Elise Blackwell - Grub

“So what am I supposed to say?”

“Something vague maybe, a hint of a great loss that you don’t like to talk about. A mention of your long-suffering wife.”

That call was followed, an hour later, by a long call with Dan, the up-and-comer. Eddie was in a fully manic state by the time he hung up, talking rapidly, going back and forth on whether this was a sure thing. He repeated the young editor’s phrases: ‘mainstream crossover’ and ‘commercial potential.’ “That means it’s a question of how much, not if? Right?”

Amanda nodded. “Sounds like it.”

“Why do you say that?” he demanded.

“It’s going to be hard, Eddie, but you’re just going to have to wait this one out.”

All evening he bounced and paced, sitting with a book or magazine only to abandon it minutes later, opening and closing the refrigerator a dozen times without taking out anything to eat, lying on the rug to do a few sit-ups then popping up to check his email. Amanda felt more sympathy for him than she had in months, and she was comforted by the probability of a happy ending. Unless publishers had devised new methods of tormenting writers, then surely a book deal was the certain outcome.

“They don’t call you if they don’t want the book. That would be beyond the pale even for them.” Amanda tried to knead his tense shoulders, but he kept looking over his shoulders asking “Really?”

Amanda waited for him to go out the next day before phoning her agent, Patrice, for a second opinion.

“Funny,” her agent said, “because Dan still answers her phones. Still, sounds like a sure thing, a question of how much and not if.”

When the bad news came seventeen torturous days later, Eddie, who by that point was never more than a few feet from the phone, fielded the call. “How can they do that to me?” he asked over and over. “Couldn’t they have just kicked my teeth out? Why’d they have to set me up? What did I ever do to them?”

Amanda watched her husband, wanting to help but knowing there was nothing she could say to change the horrible, hard fact. From behind, she wrapped her arms around his neck and chest, kissed the back of his head. She said that she was sorry and promised that someone else would buy his novel. What she did not tell him was that she had given notice at work — and in language that ruled out ever asking for her job back.

She wondered if Eddie was supposed to have slept with someone — the editor-in-chief, or maybe Dan — and had missed the hint. She didn’t think it worked like that, not in publishing, where transactions are done at a distance and anyone can be made to look good in an author photo, but there had to be some explanation. Something had to have gone wrong.

“This is all I found out,” Patrice told her the next day. “The editor-in-chief says it was never a done deal. She claims that it’s great for a writer to come close, to at least talk to an editor interested in his work, that lots of writers would think that’s an honor. She actually said that the next best thing to having serious mainstream crossover appeal it to be told that you might have serious mainstream crossover appeal, though perhaps only in another life.”

As Patrice paused, Amanda could hear her own husky breathing. She leaned against the brick exterior of an apartment building down the street from her own, the cold spreading across the seat of her jeans and her upper back. She said, “Only someone who has never written would ever say such a thing.”

“Bingo,” her agent said. “And likely never worked a job she couldn’t afford to quit. Daddy’s loaded, big surprise, and so’s hubby.”

Though Amanda could no longer say she loved Eddie, he was her husband and he was a writer. You don’t get to treat us like that, she thought. She made her agent promise never to send her work to that house.

“Smart anyway,” Patrice said. “They don’t publish fiction well at all. They really botched that antebellum mystery. What a fiasco.”

“But really,” Amanda said. “I’d rather not publish anywhere than publish there.”

“Honey, that doesn’t sound like you at all. But no matter, it’s not even going to come close to that.”

The publishing near-miss sunk Eddie into a new psychological trough from which Amanda worried he would never emerge. He drank more and more, night after night, and rarely left the apartment unless they were out of liquor. He slept on the sofa significant portions of most days.

“Start a new book,” Amanda instructed him with no effect. “Remember that your book is out with other editors,” she pleaded softly.

She herself wrote a great deal while she awaited word on The Progress of Love , trying to keep up with the requests for Clarice Aames stories. On her first day of unemployment, she told Eddie that she had called in sick. Using the morning and half the afternoon, she wrote three Clarice pieces: a second-person story about a deformed girl living on a garbage barge, an omniscient narration describing a world-ending apocalypse that no one notices, and a love story told from the point of view of a female sadist. She received acceptances by email the next day, placing “Cauliflower Girl” in Swanky , “End Zone” in The Bleeding Edge , and “Assume the Position” in Virus , which was the publishing organ of ulcer.

When she walked into the living room brimming with the secret good news, Eddie roused from his half-sleep and sat up on the sofa. “How can you smile while our books are out there and your husband is in pain?”

“Today could be the day. Good news in publishing always comes on Thursday or Friday. You should be glad you made it through Wednesday. Do you want a sandwich?”

“No, I don’t want a sandwich. I want a publishing contract and a wife who loves me.”

Amanda made two cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, and Eddie ate the one she handed him.

“Don’t we have any chips?” he asked. “It’s not the same without chips.”

Often the small sums up the large, and it was that statement, as much as anything else, that started Amanda thinking through the logistics of divorce.

Later that day, Eddie perked up when he received a letter informing him that Vapor had been second runner-up in a manuscript competition. His prize was a coupon waiving the entry fee in the same competition next year.

“What have you come to that you consider this good news?” Amanda asked.

“Well, if I don’t place the new book, I can enter it next year for free.”

“Even if you win, what’s the prize? A print-run of eight hundred and a thousand dollars?”

“Five hundred,” Eddie said. “Print run and prize money.”

Amanda knew they were on the verge of the argument that might end their marriage when the first call came. It was Eddie’s agent phoning with the news that she had sold Conduct to a mid-size publisher with a good reputation. The advance was fifteen thousand dollars for world rights, but his agent believed they would “make more money” on sales.

Eddie lifted Amanda and spun her twice, so fast that her hair whipped around, releasing the citrus smell that she considered part of herself. He set her down and kissed her on the mouth. “Finally!”

“This is fabulous news!” she said. “You needed to get one across the finish line and now you have! Now you can take the time to write a really good book.”

“Thanks, honey,” Eddie said. “You know I love sports analogies.”

She was about to ask him whether he was engaging the sarcasm center of his brain when he lifted and spun her again.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, cupping her cheekbone, “and I’m taking you out for dinner.”

The second call came while she was dressing. This time is was Amanda’s agent, and the size of the advance for the Fragonard book surprised even Amanda.