I am going to belong here. I’m going to be one of those women pushing a stroller with a new baby in it, while my adorable little boy runs over to the climbing structure—he’s just like his father, loves to climb. That’s what I’ll say to the mom next to me, as I take the baby out of her stroller, and I’ll smile down at the baby as she curls her little fist around my finger and coos. And that night, Judd will give them a bath while I cook dinner, and then while he does the dishes (he loves to do dishes), I’ll put the children to bed and sniff their sweet-smelling hair and nuzzle their soft little cheeks, and then I’ll work on my novel, propped up on pillows on our bed, while Judd—well, I don’t know what Judd is doing. Push-ups in the living room or something. Figuring out somebody’s physical fitness plan.
Last year when my friend Sarah told me that she couldn’t take her eyes off babies everywhere she went, I was like, “But why?” And she gave me a funny look and said, “Because they’re so cute. And they’re the future and the meaning of life, and I love the way their cheeks are so fat, and the way they have such goofy smiles, and . . .” And she went on for a lot longer than was absolutely necessary, listing every little thing about babies she could think of, even expounding about their toes and their eyelashes, until we reached the subway and I had to say good-bye to her. And when I got on the A train and settled into my seat, I felt like I’d just escaped from a very boring movie or a political rally by a not-very-galvanizing candidate.
But now. Now I get exactly what she was talking about. I really could get married to Judd. All I have to do is make a few minor, minor adjustments to my expectations, a few tweaks—and we could be just like these parents, right here in the park.
I watch for a few more delicious minutes, and then I tear myself away.
CHAPTER THREE
Tiller Publishing Company is located in a skyscraper-ish building overlooking the FDR Drive and the river. I work on the fourteenth floor, in an office that not only has a big window, but also came furnished with the most amazing pink brocade couch. Like a fainting couch. And bookshelves! Filled with books. There’s a coffee room down the hall and a big conference room with a long walnut table and twelve chairs all lined up, where we have our weekly meetings under the watchful eye of Darla Chapman, the head of publicity.
I’ve been there ten years and am now second-in-command to Darla, which is why I get one of the bigger offices with a couch. As one of the more senior people there—let’s face it, I’m something of a dowager here, rather like the Queen Mother—I’m assigned to mentor the younger publicists, who are always hanging around my office bringing me their questions and problems. That’s who mostly sits on the fainting couch these days—people who want to know the best way to tell an author that we’re probably not going to be able to send him on a thirty-city tour for a book about the life of an aquarium guppy. Publicity can be a grinding job when you’re having to manage authors’ expectations all the time, dealing with a dwindling number of magazines and reviewers and book tours and budgets. You have to get good at smiling while you say, I’m sorry, but that’s probably not going to happen, a lot.
As I’m walking down the hall to my office, I hear, “Oh, hey, Phronsie,” from the office next to mine. My heart sinks. I won’t be alone after all. It’s the new guy—Adam Cunningham. He started two months ago, and he’s a displaced surfer from California and has no background in marketing. He just likes to read, he told me, and somehow from that and the fact that his father is somebody important, he got an interview and talked his way into getting hired. Cutely strange-looking, with curly tangled hair that’s blond on the top and various shades of dark as it gets closer to his scalp. Beach hair, he told me once. Can’t do a thing to tame it.
“Hey, so what are you doing here on a Saturday?” he says, smiling. He wheels his chair back from his desk and puts his hands behind his head. He has large, white, even teeth. He’s always smiling, flashing those teeth at me during staff meetings, mostly from across the conference room table. Sometimes he makes faces at me, like when I’m trying to be serious and he’s trying to get me to laugh.
“Well,” I say, “I’ve got an author who’s stirring up some trouble, and I came to get the file so I can start figuring out what to do about her before Darla weighs in on the whole mess.” I lean against his doorframe. “But you! You’re new to the city. Aren’t you required by law to be out there soaking up all the fun things?”
Go, go, go, I am thinking.
He shakes his head. “Actually,” he says, clearing his throat, “I’m here because I’m trying to do extra work to suck up to Darla so she’ll let me have some extra days off Thanksgiving week. My family is making a huge hairy deal of the fact that I’m missing out on my grandpa’s birthday. I think he’s turning one hundred and forty-two, and it’s all hands on deck.”
“Oh. Well, she’ll probably say yes to that. She likes suck-ups.”
Actually, Darla has told me she’s had her doubts about whether he’s going to work out, and that I should let her know if there are any red flags with him. I saw from the file that he’s twenty-eight, but he seems younger than that. Maybe it’s the surfer-boy persona. He’s too . . . too . . . something for this job, Darla said. Too quirky maybe. “Keep an eye on him.”
It’s true: he is a little strange and offbeat. For instance, he has two little ceramic gnomes who sit on the windowsill like they’re standing guard. Gnomeo and Juliet, he told me.
Gnomes.
And now that I look over, I see that they’re not on the windowsill anymore; they’re sitting on his desk in a little platter of dirt, and Adam’s holding a miniature tractor in his hand.
He sees me looking, but does he put it down and look appropriately embarrassed? He does not. He just smiles at me and shrugs. “Gnomes are creatures of the land,” he says. “I found them a tractor, and so then I thought I’d bring them in some dirt to farm.”
“Sure,” I say.
Perhaps, as his official mentor here, I should tell him that a lot of people might not bring in their odd personal collections to the office right after being hired. Especially if they’re trying to fit into the corporate culture. But why should I be the one to quash his originality? I find him kind of brave, to tell you the truth. He may even be a marketing genius, despite not having any training.
One day at a staff meeting, for instance, he made a pitch for having an author do a reading at the Stardust Diner, a New York landmark where the waiters and waitresses break into oldies songs while they serve the food. Seems the book was about rock ’n’ roll, and why not have it celebrated right there, in between songs? That’s what he said at the meeting. Everyone was silent, looking down at their hands, waiting to see what the correct response might be, as dictated by Darla’s expression.
As I may have mentioned, I’ve worked there for ten years, longer than anyone, so I cleared my throat and said this sounded like a splendid, radical idea, but Darla frowned and said it wasn’t “the kind of thing we do.”
Yeah. So he probably won’t be here long. He’ll discover that we’re way too boring for him, and that will lead him to remember that the Pacific Ocean really does have excellent waves, and he’ll pack up his gnomes and their tractor and go back.