“How many are they taking now? Will it still be in most stores?”
“Darling, you don’t understand. They cut your title.”
“Cut?”
“They aren’t ordering any.”
“But the review in The Times was so good.”
“All of your reviews have glowed, and that’s wonderful. It’s not only wonderful, it’s deserved. If only reviews translated into sales, you’d be a wealthy young woman, but that’s just not the case any longer.”
“People don’t want to read good books?”
Margot realized how naïve she sounded, but she couldn’t believe that her good reviews — however much she doubted their wisdom — didn’t mean anything.
“Don’t worry; all is not lost. We’re still sending you to Vermont next week, and Renate booked you into the fiction series at the CIA Bar. You’ll be reading before someone named Clarice Aames. She doesn’t have a book out yet, but she’s gathered quite a following. The turnout should be great.”
Margot had been to a reading at the CIA once, and her stomach shifted at the idea of reading to a large, inebriated crowd.
“I believe in your book. The indies are going to hand-sell, and word will get out.”
After she put the phone down, Margot continued what she’d been doing: heating tomato soup and melting butter in a skillet to grill a cheese sandwich. But when she sat down with the meal that had constituted her winter comfort food since childhood, her appetite was gone. She chided herself for being disappointed by expectations she had never held. It’s not as though she’d ever thought she was writing a bestseller; she was happy just to be publishing a book and garnering a few readers and reviews. It was still a dream come true. Pushing away the image of books stacked high in large, well-lit bookstores, she dipped a corner of sandwich into the scarlet soup.
Chapter forty-two
Amanda Yule’s novel parked on every bestseller list in the country. It was hailed as a literary crossover book — a book club favorite praised by critics for the magic realist elements that so captured the mood of the paintings on which it was based. At the same time, Amanda’s alternative career as Clarice Aames soared, with more stories published and more websites devoted to her work appearing online.
Amanda kept a color-coded calendar, using blue to mark her publicity appearances for The Progress of Love and red for Clarice Aames’s readings. Her even script crowded the calendar, blurring into purple. When Amanda was scheduled for a television appearance in Los Angeles, Clarice gave a surprise reading at an Orange County community college. When Amanda signed books at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, Clarice read at an art bar in Oakland. When Amanda appeared in Denver or Minneapolis, Clarice showed up in Boulder or St. Paul. They drew different constituencies, and no one picked up on the pattern. Yet Amanda was careful to keep her two authorial identities distinct, and Clarice always appeared in disguise — a face powdered white, too much black eyeliner, and a long black wig with bangs covering her forehead. Amanda also limited Clarice’s appearances in New York, though she had finally succumbed to pressure and vanity, agreeing to appear at the CIA Bar.
Her biggest problem in maintaining her double identity was her husband, who asked detailed questions about her itineraries and hotel room changes. In the spring, when she changed her drink of choice from red wine to white and from Irish whiskey with a splash of soda to a salty dog, Eddie grilled her. They’d once figured out that a friend of theirs was having an affair with their professor because the friend, out of the blue, had started ordering Makers Mark. And she’d heard of a man whose infidelity was discovered after he acquired his mistress’s mispronunciation of the word macadam, a verbal tick whose origin was not lost on his wife. Amanda confronted Eddie one morning as he was busy not-writing. “You think I’m having an affair.”
He stayed hunched over his computer, eyes on the blank screen. “Are you?”
“No,” said Amanda, “I’m not. You have no appreciation for how hard I am working. And despite all the publicity and phone calls for quotes and travel, I’m a lot further along on my new book than you are.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say.”
“The truth hurts.”
Eddie pushed out his chair and swiveled sideways. “You’re really not seeing someone else?”
“Not yet.” She softened even as she said it. “Really, Eddie, I’m not having an affair. It’s all work. And I always change my drinks with the weather, you know that.”
Amanda came close to telling Eddie about her black-wearing alter ego, but she stopped herself. She could not articulate why — she wasn’t sure whether she was trying to protect herself or Eddie or perhaps even Clarice — but she didn’t want him to know. It was a secret she wanted to hold close, a marvelous thing that was all her own and didn’t have to be shared. Some people, she knew, only enjoyed good things — from sexual relationships to compliments at work — if and when they could tell someone else. She wasn’t like that, and she wondered if it meant she was self-sufficient or that there was something askew about her, something related to her childhood, that made her comfortable with complete privacy.
“And now I must get back to work.” She paused, spinning Eddie’s chair back toward his computer. “Perhaps you’d feel better if you did the same.”
For the next four hours, Amanda typed away on her new book: an increasingly autobiographical novel about a pretty young girl reared in poverty who marries an aspiring writing whose star seems to be rising.
As she was taking a break to fix dinner, Henry Baffler phoned.
“How’s Harlem?” Amanda asked.
“I like having an apartment, but I hope it won’t corrupt my work.”
Amanda laughed: at least she hadn’t married Henry. “Impossible,” she said. “And Henry, I want you to know how much we love Bailiff. It’s terrific.” She eyed the book on the coffee table, vowing to move the bookmark further along before Henry’s next visit. Perhaps she could memorize a few key lines and make him think she’d studied the whole thing.
“Thank you, Amanda.” Henry sounded moved. “That means a lot to me. A lot.”
She noticed that he said nothing about her book. Maybe he couldn’t afford it, and she knew it was tough to borrow — all the public libraries had waiting lists.
“I just found out that one of the best writers in the country will be reading at the CIA Bar. Clarice Aames. I thought you and Eddie might want to go hear her.”
“Terrific.” Amanda thought quickly. “When is it?”
When he told her the date, she said, “Rats, I’m going to be out of town.”
“That’s a shame. It’s really amazing what she does with non-realism. I’m rethinking my whole aesthetic. I already got tickets. Maybe Jackson will want to go with me and Eddie.”
Amanda realized that she was going to have to improve her disguise or, perhaps, cancel the event. Maybe Clarice should only make surprise, unadvertised appearances in New York.
“Amanda, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“The word copse. How many times can it be used in one book?”
“Once every hundred pages,” she said without hesitation.
“Yes, I think that’s the right answer.” He paused, then asked, “What about splay?”