Betty looked seasick. “Great,” she said.
The three of them stood there for a moment. Betty opened her drawer, coming out with the bathroom key. “But Patty and I had better freshen up first.”
“Okay,” Gelb said.
“I’m fresh enough,” Patty said, not wanting to have to answer Betty’s questions yet.
So now Betty was stuck, the ladies’ room key in hand. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and walked out, turning her head away from Gelb and signaling violently with her eyes at Patty. Betty’s attitude toward Gelb was what Patty’s once was — a schoolgirl’s toward the principal — but having seen his lumpy buttocks while he stood at the bathroom sink angling his head to see if he had trimmed all his nostril hairs had altered Patty’s perspective.
Gelb moved at her the instant Betty was gone, his hands out. “How dare you!” Patty said, outraged, as he took possession, his hands reaching for her ass, his lips kissing her neck. “You’re making it so fucking obvious! You might as well come in with my panties in your teeth!”
He laughed into her hair and then murmured, “You’re so beautiful — I got a hard-on in the cab just thinking of you.”
“Fabulous,” Patty said, and pushed at his chest. “Anyone can see! Will you stop!”
He moved away. “Who cares if they find out?”
“I do! Everyone will think it’s the only reason I’m being published.”
“Nonsense,” he answered with a devilish smile. “Everybody knows I’m not that nice.” And then he laughed, delighted.
“Hilarious. I can’t trust you. The affair’s over.”
“Bullshit,” he said confidently, but his eyes were worried. “Your orgasms are too good. Last time you almost shattered the chandelier.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. If a dog licked my clit that long I’d come.”
Betty breezed in, her face set in a wide smile. Patty and Gelb both looked at the floor like guilty children. “All set?” Betty said with an even brighter smile.
On his way to see Holder for his weekly meeting, Fred passed Patty, Betty, and Gelb in the hail. His routine for the last six months had been to submit rewritten pages each Friday and meet with Holder on Monday and be given changes. This was to be the last of their conferences, since Fred was handing in the final ten pages.
“What are you doing here?” Fred asked Patty without even a hello. “Returning to editing?”
“Patty’s just handed in her novel. We’re publishing it in the fall,” Betty said triumphantly and — Fred thought — as though it were somehow a slap in the face. It did worry him.
“You’ve written a novel?” he asked Patty.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Patty said in a sarcastic and disgusted tone that also smacked of confidence and control. “I walk and talk too — I’m a real bargain.”
“Oh, stop,” Betty said. “Fred, you know Jerry Gelb? This is Fred Tatter. We’re publishing him also. When, Fred?”
“I guess in the fall,” he answered, terrified, now that he knew for sure that Gelb was Gelb, the man himself. Patty used to work for him, Fred remembered, and now felt better, assuming that’s why she had gotten a contract. Sure, and Betty, her best friend, is her editor. He regained his balance. “We’ll be on the same list. We should have a joint pub party.”
“I’m not gonna have a party,” Patty said. “I’m gonna stab the Times Book Review editor in the stomach and get some decent publicity.”
Fred frowned. Betty and Gelb laughed. They said goodbye to him and he felt keen resentment toward them while he walked to Holder’s office. He had been worked to the bone by Holder, had had to rewrite every page, while his advance was drained by the studio apartment he had sublet, his expensive social life, and his share of the couple’s therapy. Increasingly he felt financial pressure to return to Marion, which would automatically reduce his costs and restore access to her income. Life seemed so easy for these women. If they got into trouble, like Patty had a couple years ago, they banded together, found a man, a place to live, and even a career. He had struggled his whole life to get a novel published and Patty just got one handed to her on a feminist platter.
For once, Holder was wearing a sweater with no holes in the elbows. “I’m real excited, Fred. This book is terrific. I love the story …”
Fred nodded, smiling sheepishly while Holder went into this now familiar litany. The plot was Holder’s, and it seemed to bear a remarkable similarity to the progress of Holder’s life, with a few exaggerations, which were probably fantasies — mostly the hero’s sexual prowess. It was awkward and embarrassing to listen to his editor praise what were basically his editor’s ideas as though they had originated with Fred. If he accepted the compliments he would be a fraud, to refuse them might seem ungracious and resentful of Holder’s editing.
Instead, he changed the subject. “I just met your boss, Gelb, out in the hall. With two friends of mine.”
“Oh yeah?” The mention of the publisher’s name had Holder on the alert. “With who?”
“Betty Winters and Patty Lane.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Holder said. Whatever had worried him was gone. “Yeah, Betty’s nice. She’s doing her first novel with Patty. It’s exciting for her.”
“Patty? Or Betty?” Fred asked, not archly, but out of confusion.
“Both, I guess. I mean for Betty. Gelb has helped open things up around here — used to be so uptight, so scared to take risks. I really like him. Do you know him?”
“No,” Fred said, unable to conceal his irritation that Holder didn’t listen carefully. “I told you. I just met him.” Holder made Fred feel he was barely in the room, his words merely a string interlude between Holder’s orchestral crescendos.
“Oh. Yeah, he’s a great guy.”
“They were going to lunch together,” Fred mumbled.
Holder looked at him curiously. “That bother you?”
“What?” Fred maneuvered in his chair nervously. “No, no. Patty used to work for Gelb.”
“Oh!” Holder drew the word out, leaning back with a smirk on his face. “So that’s why she got a book contract.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Fred said, frightened somehow to admit to his opinion.
“Going to lunch with him doesn’t mean a thing, you know.” Holder leaned forward and raised his hand high in the air, his index finger pointed down, swooping through the air and landing on the title page of Fred’s manuscript. “This is going to be a big book. I haven’t started lobbying in the house. I was waiting for the whole book. But you’ve done great work. And this book is going to be big.” Holder fixed Fred with his eyes and nodded solemnly. “Believe me,” he said.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” Chico said, feverishly pulling David into his office and closing the door. After a wait of two hours David had been summoned by the Power Phone to Animal Crackers, Chico’s voice rasping anxiously, so that David guessed the news wasn’t good.
“What?” David asked, the word spoken in dread— though of what, he couldn’t imagine.
“You know why Thorn came here? Because of him! This is the most diabolically brilliant maneuver, or he’s an idiot, I don’t know which. What difference does it make?” Chico cried to the ceiling. “Either way, he’s saved himself.”
“What did he do?” David asked, panicked, the suspense unbearable.
“He resigned!” Chico spread his arms out, laying out for David his incredulity like a map. “Can you believe it? She’s ready to fire him and he resigns! Says he’s wrong for the job. Doesn’t like it!” Chico grabbed the sides of his skull as though to close in the bursting fury of his mind.
“But … but …”