“I’m sorry, I can’t talk.” I brushed past the man and hurried down the stairs.
I could not remember the T ever operating so slowly. I was frustrated by the wait, by my inability to take the stairs out of the Kendall Station two at a time—I started to, but had to lean back against the railing to catch my breath and let my vision clear.
Inside the Brooks and Hanover offices I slipped past Sheila’s desk, now occupied by a temp, a girl in her twenties who might have been pretty had she refrained from drawing her eyebrows on with a marker. If I could get inside my office without being seen, it was feasible that no one might know I had not been there all morning. I shut my door, docked my laptop, stared at the stack of office mail in yellow tie-top envelopes on the corner of my desk.
Exactly ten minutes later my phone rang. It was Helen. “Clay, can you come see me?”
“Helen, hi. I’m really behind—I was sick this morning. I’m trying to get going on my day. I know I haven’t gotten the contract back to Anu—”
“Clay, can you just come in, please?”
I sighed. “Sure.”
I scratched my unshaven face, combed my hair with my fingers. I didn’t feel like another reprimand. I was soon to become a double asset to this house, and I needed some flexibility and respect.
Helen was wearing her usual cashmere turtleneck—nutmeg today—her glasses hanging on their beaded chain, her hair in a headband worn only by girls in high school and women in their fifties.
“Clay.” She sighed as I sat down. “I don’t know how to say this.”
My first thought was of the book—she couldn’t get the larger advance, or they’d have to defer its release by a season.
“We can’t work this way. The marketing team is behind, you haven’t had a single viable proposal accepted by the committee—not counting your own—in the last three months, and despite the fact that we just spoke yesterday, you still showed up well after noon today.” She threw up her hands. “I mean, we just talked yesterday!”
I just sat there in my wrinkled slacks, mutely gazing at her.
“There’s still a fine chance that we’ll offer you a contract for your book, though I think we should give that a few weeks to re-evaluate how many projects we’re going to be behind on and how quickly we can find an editor to take your place. It’s a good book, Clay. This is not a statement on your work as a writer—only your work habits as an editor.”
All of this came to me through a time warp, each of her words registering in slow, crawling baritone.
“Are you kidding me?” I said at last, incredulity slowly washing over me. “Are you kidding me?” I repeated when she said nothing. In one stroke she was relieving me of not only my job but also of the book that was, to my mind, all but published. How could this be possible?
I’m going to tell you my story, Lucian had said, and you’re going to write it down and publish it. He had said it. And I had written it, and the committee had accepted it! Obviously this decision would be reversed. Something would happen to change Helen’s mind.
Helen shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“The contract is in my e-mail. It’s been sent.” Why hadn’t I gone through it—or just signed it and sent it right back, never mind the details?
“It hasn’t been signed, Clay,” she said in that tone adults take with recalcitrant teens. “And this might be the best for both of us. We can both take some time to think. Maybe you should try your luck with a larger house. The book is certainly good enough.”
“Are you patronizing me?” I realized my voice had risen. “And we didn’t talk yesterday, Helen. You pulled me aside like a wayward student in the middle of the hall.”
“Clay, I’m sorry about that, but the fact is—”
“The fact is you have no idea what my life has been like. What I’ve been going through these last few months. You have no clue, Helen.” I was shaking, venting my anger as I waited, waited for the reversal that I knew must happen.
“Clay”— her voice steeled—“You’re not the only one with problems.”
“Exactly. And when Sheila put herself in the hospital after drinking herself half to death, did you fire her? No. I don’t think you did. You gave her time to get her act together. That’s some kind of double standard, Helen.”
I was on fire, all the tension of the last week, of the last three-and-a-half months, spewing from me as if from a cannon.
“Clay”—she rose and extended her hand—“I wish you luck.”
I stared at her hand for an instant before turning on my heel and striding out, slamming her door behind me.
In the hallway, the temp waited with a box. “I’m supposed to help you get your things.” What was she, twenty-two? Fresh out of college, maybe, if she had gone at all? Sheila had gone to community college at least. What did this temp straight from—wherever—know? What gave her the right to follow me into my office with a box?
I shoved items off my desk and into the box, threw in the contents of drawers: pictures and books, most of them signed by authors I had acquired, greeting cards accumulated through the years. I sorted through my card file, pulled a few to keep, Katrina Dunn Lampe’s among them. I threw in coffee mugs, a Cross pen set, a quote-a-day calendar from the year before opened to July 7. I left the rest—the manuscript pages, the proposals, the galleys, the covers—where they lay on my desk and then, on impulse, knocked the stack to the floor.
I undocked my computer and put it into the box. The temp chewed her lip. “That’s a company laptop, right?”
I stopped cold. My story was on that laptop. Almost as important, my calendar was on it too. It was the only one I kept, and every one of Lucian’s mysterious appointments had appeared on it.
I forgot the demon’s horrible smile, the dire awareness so similar to that first night in the café, the voice within me compelling me to leave the Starbucks. He had frightened me before, I had walked out before, and always there had been another meeting. But without my computer, what would happen to the appointments? How would I know if he made one?
I had no way to contact him. No way to tell him. He had told me never to attempt it again, and after what had happened the last time, I was too afraid to try. Would he know? Would his buzzing network tell him?
I rummaged around in the box, found a cheap flash drive, and copied my book onto it. Then I deleted my manuscript on the hard drive along with my sent and deleted e-mails and, facetiously, several drafts of edited copy.
No one stopped me. As I left, no one rushed out after me. I had arrived at work an editor, writer, and soon-to-be-published author and left the proud owner of a box full of junk. As I walked to the station, I noticed a dumpster outside a neighboring building. I set down the box, threw open the lid, and dumped the entire box, contents and all inside. It was all junk. The only thing of value, the flash drive with my manuscript on it, was already tucked into my coat pocket.
TURNING IN MY LAPTOP meant I had no computer. Despite the fact that I now had no idea how I would pay for my trip to Cabo, let alone a new computer, I walked the several blocks to the Galleria. Had I my own laptop, or had Helen given me any warning, I could have ordered one online. As it was, I was at the mercy of whatever the computer store had in stock.
After enlisting the help of a kid half my age, I chose the most affordable, basic model I could find and charged it to my credit card. I took a cab home via the local liquor store, my new computer resting on my knees in its small, white carrying box, a paper bag on the seat beside me.
FOR THE NEXT TWO days I drank, slept, and somehow set up my new computer, which came complete with its own schedule, contact, and mail software. I set up the calendar, which now had nothing on it, and opened a new e-mail account through a free online service. And then I waited.