Blind Submission (9 page)

“Listen, Damian—
Dami,
” I whispered into the phone, “why don't you call me after you've made some more of these changes? And then you can just, um, e-mail it to me at home. I'll—I'll just print it out.”

“Grazie,”
he said.

“And a photo,” I added hurriedly. “Do you have a photo you can e-mail? Of yourself?”

“Not really, but—” he began, but my intercom buzzed again and I rushed him off the phone. After assuring Lucy that I'd have a pitch letter for her momentarily, I took a chance on the possible kindness of strangers and approached Craig.

“How are you doing, Angel?” he asked. Craig looked particularly scrawny in a blue polo shirt that was a size too big and brown pants that had seen better days. As he pushed his spectacles back on his nose, I was reminded of Woody Allen minus the irony. But that voice! It resonated in the center of my body and made my heart skip. Craig's wife, I thought, was obviously a lights-off kind of gal.

“I—I'm okay,” I said. “But I wonder if you could give me a hand with something. Lucy wants me to—”

“Draft a pitch letter for the Italian book?” Craig asked.

“Right,” I said. “And I don't…” I trailed off, not wanting to admit to Craig that I didn't have the vaguest idea how to start such a thing.

“There's a template on the computer,” Craig said. “But if you want an example to follow, I've got one here somewhere.” He slid open a meticulously neat file cabinet beneath his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here you go,” he said. “But I'll need that back when you're finished with it.”

“Sure,” I said, but hesitated.

“You're going to have to jump right in, Angel,” he said, and the sound of my name in his mouth made my throat constrict. “It's the best piece of advice I can give you. Don't be afraid to get wet.”

This was, oddly, the warmest, most encouraging thing anyone had said to me since I'd started, and it immediately endeared me to Craig, who was, nevertheless, frowning as he uttered it.

“Okay,” I said, giving him a high-wattage smile. “Right you are.”

I returned to my desk and scratched out a one-page letter that included a brief description of
Parco Lambro,
heavy on superlatives, and a short paragraph stating why “Dear—(Ed.)” absolutely had to have it. I copied the sign-off on Craig's sample letter, which was “As always, Lucy Fiamma.” And I supposed she was. Always Lucy, that is.

It took Lucy less than ten seconds to decimate my letter with razor-like flourishes of her fountain pen.
Redo as per my notes,
she wrote on top.
This reads as if a (small) child wrote it.

I felt a flush spread up my neck as I read her comments and my ears began to burn with humiliation. I realized that I hadn't really been stung by Lucy until that moment and I found it particularly painful. The escape fantasy I'd envisioned for myself during my first five minutes on the job flared in my head. Craig must have sensed this somehow, because just as I was contemplating how long it would take me to gather my purse and exit, an instant message from him appeared on my screen.

Don't take it personally.

I sat down at my desk and typed one back.
I'll try not to,
I wrote.
Thanks.
I looked over at Craig, hoping for some kind of visual affirmation, but he was already on the phone, murmuring something about overdue royalties into his headset.

I rewrote the pitch letter five times. Each draft came back to me (via Anna, Nora, or myself as we took our turns through Lucy's office) with more strike-throughs and margin notes than the last. Lucy made corrections on her own corrections. Finally, I received a copy that stated,
Enough already—we're out of time. Let's get this done!
I looked at the changes and realized that the final copy was almost identical to the original I'd given her.

I returned Craig's sample pitch letter to him and hovered at his desk until he looked up at me and asked, “Is there something else I can help you with, Angel?”

“Well, actually, um…”

“The letter's fine. Is that it?”

“No. I…”

“We're kind of busy here, Angel.”

I realized that I was sweating profusely and had no idea why I was finding it so difficult to broach a subject that should have been discussed and put to rest after my initial interview.

“I don't, uh, ha-ha, know exactly what my, um, salary is here, Craig.” I gave him a big smile, hoping it would cover my conversational flailing. “I was sort of wondering if you could fill me in. You being the money guy and all.”

Craig leaned back in his chair and, for a moment, a strange look passed across his washed-out features. If I hadn't known better, I could have sworn it was a kind of indictment—as in, why would I be so presumptuous as to assume I was actually going to get
paid
for this opportunity? The look passed quickly, before I could positively identify it, and Craig gave me a weak smile in return. He leaned over his desk, grabbed a scrap of paper, wrote
25K
on it, and handed it to me.

“And this is…?” I searched his eyes for an answer.

“Yearly.” He'd lowered his voice to a kind of Shakespearean actor's whisper.

“Okay,” I said, staring at the paper, dividing it by twelve, subtracting taxes in my head, and coming up with much smaller figures.

“Most people who start in publishing make much less,” Craig said. “This is a very generous starting salary. She has a lot of faith in you.”

“Right. Of course. Thanks,” I said, and went back to my desk. I'd barely seated myself when my intercom screeched once more.

“Angel!”

“Lucy?”

“My office!”

Before I could get more than one foot in her office, Lucy barked, “Copy and circulate,” and thrust a memo at me.

We are not running Gap ads in this office!!!!
it screamed.
Professionalism is paramount to the success of this operation! I must insist that, from now on, there will be NO JEANS worn to work! Please adjust your wardrobes accordingly! LF.

I had, of course, already adjusted my “wardrobe” and was wearing a pair of khaki pants I'd pulled from the depths of my closet earlier that morning. Anna and Nora, however, were still clad in denim. Nora's reaction to the new “no jeans” directive was to fold and refold the memo until it was an extremely small square. When Anna read her own copy, she shot a pointed glance in my direction and turned to her computer. Two minutes later, I received an instant message from her:

LF has requested that we dress more professionally. No more jeans. Just so you know.

I held up my copy of the memo, but Anna's eyes were fixed on her computer screen.

Okay,
I typed back.
Thanks for letting me know.

Any idea why we can't wear jeans anymore?
Anna sent back.
I'm just wondering because jeans were fine until today. Just thought you might know.

My guess is as good as yours,
I typed. I hoped that would be the end of it, but I suspected that Anna was just getting started. The phone started ringing again and she leaned back in her chair, sulkily refusing to answer it.

“Lucy Fiamma Agency.”

“Listen to
you,
all professional!”

Malcolm. Damn it. “Hello there,” I said, lowering my voice by several octaves.

“‘Hello there'? You know who this is, right? Your boyfriend? The man you left lonely and unfulfilled in bed this morning?”

“Yes, Mal—of course I know who it is.” I was whispering, which had drawn Anna's attention. I swiveled my chair away from her so that she couldn't see my face, but that put me squarely in Nora's sights. I was learning that privacy was at a real premium in this office. “I can't talk now,” I breathed into the phone. “I'm not really supposed to get personal calls here, anyway.”

“Well, you're not answering your cell phone.”

“Of course I'm not answering my cell phone. I'm
working.
”

“Angel, why do you sound like someone's standing on your hair?”

“I have to go,” I told him.

“Wait, I'm calling to see if you want to go out to lunch. I can come get you—”

“No, no, I can't. I have to get off now—”

“Why
not
?”

I was desperate to get Malcolm off the phone, and although I was staring down at the note-covered surface of my desk, I could feel the heat of Anna's stare on me. “It's really busy here,” I told Malcolm, trying to sound calm. “We're trying to get that book ready. You know, the Italian guy—the one I was working on last night.”

“Who
is
this guy?” Malcolm asked. “Is he somebody famous or something? Why so much attention?”

“He's got a good book,” I muttered.

“Has to be more than that,” Malcolm huffed. “He must be some kind of stud or something. Is he? Angel?”

“I don't know, Malcolm!” I lowered my voice again. “I really have to go now.” Two more lines were ringing and Anna refused to touch them.

“What about dinner, then? I'll cook.”

“Great, great,” I said. “I'll see you then. Good-b—”

“Angel, wait.”

“What?!”

“Your mother called.”

A long second passed, suspended and fraught. “Couldn't you have mentioned that first?” I whispered finally.

“Well, excuse
me.
”

“I have to go,” I said, and hung up on Malcolm, jamming my finger on the next call line button.

“Lucy Fia—”

“Angel,
bella
!”

“Hi, Dami, can you—” I thought about putting him on hold to answer the other calls and, in an instant, decided against it. As far as I could see, Damiano Vero was now my top priority. Nora would have to get her face out of her protein powder and pick up the phone. “Never mind,” I said. “How are you?”

“Bene,”
he said. “But Angel, a couple of things. I don't have a photo. Is it so important?”

“Well, Lucy thinks…” I trailed off. How to tell him that she'd already pitched him as some kind of Johnny Depp–meets–Benicio Del Toro? To be honest, her ongoing descriptions of dark, brooding Italian sexiness had become my own mental picture of Damiano. Not that the dark look meant anything to me, particularly. For a moment, I debated asking Damiano to describe himself, until I realized how absurd that would sound.

“Lucy thinks it helps,” I finished. I thought about Karanuk and wondered what the real reason was that nobody knew what he looked like. Was it possible he was so unattractive that Lucy had actually kept him hidden on purpose? Perhaps this was why she was so obsessed with seeing Damiano's photo.

“And if I don't have one?” he asked. He sounded amused.

“Well,” I repeated, “Lucy thinks it helps.”

“Okay,” he said. “The other thing…
Penso che
…uh, sorry…I think I need some help tonight, Angel. With the book.”

“Sure,” I said. “How about if I call you when I get home? It'll be quieter there and then we can go over it. Does that sound okay?”

“Bellissima,”
he said. “That's wonderful.
Mille grazie,
eh? You are very kind, Angel.”

“You're most welcome,” I told him, and hung up smiling. It was only later, after dozens more calls and a sheath of memos from Lucy, that I remembered I'd told Malcolm we'd have dinner together and that the editorial session I'd promised Damiano was probably going to ruin those plans.

At five o'clock, with a good hour of office work yet to go, I sneaked into the “employee bathroom” (a guest bathroom tacked onto the office, which Nora had informed me it was
her
duty to keep clean, as if that were some kind of prize) and called Malcolm on my cell phone.

“Hey,” I whispered when he picked up, “it's me. Listen, I'm sorry about before. I just can't…I mean, it's really crazy here.”

“Must be,” he said.

“What did my mother say?” I asked. “Did you talk to her?”

“A little,” he said. “I'll tell you about it at dinner.”

“Right. About dinner, Malcolm. I'm going to have to take a rain check.”

“Why?” he asked. “Does the Italian guy need his shoes shined?”

“Don't be like that,” I said. “Do I need to remind you that
you
were the one who advised I apply for this job?” I ran the water in the sink to drown out the sound of my voice.

“I'm sorry,” Malcolm said. “I didn't mean—Angel, what's that noise? Are you hiding in the bathroom?”

“Shhh,” I breathed into the phone. “She'll hear.”

Malcolm gave a perfunctory sigh and said, “Okay, I get it. No dinner. But I'm coming over anyway, okay? Later.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'd better go.”

“Angel?”

“Yes?”

“Love me?”

“Of course,” I said. I waited for him to tell me he loved me, too, but I lost the connection before he got a chance.

As I closed the bathroom door and made my way back to my section of the office, I saw that Anna and Nora were in a huddle at Nora's desk. Before I could sit down, both of them looked up at me, wearing identical bemused expressions.

“What?” I said.

“Check this out,” Anna said, gesturing to a letter in Nora's hand. I approached Nora with caution and read over her shoulder. Anna stood behind me, too close, as if she were guarding me. The single line of type on the paper was streaked as if someone had spilled water on it.

 

I am your next star author. The manuscript is on its way. Get ready.

 

“Hmm,” I said.

“Kind of weird, don't you think?” Anna asked.