Steven Rowley - The Editor

It’s two minutes before five o’clock when Lila guides me back down the long hallway that leads to the conference room, her coworkers packing up to go home. I try to make eye contact with everyone, smile to diffuse their annoyance. I can read the stress on their faces. Who is this arriving just as we are leaving? Do I have to stay? Will I miss my train? Lila keeps her usual pace; had we not met before, I would feel she, too, was itching to leave. She probably is, but Lila has only one setting: rushed. This time when we hit the conference room we bear a sharp right, down another hall, toward, I assume, Jackie’s office.

“Do you want coffee?”

I can picture the coffee mugs washed and put away for the day and the kerfuffle it would cause if I said yes. “No, thank you.” And then, because I can’t help myself from babbling around Lila, “Caffeine makes me jittery this late in the day.” I don’t want to say what we both already know: I’m jittery enough already.

A young, fair-haired man, handsome, maybe twenty-five, approaches us while pulling on a blazer in a windmill-like fashion I imagine members of a varsity rowing team do. He locks eyes with me like we’re cruising for random sex in an out-of-the-way park, and while unnerved, I can’t look away. I’ve spent years wanting to belong in these halls; glancing down would send the wrong message.

“Oh, hey.” Lila stops us. “This is Mark. He’s Mrs. Onassis’s new assistant. Mark, this is James Smale.” Lila punctuates my name with an air of disinterest.

“James Smale,” Mark says, shaking my hand while trying to place my name.

Lila rolls her eyes, I hope at Mark and not at me. “Jackie’s new acquisition.”

“Right.” Mark clasps his other hand on mine, they are soft and warm.

“Acquisition?” Like I’m some antiquity she’s acquired on an exotic foreign trip? “I guess we’ll be working together.”

“I look forward to it.” Mark lets go of my hand, but not before he winks. Thankfully, Lila doesn’t see that, her eyes might roll fully back in disgust. He walks past me and we both turn back for one last look. I’m one who feels invisible more often than attractive, so I’m almost giddy when I see him smile at me. Not to say Daniel doesn’t do his best to prop up my self-esteem, but he’s obliged to; the return date on me has long since passed and he doesn’t have a receipt. But was this flirtation? Or just aggressive friendliness. I stumble forward to catch Lila. Whatever that was, I don’t have time to process it.

We stop in front of a door that’s only slightly ajar.

“Here we are.” Lila raps on the door three times. Loudly. I would have knocked gently, with decorum; I’m instantly horrified. I turn to protest, but she’s already gone.

“Found it!” The unmistakable voice rings out from inside the office.

I knock again, quietly this time, and open the door a few more inches. “Mrs. Onassis?” I peer around the open door into the office and see no one. I bite my lip just in time to keep from saying “Jackie.” I peek farther into the room and find her standing by a bookshelf in the space behind the door. “Oh, hello again,” I utter awkwardly. I realize I have no idea what’s going on and hope for my own sake that what she’s found isn’t a manuscript more intriguing than mine. “What did you find?”

“A book I brought from home. Come in, come in.” She ushers me inside her office and I push the door closed most of the way behind me. I have the good sense to leave the door cracked, enough, at least, so that I can’t be accused of doing something untoward; it feels inappropriate to be entirely behind closed doors with her.

The office is not what I would call small, although it’s decidedly not palatial. It’s quite nice—comfortable, even. There’s nothing that would have prevented us from meeting here when we were first introduced. I’m wondering now if she didn’t select the conference room as neutral territory to put me more at ease, and I feel empty-handed suddenly, a gentleman caller without flowers or wine or chocolates.

“So nice to see you again, James.”

I can feel myself blush. “You as well.”

Jackie steps over several boxes (books, I’m guessing), which, in her skirt, is no small feat of gymnastics. They seem out of place, these boxes, uncharacteristically messy, but upon closer inspection her shelves are at capacity with manuscripts and galleys. There’s a painting of a dancer on the wall that looks like it could be worth a good deal of money, but I don’t know enough about art to be sure. I half expect her desk to look like her husband’s from the Oval Office, but instead it’s a Formica-topped eyesore that looks more like it might belong to a junior-high science teacher. The desk itself is covered in more manuscripts, weighed down with decorative glass paperweights.

Jackie holds the book up with both hands before circling behind her desk to take a seat. “I thought this would be just what we need for our working together tonight. Have you read the poet Constantine Cavafy?”

I glance at the book—his collected works. “No, I haven’t.” I wait for her to sit behind her desk before taking a seat in one of her guest chairs. I want to appear well read (and if there was homework for this meeting, I want to have done it), but this particular poet might be a little too obscure to fake a passing knowledge of.

“He’s not widely read in the States. My second husband introduced me to his works and he fast became a favorite. He has a poem, ‘ Ithaka .’”

“The location of my book,” I say, although these must be very different Ithacas. I’m doubting that any poet named Constantine wrote about central New York.

“I’m wondering if it might be a good title for your novel.”

“Ithaca?” I’m momentarily disheartened. Not that I’m overly invested in my own title, but that the time has arrived to get down to work. I already miss the part where we fawn over me and the book. Can’t we have several more meetings like that?

“Though we generally try to avoid publishing titles with negative onomatopoeic sounds …”

I chew on that for a second. Ithaca. “Ick?”

“It makes the marketing department frown.”

Is she pulling my leg? There’s an uncomfortable pause and then I laugh politely, but not too much, in case I’ve misread her. I look around the office for clues that will put me at ease. Something that I recognize could belong to anyone, to normalize our interaction. The truth of the matter—it’s all rather conventional. It’s an office, like any other.

“So why Ithaca?” Jackie resumes. “Why set the book there?”

“Oh,” I say, the question snapping me back. “I grew up there. Well, a microscopic town just outside. So when people ask me where I’m from, that’s what I say.” Daniel’s voice fills my head. “You don’t want to change it to Cape Cod, do you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

I shake my head slightly. “Someone told me that you would … never mind. Nothing. It’s small, Ithaca. Exotic-sounding, perhaps. I like the Greek name. I think it evokes the book’s underlying tragedy. But otherwise, there’s nothing special about it. Like the characters themselves, at first glance. They’re unremarkable. On the surface they could be any mother and son. But I find simple can be … quite complicated.”

“Oh, so do I. You only passingly refer to the name of the town in the manuscript. It got me thinking that you might mean it as more of a state of mind. Or a state of being. Does that make sense?” Of course she must know that it makes perfect sense, but phrasing it as a question sets me up to agree. Perhaps a skill she’s used in the past, asserting her own ideas by involving others.