The Agency (10 page)

I FINALLY REACHED
Dorothy Starkwell from my office on Monday afternoon, which is Monday morning in New York. It was my ninth attempt to call her, which is by no means a new record. I had to dial the calls myself, which is a hardship, because I’m hopeless with international dialing codes. Emma had decided to take the day off, either to get past a hangover or to spend the day in bed with her latest whirly girl.

My end of a conversation with Dorothy usually goes like this: “Dorothy, it’s Tess.”

At that point, I put down the phone, answer a few e-mails, head out for noodles at Wagamama, take the Tube to Oxford Street, pay my mobile bill in the Orange store, buy a new skirt at Selfridges, walk back, toss some bread cubes to the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, and then saunter into the office, by which time Dorothy is ready to take a breath.

“Dorothy, it’s Tess,” I said when she answered the phone.

“Oh, Tessie, how lovely to hear from you! I called you three
days ago, and I was beginning to wonder if you were ill, because I hadn’t received a call back. You are all right, aren’t you? You work too hard, Tess. I know it’s all day and all night for you agents, but honestly, dear, you’re going to have to take some time for yourself. Did I tell you that I’m fostering a kinkajou? Yes! He is adorable! Although I understand you can’t give them strawberries, which I find a little odd. Can you imagine any creature being allergic to strawberries? I’d die, I really would. I just got back from breakfast in SoHo, and I had strawberry-stuffed French toast, which was lovely, dear, absolutely lovely, we will have to go there when you’re in New York. Are you coming over soon? It’s been eons, simply eons. Oh, by the way, I heard from my publisher in Milan, did I tell you, and even though I still think the pandas on the cover look anorexic—and pandas are roly-poly, dear, not anorexic—which reminds me, did you see what that Nicole girl looks like these days? My God, her forearms look like chopsticks, it’s so sad. Where was I? Oh Milan, yes, anyway, Maria tells me that the books are selling over there like, well, what sells well in Italy? Pasta, I suppose. See, that’s another reason why the pandas shouldn’t be so thin. People in Italy love to eat. Although it is true that they themselves are thin as rails, and I don’t know how that’s possible. Do you think they work out? I mean, if I ate Italian every night, I’d be the size of, well, one of my pandas, don’t you think? Can’t you just imagine that?”

I heard Dorothy inhale, and I broke out of my coma and jumped in with the most important question.

“What’s a kinkajou?” I asked.

Okay, second most important question.

“Well, this fellow looks a little like a monkey, or maybe a ferret, although I’m told he’s part of the same family as the red panda, which I thought was very ironic and appropriate for me, don’t you think? However, if truth be told, the red panda isn’t in the same family with the giant panda at all, and since they don’t really look at all like each other, you have to wonder why they wound up with the same name. Both Chinese bamboo eaters, though, so perhaps that’s the reason. Strange. That’s life in the animal kingdom, I guess. I imagine they think all the names we give them are pretty
silly. Someone says ‘kinkajou,’ and I want to say gesundheit! Do you think they come up with names for us?”

“I heard that lions give names to other animals,” I said. “They call them dinner.”

Dorothy giggled. She is in her early sixties, no bigger than a kinkajou herself, with a helmet of gray hair. She wears jewelry that is so gaudy and heavy her earlobes droop and her back is permanently slumped. Her body, bathroom, condo, and car smell of Crabtree & Evelyn. When she laughs, she has all the innocence of a ten-year-old girl. “Oh, Tess, what am I going to do with you? You are too funny, dear.”

“What do the girls think about the kinkajou?” I asked.

Dorothy has five female white standard poodles that she walks every morning and every afternoon. They’re clipped like balls of cotton candy and look like a poofy street gang taking over downtown Manhattan.

“The girls are in Starkwell North, dear, and I keep the kinkajou in Starkwell South. I don’t suppose they’d get along.”

Dorothy owns the two top floors in a Tribeca loft, which should tell you that her panda books have generated an awful lot of bamboo.

“I guess you can’t risk having an apartment full of kinkajoodles,” I said.

Dorothy giggled again and snorted. “Kinkajoodles. Oh, that’s funny, I love that.”

“I suppose you want to hear about lunch with Guy,” I told her quickly, before she could recover.

“Oh, yes, that’s why I was calling! Now I remember! Dear Guy, I suppose he was as crusty as ever, the pudgy ol’ poop. I really do love him, almost as much as I love you, dear. There aren’t many people who understand my pandas so well, who really get their personalities. I was so lucky to find him. I know you had lunch on Friday, so just send me the contract, I’m ready to start, I’ve got some wonderful ideas.”

“Yes, about that—” I began, but I wasn’t fast enough.

“Speaking of lunch, did I tell you who I was seeing today? No, I don’t suppose I did, he just called me over the weekend. His name
is David Milton. Have I ever mentioned his father? Tom? Tom was a dear, dear friend back in Ithaca, he worked at the library alongside me for years and years, but he died of a brain aneurysm, terrible thing, it was like losing a brother. I still miss him. I mention Tom in the acknowledgments of
The Bamboo Garden,
do you remember? He was so supportive of my career, so inspirational to me. David is his son. I don’t recall meeting him more than once, because he was busy in the city, and Tom would visit him here from time to time, but I suppose I understand now that once you live in the Big Apple, you don’t really think about going back to quiet little Ithaca. Did I ever tell you the town slogan in Ithaca? Ithaca is gorges! Really, because they have these wonderful gorges with waterfalls around town, but of course, it’s a pun, you know. Gorgeous? Get it? Well, David called me out of the blue and said we should have lunch, so I’m seeing him at Ono in the Gansevoort. They have some amazing vegetable sushi there.”

Dorothy is a vegetarian, which is probably no surprise. I have to suppress my carnivorous instincts when I’m around her. I would happily devour roast kinkajou with mushy peas.

“About Guy,” I said.

“Yes, dear, tell me everything, I am yours.”

I took a breath. I tried not to think about the fact that my whole life depended on what Dorothy would say to me in the next five minutes. I felt like a Mexican cliff diver with a fear of heights. Yes, I have other clients, but if I want to launch my own agency, I need Dorothy with me. It’s as simple as that. Her deals are my money-makers.

“Well, I have a very important question for you, darling,” I said.

“Now, Tess, I know what you’ve said in the past, and, yes, I’m sure I could get more money by going elsewhere, but Guy is the dearest person in the world to me after you, and he’s a crazy animal lover like me, and my books would be nowhere at all without his guidance. So don’t start in on me again about switching to a different house, because I just won’t hear of it. I love Guy, and I have more money already than I know what to do with, so there’s just nothing more to be said.”

“No, it’s not that,” I told her, although I do wish she would give up her little crush on Guy and move to a house that does proper marketing. But that ship has sailed. “Some things have been happening here at Bardwright,” I added.

I told her about Lowell. She was shocked.

I told her about Cosima. She was appalled.

“So the long and the short of it is that I’m thinking about launching my own entertainment agency next week, which means leaving Bardwright, and I was very much hoping that you would allow me to keep representing you in my new business.” I said this all so quickly that I was afraid I had condensed the words into a little
urp
sound that was unintelligible to the human ear.

“Oh, well, Tessie, of course,” Dorothy said.

“I know you have a long history with Bardwright, and there are some fine people here, and anyone would be thrilled to have a gem like you as a client. But I truly value our relationship and would love for it to continue when I take the big step.”

In fact, I can’t afford to take the big step without you, so please say yes, or I will be forced to swoon in front of the next Tube train that presents itself or follow Lowell’s example and play an abortive game of erotic asphyxia. I have to say, as death goes, the latter doesn’t sound so bad.

“Tessie, dear, get the wax out of your ears. I already agreed.”

“You did?”

And then my brain caught up with my ears, and I realized that she had said yes. I think I may have had a little orgasm right then. Just a quick one. Oh my God, I’m free at last!

“Dorothy, I can’t tell you how much that means to me,” I told her honestly.

“Please, dear, you’d have to murder someone before I went with another agent. You know that. You’re everything to me.”

I knew what she meant about killing someone, but I didn’t tell her that Nicholas Hadley seemed to be under the impression I had done exactly that. Better to leave that discussion for another day.

“We can talk about the details later, but I’ll be hiring coagents for the international deals and accountants and bankers and people
like that, and so for your purposes, it should be basically seamless. I’ll have even more time to focus on bigger and better things for you and your little black and whites.”

“Will Sally still do the deals in Europe?” Dorothy asked. “You know I love Sally.”

“Yes, I’m sure I’ll use Sally for Europe. I’m seeing her for a drink later. The only thing that will change at all in the short run is that I want to slow down the train a little with Guy and get the deal done as soon as the agency is launched. Does that sound okay to you?”

“That sounds lovely,” Dorothy told me.

Oh yes, lovely, lovely. I felt like a heroine in a musical. I felt pretty. My hills were alive. I was making the music of the night.

“Was there anything else, dear?” Dorothy asked me. “I know you like to go on a bit, and sometimes I have to cut you off, or neither one of us would get a thing done. I’ve got to see that boy David Milton for lunch, and I haven’t taken the girls for their morning walk, and they get cranky if they don’t get to prance through City Hall Park.”

Try to imagine five clipped poodles strutting through the canyons of New York ahead of a woman barely taller or larger than a Russian gymnast. Scary thought.

“Thank you, Dorothy, you’re the best,” I told her.

“Oh, you’re very welcome, Tessie dear, don’t give it another thought. Go do all of your little agent things, and don’t worry about me. Give Sally a hug. I could swear, though, that there was something else I was going to tell you. What, what, what was it, and it was on my tongue just a second ago. Oh, yes, I know, I have greetings from a friend of yours, that’s what it is.”

“Friend?” I said.

If someone introduces himself to Dorothy as a friend of mine, I have an awful feeling that he’s not.

“Yes, I was getting an award at the animal rights dinner last night, don’t you remember? Very posh, swanky, in the ballroom at the Pierre. I love that ballroom, do you remember what it’s like? Anyway, it was all vegetarian, of course, and I was telling everyone
about my kinkajou, and they all wanted to see pictures, not only of Kinky—that’s what I call him, isn’t it wonderful?—but of the girls, too. Naturally, I was happy to oblige. Oh, and the ceremony was lovely. I cried. They talked about everything I do for animals, and, yes, I know it’s a fancy way of saying I write big checks, but they were gracious about it and they even did a little reading from my books.”

“Friend?” I repeated.

“Oh, yes, I met this lovely woman, and we spent most of the evening together. She is extremely passionate about animals, too, just a lovely little thing. But I was so surprised that she knows Guy, and she knows you, too! Isn’t it a small world?”

“Tiny,” I said. “Minuscule.”

“Her name was very exotic—now what was it?”

“Saleema?” I said, feeling all my stomach juices slurp through the hole that had just formed, like sand squeezing through an hourglass.

“That’s it! Saleema, isn’t that pretty? Saleema Azah. She said I should be sure to say hello when we talked. I thought that was very sweet, don’t you think?”

“Sweet as sugar, that’s Saleema,” I said.

If you’re diabetic.

“
MY GOD, I’M EXHAUSTED
,” I said, collapsing onto the burgundy sofa in the downstairs bar at the Groucho Club. I blew a kiss at the bartender, who knew me and kept me well supplied with white wine and cosmopolitans. Always make friends with your bartender.

“Dorothy?” Sally Harlingford asked me with a knowing smile.

“Dorothy. I feel like I’m a year older every time I talk to her. This time, however, it was worth it.”

“So I gather.”

I had texted her the good news about Dorothy and my agency. It was a code she would understand:
pandas r free.

I made short work of the first glass of wine and relaxed into the red velvet with a satisfied sigh. It was only four thirty, but I knew my afternoon would be a loss after chatting with Dorothy, so I asked Sally if we could move up our date. Sally never says no to early drinkies. You’d think the bar would be empty at that time of day, but the Groucho is a haunt for the publishing industry, and
we do as much work over afternoon drinks as we do at our desks. Probably more.