rewritten the Susann Baker Edmonds abortion, as well as the first chapter of Gerald’s pathetic book. In fact, if Pam won Editor of the Year—and she absolutely had to—it would be in large part due to Emma’s work this year and last. Amazing how much she resented Emma.