“I’m just going to pour the rest out; I should get back to work,” I said, my back to Jeremy, as the amber liquid flowed into the drain.
I was about to turn to go when I felt my hair slip out of its bun and tumble down to my shoulders. I turned around and Jeremy was standing right behind me, holding the pencil that I’d used to keep my hair in place. He looked as surprised as I was.
“Sorry—I couldn’t resist,” he said.
For a second, his face appeared tentative, even open. Had Jeremy been making a pass at me, at Franny’s “easy mark”? Then, tapping the pencil against his palm, he seemed to regain his composure.
“Can I take this?”
“I think you just did,” I said.
I told him I’d see him around, and without looking at him again, I let myself out.
7
Other than May Castanada, the new receptionist, who was listening to her Walkman with her eyes closed when the elevator opened onto the third floor, Hodder, Strike had cleared out by the time I got back. I felt guilty going into Malcolm’s office without permission. Malcolm guarded his authors’ manuscripts carefully, often keeping them even from the assistants, until he’d gotten through a few rounds of edits. Before he’d left for the country, he’d mentioned that Jeremy’s novel was in the “percolation” stage, which meant that he was going to let it sit for a while before he tackled it again.
Malcolm’s vast mahogany desk gleamed as if it had just been polished and was nearly bare, except for a black leather blotter, a row of six perfectly sharpened pencils, a thick pad of white paper, and a single silver pen, which I knew contained a cartridge of green ink, as it was my responsibility to keep the supply closet well stocked with them.
I found Jeremy’s manuscript in a cardboard box on the credenza behind Malcolm’s desk. Not daring to stay in his office, I took the box and returned to my desk just outside his door. I don’t know why I felt so nervous. If Malcolm found out I’d read the manuscript, he’d probably do little more than show his displeasure by waiting a week or two before asking what I’d thought of it. But my heart raced as I lifted the top off the cardboard box and saw the first page, which read “An Untitled Novel by J. Grand.”
When Malcolm described Jeremy’s novel, the idea of a young American writer setting his first novel in a leprosy colony in Nepal seemed ridiculous to me. I figured the protagonist would be a barely veiled version of Jeremy who found “unlikely adventures and life lessons in the heart of the Himalayas,” as the jacket copy would inevitably put it. The novel would be slick, darkly funny, and a little empty.
By the time I’d read the first two pages, though, I knew how wrong I had been. It was not just the writing, which was simple and clear and without any of the pretentious literary pyrotechnics I had expected. It was the voice. The book was not narrated by a young man like Jeremy, but by a teenage girl with a distinctive, lilting tone. In the first chapter, she was perched in a tree, gazing at the thick vines that wrapped tightly around the branches in a way that she feared no one would ever embrace her.
I stopped reading for a moment and exhaled. Jeremy could write, and he appeared to have a heart. It was hard to reconcile his snide manner with the tone of his novel, but more puzzling, and intimidating, was the tender specificity of his story. His protagonist, Sarita, was infatuated with the son of the colony’s doctor and would watch as the boy walked through the rhododendrons. When he left, she would follow his path, placing her own bare feet into his footprints, balancing one foot in one print for a few seconds before stepping her other foot into the next one.
I read all afternoon and into the early evening, until I finished Jeremy’s astounding novel.
8
One of the first things I discovered when starting my job at Hodder, Strike was that the assistants on the third floor are of two distinct tribes: editorial and publicity. The editorial staff—lowly editorial secretaries, like me, and the higher-ranking editorial assistants, like Ron—are more serious and pretentious, as well versed in postmodern writers like Angela Carter and Robert Coover as in John Steinbeck and Jane Austen. We favor studiously casual clothes, usually in black, that are as likely to be thrift-shop discoveries as expensive indulgences from the parents who often subsidize this low-paying profession.
Then there are the young publicists, all female and all pretty, the kind of girls who wear velvet headbands to pull back their shiny blond hair and show off their bright faces. They start and end the day perky, apparently without a dependency on coffee, and relish their role as cheerleaders for books. Unlike the more introverted editorial assistants, many of whom are angst-ridden about working in publishing rather than being published, the publicity girls love their jobs and think nothing of mixing work and pleasure. So it wasn’t surprising that it was a trio of young assistant publicists who decided to host the first party of the summer.
“It’s a progressive party,” said Mary Noonan, who had walked over to the editorial department to extend invitations.
“Politically progressive?” I said. “That’s interesting. I think.”
“Very funny, but no,” Mary said. “Progressive, as in we progress from one apartment to another. We start at my place, then move on to Callie’s, and finish up at Mindy’s.”
Not one for office parties, with the exception of Malcolm’s monthly happy hour, I was reluctant to attend one such gathering only to have to move on and endure the awkward start to another. But I was tired of spending evenings trying not to think about Franny while watching Bette Davis movies alone at the Regency.
“And you have to bring a writer,” Mary said. “From our list.”
“Bring Your Own Writer. That’s new,” I said. Mary waited for it to dawn on me that she meant I should invite Jeremy, the sole Hodder, Strike writer who was under the age of thirty.
“You really think Jeremy Grand will go to a progressive party?” I said.
Mary looked at me in a knowing way that reminded me she was no fool, that in addition to having been the captain of the women’s field hockey team at Hamilton, she had double majored in American literature and psychology. “He will once you tell him the party is hosted by the people responsible for promoting his book,” she said.
“You think he’s that pragmatic?”
“I have no idea!” Mary said, with a shrug. “I just think he’s cute.”
Half hoping Jeremy would have other plans and be unable to come, I waited until the end of the week to call. But he accepted the invitation readily, without questioning the “progressive” nature of the party. He suggested we meet on the corner of Eighty-Sixth Street and York to walk up to the first installment together.
He was there before me, leaning against a NO PARKING sign, hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans.
“Ready for some preordained spontaneity?” I asked.
“Are we committed to all stops on this party train?”
His frown suggested that he’d accepted the invitation only for professional reasons, as Mary had suggested he might.
“You’re free to do as you please,” I said. “I’m not your minder.”