Don't Tell Eve (8 page)

‘So true, so true.’ Eve had not understood any of what had just been said, but that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy listening to his voice. Low and husky and, for that fifteen minutes, blissfully free from a stutter, she imagined that he’d grown up on a ranch somewhere. As Todd was a fan of Westerns, Eve had watched enough to be familiar with life on the land. So while Chris was speaking of simulacrum and bricolage, she’d been picturing him in the mountains, on a horse, rounding up cattle, wearing chaps, sweating and cracking a whip.

She was far from bored. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she said, opening her purse and giving him a key. ‘Just let me freshen up.’

After she’d tottered to the bathroom Chris quickly assessed his options. The one he liked best was leaving and turning off his phone. It was easy, clean and didn’t involve confrontation, at least not initially. It might later, he could see that. Another option was to leave Eve a note saying that there’d been an emergency,
though that then left open the possibility that he wanted to see her again. The third option was staying and quietly explaining that, while she was a very attractive women, sleeping with her would be inappropriate, but he was flattered – honoured? – no, flattered – by her interest. The trouble was she might be insulted. Or he could just agree to go upstairs with her and then not perform. The flaw here was that he couldn’t guarantee non-performance, not without drinking a lot more very, very quickly. He wished he’d just said he had a girlfriend, or that he was gay, or celibate. Celibacy was trendy, he’d heard somewhere. Faced with an impossible decision, Chris panicked. ‘I’m really s-s-sorry,’ he said when Eve returned.

Eve was left standing, open-mouthed, as he ducked past her and out of the door. Anger quickly replaced astonishment. No one, she thought, humiliated her like that and got away with it. Muttering, she swigged down the rest of the bottle and lurched out of the bar.

When Eve stopped to get her bearings, a sedan drove by, slowly at first. It then reversed and pulled up beside her.

‘How much?’ a male voice asked through the open window.

Eve, who didn’t hear the question, leaned forwards and asked the man to repeat himself. As she did so, her bodice slipped down. Instead of pulling it up, she thrust out her chest and slurred at the driver, ‘You wouldn’t say no to these, would you?’

Before the driver had a chance to answer, she continued. ‘No, of course you wouldn’t. No sane man would. No man who’s a, who’s a, who’s a … man. Who does he think he is, anyway? Saying no to me? He’s crazy. He’s not gonna get away with it. I’m gonna —’

Before she had a chance to explain what she intended to do, she heard a voice behind her and her wrist was grabbed. The car skidded off.

‘Let go of me, you asshole,’ Eve yelled, spinning around.

The policeman let go temporarily, assessing correctly that Eve wasn’t going to be able to run far, not with those heels. Only a trannie could negotiate them properly, and Eve was no trannie. ‘You can explain yourself down at the station. But before we go, please make yourself decent.’

A rapidly sobering Eve attempted to pull up her bustier, an action made more difficult now that her breasts had escaped. Eventually she was able to contain herself and the officer escorted her to the police station around the corner.

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ she screeched at the desk clerk, having already asked the arresting officer the same question while they’d walked.

‘Well, not who, perhaps, but what is pretty clear.’

Eve’s response to this remark should, by rights, have had the man in a foetal position on the floor, thumb in his mouth wishing for his mother. Instead, he gave a sardonic shrug of the shoulders.

‘Can I use a phone?’ she spat.

‘I have no doubt you can, the question is, would you like to?’ The desk clerk was well known for his pedantry; it annoyed his colleagues as much as those they arrested.

There was only one person Eve trusted in a situation like this: Hilary. Hilary would know how to deal with this kind of predicament. While Eve waited for her to arrive, she reflected on the evening. She had played her part perfectly: she’d been sexy, witty, seductive. Instead of sitting in a cell, she should be in a luxury hotel suite by now, enjoying herself in a way that didn’t happen nearly enough at home. Indeed, didn’t happen at home. Not at all these days. Chris was going to pay for this. The only upside to the whole mess was that no one she knew had seen her.

There were, however, people about who knew Eve, and two were close by. As she’d emerged from the bar, Oliver and Kate had been waiting for a taxi. Kate had been talking to the boys on her mobile, but Oliver, Oliver had been paying very close attention to the incident taking place in front of him.

He considered telling Kate what he’d seen, but decided against it for several reasons, chief among them being that he wasn’t sure he wanted to discuss Eve’s extraordinary anatomy with the still drunk, modestly proportioned Kate. They’d already spent enough time on the woman for one evening and he was only too aware of Kate’s opinion of her.

It was nine the next morning and Eve was drinking black coffee, thinking dark thoughts and trying not to slide off the uncomfortable iconic silver sofa in her office.

Chief among the dark thoughts was how Chris could have turned her down. Was he actually gay or just an imbecile? She fondled her broach, a vast gold ornament designed to compliment rather than compete with her gold chandelier-sized earrings. Not that it mattered, she was still going to destroy him, and in a way that would hurt. The question was, what would hurt most?

While mulling this over, she noticed that someone – probably her improbably chirpy assistant – had left a pile of paperbacks on the glass coffee table in front of her. When would the girl learn that the coffee table was for fashion magazines and luxuriously illustrated hardbacks, not flimsy paperbacks? Eve hated that paperbacks were what people wanted on this island; it said everything there was to say about them. They wanted ease and convenience: quality and longevity didn’t come into it. As she hid the offending items in the cupboard below her bookshelf, one of them caught her attention.

It wasn’t one that Papyrus had published.

The cover, she had to admit, was arresting, if misleading. It had the appearance of a novel but, if the information on the back was to be believed, it was in fact a management book. In her opinion it was the kind of packaging that would cause fiction lovers to pick up the book then throw it down, annoyed at the deception, and business readers not to bother with it in the first place. And then there was the author. Or lack of one. Everyone knew that ‘anonymous’ was for contentious material, or pornography. She couldn’t imagine why someone wouldn’t admit to having written a business book, although it didn’t look like an ordinary, straightforward business book, so perhaps the author was embarrassed.

Eve summed it up quickly as a book that would not sell. Her assessment, and the book’s dismissal, gave her a feeling of satisfaction, one almost akin to a hit of her favourite dark chocolate. It proved that she knew what she was doing, that publishing wasn’t such a difficult business. Todd and, more recently, Hilary, had helped to bring out her latent business and leadership skills – she liked to think she was someone who gave credit where credit was due – but, essentially, she was a natural.

However, if she wanted to get home she couldn’t rest, and she did need to use all the resources available to her. ‘Hilary, in here – NOW,’ she barked into her phone.

Almost before NOW, Hilary had slithered in and Eve explained what she wanted. After listening carefully to Eve’s requirements, Hilary wandered over to Eve’s window and unconsciously fiddled with the blind cord. It wasn’t long before she’d suggested an ingenious solution, a form of retribution that was effective, efficient and practical.

For Eve, one of Hilary’s most fetching features was that she asked no awkward questions; questions such as: was an action
right, was it ethical or was it legal? Whether it was sensible was never at issue.

Having briefed Eve, Hilary returned to her office and allowed herself a twitch of the lips, which for her indicated satisfaction.

Thank God for the arrival of Eve, she thought. Eve was her way off this upbeat, sun-drenched island, where the people were tanned, the trees tropical and the weather always bloody summer. What had brought Eve to such a hellhole Hilary didn’t know, but it seemed that she’d not been sentenced to life, just hard labour. By making herself indispensable, Hilary believed she’d found her own escape route, one that would lead to a whole new life in a new place that Eve, and Hollywood, depicted as magical. A place with seasons, where the leaves fell, where it snowed and where the city was composed of skyscrapers and man ruled over nature: a place where people were
expected
to reinvent themselves.

Later that morning, while sitting in David’s dank and claustrophobic office, made more claustrophobic still by a closed door and ten years’ worth of postcards, notes, articles and book jacket ideas sticky-taped to the walls, Noel broke the news. ‘Just a warning, nothing you can do, but thought I’d give you a heads-up. In a minute you’ll be getting an email from Eve. She’s after a complete list of the as-yet-unpublished manuscripts that have been finished, accepted and paid for – and those that haven’t. She’s about to do a little list-trimming.’

Noel hadn’t been surprised when Eve and Hilary had visited him, just that they’d taken so long about it. After all, Eve’s
first move had been to pulp old and unsold books to clear the warehouse, and her second to begin clearing the office of staff. Logically, the next step was to attack the authors.

‘Oh Lord, do you know if she’s targeting anyone in particular?’ said a desperate David.

‘Of course – we just spent the last two hours trawling through contracts, in particular escape clauses. Thing is, she knows exactly who is going to go, and compiling a long-list is just to give an appearance of even-handedness.’

‘But surely she’s got to understand what kind of message it will send to people? No one will want to do business with us, agents won’t send us new manuscripts.’

‘She’s ahead of you there. The move’s being packaged as part of a bigger strategy.’

‘Oh fuck, what?’

‘Less is more. She’s saying that it’s the final plank in her vision for the “new” Papyrus, and, I must say, she sells it very well: fewer books but bigger books. We’ll be streamlined, efficient, focused. It’ll be less confusing for the booksellers, less work for us and simpler for the book-reading public. Good for the environment too.’

‘Whose side are you on, Noel?’

‘Mine. As long as we have some big authors left, my salary’ll be paid.’

‘But that’s the whole point! It doesn’t work like that for me. I don’t know which of mine are going to be big. Oh God.’ David’s voice rose as he lowered his head into his hands.

‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter what you think, she’s making the decisions. For instance, do you know which author she asked about first? That young bloke, the scruffy one who writes porn. God, I’ve forgotten his name – poor thing, his career over before it began. Didn’t even get his fifteen minutes.’ There was badly suppressed glee in Noel’s voice.

‘No, no, that won’t happen, I won’t let it, I’ll fight it.’

‘Don’t be silly, there’s no point – just accept that you’ve got no influence. No one has, except possibly Hilary, although she probably has less that she thinks. If you want to keep your job, follow my example and agree to whatever our beloved leader suggests.’

When the official announcement was made, David discovered that the bulk of the contracts being cancelled belonged to Kate’s authors – and his. And, as predicted by Noel, it was presented as a triumph of management. Vigorous, exciting, challenging, dynamic were just some of the words Hilary used to describe the new Papyrus in Eve’s press release.

In the speech to the staff Eve talked about the company striving for excellence, being forward-thinking and lean, like a marathon runner who couldn’t perform carrying extra weight. And, like marathon runners, they were all to keep training. Time management, negotiation – she wanted them on courses. She wanted a team who were fit for business.

In this same speech she announced two promotions. Promotions that were Hilary’s idea and designed to make those remaining believe it was possible to work hard at Papyrus and be rewarded for it. They were a sign that it was possible to survive and to flourish under Eve’s regime.

Phil and Jess were both stunned to be offered pay rises and relocation to offices on the refurbished executive floor. Phil was particularly pleased about being allowed to use the lifts again – the only ones now operating went to the executive floor, and the stairs were proving tiresome.