"It's the libraries," Amy said hastily. "So ignorant. But we don't want your book shelved with Indian literature, do we? Your loyal fans will want to see it prominently displayed with new fiction."
They agreed in the end on Fool's Gold, with a Central American pyramid to be shown in jagged pieces around a single rose. Roxanne settled her jacket around her shoulders and held out her cup for more tea. She wasn't sure she even wanted a Central American pyramid. Wouldn't it always remind her of the misery she'd felt when Gerardo betrayed her? Her mother had warned her, but then Mother was positively lying in wait to watch her misery.
Amy, alert to the quiver in Roxanne's chin, asked if the cover decision troubled her. "We'll get Peter to do a series of layouts. You know we're not tied to what we decide today."
Roxanne held out a hand. Amy tried hard, but she wasn't sensitive-she wasn't an artist, after all-she lived in the world of sales and bottom lines.
"This whole discussion overwhelms me with memories of Gerardo. People said he only wanted me for my money. And to get a green card. But it's not impossible for love to flourish between a man of twenty-four and a woman my age. Just think of Cher. And despite all those ridiculous exercise videos she isn't any better looking than I am."
That much was true. Adolescent passion kept Roxanne young. Her own skin could indeed be described as milky, her dark eyes lustrous, childlike, confiding. Her auburn hair was perhaps hand tinted to keep its youthful shades of color, but if you didn't know she was forty-six you'd assume the rich browns and reds were natural.
"When I found him in bed with my maid I believed Gerardo, that she was homesick and he was comforting her. My mother ridiculed me, but how can you possibly live so cynically and ever be happy?"
Roxanne held her hands out in mute appeal-two poignant doves, Amy thought, murmuring, "Yes, indeed."
"But then, the night I got back from Cannes, I found them together at the swimming pool. He wouldn't come to Cannes with me-he said he shouldn't leave the country until his immigrant status was straightened out, so I raced home a day early just to be with him, but then even I had to realize-and he'd paid for her abortion, with money I'd given him."
"You poor child," Amy said, patting her hand. "You're far too trusting."
Roxanne lifted her doelike eyes in mute gratitude. Amy was so warm, a true friend, unlike the hangers-on who only wanted to sponge off her success.
"Someone in Santa Fe suggested I talk to a psychiatrist. As if I were sick!"
"How dreadful." Amy sounded shocked. "And yet, the right psychiatrist-a sympathetic woman, perhaps-could listen to you impartially. Unlike your mother, or your friends, who are always judging you and scolding you."
"Is that what psychiatrists do?" Roxanne opened her eyes wide. "Listen?"
"The good ones do," Amy said.
"You did what?" Clay Rossiter screamed. "You're the one who needs a psychiatrist. We can't have her getting over her neuroses. They're what drive her books. Look, fifteen weeks after finding Raoul in bed with her maid she produces a bestseller for us. We can do an initial run of a million five. That's our paychecks for the entire year, Amy."
"Raoul was the hero of Broken Covenant. Gerardo was her gardener. You're not the one who has to feed her tea and bolster her after the cad has been found out. Not to mention take her to Lutèce and listen to the storm of passion while it's at gale force."
Clay bared his teeth at her. "That's what we pay you to do, Amy. You're the goddamn star's goddamn editor. She likes you. We even had to write it into her last contract that she will only work with you."
"Don't lose sleep over it. The chances are against Roxanne entering therapy. She's more likely to pick some New Age guru and have a deep mystical experience with him." Amy got up. "You know Gary Blanchard signed with Ticknor & Fields? I'm really annoyed, Clay. We could have kept him for twenty-five thousand: he's very humble in his needs and it makes me sick to lose a talented writer."
"He's humble because he knows no one wants to read artistic work. Let Ticknor & Fields have him. They don't have Jambon et Cie breathing down their necks." Clay picked up his latest fax from Brussels and waved it at her.
Amy skimmed it. Jambon was disappointed that Clay had rejected all of their previous marketing proposals, but pleased he had let Gary Blanchard go. All of the scenarios they had run on Quattro showed that every dollar spent on advertising would lose them thirty cents on revenue from Blanchard's work. They definitely did not want anyone on the Gaudy list who sold fewer than twenty-seven thousand in hardcover.
"This isn't publishing," she said, tossing it back at him. "They ought to go into breakfast cereal. It's more suited to their mentality."
"Yes, Amy, but they own us. So unless you want to look for a job right before Christmas, don't go signing any more literary lights. We can't afford them."
"I dreamed I went to the airport to catch my flight to Paris, but they wouldn't let me in first class. They said I was dirty, and badly dressed, and I had to fly coach. But all the coach seats were taken so I hud to go by Greyhound, and the bus got lost and ended up in this dreary farmhouse in the middle of Kansas."
The eminent psychiatrist, his kindly gray eyes moved to tears by the beautiful girl on the couch in front of him, sighed and stirred in his chair. How could he ever persuade her that she was clean enough, good enough, for first class?
Amy choked. "Roxanne. Dear. Where's the story?"
"It's here. In front of you. Have you forgotten how to read?"
"But your readers expect passion, romance. Nothing happens. The doctor doesn't even fall in love with Clarissa."
"Well, he does of course, but he keeps it to himself." Roxanne picked up the manuscript and thumbed through it. She began reading aloud, clicking her rings against the chair arm for emphasis.
Clarissa put her hand trustingly in the older man's. "You don't know how much this means to me, Doctor. To finally find someone who understands what I've been through."
Dr. Friedrich felt his flesh stir. His professional calm had never been pierced by any of his patients before, but this gaminelike waif, abused by father, abandoned by mother, so in need of trust and guidance, was different.
He longed to be able to say "My dear, I wish you would not think of me as your doctor, but your dearest friend as well. I long for nothing more than to protect you from the blasts of the stormy world beyond these walls." But if he spoke he would lose her precious trust forever.
Roxanne dropped the pages with a thump, as though that settled the point.
"Well, why can't he marry her?" Amy asked.
"Amy, you didn't read it, did you? He's already got a wife, only she's in an institution for the criminally insane. But his compassion is so great he can't bring himself to divorce her. Then the Nazi-hunters confuse him with a man who was a prison-camp guard who looked like him, and he gets arrested. It turns out that the wife has turned him in-that her criminal insanity has given her a persecution complex and she blames him for all her troubles. So Clarissa has to find him, behind the Iron Curtain-this takes place in 1983-where he's been put into a gulag-and rescue him. And the wife has a brainstorm when she finds out he's been rescued. That kills her. But Clarissa has already become a nun. They sometimes dream about each other but they die without seeing one another again."