“Those aren’t my terms at all,” Camilla said. She looked at him and began to giggle. “Actually, I think it’s very funny.”
The waitress placed their first course before them. She looked at Craig. “Is there anything else you want?” she asked.
“I’ve already made what I want abundantly clear,” Craig told her. Camilla giggled again. The waitress stood there confused until he dismissed her.
“I’m very complimented,” she said, “but I’m a little bit fragile right now. I don’t think a casual affair would work for me.”
“I’m not talking casual affair, Camilla.” He looked at her across the table, and silly as it might be, she believed him. “I know you must think I’m a bit of a tart,” Craig said.
“A bit,” Camilla agreed.
“You know I was married, right?”
Camilla nodded.
“Well, one of the reasons we broke up was because we couldn’t have children. It was a great disappointment to me and to my wife. It was also a humiliation.”
“Why should that humiliate you?” Camilla asked. “Your wife couldn’t help it.”
Craig smiled but shook his head. “The problem wasn’t with my wife. I think low sperm count is always the husband’s fault, isn’t it?” He looked away, over to the bar.
“Still,” Camilla said. “It isn’t as if it’s your fault.” But even as she said it, Camilla wondered why wounded men were the ones attracted to her. Was it some message she gave off? Some attitude? But perhaps she shouldn’t take it so personally. Perhaps all men were wounded in one way or another.
“Is this a ploy?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve been told by Emily and Susan that there are a lot of lines men use in this city.” Craig’s face hardened, and Camilla realized she’d made a mistake.
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for what I just said, and I’m sorry about your marriage.” She paused. “But it isn’t totally tragic, Craig. There are a lot of babies in the world who need parents.”
Craig shrugged. “I think it was the blow to my ego. The fact that I’d been blaming my wife, that we’d just assumed it was her. I did a lot of damage. I’ve had time to get over it. Time to change. But I want a wife, and I want a family. And I really care about you. Let’s get to know each other better. What do you think?”
“Craig, is this a proposal?”
He grinned. “It’s more like a proposition,” he said. “I felt full disclosure was the way to go with you. Now that you know: If you’re interested, well”—he paused—“we could rent with the option to buy.”
“It would be a tempting way to get my hands on a Canaletto,” Camilla joked.
“It wasn’t the first thing I was thinking of you getting your hands on.”
Camilla smiled at his wickedness. She liked Craig. Was it something more? She thought of Frederick but put him out of her mind. Maybe this was a way to get over him. “My place or yours?” she asked.
“Most definitely mine,” Craig told her. “It’s just around the corner.”
Camilla was late getting back to Park Slope, and the people from People—a funny phrase—were already there. There were three of them: a male journalist, a woman photographer, and a dogsbody who seemed to help with the lighting and carrying the bags. Alex was there too, and rolled her eyes as she saw Camilla walking down the block.
“I’m so sorry to be late,” Camilla said.
“At least it isn’t snowing,” Alex remarked caustically.
“Picture of the struggling writer coming back from work?” the photographer said, aiming an absolutely enormous lens at her.
“You have a daytime job?” the journalist asked.
“Yes,” Camilla told them. “At Citron Press.” But that was not where she’d been. She’d been lying in bed at Craig Stevens’s flat. They had spent the night together. He was a tender and energetic lover. Funny how that hadn’t moved her. It had been pleasant to be with him, but something was missing, and it certainly wasn’t sperm. She’d been trying to forget Frederick, but it had reminded her vividly of her night with him.
Camilla had fallen asleep disappointed. She and Craig had made love again in the morning, and she had felt very little toward him. Camilla didn’t understand it, accepted it as one of the odd tricks of life. But she certainly couldn’t discuss it with this magazine interviewer. “Please come up to my flat,” she said. “I’ll make you a proper cup of tea to warm you up.”
“Could you put some Jack Daniel’s in it?” the dogsbody suggested, stamping his feet. Alex gave him a look, then gave Camilla another look as they all trooped into the tatty foyer and up the stairs.
“We could shoot on the staircase,” the photographer suggested. “I like these broken banisters, they look like missing teeth.”
“Whatever,” the journalist said in a bored voice, and Camilla wished she’d been there a little bit earlier.
87
One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception—at least some of the time—incompetent or crazy.
—John Gardner
Pam had already put her sunglasses on and crossed the dim lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria without looking in either direction. David Morton wasn’t a particularly good lay, but you didn’t have to be when you owned as many companies as he did. Pam didn’t even think of it as sex—it was more like insurance payments—a necessary precaution.
Still, it wasn’t necessary for anyone to see her slipping out of the Waldorf. She wished that David had picked a more discreet hotel, but it was clear that he didn’t often carry on with women. He’d spent half the evening talking to her about his troubled marriage and then had been as tentative and polite as an Eagle Scout. David Morton had probably been an Eagle Scout, Pam thought. She ran her fingers through her blond, curly hair and descended the steps. Shit! There was a line of people waiting for taxis; she’d have to hoof it crosstown over to Davis & Dash for the big meeting with Edina Trawley and her gang of lawyers.
The sun was shining, and the morning was fresh and pleasant. Pam smiled. David Morton was very impressed with his Editor of the Year. He wasn’t from the book world, and like many of the moguls new to publishing, he still believed its PR. Funny how men who knew how to manipulate the buzz on Wall Street to float a stock offering believed the buzz in the book world. Pam thought of all the trouble, all the sucking up she’d had to do, to get the fucking award. It had been worth every minute of it. She was David Morton’s little Editor of the Year. David Morton was proud of her and, after talking, had confided in her. He thought Gerald would have to go. Pam had faked a torn loyalty but at last had let him coax out her views. She’d given him all the support she could after decimating Gerald. David hadn’t promised her Gerald’s job as publisher—not yet—but given time, he would. Perhaps a walk over to the office was just what she needed—it gave her time to think of how she’d decorate GOD’s Little Acre.
Then she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around, surprised.
“When are you going to meet with me?” Stewart Campbell asked. “When are you going to take my calls? You promised me a new arrangement. You promised, and now you don’t even take my calls.”
Pam gave him a withering look. “And what are you doing now, stalking me? Have you gone completely crazy?”
“I’m not stalking you. I’m following you because it’s the only way I get to see you. That’s your choice. You made some promises to me, Pam, and you better live up to them.”
Pam’s stomach clenched. How long had he been following her?
“Since last night,” Stewart said, as if her question had been voiced.
“I will not be blackmailed,” Pam said in a voice as strong as she could manage. “I told you: I’m meeting with Edina Trawley and her legal corps today. I’ll get it all straightened out.”
“Good,” Stewart said. “Or I talk to my own legal corps.”
“Stewart, I told you: Contractually you deserve nothing
more. You signed on as a writer-for-hire. I’m doing the rest simply because I like working with you.”
Stewart laughed. “Yeah, and I’m Elvis. I’ll talk to PW this afternoon, Pam, if you don’t take my call.”
“I am not having a fucking business meeting at the corner of Fiftieth and Park,” Pam yelled. The light changed, and she walked toward Davis & Dash. Her stride was steady, but her hands were shaking.
“You better take my call!” Stewart shouted above the noise of the traffic.
88
Good swiping is an art in itself.
—Jules Feiffer
“I can’t do it, Mr. Davis.”
Gerald froze, and then, after a pause long enough to intimidate anyone, he moved his hand up to his cheek and lay two fingers along his temple. “What?” was all he said.
“I can’t do it,” Carl Pollenski repeated.
“You can’t? Or you won’t?” Gerald asked in his most withering tone.
The MIS drone had had the nerve to call him and insist—insist—on a meeting. “We’re in trouble here,” he had said, and although Gerald had told him he was simply too busy to fit him in, Carl had demanded a half hour of his time. In principle, Gerald felt that allowing Carl to dictate to him set a bad precedent. But the man’s nervousness had begun to infect Gerald, not unlike a nasty contagion.
Carl told him that he felt frightened by the questions of his chief analyst, and he wanted to abort all future transfers of sales. Gerald told him not to be an ass, advising him simply to fire the analyst. The Polack looked at him as if he were crazy, but Gerald knew that he was the only one who saw things clearly and had the power to achieve his goals. To hear any protest from this computer dweeb, who had accepted Gerald’s generous salary and very special benefits, enraged him. Gerald told him to forget about the analyst, fire or reassign him, and double the orders for Twice in the Papers, taking most of them from A Week in Firenze, which was doing surprisingly well. Gerald had consulted the order sheets. Too bad The Duplicity of Men was priced so high—it had a lot more sales than Gerald had expected, and he could have stolen at least a thousand orders from there.
But when he poo-poohed Carl and gave him new instructions, Carl balked. “Look, things aren’t like they were,” Carl said. “Did you hear about the Dean Koontz audit? He had them going over the joint with a fine-tooth comb. Backlist, current stuff, everything. Paperwork, computer data, warehouse, printing press, shipping and postage records. They owed him four million in royalties. I can’t do it.”
Gerald, when he was most angry and most dangerous, grew icy cold. He looked at the big idiot with the crew cut through teeth clenched so hard they were almost chattering. “You can and you will,” Gerald told him.
“But someone’s going to find out,” Carl said, almost whining.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody expected any sales from the Clapfish book. We could take twice as many and no one would be the wiser, least of all the author. Edina Trawley isn’t going to miss nine thousand copies when it’s selling double that in a week. And I’m taking full responsibility. As they say at Nike, just do it.”
“Look, it’s my career that would be at stake.”
Gerald never ceased to be amazed at the worry and grandiosity of all the little people with little lives that they never failed to think actually mattered.
“I’m not putting my career on the line,” Carl said more harshly.
“I’m afraid you already have,” Gerald told him smoothly. “I’ll report that you did this without my permission as a way to curry favor, and I’ll also discover your abuse of company privileges—the car, the catering, the theater tickets.”
89
I think it’s unfortunate to have critics for friends.
—William Styron
Susann lay on the sofa, a cold compress on her forehead, her hands wrapped in a moist hot towel. She’d finished the tour almost a week ago and returned to New York with unbearable pain in her hands. The New York dampness didn’t help, but Susann didn’t have the energy to travel. Her house in France during this wet season was certainly no better, and expensive as they were, she didn’t really feel good in either of her homes.
She’d already been to Columbia Presbyterian twice for hot-wax treatments. They had done little to relieve her, but immersing her hands in the warm gluey wax had at least been a momentary respite. The moment she pulled out her hands, the aching intensified. Her only distraction from the pain was to think about her failure. She hadn’t made the list, and she knew she wouldn’t. Other books had moved in, and hers was finished, topping out at an invisible number, part of the unpublished list, the list that didn’t matter, the list that did not include bestsellers.
She had called Pam Mantiss and Gerald Ochs Davis twice a day for the last four days and had not even received a call back. She knew she wouldn’t. She was nothing but a burden on their list, an author who would never earn out her advance, and one they might decide was not worth publishing. The thought of turning out three more books very nearly made her weep.
She would become a nobody, a nothing, for what was she if not a bestselling author? For almost fifteen years, her name and that phrase had been married in a joining far more meaningful to her than any of her actual marriages. Susann Baker Edmonds, bestselling author of A Woman with a Past…bestselling author Susann Baker Edmonds is arriving in…and now let me introduce bestselling author Susann Baker Edmonds…
She wasn’t a wife. She wasn’t even a mistress—when was the last time she had seen Alf, much less slept with him? She wasn’t a successful mother—despite Kim’s book, her trouble with drugs and Susann’s guilt at not protecting her from her stepfather certainly proved that. So what was she? Despite the face-lifts, despite the money she had earned, Susann returned to her apartment and lay on the sofa, facing the fact that both her time as a publishing star and as a sexual woman had come to an end. She was a middle-aged woman alone, about to sink into the oblivion into which all middle-aged American women without the buffer of fame, family, and status disappear. She would become invisible, no longer in magazines, no longer quoted in Publishers Weekly, no longer sought after as a speaker or television guest. She would become a nobody, and the thought was unbearable.
Edith, another middle-aged nobody, walked into the room. “How are your hands?” Edith asked.
Susann just shook her head. What was the point in describing her pain?
Edith brought the heated mitts and gently, carefully, inched them over Susann’s curled claws. Then she sat down in the small chair opposite Susann. “I think there’s been about enough of this.”
“Enough of what?” Susann asked.
“Enough mourning. Okay. The book hasn’t succeeded. So what? You’ve had eleven that have. You have money in the bank, a house in France, this apartment, and enough clothes to fill ten boutiques on Madison Avenue. It’s time to get over it and move on.”
Susann looked at Edith resentfully. “Move on to what?” she asked.
Edith shrugged. “Who knows? That’s the fun part. Figuring it out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. It’ll be more of the same. I have a contract to do three more books. I’ll hate them. Pam Mantiss will hate them. The public will hate them. And then I’ll be seventy.”
“Who says so? You might finally fire me for saying this. That’s okay. I’ve put plenty by for my retirement, and it’s got to be said. Susann, I’ve never known a woman who was so smart and so dumb at the same time. Screw the contract. Screw Gerald Ochs Davis. Screw the public. You don’t have to write another word, not if you don’t feel like it. And you certainly don’t have to try to do some silly knockoff of The Bridges of Madison County!”
“But I have to. My contract…Alf—”
“SCREW ALF!” Edith crossed her chunky legs. “Alf is a lying, manipulative, greedy, ungrateful, disloyal agent. I know that’s redundant. Let’s face it, he’s always been a power-crazed prick. He rode you until he found another horse. Well, t
hrow the jockey and let him get trampled. If it’s any satisfaction to you, Jude Daniel’s book tanked. Word over at Davis & Dash is that it’s the big disappointment of the season.” Edith tsked sarcastically. “Such a disappointment for Alf Byron. I guess his mummy never taught him not to count his chickens before they were published.”
“Oh, Edith, I can’t face knowing that I’ll be alone for the rest of my life.”
“Alone? What am I? Chopped liver? And I think that you should see Kim again.” Edith leaned forward gently and put her hand on Susann’s shoulder. “Sue, dear, it’s time to put down the reins. You’ve worked long and hard. No wonder your hands hurt. They’re tired. It’s time to move on.”
“Move on to what?” Susann asked. “A crippled old age?”
“Well, old age certainly, but how about moving on to some fun and selflessness? They’re not mutually exclusive.”
Susann sat up. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s time to stop worrying about the career. It’s time to stop being a hostage to it. You don’t have to worry about chapter eleven ever again. It stopped being fun a long time ago. You don’t have to worry about your place on the list, the number of advance orders, or your meeting with the Literary Guild. Think about what you would really enjoy doing. You have the means and the time.”
“What about my contract? What about—”
“Let the lawyers handle it. That’s what they’re paid for.”
Susann thought for a moment of what it might feel like to lay the burden down. It had been so much work, so much unrelenting pressure for so long, Susann could barely imagine her life without it. “I don’t know what I’d do,” she whispered.
“I know. Isn’t it exciting?” Edith asked. And for a moment Susann felt the thrill of possibilities.
“Hawaii,” Edith whispered. “The South Pacific. Pueblos. Rafting down the Colorado. An apartment in Paris. Arranging your own flowers. Giving money to Chinese orphans. Shopping on the rue de Rivoli. Breakfast in bed. Scholarships for creative writing. The emptiness could be filled.”
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