Jennifer Crusie - Anyone but You

"Well, how are they?" Charity demanded.

"They're good," Nina said. "They're really good. They're just not what I expected.''

"Like what?" Charity said. "Nina, you're killing me here!"

"Like 'funniest sex farce in years,'" Nina read to her. She picked up another review. "Like 'Moll Flanders meets Odysseus.' Like 'Jane Errs will do for boutique owners what Jane Eyre did for governesses.' Like 'Read Jane Errs and find out all the things your mother never taught you about sex.'"

"That's good, right," Charity said dubiously.

"Well, it's going to sell books," Nina said.

"Didn't they notice the other stuff?" Charity said. "How she changed? What she learned? Didn't they notice the important stuff?"

Nina flipped back through the reviews. "They seem to be concentrating on the sex, but that's probably because they weren't expecting it. Howard Press doesn't usually publish a book like yours."

Or as one of the reviews put it: "This book blows a hole in the side of stuffy old Howard Press and lets the light of the twentieth century in. The surprise is that it's the bedroom light."

Jessica was going to have heart failure when she showed her the reviews.

But what Jessica did instead was fire her.

"It's fiction?" she screeched to Nina when Nina gave her the reviews.

"It started out as a memoir." Nina clasped her hands in front of her. "It truly did, but in the last rewrite, Charity changed it to fiction, and it was better that way, and the reviews are good-"

Jessica waved a review at her, apoplectic with rage. "Listen to this review! 'Jane Errs makes the rest of the Howard Press output look like a bad blind date.' That's what you call a good review?"

Nina gave up. "Well, yes. I call that a good review."

Jessica stopped waving paper around and leaned on her desk. "You're fired."

Nina stepped back. "I'm what?"

"You're fired. You're out. And you take this book with you because I'm not releasing it. Not now, not ever. Howard Press will never print trash."

Nina regrouped. "Okay, fine, fire me, but release Charity's book. It's not trash. You haven't even read it yet, how can you say it's trash? That's intellectually dishonest. For heaven's sake, Jessica, it's already in production. You can't-"

Jessica leveled a look at her that stopped her cold. "I can do anything to save the reputation of my father's press. And I will. Now get out."

That night, Alex tried to comfort her. "It's all right, you don't have to work, anyway. I can support you. That's what I wanted to do, anyway. It'll be just like when you were married to Guy.''

"That's a great comfort to me," Nina said. "And I'm sure it will be a great comfort to Charity, too."

Then she went to Charity's apartment to tell her in person.

Charity's face went blank with shock as she sank onto her wicker couch. "She's not going to release it? It's printed. Why won't she release it? I'm not going to have a book, after all?"

Nina sat beside her. "Let me think. I'll fix this."

"Why didn't you tell her it was fiction?" Charity asked.

"I thought it was better that she didn't know," Nina said. "She didn't want to know. I thought she'd just have to accept it."

"You thought wrong," Charity said, her voice dead.

Nina jerked her head up. "Listen to me, I'm going to fix this."

Charity shook her head, defeated. "How? It's over."

"The hell it is." Nina stood up. "There are other presses and this is a great book. It even has advance reviews. Well just buy it back from Jessica and sell it somewhere else."

Charity nodded but her heart wasn't in it. "Sure, Neen. Whatever."

"I'll fix this," Nina said.

"I'm not sure I can fix this," Nina told Max the next night at dinner.

It was his father's birthday and the family had gathered for cake and booze. "It's a Moore tradition," Max had told her, filling her glass. "By the time the candles are lit, so are we." His mother and his sister had toasted his father briefly and coolly and then left the room, and now it was just Nina and the three Moore men, who were looking more and more alike: tall, good-looking, strained and unhappy.

Max was looking particularly miserable.

"Are you all right?" Nina had asked him, searching his eyes.

"No," Max said. "But thanks for asking." He smiled at her, a small smile but a genuine one. "I hope to hell Alex talks you into marrying him soon. It's about time we got a human being in this family."

"I don't think marriage is a good idea," Nina said.

Max snorted. "Why, because you want to give him an out in case he grows up and changes his mind?"

Nina set her jaw. "It could happen."

Max shook his head. "Not if he has any brains. And notwithstanding his performance lately, he has brains."

"I don't," Nina said. "I just lost my job because I'm stupid."

"Tell daddy," Max had said, and Nina had dumped it all in his lap.

"I'm sorry to bore you with this," she said when she was finished, "but Alex tells me not to worry about it since he'll be supporting me, anyway." She looked across the living room where Alex was discussing something somber and cardiac with his father. "So I told Fred. It was a help, but not like telling you."

"Forget the book," Max said. "Save Alex. Hell, save me."

Nina watched Alex across the room, nodding at something his father said, and he looked so much like his father that she felt cold. "He doesn't laugh anymore. We've been together for almost two months now, and he doesn't laugh anymore. We don't watch movies or jog because he's too tired. Even Fred knows something's wrong. He whines until Alex pays attention to him. It's like he knows Alex has to be reminded to live life."

"Send Fred to my house," Max said. "Do you want another drink?"

"No," Nina said. "I didn't want this first one." She turned to Max. "And neither did you. If you're so unhappy, do something about it. Stop anesthetizing it with alcohol."

Max blinked at her anger. "Hey, don't take it out on me because Alex is turning into the old man. I told him not to do it, but he wanted to give you the rich life."

Nina stopped. "What are you talking about? Are you telling me he doesn't want cardiology for himself?"

Max snorted. "Of course not. He loves the ER. He's doing it for you."

Nina gritted her teeth. It was Guy all over again. Doing it for her when she didn't want it. Alex and his father came to join them and she glared at them with such passion that Max patted her hand, but they didn't seem to notice.

"Alex and I have worked out a wedding present for you, my dear," his father said.

The hell you have. Nina smiled tightly. "We're not getting married."

His father smiled back at her, oblivious. "Now, now, Nina, there's no need to feel guilty because you're past childbearing age. As Alex has pointed out, it isn't that important. Max isn't married yet."

Alex winced, and Max looked at her and said, "I'll flip you for the right to say something nasty here."

"So we bought you a house," his father finished, and Nina rose straight out of her chair like a banshee.

"You did what?"

"We bought a house," Alex said, blinking at her. "Dad gave us the down payment. It's on Lehigh Terrace."

Nina gritted her teeth. "I used to live on Lehigh Terrace."

"I know," Alex said. "That's why we bought there. So it'll be just like when you were married to Guy."

Nina gritted her teeth harder, so hard she thought her gums were going to shove through her cheeks. "I left Guy. Why are you turning into him?"

His father intervened. "Really, Nina, I hardly think-"

"Yeah, we know," Max said. "That's why you drink. That's why we all drink, so we don't have to think about anything but work and booze. You know, we have a problem here."