“I can’t believe it! I’ll become one of those hysterical writers screaming for more ads. I can’t do it. And how do we get a contract anyway? We have no experience.”
Betty laughed. “So you do want to try?”
“I can’t get a job again. I’m too passive. I’d never be promoted. I’d end up being the first eighty-year-old assistant editor in publishing.”
Betty stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Downstairs to the Shadow Books division. We’ll see Joe McGuire. He handles romances.”
For a moment Patty stayed in her chair. It seemed preposterous: could it work? Had she been worrying herself to death over nothing? Could she just take an elevator down to an assignment, money, respectability, a sense of self, a return of appetite, the ability to pay for extermination of all the cockroaches in her sublet? Had this nightmare merely been an illusion of nerves?
Betty nodded at the door. “Come on. Let’s do it.”
Patty opened her mouth to protest: argue that failure would surely be the result.
But Betty anticipated her: “No back-talk. I’m telling you it’ll work.”
Patty got up. Betty made her feel competent. That this would be fun. She followed her out and smiled brilliantly at a cute male assistant who was watching her breasts bounce while she walked.
Fred Tatter was waiting again. This time in Bart’s outer office. He had handed in an outline for The Locker Room, his novel on the incompatibility of men and women, two days after thinking of the idea. Bart had taken the weekend to read it, called to say he liked it, and made an appointment to see Fred the next morning. So Fred had spent a sleepless night trying to deduce what Bart intended from his terse comment of praise on the phone:
“It’s good, Fred. Come in tomorrow at ten and we’ll talk.”
A cryptographer handed a top-secret code could not have found more significant hidden meaning than Fred did in those two sentences. He began euphorically; decided that Bart was going to present him with an offer from a publisher and simply wanted to do it face to face. That fell by the wayside when Fred realized it was impossible. Not enough time had passed for Bart to get the outline to an editor and have it read. By three in the morning he had become pessimistic: Bart wanted major changes in the outline and simply wished to begin by softening up Fred with praise. By five in the morning Fred decided that “It’s good, Fred” was a pretty weak compliment, so halfhearted that it was no better than saying “It stinks, Fred.”
I poured my heart into that outline, Fred thought. It’s got my guts in it. And all he can say is, “It’s good.”
Fred fell asleep on the couch at six, furious and despondent, resolved to break off with Bart if he suggested any changes, and prepared to demand why he was so abrupt and high-handed on the phone.
But by the time Fred, bleary-eyed, his back aching from sleeping on the soft couch, arrived at the town house in the Village that Bart had bought — the bottom two floors for his office, the top three for living — he felt so worthless, so convinced that his only hope of success lay with the backing of a hot, powerful agent like Bart, that he was ready to throw out the outline and apologize for having handed in such a miserable piece of work.
Fred looked at the beautiful built-in maple shelves that surrounded the marble fireplace in the waiting room. A hundred years ago it had been a fancy parlor room, and Bart’s architects had kept and restored that feeling, except for the Xerox machine that glistened on top of a large oak table near Bart’s secretary’s elegant desk. The shelves were filled with books by clients. Even if Fred had come in cocky, the sight of seven bestsellers within the last two years would have punched it out of him. In his state of mind, it almost felled him to his knees. He felt lucky that Bart’s secretary smiled at him, grateful he had been offered coffee, and terrified of the closed door to Bart’s office.
When it did open, Fred got up quickly, forgetting his cup of coffee was filled to the brim and would spill. It did, most of it going on his best beige pants.
Bart’s secretary exclaimed.
Bart merely stared impassively.
The hot coffee burned into his thigh painfully.
The secretary rushed over with a roll of paper towels from her desk, handed Fred some, and bent down to mop up what had landed on the white rug. She looked up at Fred. “Are you okay? Is that burning you?”
“No,” Fred said angrily.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” He had dabbed at the wet spot on his pants, but that made the burn hurt more, so he stopped and held out the paper towel to the secretary. “Sorry about the rug.”
“Won’t hurt it,” she said. “Maybe you should put some water on the pants. It’ll stain.”
“Nah.” Fred waved his hand as if he usually wore a pair of pants only once and then threw them out. His leg hurt. He got an image of it swelling into an enomous pus-filled blister.
Bart, still standing at the door calmly, said, “Come in, Fred.”
“Sure,” Fred said, now carrying the coffee in both hands.
Bart’s office must have been the dining room. It had tall, elegant windows, a large fireplace, and elegant moldings in the center of the ceiling that once supported a chandelier. There were no books in this room, but there were two large leather couches — distinctly inconsistent with the dominant motif of French country antiques — a large armchair opposite Bart’s desk, and an enormous globe underneath the nearest window. The world was literally at Bart’s fingertips.
Fred winced as he sat in the armchair.
“Are you all right?” Bart asked in a tone suggesting surprise that he could possibly be in pain.
“Oh, yeah.”
“I just got off the phone with Bob Holder at Garlands. We were discussing your outline. I’m sending it to him this afternoon. He’s promised to give an answer in two days, if I give it to him exclusive.”
Bart’s tone was matter-of-fact, so listless that Fred didn’t react. He nodded slowly.
“I think he’s a good choice, don’t you?”
“Uh, Bob Holder?” Fred repeated.
“Yeah, he’s the hot young editor at Garlands. And they’ve really been the aggressive packager of fiction in the last couple years.”
“It’s great.” Fred said in a stunned tone.
“Off an outline I don’t know how big an advance I can get—”
“You think he’ll buy it?”
Bart stared at him. “Why not?”
“You think the outline’s really good?”
“It’s fair. You’re not terrific at writing outlines. But it’s been my experience the best outline writers come out with lousy novels. And vice versa. I told that to Bob. He agreed. He’s had the same experience.”
Fred laughed nervously. Fair. He said the outline was fair. “He knows I haven’t written a novel?”
“If Bob likes the idea, he’ll trust my judgment that you can pull it off. We’ve done very well together.”
Fred nodded, stupefied by this strange conjunction: Bart thought the outline was fair, but he had given it to his big-money editor at one of America’s most prestigious publishers, and was confident he would make a deal. Was Bart that influential? Could this man whose rug Fred had just spilled coffee on really announce to an editor that someone was a good writer and be taken at face value? If so, rather than reassuring Fred, it made him very nervous. He tried to think how he should react: with profuse thanks? Or was that too craven, indicative of a total lack of confidence in himself? But if he took it in stride, mightn’t Bart feel Fred was ungrateful, ignorant of how big a favor Bart had given away?
“This is great,” Fred said, still in the slow speech of a victim of bad news.