You can’t fit any more people than that in the whole store. In fact, my guess is you’re lucky the fire marshal didn’t show up.”
Michael smiled. “You always make me feel better.”
“I’m your agent; it’s part of my job. How’d the interviews go?”
“That lady on the public radio station did an okay job. She at least had read one of the books. But I did that noontime talk show, with that-oh hell, what’s his name? God, I met him seven hours ago and can’t remember his name.”
“That’s life on the road for you,” Taylor interjected.
“No kidding,” Michael said. “Stress-induced memory loss.
Anyway, he was an idiot. Typical daytime talk show blow-dried anchorperson. Hadn’t read the book, didn’t know who I was. At least he sort of stuck to the prepared questions.”
“That means he can read,” Taylor said. “In the TV business, he’s an overachiever.”
“So what’s new on your end?” he asked.
“I had dinner tonight with Brett,” Taylor answered.
“Oh, so no hot date?” Michael offered.
Taylor hesitated. “No, no hot date. But she did tell me you’re climbing to number three on the list Sunday.”
“Great!” Michael said.
“And on top of that, The Fourth Letter made it onto the paperback list. You’ll debut at eleven.”
“Oh man, I love it!”
“And the contracts have been processed and I expect a check within the next couple of weeks.”
Michael stretched on the bed and finished off the Scotch.
“If your job is to make me feel better, you’re sure doing it well.”
“All part of the package,” she teased.
“I wish you were here,” he said. “I’m stretched out all alone on this king-size bed with no one to massage the tension out of my tired muscles.”
“So get a rubdown,” Taylor said.
“That’s not the muscle I meant,” he teased, then lowered his voice. “I miss you.”
Her voice lowered as well. “Well, hmm.”
There was a long silence filled only by a faint whisper of static on the line.
“You still there?” Michael asked after a moment.
“Yes.”
“Something bothering you?”
Another long pause. “I’m just not quite sure what’s going on, that’s all,” Taylor answered. “I mean, I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what before?” Michael asked. “You mean you were a-”
“No, silly,” she snapped, laughing the tension out of her voice. “I’ve done that before! I’ve just never done it with a client.”
Michael rolled over on his side with the phone resting on his right ear. “Okay, so it’s a little weird, mixing business with a personal life. But there’s something going on here, Taylor. Something powerful. I don’t know where it’s going, but I’d sure like to find out.”
“I just don’t want to … don’t want to make another mistake, that’s all.”
“Look,” Michael said, “this stupid tour is almost over. At least I can see the end. Then I’m going back to New York City and find a place, get moved, and get back to work.
That’s a tall order. I think I’m going to need a rest before I take that on.”
“So-”
“What say we get on a plane and go lie on a beach for a week or so? Just the two of us? Maybe someplace in the Caribbean.”
Taylor cleared her throat and was silent again for a few moments. “I don’t know, Michael, I-”
“C’mon,” he said. “It’s wintertime. You need to get away.
We need to get away. Please?”
“Let me think about it,” she said.
“Fair enough. At least it’s not a no. So what are you up to for the rest of the evening?”
She laughed. “It’s nearly eleven here,” she said. “And I’m pooped. I might finish reading the paper and go to bed.
Don’t know if I’ve got that much left in me.”
“Me, too,” Michael said, raising up on the bed and plant-ing his feet on the floor. “I think it’s a phone call to room service and then some free HBO. I’ll call you tomorrow from San Francisco. Okay?”
“What time’s your plane leave?”
“Not until eleven, which is a real treat. Writers aren’t used to being up in time to make seven A.M. flights.”
“You and Carol will get a break tomorrow,” Taylor said.
“By the way, how is she?”
Michael felt the muscles in his jaw knot up and fought to keep the tension out of his voice. “She’s Carol,” he said.
“You know.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Sleep well,” Michael said.
“You, too. Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Taylor said. “And Michael-”
“Yeah?” he asked after a moment.
“I miss you, too.”
Michael grinned and rattled the ice around in his glass.
“Go to bed,” he said. “Think of me.”
“Can’t help it. Good night.”
Michael hung the phone up and stood, stretching his arms high over his head and arching his back. He walked over to the large window that nearly covered the wall opposite him.
He pulled the drapes aside, revealing the buzzing, chaotic, hyper light show that was Las Vegas on any night of the year. In the distance, he spotted the beam of light coming out of the apex of the Luxor, a light so bright it was visible from the space shuttle when the sky was clear. Off in another direction, the strip ran twenty-five floors below him, lined with cars bumper-to-bumper.
Michael felt restless. He was in Las Vegas, one of the most exciting cities in the world, on a Friday night in a luxury hotel room someone else was paying for, with a very generous expense budget included. And he was alone.
He reached down and picked up a spiral-bound notebook that described and promoted the various features of the hotel. The room service menu was extensive and available any time, day or night. Just pick up the phone … Maybe there was a movie on he hadn’t seen.
Then again, maybe there wasn’t.
Michael walked into the bathroom, ran water over his face and rubbed his tired eyes, then brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He pulled a navy-blue double-breasted jacket out of the closet and slipped it on, then walked to the door of his hotel room and opened it. He stopped in the doorway, took one last look at the rumpled bed, and pulled the door behind him.
In the two years Carol Gee had been the senior publicist at Accent Press, she thought she’d seen just about every form of schizoid author imaginable. She’d once accompanied a best-selling author on a twelve-city tour in which the famous literary author managed to get himself arrested four times-twice in the same city. A mega-best-selling female author had once called her in the middle of the night from her four-room suite and demanded that Carol clean up the mess where her cat threw up. And she’d been hit on by famous authors so many times, she no longer bothered to record that in her mental diary.
Twenty-eight years old, Yale graduate, second-generation Korean-American, and with an IQ that placed her in the top point-five percent of the world’s population, Carol Gee was finally beginning to wonder what the hell she was doing with her life. All her career aspirations, her ambitions, her desire to achieve and succeed had been thrown into jeopardy by the behavior of one man: Michael Schiftmann.
Carol had never seen anyone like him. Charming and affable, even warm, one minute, he could in an instant become an over-controlled, seething cauldron of cold fury. In Detroit two days earlier, at an old Waldenbooks in a decaying strip mall, the two of them had arrived for Michael’s book signing only to discover that no advertising had been done, no announcement made, and the only notice of the signing was a handwritten sheet taped to the cash register with the wrong date listed. To add even further insult, the five cases of books Carol had overnighted to the store hadn’t even been opened. It took the assistant manager and the sixteen-year-old girl working the night shift five minutes to even find them.
This was not the first time Carol Gee had seen a book signing botched, although it was relatively rare to see one bungled this badly for a New York Times best seller. Carol was prepared to deal with it, go on to the next city, and make a note to never schedule a signing at the store again. The usual procedure was to stick around for an hour, chat up the bookstore salespeople, then sign every copy in the store so they could be sold as autographed copies, a practice known in the business as “signing stock.”