by Wendy Wax
An uneasy truce existed between the editorial and business sides, but the days of buying a book based solely on literary merit or an editor’s gut reaction were long gone.
Lacy Samuels was blissfully unaware of all of this on the Friday morning following her conversation with Kendall Aims. Lanky and somewhat awkward, Lacy had deciphered her first written word at the age of four and had spent the last eighteen years inhaling every one she encountered, from ad copy on cereal boxes to leather-bound editions of the classics.
Having graduated at the top of her class at Smith, she took her English degree very seriously. Despite her worship of the written word, she had recognized early on that she was not a writer herself, but was certain that her destiny was to discover and nurture into print the next Great American Novel.
Toward this end, in between the grunt work and coffee runs, she had begun to work her way through the mounds of unsolicited manuscripts, referred to as the slush pile, that she had originally believed would yield at least one undiscovered gem that might propel her out of the bottom of Scarsdale’s editorial heap. Unfortunately, despite six months of concerted effort, she’d barely made a dent in the constantly replenishing piles that littered the editorial offices and had been forced to concede that the quality of the work, even to her inexperienced eye, was appalling.
Which was why she had been so excited when Jane Jensen had assigned her to work with Kendall Aims, who as a mul tipublished author should provide a much speedier and more enjoyable route to an editorship.
Except, of course, for Kendall’s worrisome reaction to her call.
Lacy sat at her desk, worrying her lip, trying to figure out whether or not she should bring this up with her boss. On the one hand, she didn’t want to give up the opportunity to prove herself editorially; on the other, she didn’t want to be foisted on an author who didn’t want to work with her. She was still debating her best course of action when her phone rang and Jane called her into her office.
Jane Jensen’s dark hair was held back with a black-and-white polka-dotted headband that looked much too perky for the rest of her. She wore a generic black top and pants that did nothing to disguise or enhance her chunky figure, and she wore neither makeup nor jewelry. Lacy, who was not exactly a fashion diva herself, felt downright trendy beside her. If she didn’t care about her job so deeply, she would have been on the line to the people at What Not to Wear to nominate her boss for a fashion intervention.
“Good morning,” Lacy said, as she entered Jane’s corner office and came to a stop across from her desk.
“Maybe,” Jane Jensen replied. “The jury’s still out on that.”
Lacy smiled weakly; she’d discovered the hard way that no response was expected to her boss’s sarcasm.
“Call Stephanie Ranson—you’ll find her name on the agent list—and tell her I’m looking for something with at least a touch of paranormal to fill in the slot Sandra Adams was slated for.” Sandra Adams was a first-time author Jane had bought who’d been unable to revise her manuscript on time. “She owes me for this whole fiasco. Tell her I expect to see something by Monday.
“Then get hold of somebody in the art department and find out what happened to that new cover we were promised.”
“I’m not sure anyone is in the art department today,” Lacy said, as she scribbled Jane’s directions on her pad. During the summer, Fridays were hit or miss as everyone seemed to work fewer hours. “Aren’t they taking off—”
“I didn’t ask for an attendance report,” Jane snapped. “Just find somebody. Call somebody’s assistant and tell them I need that cover now. I don’t care what you have to do, just take care of it.”
Lacy nodded and added the note to her growing list.
“Call Picata,” Jane said, naming a nearby Italian restaurant that was so heavily frequented by Scarsdale employees that it was referred to as the Scarsdale cafeteria, “and make a lunch reservation for two under my name. Carolyn Sinclair is in town and I’m meeting her there at one.” The day Jane had stolen Carolyn Sinclair from another publishing house was the happiest Lacy had ever seen her. To say that Jane was competitive was like saying there were a few Starbucks in New York City. Jane had practically done a happy dance on the top of her desk when Sinclair’s agent had pronounced the deal done.
Some day, Lacy thought, she’d have big name authors and her own corner office. And when she did, she intended to treat her assistants a lot more gently than Jane Jensen. The only people Jane treated well were those a lot higher up on the food chain.
“I want you to type that memo for Brenda Tinsley about the sales catalogue.” Brenda, the associate publisher at Scarsdale, was a tall, terse woman who was way up there on Lacy’s personal intimidate-o-meter. As the second in command to the publisher, Brenda was often referred to as “the hand of God.”
“Find Kara in publicity and tell her I want a copy of the stops on Carolyn’s book tour to take with me to lunch. Then ask her to make a call to Carolyn’s agent. We need to do a little stroking here and I can’t do it all by myself.”
Lacy made the required notes, wondering how in the world she was supposed to find all these people when the building felt as quiet as a tomb. If she reached anybody any more senior than herself today it would be a miracle.
She suspected that once Jane left for lunch she wouldn’t be seen again until Monday. Lacy waffled once again about whether to bring up her conversation with Kendall Aims or leave it for next week. Deep down, she felt the author’s reaction was an important piece of information, but her boss’s reactions were often difficult to predict. Occasionally she was friendly and approachable, sharing with Lacy the knowledge acquired over her two decades in the business. More often she resorted to sarcasm or shrieked like a fishwife. Lacy had heard more than one staffer mutter about Jane not taking her meds or needing to get her dosage right, but she’d never known if this was idle gossip or a simple statement of fact.
Jane looked up from her desk. “That’s all for now,” she said, with all the emotion one would use to shoo off a fly. “I’ll probably have a few more things for you before I leave for lunch.”
Lacy didn’t move, still unsure.
“What? What is it?” Jane’s dark eyes signaled her impatience. It didn’t look like she was about to engage in a teaching moment.
“I, um.” Lacy looked for the right words, but couldn’t find them. She already regretted not leaving the moment she was dismissed. “I, um, spoke to Kendall Aims yesterday like you told me to.”
Jane just continued to stare at her as if she couldn’t imagine why they were discussing this. Lacy fervently wished they weren’t.
“And, um, she didn’t seem too happy to hear from me.” She shifted nervously from foot to foot. “I had the impression she was surprised to be working with me. I, uh, think she would have preferred someone more senior.”
Jane’s mouth tightened with displeasure. “Is that right?” She stood and came around her desk then leaned back against it in a casual pose not at all in keeping with the ramrod tightness of her body. “As far as I’m concerned, Kendall Aims is a mediocre midlist author who needs to be happy with whomever I assign her.”
Lacy noted the jangle of emotion that always seemed a tad too close to Jane Jensen’s surface and knew better than to comment. She stood completely still, much as you might freeze if you stumbled across a snake coiled to strike.
“This is your opportunity to show me what you can do,” Jane said. “I suggest you make the most of it.”
Lacy licked her dry lips, but it was the only movement she allowed herself.
“If you’re smart,” Jane continued, “you won’t waste a drop of energy worrying about the Kendall Aimses of this world. I guarantee you she’s sitting in her white columned McMan sion down in Atlanta right now pounding out this manuscript just as easily as you or I could go downstairs and hail a cab.”
This sounded somewhat unlikely to Lacy, who had a great deal of respect for anyone who c
ould produce a four-hundred-plus-page manuscript on a regular basis, but again, she knew better than to comment.
“Do you understand?”
Lacy didn’t, not really. But she nodded her head as if she did and forced herself to make eye contact with the woman across from her.
When she was certain Jane was finished speaking, Lacy prepared to leave. As she did so, she noticed a row of Kendall Aims’s titles on a lower shelf of her boss’s bookshelf. This time the internal debate over whether to speak was briefer.
“Maybe I should read some of her work so I can be familiar with her style,” Lacy said. “Do you mind?”
“Fine.” With almost complete indifference, Jane waved her toward the bookcase. “Take them. She’s all yours now.” Jane watched as Lacy gathered the paperbacks and balanced them against her chest to carry back to her cubicle. “But I wouldn’t get too attached.”
Kendall was definitely at her desk, but she was not, alas, pounding out a novel. Or much of anything else except a rousing game of FreeCell. Then Tetris. Then Minesweeper.
She had intended to bury herself in her writing and had hoped to get chapter one roughed out, but the day was almost gone and other than her page and chapter headings the screen was completely blank.
Except for that damned blinking cursor.
Every once in a while she stopped between games long enough to make a trip to the pantry or check e-mail or click back to Word—where that damned cursor blinked back.
She both wanted and needed to write. If for no other reason than to blot out Cal’s defection, she craved the oblivion of words and imagined images, but no matter how many times she curved her fingers over the keyboard, she couldn’t find the right words with which to begin.
Graham-cracker crumbs littered her keyboard and gathered in the lap of her robe. Her notes lay strewn across her desk, but she didn’t have the will to decipher them. Her face felt sticky from junk food mixed with tears. It desperately needed to be washed—just like the rest of her. She considered taking a shower but was oddly reluctant to go upstairs where she’d have to see how much Calvin had taken with him.
Just past noon a strange car drove up the drive. From her office window, which fronted the street, Kendall watched what turned out to be a bright red Jaguar pull to a stop. The driver-side door opened and she got a flash of a magnetic Realtor’s sign, though she couldn’t read the name of the firm. A long shapely leg poked out of the car and a tall, willowy blonde emerged.
Feeling slightly ridiculous, but unwilling to be spotted by anyone who looked that put together, Kendall eased carefully out of her desk chair and onto the floor so that she couldn’t be seen through the triple window under which her desk was centered.
She crouched there as the tap of high heels on the brick walkway announced the blonde’s approach. Kendall held her breath even as she berated herself for being such a wuss. It was her house, her prerogative how she dressed and what she did in it. She didn’t have to hide. If she wanted to she could meet the woman’s gaze through her office window and simply choose not to answer the door.
Instead she crouched beneath her desk like some modern-day Lucy Ricardo waiting for the woman to go away.
The doorbell rang, the multitoned chime echoing loudly through the empty house. Kendall waited, barely breathing, for the stranger to go away, but after a couple seconds’ wait the bell rang again. It rang a third time.
And then, unbelievably, a key turned in the lock and the front door of her home swung open.
“Hello?” The woman stepped all the way into the foyer and looked right through the open French doors into Kendall’s office. Her gaze slid down to Kendall, who was still crouched on the floor.
Kendall’s mind, which had been moving incredibly slowly up to that point, began to race through possible options.
The phone was on the opposite end of her desk, too far away to reach, and it seemed unlikely the intruder was going to stand idly by while Kendall lunged for it and dialed 911.
Their gazes met—the intruder’s a clear and very startled blue, Kendall’s undoubtedly wild and unfocused. An empty marshmallow bag, left over from last Thanksgiving’s sweet potato casserole, blew off the desk and landed on the carpet beside her.
A strange woman had just walked into her home and found her cowering beneath her desk. After a few agonizing heartbeats and an unadulterated adrenaline rush, the most salient fact sank in: The strange woman had a key.
Kendall straightened with all the dignity she could muster and cinched the belt of her robe tighter around her waist. “Who are you?” She looked the woman up and down, trying to understand what was happening. “And what are you doing in my house?”
The woman took a step forward, pocketed the key, and offered her empty hand, which Kendall ignored.
“Cal,” the blonde began then stopped. “Mr. Aims told me you were considering putting the house on the market. I’m Laura Wiles. I’m with Harvey Regis Realty.” She flashed a brilliant smile. “I’m a ten-million-dollar seller.”
Putting the house on the market?
There was a whooshing sound in Kendall’s ears that threatened to drown out the rest of the woman’s words. Surely she’d misheard. Or misunderstood. She and Calvin had moved into this house as young marrieds and raised Melissa and Jeffrey here.
She swallowed purposefully, like she did on a plane to compensate for changing altitude, in an effort to clear her ears.
“Anyway, Cal, um, Mr. Aims gave me the key so that I could take a look around and start working on the listing. I rang the bell first like I always do. I’m really sorry for barging in on you. I didn’t realize anyone was home.”
Kendall swallowed again and willed the whooshing sound to recede as she considered the woman in front of her. Laura Wiles was somewhere in her midthirties, a good ten years younger than Kendall. Her hair, which was salon cut and artfully highlighted, hung past her shoulders. She wore a light pink summer-weight suit over a lacy white camisole. Her dainty feet were encased in pointy-toed three-inch heels. Diamond studs sparkled at her ears and her lipstick matched her suit exactly.
More importantly, she was on a first-name basis with Kendall’s husband. And Calvin had given her a key.
Kendall dropped her gaze and was confronted with twin chocolate stains on the lapels of her robe. The hands that she smoothed down her sides encountered frayed patches of ter rycloth and other unidentifiable sticky spots.
Her tongue moved over her dry lips and she got a taste of cheddar cheese from the stale Cheetos she’d uncovered at some point that morning. What she looked like began to sink in and she could tell by the Realtor’s face that her disheveled state had not gone unnoticed.
“I see I’ve caught you at a bad time. I’m so sorry for intruding. I’ll, um, just let myself out and come back another—”
“Give me the key.” Kendall held out her hand, palm up.
Laura Wiles, whose name was now branded in Kendall’s head for all eternity, took another step back. But her chin went up and her eyes telegraphed a warning. If there’d been any doubt, Kendall now knew this was not some uninvolved Realtor who happened to call Kendall’s husband by his first name. This was her, the woman Calvin was getting ready to jettison his old life for.
And he thought he could give her the listing on the house Kendall hadn’t agreed to sell.
Kendall stood stock still with her hand extended while adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream and her mind raced. Their gazes were locked and Kendall had this bizarre image of them standing there all day in some sort of Mexican standoff until Calvin finally came home and . . . what? Kendall’s brain adamantly refused to go there.
“I suggest you give me the key now,” Kendall said. “You may have my husband for the moment, but you will never get the listing to my house.” The younger woman blanched and Kendall felt a small surge of victory. “I will personally burn this house down over my head before I’ll let you list it or live in it. Do you understand?”
&n
bsp; Kendall watched as the other woman considered her options. Kendall’s hand had begun to tremble from being stuck out there for so long, but Kendall didn’t pull it back.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” The Realtor reached in her pocket and pulled out the key. “Look at you.” She shook her head, the professional mask gone, allowing the disgust to show on her face. “No wonder he doesn’t want you anymore.” She wrinkled her nose and dropped the key in Kendall’s outstretched palm with her French-tipped fingernails.
“Frankly I couldn’t care less about the house,” Laura Wiles said succinctly. “It would be a hard sell anyway. And I certainly have no interest in living in it.”
She settled her Coach bag firmly on her shoulder and stared Kendall in the eye like a gunslinger fingering the ivory handles of her Colt .45. “But I’m going to keep your husband, Mrs. Aims. That much you can be sure of.”
Kendall watched the blonde leave. She relocked the front door behind her then stood in the foyer for a long time trying to absorb what had just happened.
There really was another woman. Calvin had already moved on and her little tussle with his girlfriend had accomplished absolutely nothing. The small flush of victory she’d felt when demanding the return of her key had all but faded. Life as she knew it was now over.
Kendall walked into her office and stared down at the desk she’d tried to hide under and knew one thing for sure. She couldn’t write—or even think—here. She couldn’t be here. She would not stay in this house one more minute than she had to.
Moving now at a speed she hadn’t come close to all week, Kendall practically flew up the stairs where she dumped her conference clothes out of the suitcase that still sat on the bedroom floor, then ran hot water for a shower. While she washed her hair and rubbed soap into her poor food-caked body, she realized there was only one place she could go.
Letting her hair dry on its own, she dressed, threw jeans and T-shirts into the suitcase, and raced back downstairs where she gathered her notes and a yellow pad and stuffed them into the case with her laptop. On her way to the garage, which she hadn’t set foot in all week, she raided the pantry one last time for the fuel she would need to get her where she was going.