“It goes to show us that money can’t buy everything,” Jackson said, grabbing a handy platitude.
“Exactly. It can’t buy everything.”
After walking a few blocks, they picked out a bar advertising its formidable line-up of martinis and stepped into pulsing florescent blue light. Jackson used his line when Amanda slipped her billfold from her purse: “Your money will never be any good when I’m in the room.”
“You’re such a good friend to me, Jack,” she answered, her billfold quickly disappearing.
One drink later, Jackson asked her if she was sure she didn’t want the Hobbema idea for herself.
“It’s something I want you to have,” she answered. “It’s one thing I want to give you.” Another drink later, she asked him about Margot. “How’s the new girl? Still thinking about her too much?”
“I care a lot about what happens to her. I can say that. She’s a very nice person, absolutely decent.”
“Is she well suited to you? I bet she’s just the sort to really shine at your publication parties — brilliant and stylish and full of tact and wit. Just like you.” Amanda circled her cocktail with the little straw, bit her bottom lip, gazed back at Jackson. “That’s what you deserve — and what you’ll need.”
“Well, that’s not quite the right description for her, but I care about her tremendously.” Jackson reached again for the studied charm that he hoped would mask the truth in his words and added, “After all, you’re already taken.”
Chapter eighteen
Margot Yarborough was online looking up train schedules to New York. She’d meant to get down sooner, as soon as she’d finished her novel, but the days had slipped by. She’d spent some time investigating and selecting a reputable agent — and of course her father’s book still required her ministrations — yet she still couldn’t quite account for the time that had passed, not to herself or to Jackson. In his emails, Jackson continued to seem solicitous of her welfare. He asked her about her home, the name of her childhood dog, whether she’d gone to her high school prom, and, most recently, whether she ever wore high-heeled shoes. He also pressed her. “Just pick a day,” he’d written most recently. “Like tomorrow.” Of course he must be questioning her interest. She did like him, but the idea of having his affection at a remove was sometimes more attractive than the idea of seeing him. She knew this was crazy, just a funk or something. She had warned him she was a homebody. But still, this was the week. Tuesday, she thought. She was deleting an email in which she promised to come down on Wednesday when she heard her father yelling.
“Margot!” His voice, even from down the hall, was large.
“Telephone! Please do tell your friends never to phone here before noon. You know I can’t work with these distractions.”
Margot couldn’t imagine who would be calling — she’d let all her school acquaintances fall away — and chided herself for hoping it was good news. On the other end of the line was the agent who had agreed to represent The Reluctant Leper provided she kept her expectations in check.
“The money’s not great, but it’s not too bad for so literary a first novel.” The agent then named a senior editor at one of New York’s most prestigious imprints.
Margot made her repeat the name, dug her fingernail into her fingertip to ensure that she was awake, and then said thank you nearly a dozen times. She promised to come into the city to have lunch with the agent, whom she had never met, and her new editor. Her editor! It seemed too good to be true. She would have to remember which woman was named Lane and which was Lana.
“By the way,” Lana intoned as a calculated afterthought. “One thing we’ll want to discuss is the title, so give it some thought. Make a little list.”
Margot explained that she had made a list, that she’d thought very hard about the title and decided that The Reluctant Leper was exactly right.
“Just think about it,” her agent said. “I’m sure Lane will have some ideas to bounce around as well. Lane’s super busy, but I’ll try to schedule us a lunch next month.”
At the good news, her mother hugged her. “You believed in yourself, set yourself free, took real ownership, and look what happened! This belongs to you, Margot, and no one can ever take it away.”
“No one can ever take it away from me? Why would you say something like that?” But Margot accepted her mother’s hug and grinned.
Her father looked momentarily stricken, though she couldn’t discern whether it was her news or her mother’s affirmation-speak that had sickened him. His recovery was quick, and then he seemed happy for her.
“Wonderful news, my dear, wonderful. I always knew you had a real talent. Now someone else has finally noticed. Wonderful. Let’s all go out tonight. Hell this news is even good enough that I don’t mind eating out with your mother if we can find a restaurant that doesn’t serve fois gras or milk-fed veal or swordfish or oppressed broccoli stalks or God knows whatever else your mother isn’t eating these days.” Despite his mini-tirade, his laugh was warm. “Say, Margot, what kind of advance did your agent mention?”
“Not bad,” he said when she named the sum. “Very respectable.”
Though her news was large enough to warrant a phone call, Margot, as ever, felt more comfortable expressing herself through written words. She emailed Jackson about the acceptance of her novel for publication, wrote that she was certain that his would be next — and in a much bigger, more impressive way. And she told him that she was finally coming down to New York. “I have wanted to see you,” she said. “It’s just been an odd stretch.”
For dinner that night, Margot’s parents settled on a Japanese place where her mother could have green tea and sushi and her father could order steak, pan-fried noodles, and sake. He talked Margot into a glass of wine with her dinner and then into a second one for dessert. Her thoughts had an audible buzz as she rode home in the back seat, her parents up front squabbling over whether or not the heater should be on.
Back in her room, she opened an email from Jackson. His note congratulated her heartily and thanked her for thinking of his book in her moment of triumph, mentioning that it was now in possession of a top agent.
“There’s something I must be honest about,” his words continued. Reading them, her chest tightened and yet she also felt giddy, flattered by his intimate tone, his seriousness of purpose. “I must tell you something, because you are one of the few people I respect. I don’t know you very well, it’s true, and you certainly have made yourself scarce lately. But I know quite enough to respect you, and so I feel that I have to warn you that I’m a selfish person. Not brutally selfish, and the thought that I’m at all selfish does trouble me. If I were rich, I think I would be generous. I would be a good person. I’m civilized, if nothing else. Because I’m not rich, though, and because I am selfish, I’m likely to do ugly things to make some money and make a name for myself. Or at least I’m willing to do them. I tell you this in case you read my book and despise it, which you may. I cannot afford to live as I would like to, to write the literature I might aspire to if I could touch the family money or if I won the lottery. That is, simply, one of my facts.”
Margot smiled, thinking that someone really living an unworthy life and writing unworthy books wouldn’t declare it so plainly as Jackson had.
She read on. “I hope you really will come to see me soon. And maybe because I don’t trust you to, I’m wondering if that invitation to visit up there might be possible. Perhaps enough time has elapsed since I met your father that it might now be all right if I spent an afternoon on the Hudson. I think we need to see each other. Otherwise we’ll never know, and we might as well know, don’t you think?”