Tillie left, and Franny poured the champagne.
“To the ocean,” he said, handing me a glass.
“To the ocean.”
I took a big sip. Then another. We ate sweet Portuguese bread, ripping chunks off a round loaf, until our lobsters turned bright red. The champagne tickled my tongue and rippled to my head. The lobsters were small and their meat was sweet and juicy. We tossed the shells into a metal bowl that sat between us on the table. It got darker in the kitchen, but we didn’t turn on the lights.
Franny wanted to know what I loved about my job. I told him there wasn’t much.
“I am a very educated typist,” I said.
“So why do you do it?”
I told him about my leap into publishing after graduation, how excited I was to learn the magic of making books and how hopeful I’d been that working with real authors and editors would give me back some of the confidence in my own writing that I’d lost in the midst of so many talented writers at school.
“Were they really that good?” Franny asked.
“They were. Prolific too. And arrogant. They carried themselves like writers with a capital W. I’m sure you had the type at art school—straight guys who wear eyeliner. Everyone seemed so sure of themselves. It was like they were preparing to become the ‘voices of their generation’ and I was struggling to clear my throat.”
When I was hired as an editorial secretary at Hodder, Strike, I felt as though I’d won the lottery instead of a $13,700 annual salary that was barely enough to cover my rent in the cramped and dark one-bedroom apartment on upper Broadway that I shared with a former classmate named Annie. An assistant account executive at McCann Erickson, Annie kept trying to convince me to join her for “more money and better parties,” but for at least my first year at Hodder, Strike, I had loved my job.
“It was a thrill to read every submission, to open every box of new books. I thought my instincts had been right and that working at a publishing house really would help me start writing again. But over time, being among people whose job was to judge books had the opposite effect.”
I told Franny how Ron Ingot, the editorial assistant who was one rung above me, also working for Malcolm Wing, had a daily ritual of skewering submissions he didn’t like. We all laughed at his pithy critiques, but they left me feeling a little queasy, as if I’d authored the novels myself.
“What would this Ronny-boy say?” Franny asked.
“Well, he faulted one manuscript for its ‘pitiful irrelevance’ and took another author to task for the ‘circuitous exploration of her destitute imagination.’”
“Ouch.”
It turned out that reading and making fun of the slush pile, all the manuscripts sent in by hopeful writers with no connections, was not a confidence booster. Every line I wrote, I imagined Ron reading and saying, “Hey, everyone, listen to this doozy.”
Tipping his wooden chair back and letting it balance on two legs, Franny asked me to tell him more about the slush pile. He pretended to be shocked to find out it was not a literal pile, just shelves of manuscripts, each a stack of papers in a cardboard box.
“No pile? That’s terrible!” he said. “The manuscripts should be tossed into a pile, a huge messy pile of manuscripts. A mountain of dreams.”
“Very boring dreams,” I said. “Few are well written.”
“Who cares? I don’t want to read them, I want to photograph them. I want to take a whole series of photographs of the Hodder, Strike slush pile.”
“Which isn’t a pile.”
“I would photograph the pile from below, to show how big it is, how unlikely the climb out of obscurity, but close enough to see some of the titles, the hundreds of stories that need to be told.”
“They may need to be told, but trust me, most of them don’t need to be read.”
“No—better. I’ll photograph you bending down to pick up one lucky manuscript. Or you’ll be sitting on the floor in the middle of the pile—I know, I know it’s not a pile, but we’ll make it a pile—and you’ll be looking down, your face hidden, reading.”
I loved that he wanted to photograph me. I was astonished, yet again, by the ease with which he floated his ideas, and how pleased he was with them.
“Next time I’m in New York.” And then he stood up and put his hand on my head. “Well, my lobster girl. We will never have another meal as good as this.”
“That is so very sad,” I said, looking up at him and not feeling the slightest bit sad. “And so very true.”
His eyes were a dark, algae green. I willed myself to hold his gaze. I had been playing it safe long enough, letting myself get involved only with men I never really cared to know, and who I eventually realized had little interest in getting to know me. I had finally ended things with a law associate named Brian, the last in a line of unimaginative men, and was ready for something new. Annie had urged me to get out of my shell, to try new things and meet new people—new men—this summer. I’d gone to Henry and Tillie’s party and danced with abandon. I’d jumped into the surf and taken its treasure. I wanted to be the free spirit Franny seemed to think I was.
I tried to still my trembling legs as Franny bent down, brushed my hair back from my face, and kissed me. His lips were warm and soft. He took my hands and pulled me up. As we kissed again, I knew, with a mix of relief and fear, that I would follow him wherever he wanted to go, even if I ended up in way over my head.
part two
July 1987
5
Malcolm was in a closed-door meeting all afternoon, so I left my desk and went to the storeroom for a break. I ran my hands along the spines of the new Hodder, Strike hardcovers, stacked in tight, neat rows on the tall bookshelves. I pulled out a mystery with a bright red cover and opened it, hearing the slight crack in the binding. I took a deep breath and smelled the paper, which, despite being printed just weeks ago, had the same inky, musty scent of the picture books I’d loved as a child. I thought about sketching the storeroom and drawing an arrow to indicate a place on the floor for Franny’s slush pile of manuscripts. I could mail it to him, with a casual note stating that the room was ready whenever he was. Maybe I would let him know that I’d be back in Truro at the end of July and would love to see the beginnings of his mural. No expectations, just a friendly hello.
For my first few days back in New York, a breezy letter to Franny would have been sincere. Returning to work, I held the memory of Franny like a seashell in my pocket. It had been surprisingly effortless in his bed. Something about him had made it easy for me to relax. Franny’s laid-back manner made Brian seem so uptight and self-conscious. With Franny, the fooling around was unhurried and casual, the lazy, circuitous conversation even better. At one point, he lay with his head on my stomach, tracing the lines on my palm. “Very interesting,” he said, drawing out his words as his finger moved along the bottom of my thumb. “I see you will take a long journey.”
“That tickles,” I said, trying to pull my hand away. He held on and moved his finger to the center of my palm.
“You will journey to a great height, the very top of a high mountain. No, the top of a tall, tall sand dune—in the middle of a dark, moonless night.”