Blind Submission (35 page)

Today's top priorities:

1. Get “Elvis” author on the phone asap—we need to discuss her new direction with her novel!

2. Karanuk—see me!!!

3. My NY notes are on your desk—please sort!

4. What is going on with Blind Submission?!?!

5. Prepare list and status of all option books!

—
LF

 

I was trying to figure out where she'd found the time to even think about the items on the list, let alone organize them as tasks for me, when I walked into her office and saw all eyes in the room immediately turn to me.

“Well,” Lucy said, “glad you could join us, Angel. Anna said that you were ill, which I found difficult to believe since I just saw you yesterday and you were fine.” Lucy delivered this statement with her usual crispness but didn't seem at all annoyed. She looked well rested and surprisingly chic in a black pin-striped pantsuit. Her hair, a white mist around her head, looked exactly the same as it had the day before.

“That's interesting,” I said, shooting quick daggers at Anna, “because I never said any such thing.”

“Um, well, I guess I just assumed,” Anna said. There was something different about Anna, and it took me a second or two to figure out that she was wearing makeup—too much of it, in fact, and she'd chosen exactly the wrong color (powder blue) to layer on her eyelids. She'd used some kind of greasy product to slick back her hair and was squashed into a pair of khaki overalls. I had no idea what kind of look she was going for, but whatever it was, it wasn't working. She looked like painted lunch meat wedged between Craig and Jackson on Lucy's couch.

“As fascinating as the semantics of your conversation are, Anna, there is business at hand,” Lucy said. “Do I need to reiterate that we are extremely short on time today?” Anna's face flushed and she looked down at the floor. Craig, who seemed more sallow and shapeless than usual, was staring intently at the pad of paper on his knees, and Jackson simply looked relieved to see me. I sat down in the only available chair, which happened to be right next to Lucy.

“Weren't you planning to stay in New York today, Lucy?” I said.

Lucy raised her eyebrows and gave me a half-smile. “My plans changed,” she said. “If that's all right with you, Angel?”

“I was just wondering,” I said, “because—”

“In fact, I was due to meet with an author,” Lucy interrupted. “Your Italian man.” She gave me one of her laserlike stares. I felt my heart flip and beat erratically against my chest. I couldn't control the flush I could feel spreading to the roots of my hair. I looked down at my notepad in a weak effort to conceal it.

“Damiano Vero,” Anna squeaked from her position on the couch.

“Yes,” Lucy said. “Damiano Vero. But he never showed up. Which is either the height of disrespect or an indication that something's happened to him.”

“But how…?” I began. My overtired brain was trying to work out how Lucy could have been in New York waiting for Damiano a couple of hours ago and be sitting here now. I scrambled for options, but the only ones I came up with were witchcraft and time travel. “Weren't you meeting with him
today
?” I asked before I realized that I wasn't supposed to know anything about their meeting at all.

“Actually,” Lucy said, plucking a speck of lint off her pants, “we were supposed to meet for drinks yesterday.” She shrugged dramatically. “I gave him an hour and a half. I think that's plenty of time. It was obvious that he wasn't going to make an appearance. I'm assuming he didn't contact you, Angel?”

“Um…no.” I didn't have to see my face to know that it was beet red.

“Heeey,” Anna said, as if something important had just occurred to her. “Didn't you talk to him the other night, Angel?”

I was a deer stuck in headlights and couldn't speak, couldn't move away from the oncoming impact. A look of genuine surprise spread slowly across Lucy's face, and behind that I thought I detected a glimmer of satisfaction. I needed to say something, but my words were frozen and unyielding in my throat.

“What's this?” Lucy asked.

I could actually see Anna puffing herself up like a hideous popover. Clearly, she'd been waiting a long time for this moment. “He called here the other day looking for Angel. He wanted to know what room she was staying in. In New York. I thought he had, you know, a meeting or something.” Anna gave Lucy a big fat grin. I wanted to kill her—put my hands around her doughy neck and squeeze until she choked. “Did I do the wrong thing?” Anna said sweetly.

“Did you talk to him, Angel?” There was an echo in Lucy's voice, as if she were speaking to me through a tunnel. I couldn't focus. My heart was beating so hard, my vision was jumpy and blurred.

I cleared my throat and with all the self-control I could muster, I said, “No. I haven't spoken to Damiano Vero for weeks.”

“Really,” Lucy said. “Well, I can't imagine what happened to him.”

“Isn't he, like, a heroin addict or something?” Anna said. “Maybe he, you know…” Every one of us turned to Anna then, our faces showing varying degrees of surprise and disgust. Anna sensed that she'd taken her little riff too far and her color rose slightly. “I'm just saying—” she started, but Lucy finally cut her off.

“Find him, Angel,” Lucy said. There was firmness and finality in her tone. “But not now. Right now we need to discuss the
Elvis
book. You saw my note? Have you spoken to the author yet?”

“Not yet, no. I haven't had a chance.”

“Well, that might be better, actually, although I can't imagine what you have to do that would be more important. The point is this: Julia Swann is very interested in this project. She's offering us a one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar preempt.” Lucy took a dramatic pause and tapped her Waterman pen on her knee.

“That is so great,” Anna interjected.

“I thought Julia said that she wasn't likely to get a book like this past her board,” I said. “What happened to change that?” I was flooded with relief that we were off the topic of Damiano, and intended to keep steering the conversation away from any other verbal land mines.

“
I
happened,” Lucy said. “I see you were paying attention, Angel, but not closely enough. This book has certain elements that are irresistible to Julia Swann and to Long, Greene, and they want it badly enough to offer us a lot of money.”

“But what elements?” I pressed.

“Poker,” Lucy said.

“Poker?”

Lucy sighed as if my question was very tiring to her. “Yes, Angel, poker. And if it's Texas No Limit Hold 'Em poker, that's even better. I don't remember if that's the specific game she's writing about.”

“That's because she wasn't writing about poker at all. It's a literary relationship story about modern love, trust, and marriage set against the backdrop of Las Vegas. It's about a road trip. It has nothing to do with poker.”

Lucy looked at me, and perhaps it was some trick of light in the room, but I could swear her eyes were twinkling. Her mouth, however, remained set and determined.

“It does now,” she said.

“So that's the new direction you want me to discuss with the author?” I said after a pause.

“Exactly,” Lucy said.

“But Lucy…” I couldn't stop, although I wanted to. After all, it wasn't
my
book, and what did I care if Shelly Franklin rewrote her entire novel to include the game of poker as a central theme? But I couldn't let it go. I didn't particularly care for Shelly Franklin herself and thought she could use both a primer on social skills and a few visits to a good therapist, but I loved her novel and I'd worked very hard to get it in the shape it was in. The thought of dumbing it down and tearing it apart to make it fit the commercial flavor of the moment was revolting to me.

“What if the author doesn't want to take this book in a different direction?” I asked Lucy. I heard the strident note in my own voice and did nothing to soften it.

Lucy waved her hand in the air and smiled. “Please,” she said. “Of course she'll
want
to. That's not the concern here. Look, Angel, you know as well as I do that poker is very hot right now. There are plenty of instructional books and collections of fiction, but there isn't really anything out there
like this.
Honestly, do you think this author would rather sell her book to Long, Greene—who, by the way, have plenty of literary cachet if that's what she's after—or some tiny little press with no money to give her and no way to give her book wide distribution? There's a reason she came
here,
Angel.”

“I don't know, Lucy, I've been working with her for a while now. I don't know if she can change this book so radically.”

Lucy tilted her head to the side and gave me an appraising look. I'd never challenged her this way before and we both seemed to realize it at the same time. What came as a surprise to me, though, was that Lucy didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed invigorated by it.

“Well, you'll call her in a minute, Angel, and we'll see, won't we?” Lucy crossed her legs slowly and tucked an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. I noticed that she was wearing a brand-new pair of black alligator pumps that matched the stylish briefcase I'd seen her carry in New York. “But the consideration now,” she went on, “is do we accept Julia's preempt or do we take it out and possibly get more? Or possibly less? Julia's advised me that she won't use her offer as a floor, so we'd be starting lower. I've got substantial interest for this book, but you never know how that's going to play out. Especially these days. So which way do we go?”

Lucy's question had a rhetorical flavor, but I answered, anyway. “Shouldn't we ask the author?”

This was, perhaps, one question too many. “Again, Angel, why did she come here? If she could make these decisions for herself, she wouldn't need an agent, would she? She wouldn't need
me.
Does anyone
else
have any thoughts on this? We need to get it settled immediately.”

“It would be so cool to have another auction,” Anna said. “You're so amazing with those, Lucy.”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “Any other thoughts?”

“It's a very solid offer from Long, Greene,” Craig said. “And I think that if you limit the rights to North America, we could get some decent sales on the foreign side. Then there are the other subsidiary rights. It could do well as an audio book. Then, of course, there are the paperback rights. You could try to work some magic with royalty rates there.”

How had Craig gotten this job in the first place? I wondered. He lacked anything resembling a spleen. His little speech was so dull and devoid of passion, he risked boring all of us into a collective coma. Perhaps sensing this, Lucy moved on.

“What about you, Jason? Any thoughts?”

Jackson, clearly unused to being called by a name that wasn't his, hesitated for a moment before answering. I could almost
hear
Lucy's irritation increase.

“Well?” she barked.

“Um…” Jackson looked over at me as if for support. “I kind of think Angel's right. Maybe we should ask the author what she wants to do.”

“Well, what do
you
know?” Lucy said, dismissing Jackson. “It's after noon in New York. This meeting is over. Let's get to work, people. Angel, you stay here. Get the author on the phone.”

Lucy seated herself at her desk as everyone else beat a hasty retreat out of her office. “Use my phone,” she said. “And put her on speaker.” I punched the numbers and Shelly Franklin picked up after the first ring.

“Hi, Shelly, it's Angel Robinson.”

“Hi?”

“I've got Lucy on the phone for you.”

“Okay?” On speakerphone, Shelley Franklin's verbal tics were more annoying than usual. The woman was hopeless. There was no way she'd be able to turn
Elvis
into a book about poker. Lucy was in for a surprise and I was going to enjoy it wholeheartedly.

“Hello, dear,” Lucy boomed. “We've been working extremely hard for your book. Angel and I have just returned from New York, where we blanketed the landscape with the fruits of your labor.” I winced inwardly at Lucy's mixed metaphor. “What do you think of that?”

“Oh?” Shelly giggled nervously. “That's great?”

“So listen, dear, I've got some very exciting news for you. Are you sitting down?”

“Sitting down?”

Lucy looked at me, gestured to the phone, and rolled her eyes. I shrugged. Lucy lifted her hands, palms up, and I nodded my agreement. Just like that, without either of us uttering a word, we'd been able to have an entire conversation.

“We have a lot of interest in your little novel, my dear,” Lucy sang into the speaker, “but here's the best part: I have received an offer from Julia Swann, an editor at Long, Greene. I'm assuming you've heard of them?”

There was a long pause before Shelly came back with, “Long, Greene? Oh, yes, I've heard of them. They're…that's wonderful!”

“But wait,” Lucy said. “The best part is the kind of money they're offering. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars, my dear. That kind of money is almost unheard of in publishing these days. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Oh…” Shelly said. “Oh, oh, oh…” She sounded as if she were swooning.

“Indeed,” Lucy said. “But now I want you to listen carefully, all right? We have two options. I can accept the Long, Greene offer right now or you can wait and we take our chances trying to sell it elsewhere. Of course, there are no guarantees that I could get the same kind of money from another publisher. Not to mention the fact that Long, Greene will undoubtedly do a wonderful job of publishing this novel. They are the kind of house that builds their authors. Do you understand what I'm saying? You'd have a future there.”