The darker-haired one walked straight over and said, “You can only be Margot! It’s great to finally meet you.”
Margot recognized the voice of her agent, Lana Thorpe, and offered her hand to the woman’s cool grip.
“This is Lane Thompson.”
The lighter-haired woman squeezed her hand in something slightly more feminine yet also far less committal than a handshake. “So good to finally meet you. We are thrilled to be bringing out your wonderful novel.”
Both women gushed over her dress, calling it charming, quaintly chic, and ever so flattering to her slim frame. The maître d’, smiling, reassured that she was not a waif or an aspiring waitress, showed them into the dining room. Lane and Lana insisted that Margot take the booth seat so she could view the room. “We come here all the time,” Lana said. “Besides, we know you fiction writers need to people-watch. Never gossip, I always say, because a writer might just be eavesdropping.”
Like the lettering on the sign outside, the room also belied the restaurant’s name: white tablecloths, Japanese flower arrangements in square black vases, and several small fountains spaced so that the sound of trickling water could be heard from every table. A handsome waiter with a Castilian accent brought them water and bread and a small dish of olive oil so green and viscous that it glowed. Next he delivered the bottles of white wine and still water that Lane requested.
Margot scanned the menu. The prices were all in whole dollars, in fancy script, and shockingly high. Before her mother had gone New Age and stopped dispensing practical advice in favor of spiritual platitudes, she’d told Margot never to order spaghetti, fried chicken, or anything laden with powdered sugar on a first or second date. Margot figured the same held true for a first meeting with your agent and editor. None of these options were on the menu, and Margot didn’t know how to start eliminating anything else. Looking the menu down and then up, she decided that she would order neither the least nor the most expensive meal.
The waitress came before she had decided. In unison, Lane and Lana insisted that she order first. Stymied, Margot looked up to see Doreen smiling at her, hands clasped behind her back, ready to memorize her heart’s culinary desires. Doreen cocked her head slightly in a way that revealed but didn’t require recognition. Not knowing whether it was good or bad manners to acknowledge the acquaintanceship under the circumstances, Margot was further flummoxed. “It’s good to see you,” she said softly. She ordered the crab sandwich, which was the only thing she could remember from the menu.
“But what are you going to start with?” Lana asked.
“Start with,” Margot repeated, fingering her menu and looking up to Doreen, who rescued her by recommending the roasted asparagus soup. While they waited for the food, Lana and Lane praised the originality of Margot’s novel.
“Your prose is hypnotic, absolutely gemlike,” Lane said. “That’s what drew me in.”
“And the story,” Lana took up. “Devastating.”
As Doreen set cups of soup on the table, Lane murmured in agreement. “I wonder, though, whether it wouldn’t be even more powerful if the Creole girl came back into the novel.”
“Oh,” said Margot, forgetting her social discomfort and finding her voice. “That’s just it. She never leaves. She is always with Laird, always his inspiration. She’s his better self.”
“And that comes off marvelously. You really pulled that off. But I’m wondering if there’s a way to embody that, by giving her an actual scene.” Lane sipped her soup expertly from the almost flat cutlery.
Lana was not quite so skilled with her spoon, and Margot noticed other differences between the two women who had at first seemed almost clones of each other: Lana’s jewelry was gold while Lane’s was dainty and silver, and Lana spoke a little louder.
Lana said, “Exactly. Embody as in body. Maybe her body could re-enter the picture, if you see what I mean. Or does leprosy, you know, affect all areas of the body?”
Margot detected a patronizing sympathy as Lane paused from her soup to smile at her.
Lana continued. “I know. What if the beautiful Creole girl hears of Laird’s sacrifice and comes to join him, even though she knows that she, too, will contract the disfiguring disease? I can’t think of anything more romantic.”
“But it’s her absence, see, more than her presence. She’s his ideal. He can only approximate her.” Margot’s voice locked as Doreen replaced her soup cup with the most frightening plate of food she had ever seen.
Sticking out from the two triangles of bread that purported to make the meal a sandwich were the grotesque legs of an extraordinarily large soft-shell crab. “You’re not crab salad,” Margot whispered to the gangly dead creature before her.
“I take Margot’s point,” Lane was saying. “And, let’s be frank, leprous sex isn’t, well, it isn’t sexy. Frankly, it’s disgusting. I’ll grant you that there’s probably a pervert or two in the world into it. No one else wants to read about that. No one.” She paused as Doreen set before her a large plate containing three yam ravioli decorated with drizzles of brown butter and a bouquet of sage leaves. “But I do think the Creole woman could come to him. Maybe for a non-contact visit, like through the glass in prison scenes. Or maybe Laird turns her away. As drastically as he loves her and wants to see her, he won’t risk her well being. Now that would be romantic.”
Margot worked a fork and knife as inconspicuously as she could through one of the crab’s legs, seeking a bite-size piece of food. The soup had awakened her appetite, but it would be difficult to lift the monstrous sandwich even if she didn’t care how uncouth she looked. And in front of her editor and agent on what was supposed to be the best day of her life, it didn’t seem possible. She put down her cutlery, deciding that soup and dessert would be plenty, would be just right. “Actually,” she said, “leprosy isn’t really that contagious. You generally have to live in close quarters with someone for a decade to contract it.”
Lane and Lana relished their normal-looking food, saying “delicious” and “to die for.” Margot’s stomach rumbled as she saw Lana twirl linguine on the long tines of her fork. She caught whiffs of garlic, fennel, and something with a bit of fire to it.
Lane paused from eating. “I only ask that you give it some thought. You’re the author, of course.” She weighted the word ‘author’ as though to make sure Margot heard that she’d said author rather than writer. “But I am going to have to put my foot down about the title. I mean, if you really think about it, aren’t all lepers reluctant? And besides, he’s reluctant before he’s a leper. Once he’s a leper, he’s more resigned, right?”
Margot retrieved her purse from the floor and withdrew a wrinkled square of paper. “I brought a list with some ideas.”
“Excellent. Good girl,” Lana exclaimed. “Didn’t I tell you she’d be a dream to work with?”
Margot read the titles she had devised, feeling increasingly wretched as she realized that each and every one of them was much worse than terrible: Laird the Leper, Under the Spanish Moss, The Unnatural History of Louisiana, Leper in Love, and Redemption. The last made her choke down her own laugh. “They’re terrible. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Lana nodded. Lane smiled kindly and said, “We understand. You’re a virgin.”
“Virgin?”
“First-time author. Don’t worry about it in the least, and that self-deprecating thing you do is really charming. I promise we’ll come up with something.”