G Malliet - Death and the Lit Chick

"Good," she said, lowering her silky voice to a purr. "I do think it's time you and I had a serious discussion, too, don't you?"

Jay's heart took flight at the words. If he could land Kimberlee Kalder as a client, well… He'd be running the agency in a year. The Troy, Lewis, Bunter, and Hastings Agency would become the Fforde Agency at last. And he could ditch his other clients, beginning with Magretta. Who would need them?

Reluctantly, he tore his mind away from empire building. Kimberlee was saying something about train connections and reservations at the castle.

"You'll have to call today if you want to get near the castle spa," she told him. "They'll be booked solid from the moment this crowd of scribblers arrives."

"I'll tell you what, Kimberlee. Why don't I book a massage for you while I'm at it? My little treat, courtesy of the agency. I insist. What's that you say?" He picked up a pen and jotted notes as she talked. "All right. So that's a black mud envelopment treatment, an Aromapure Facial, a hydro pool session, and a sun shower treatment." Feeling like a waiter, he asked, "Will there be anything else?"

He rang off awhile later, Kimberlee having run out of special requests. Almost simultaneously, the door to the outer office swung open again.

"That was Kimberlee, wasn't it?" said Laurie. "She wouldn't identify herself, but the bossy tone is unmistakable."

"Yes. She's ready to dump Ninette and come over to the dark side."

"I suspected as much. You can tell her for me you can catch more flies with honey-"

"Before I forget, call Dalmorton Castle, will you, and book her into the spa for these treatments." He handed her the list. Laurie glanced at it and sniffed.

"She doesn't want much, does she?" Laurie tucked the list in her pocket and began tidying his desk, gathering files, tapping papers ruthlessly into line against the antique mahogany wood.

"If you move that you know I'll never find it again," said Jay.

"That's what I'm here for, Jay. To find things for you."

Jay smiled absently. Laurie always made him think of the redoubtable Miss Lemon, Hercule Poirot's fiercely competent secretary, foil to the well-meaning but dim Hastings. She placed a stack of papers before him.

"Magretta's late again with her rewrites. She's getting worse, I think."

Jay was pulled back from a daydream of yachts, Caribbean beaches, and ski chalets in Val Claret. He sat up, shoving the stack of papers to one side.

"Give her a few more weeks," he said. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

A few blocks to the west, Ninette Thomson was worried. Kimberlee Kalder, her megastar client, as she supposed they would say in Hollywood, was sending out all the well-known signs of a writer in flight to a new agent. Increasingly ludicrous demands-an espresso machine, for God's sake-temper tantrums, insistence on impossible terms from her British and American publishers for her next book, overturning all the carefully negotiated-and extremely generous for an unknown author-terms of the contract Ninette had painstakingly organized for her. Demanding Ninette take the new book when it was ready to a larger publisher, despite a contract option that stipulated she could not do precisely that.

Honestly, thought Ninette. It was worse than dealing with the commitment-phobic, hormone-blinded male. You always could tell when they had one foot out the door, headed for another woman's bedroom, if you knew the signs. Which Ninette, fifty-four and the survivor of countless "summer" romances, felt certain she did.

She stood, stretching the tension from her shoulders. She had to get home and pack for this castle fandango. Good of Easterbrook to include her, really, although she knew Kimberlee Kalder was the only reason. She, Ninette, certainly wouldn't have been invited for the sake of a Winston Chatley or a Portia De'Ath. She turned away from the large, modern desk that stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in her office. More and more, Ninette had started working from home-less temptation to frequent the wine bars that way-but she remained reluctant to give up the fantastic view and, more importantly, the prestigious address of her London office. Sometimes the only indicator of a good agent that a writer had to go by was the address. But the expense! The expense would have driven her down and out long ago if that wonderful manuscript of Kimberlee Kalder's hadn't shown up in her slush pile two years ago.

Wonderful, she reminded herself, meaning saleable, meaning marketable, meaning the only things that mattered in today's publishing climate. Every day Ninette turned down manuscripts that were wonderful-wonderfully written, insightful, sad, funny, groundbreaking, heartbreaking, whatever. And not one of them met the blockbuster, plot-driven standards that were becoming the byword of the industry: less character, more plot.

Fewer and fewer publishers were willing to take a chance on an unknown writer. But Ninette, after years in the business, could sense a best-selling winner, and had persuaded Easterbrook to take that chance on Kimberlee.

The last truly fine writer she'd taken on, knowing for certain she'd never make a fortune, but not caring, had been Portia De'Ath, who was now selling at a decent little clip. Winston Chatley once fell into the same category…

But it was Kimberlee, damn it all, who was paying the bills.

Now the silly, greedy little twit thought she could do better. Imagined a different agent, a different publisher, would bring in even more than the ridiculously large amount the first book had brought her already.

Kimberlee Kalder suddenly thought she didn't need her, Ninette Thomson.

Well, we'll just see about that now, won't we?

V

Winston Chatley was having tea with his mother in their narrow row house in a small, hidden mews in Chelsea. The fashionable part of Chelsea had grown up around them, leaving them stranded like shipwrecked survivors clinging to a valuable piece of real estate they couldn't afford to sell. Winston thought of them as on an island of desperation surrounded by a sea of clamoring, mobile-phone chatting yuppies.

Where would we move? Winston would ask his mother when the subject arose.

Somewhere smaller, in the country, Mrs. Chatley would reply, in her increasingly vague way.

You need to be near the best treatment available, not stuck in some backwash village, Winston would say. Besides, I like the city.

We'll manage, then.

They had had the identical conversation so often it amounted to a comforting ritual. For his mother, Winston suspected it was just that.

Winston worried he'd need home care for her eventually. For him the best thing-maybe the only good thing-about being a writer was that he was home most days. But she was fast reaching the stage where she'd have burned the house down if he didn't watch her constantly. What really needed to happen was for Winston to sell the house, use the proceeds to put her in a home, and use whatever was left over to buy that remote country cottage.

The idea had never seriously settled on him and would have horrified him if it had. This house was all she knew of home, of warm familiarity. It would kill her to be moved.

And so they circled around the topic. But today, his mother reverted to another familiar line of questioning.

"So, how is the new book coming?"

If there is one question a writer fears more than any other, it is that, for the answer calls upon more skills of invention and creativity than the actual writing of any book.

She beamed at him in anticipation of his answer. That Winston was an ugly man, combining the worst features of Abraham Lincoln and Boris Karloff into a homely, yet surprisingly engaging whole, she had never really noticed. She loved Winston with all the devotion and sublime lack of awareness of a golden retriever nursing an orphaned bloodhound pup. She herself was beautiful and never seemed to see the craggy, bumpy planes of Winston's face. It didn't matter: He was hers.