Patty had pulled herself up and leaned against the pillows. Her mouth tasted of both alcohol and vomit.
“Patty! You there?”
“Yeah. That’s great,” she said listlessly, despite her desire to feign pleasure.
“What’s the matter? You worried about Ann? Don’t. I gave her the manuscript a couple of minutes ago, told her all about it. She was excited.”
“She was excited? What’s she got to be excited about?”
“My opinion!” Betty said, not kidding. “This is the first novel I’ve given anyone here with this kind of hype. Patty.”
She wants me to thank her. “I really appreciate it.”
“Well, it deserves it. I read it again last night, Patty, and it’s terrific.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Before Patty could answer, Betty rushed on. “Oh, today was the big lunch! What did he say?”
“Nothing. Just apologies.”
“For firing you?”
“Yep.”
“Well, that’s nice. The bastard. I can’t imagine what it must be like to work for him.”
“I feel a little sick from the lunch. Let me … can I call you back?” She hung up the moment Betty said okay, her mind reeling from the irony of Betty’s last statement. What could she do? She was trapped. There was absolutely no guarantee that she could get a book contract from another publisher. She knew how hard it was to get them to gamble on a first novelist. She didn’t even have an agent. She would have to accept Betty’s offer — assuming it came through— and then sleep with Gelb. In fact she’d probably have to start spreading her legs even before the public announcement of his hiring, judging from how eager he was in the cab. He had fired her because she refused once — what would he do to her book? She had been ruined once by her prudery, her reluctance to use sex as a career move. She wouldn’t allow a repetition, she couldn’t permit her book to be destroyed by naiveté. A year of screwing him and she might even get a big print run and a major advertising campaign. A year of saying no and her book would be screwed once and for all.
She hadn’t told David about the lunch, thank God, so she was spared having to make up a lie to him about how it went. She suggested they go to the movies, and after considerable coaxing, he agreed to go. Afterwards she pleaded illness and got into bed, lying there listening to the faint sound of the television in the other room. I could do it, she told herself, if only Gelb attracted me. But his stubble had felt scratchy, his thick neck and cold eyes weren’t sexy, and the terms of the sexual exchange — her body for a successful career — didn’t turn her on either. She didn’t entirely mind the possessiveness of it, or even its evil tone — it simply didn’t seem to have anything to do with lust, with the physical.
She had controlled men with sex before, tamed their demands, seduced them into usefulness. While writing the novel she had recognized the pattern of her behavior with men, observed how even with David she didn’t give her real self to him, that her assumption (often reinforced by people like Gelb) that her only power over men, the granting or denial of sexual satisfaction, was not only immoral but also ultimately self-defeating.
She had vowed not to do it again, had stopped stroking David’s penis to get him out of his grumpy self-obsessed moods — though she had to admit the new approach didn’t seem to be working. But this was different in one important respect. Her novel was at stake, the promise of a long interesting career, the establishment of a beachhead on the continent she wanted to conquer. To use sex for herself, to gain an identity and a presence in the world, was that self-defeating? Sure, it was immoral — but harmful to her?
She tried to imagine fucking Gelb. She could probably just lie there and let him drool over her breasts and hump her quickly — she tagged him, from his breathy nervous kissing, an early ejaculator. And she worried whether he would keep to the bargain, whether she could handle a manipulation of him. She suspected that Gelb, despite his frantic pleas, his apparent lack of negotiating skill, would manhandle her once she took the edge off his horniness.
He called at ten the next morning. “So, are you going to take the job?”
“No,” she said, still without a plan.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to be an editor. In fact, I don’t want to have a job.”
There was a silence from Gelb’s end and then an abrupt snort of contemptuous laughter. “You don’t expect me to believe you want to write that romance shit.”
“No, I don’t want to do that either.”
“Well, what? You want to stay home and have kids? What is it?”
“What difference does it make to you? You only—”
“I love you,” he said gruffly, as though he were complaining about being mischarged on a bill. “That’s why.”
Patty shook her head, truly baffled by him. This attempt to portray himself as a romantic suitor was so preposterous, so obviously a lie, that she couldn’t believe he was attempting it. Did he really have that much contempt for her, to think she would buy his shabby goods?
“I don’t love you,” she said without thought, simply telling the truth. The moment it was out, she realized it was the perfect answer.
“Of course you don’t. Why should you? I’ve behaved like an asshole. But I want the chance to reform. To change your mind.” Again his tone was matter-of-fact, a salesman soothing a difficult client, exuding enough confidence to let you know he expected to succeed, without containing sufficient arrogance to make you want to balk just to show him up.
“I’m in love with David,” she said, this time coming up with an answer she had planned.
“No, you’re not,” he said quickly, stating a fact, not arguing.
“How can you say that? You’ve never met him. you’ve—”
“I accept that you don’t love me, even maybe that you don’t like me, but when a woman is in love she doesn’t discuss it like this. She doesn’t come to lunch like you did and sit in a cab like you did.”
“I’m intimidated by you. That’s all. I’m scared of you.”
“Really?” His voice sounded surprised and delighted. He chuckled. “That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s true,” she said with convincing earnestness, because, after all, it was true.
“I’m just a scared little kid like everybody else, Patty.”
“Oh no you’re not,” she said, and he began to laugh, and then she joined him, relaxing into the conversation for the first time. “You’re a tough guy,” she added, controlling her laughter. “And you scare the shit out of everybody.”
“That’s sad,” he answered. “Help me change. Give me some of your sweetness.”
Patty laughed. “This is ridiculous. I feel like you’re ordering take-out sex. Do you want me delivered in a white cardboard box?”
“No,” Gelb answered, chuckling. “Wrapped in silk, dear. And no chopsticks.”
“Let me call you. Give me some time.”
“Okay,” Gelb said breezily. “I’ll give you until the afternoon.” And he rang off without a good-bye. She sat at the typewriter all morning unable to write. To work on the book seemed irrelevant now, since its future hung in the balance. She expected Gelb to phone right after lunch, but Betty did instead.
“Feeling better?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”
“I hope our working together isn’t going to make things weird between us,” Betty said hastily, as though this were something she had planned to say and felt nervous about.
“Me too,” Patty said, thinking of how it would be, sleeping with Betty’s boss, turning down a job for more money and with more authority than Betty had. Even now she was keeping secret from Betty the impeding fact of Gelb’s arrival at Garlands, fearing that it might somehow stop Betty from continuing with her efforts to get Patty a contract.