Blind Submission (29 page)

“I'm sitting right next to you, Lucy.”

“But this is totally confidential,” Lucy said, and raised her eyebrows in slow motion. I realized that she was probably very high, and the thought amused and frightened me at the same time.

“Okay,” I said, and leaned toward her a little more. We were so close I could feel her hair tickle my forehead.

“Karanuk,” she said.

“What about him?” I said, and realized that I'd lowered my voice to a whisper.

“I don't know if he's going to be able to pull it off,” she said.

“Are you talking about
Thaw
?” I asked her. I'd heard Lucy on the phone, tempting editors with hints and morsels (even though, technically, Karanuk's previous publisher was supposed to get an exclusive first look at his next book), but she'd kept the actual text sealed off somewhere in her office and still hadn't allowed anyone else to read it. I hadn't really thought twice about Lucy's reticence with
Thaw.
I'd always expected that she would want to keep this particular project very private. Plus, I still didn't understand the nature of her relationship with Karanuk and wasn't sure that I wanted to.

“It's not even close to the level of
Cold!
” she said. “But that's not the problem. They'll buy it, anyway. But it's
not good,
Angel. Something's happened to him. It's as if the ability to write has been sucked right out of his being.”

I flashed on Sunny, reading her crisp new copy of
Cold!
back in coach.
Why hasn't he written another book?
she'd asked.
Makes you wonder.

“It's going to need a lot of work,” she said, and fixed me in her sights. “It's going to need
you,
Angel.”

“Oh.” The weight of what she'd just said hit me hard. I eyed her cautiously, wondering if she knew what she was saying.

“So now you know why I haven't sold it already,” Lucy continued. “If it wasn't such a mess, I'd have had the deal done the day after the first page arrived in the office.”

“Of course,” I said, realizing the truth of what she was saying.

“I've brought it with me,” she went on, “and I want you to read it. When we get home this is going to be your first priority, Angel. And I don't need to tell you that this is a delicate situation. There's a lot of money at stake here, not to mention reputation.” She inhaled deeply. “I don't know how kindly Karanuk will take to your giving him
direction,
so it's going to have to come from me. Do you get my meaning, Angel?”

Of course I got it. I'd do the work, she'd take the credit. It couldn't be clearer, really. But I didn't really care about that. I was far more concerned about Karanuk. I couldn't imagine him writing something
bad.
Not after
Cold!
I wondered if he was one of those fabled writers with just one great work inside him, a work that is almost channeled through him, and after that, it's over.

“Sure, Lucy.”

“Good. As long as we understand each other.” She pointed to the seat back in front of her. “There,” she said. “Take it.”

I reached in and pulled out the curled, worn manuscript pages. Lucy had written wild, scrawling notes all over the cover page. I could barely make out the title and Karanuk's name. Lucy leaned back in her seat, breathing very slowly. Her eyelids looked heavy and I was sure she was about to drop off. I looked up and met the eye of the flight attendant who'd brought me the memo. I could tell by her expression that my time in first class was about to get cut short.

“Lucy?” She didn't move or react in any way. “I think I'm going to have to go back to my seat now.”

“He was one of the worst lovers I've ever had,” Lucy said. Her voice was somnambulant. She sounded like she was reciting a passage from a novel. “Talk about cold! Ha! Great writer. Lousy lay. You wouldn't think it, would you? You'd figure an Eskimo would know how to heat things up.”

I realized with horror that she was talking about Karanuk and felt my mouth drop open. I had the same feeling you get when you witness your parents fighting or when you run into a teacher outside of school. It was just wrong—and uncomfortable in the extreme.

“They don't know,” she went on, “they don't understand…what a
privilege
it is to get published. So many of them…don't even deserve it.”

“Miss?” The flight attendant was hovering over me, her charms dangling. “I'm going to have to ask you to return to your assigned seat, please.”

“No problem,” I said, and gathered my things.

“Where are you going?” Lucy asked.

“I have to go—”

“Ma'am, she needs to be in her assigned seat. If you need—”

“I'll tell you what I
need.
Now listen to me, do you know who I am?”

I'd never heard anyone actually use that phrase before and had to stifle the laugh that bubbled up in my throat. I made my exit as gracefully as possible considering the tight space and left Lucy arguing with the flight attendant. I could only hope that she wouldn't make enough of a scene to get us both detained when we arrived in New York.

I climbed over Sunny for the second time, careful to fold
Thaw
in half, and tried to settle myself back in my seat. I was already exhausted and we weren't even an hour into the flight. It occurred to me that I could make good use of Lucy's Xanax myself.

“Everything okay?” Sunny asked me, those notes of comfort and understanding in her voice again.

“Oh, yes, fine, thanks.” I looked at her, still expecting her to start talking about her book, but again, she just smiled at me and went back to her reading. Perhaps she was waiting for the right time, waiting for my curiosity to be piqued. I gave a nervous glance down to first class. I hadn't seen any air marshals walking the aisles, so perhaps Lucy had quieted down. I pulled out my laptop again and turned it on. The most recent installment of
Blind Submission
stared back at me. This chapter, along with three others (G had gone into overdrive now), had come in as Lucy and I were preparing to leave, so I hadn't yet had a chance to read them.

There was no question that this manuscript was getting much better as it went along. It was as if G (or Malcolm—damn him) had had some kind of breakthrough after our last go-round and was finally finding his real voice. There was still some work to be done, of course, especially when it came to his annoying tendency to use clichéd and peculiarly awkward metaphors, but the characters were starting to come alive. Alice had found her voice as well, in a manner of speaking. The fact that this voice belonged to another author whose work she was about to steal and present as her own made for an excellent plot twist. Even as it worked on me,
Blind Submission
was getting good.

“Ms. Robinson?”

The first-class fight attendant was back at my seat. I braced myself for her wrath, sure that Lucy had stirred her up again, but was surprised to see her smiling warmly.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind coming with me for a moment, please?”

What could it be now? I wondered as I climbed over poor Sunny for a third time. I had a sudden fear that the flight attendant was only calm and smiling to avoid creating a scene before I was placed in some kind of custody at the front of the plane.

“Is there a problem?” I asked her timidly as we headed toward first class.

“No,” she said, “not at all. Your mother explained the situation to me. You can stay there with her for a while if you need to.” She graced me with a wide grin. “But I'd personally appreciate it if you'd return to your seat before the end of the flight.”

My
mother
? Lord, but Lucy was good. I wondered if she'd promised literary representation as well.

“Thank you,” I said. “She—”

“Not to worry, dear.” The flight attendant actually patted my arm, which was an awkward maneuver in the tight cabin. “She's already told me everything.”

I shuddered to think what “everything” might constitute.

The color and texture of Lucy's skin made her look like a wax replica of herself. She'd applied an overly generous amount of flaming-red lipstick since my last visit, which only served to heighten the effect. I sat down next to her and realized, with horror, that I hadn't brought my laptop or notes with me. I told myself it didn't matter because there wasn't a single piece of business Lucy could bring up that wasn't hardwired into my memory.

“Angel.” She leaned toward me woozily, her bright green eyes clouded over. I had another pang of concern about her pill consumption. The flight attendant was attending to a passenger directly in front of us but seemed to be keeping a curious eye on us all the same.

“Mom?” I said, and raalized how incredibly strange the word sounded in my mouth, and not jusd because I was directing it at Lucy.

“Books are like children, yoq know,” Lucy said with great seriousness.

My hair had sdarted to come loose and I blew a strand of it off my face. For the first time in my hife, I thought it was a pity that I
wasn't
a writer. I was trapped on an airplane with my crazy-stoned boss, who was claiming to be my mother and who was now going to launch into a discussion about giving birth to literature. It was a situation that was ripe with literary possibilities. “You labor over them, deliver them, and then they're out there in the world,” she continued, “and you never know what they'll become.”

I'd heard this many times before. I wondered where she was going with it, if anywhere.

“I've midwifed…midwived…been the midwife for many, many books that wouldn't have been born at all without me.” She ran her tongue around her lips, smearing her lipstick slightly. I thought about offering her a napkin to blot her lips.

“So true,” I said, wondering why I felt the need to speak.

Lucy stared through me for a moment, her gaze on some unseen point beyond the confines of the first-class cabin. I thought she was going to zone out completely, but then she slowly brought herself back around. I could almost see the thoughts collecting behind her eyes.

“Blind submission,”
she said suddenly and with great force. “I need it.” I looked at her, perplexed, searching her face for more information, and then it dawned on me that she was talking about the manuscript and not giving me an employment directive.

“I've just been reading it,” I told her, and I could hear the skip in my voice. “It's really getting better, Lucy. I don't even think the new material is going to need much work. I'm not quite finished reading yet, but I think—”

“Really?” Her voice was in near-monotone, but I could see some animation working its way into her features. “I need to sell that book, Angel. I'd
like
to sell it as soon as possible. How close are we?”

“Close,” I said. “I think with the rewrite of the last two chapters and this new—”

“I don't need the details of every sentence, Angel. I want to know
when.
We're hours away from New York. In the morning I'll be having breakfast with…with…”

“Natalie Weinstein.”

“With Natalie Weinstein, and she's still upset about losing
Parco Lambro.
She's ravenous for a hot new project. From me. Can I tell her I have one or not?”

I struggled with what kind of answer to give her. “Well, I think if—”

“Do we have the pages?”

“Only on my computer. But I'm still$#x2014;”4

“On your computer?”

“Yes, because I'm—”

“Still
writing
it?” Lucy gave me a twisted, joyless smile, her smeared lipstick `dding to it a touch of the grotesque.

“What?” I asked her.

“Are you still writing it, Angel? Is that why we don't have it yet?”

I knew t`at Lucy was out of it, perhaps dangerously so, but I found it difficult to imagine that she really thought I was the creative force behind this novel, Unless…Staring at hep, unable to come up with a response, I realized in a sense I
was
writing
Blind Submission.
Hadn't I been over every word of this thing, changing it, reshaping it, doing my fairy-tale spin of straw into gold? Were the “suggestions” I was giving G starting to become more than that? Was I creating the text before he wrote it? My thoughts started to collapse on themselves in a flash of total confusion. I had the terrifying sensation that she'd found me out, that she'd caught me at something I didn't even know I was doing. I shook my head and the moment passed.

“I'm
editing
it, Lucy. Isn't that what you want me to do?”

“What I want…” She stared at me hard, her eyes gaining focus on mine. “What I want from
you
—” The plane gave a lurch before she could finish speaking, and the
FASTEN SEATBELTS
sign blinked on with its accompanying ring. Lucy cringed and seemed to shrinc into herself, an expression of sheer terror flashing across her face. “Fucking airplanes,” she said through clenched teeth. I was at a loss, unsure whether to try to comfort her, summon a dlight attendaft, or search for more Xanax. She covered her eyes vith her hands and laaned forward in her seat. I waited for her to speak or change position for five minutes and then I raalized that she'd fallen asleep or, more likely, passed out. I reached over and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. No response. I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to lean her back into a more comfortable position. Lucy stirred as I fumbled. Without opening her eyes, she reached up, grabbed one of my hands with her own, and held on.

“It's…um…Lucy? It's okay. Do you want me to stay here with you?”

Lucy didn't open her eyes and didn't respond. I waited another few minutes until she dropped my hand and it became apparent that she was out cold. It was as good a time as any to go back to my seat, I thought. I caught the flight attendant's eye as I headed back. She gave me a dirty look as she draped a blanket over Lucy's inert form. I knew what she was thinking.
Bad daughter.