Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

Fred nodded solemnly and looked thoughtful. However, his only thought was: I have to rewrite the whole outline. Nothing has been accomplished.

“I know that makes the book shorter, but that’s good, I think,” Holder went on.

“Definitely,” Fred said.

“So basically you’d start the novel about halfway through your outline.”

“Okay,” Fred said, bobbing his head like a doll.

“Okay. Now that’s settled, I’ll tell you my plan. We usually submit proposals to the ed board — which I’m on, along with five other editors and Tom Paulson. But I can go to Paulson directly if I tell him we only have your outline exclusively for twenty-four hours. That’s what I’m gonna do. So you should have an answer by tomorrow morning. How’s that?”

The Resurrection of Christ, Bobby Thompson’s home run, the Parting of the Red Sea — no reversal of fortune in history could compare with the shock, followed by delight, in Fred’s heart at this statement. He said, “Great,” with his first natural smile of the meeting, and floated out back onto the street feeling as if he had never lived before, never seen the intense beauty of real life, never known true respect for himself.

Finishing the chapter excited Patty. She calculated that if she were able to type it quickly, she could deliver it before five to Joe McGuire, the editor in chief of Shadow Books. She was a fast typist, the only skill she possessed that her old boss Gelb never found fault with, and even going slowly (to be sure there was not a single typo), she had the twenty pages done in an hour. It was two-thirty.

A pause of insecurity slowed her progress to McGuire’s office. After all, Betty knew what he would want, and she was on the floor above, so Patty called from the lobby extension and got Betty, asking if she could read the pages immediately.

“Sure. But what’s the rush?”

“Don’t we want to get it in and over with? You know how we hate suspense.”

“We sure do,” Betty agreed, laughing. “Okay, I’ve got a meeting at three. So let’s do it.”

Patty went upstairs and paced restlessly back and forth past Betty’s window while she read. Twice Betty told her to sit down and once she burst out laughing at something in Patty’s chapter. “Whoa, that’s hot,” Betty said toward the end of the chapter, and Patty knew she must have reached the moment where the heroine was roughly kissed by the dark, handsome, and possibly brutal love interest.

At last Betty swiveled in her chair and said, “It’s great! I knew you could do it.”

“Okay. But what should we change? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing. It’s fine.”

“Come on,” Patty said, frowning. “I need this to come through. I can’t start a relationship with a man and be broke. I don’t want to depend on him for money.”

“It’s that serious?” Betty asked, not concealing her amazement. After all, only last week Patty hadn’t even discussed David with her. To Betty no weekend, no matter how magical, could be that dramatic.

“I told you I was in love. I don’t know. Am I crazy?” Patty’s eyes looked big and forlorn, like those of a misbehaving dog approaching head down, asking for reassurance from its owner.

“I didn’t mean that,” Betty hurried to say. But she did.

“I feel like it’s serious,” Patty said in an unusually somber tone.

“That’s terrific.” Betty said, and felt moved for Patty. In all the years she had heard Patty discuss men, never before had she allowed herself to speak so simply, to make it clear that she was vulnerable. Several times Betty had concluded that Patty was incapable of real feeling, of being in love unselfconsciously, without burlesque. It had made Betty think less of her, and so this moment was impressive. “Well, I think Joe will give you a contract on this.”

“Really? ’Cause if it needs work, tell me—”

“I think it’s fine. You should give it to him. Does he know you’re bringing it up?”

Patty blinked, confused.

“You didn’t call ahead and tell him you were delivering it?”

“Oh God,” Patty said, looking distraught.

Betty couldn’t help smiling. “It’s not a problem. Call him from here. Just give him a little warning.”

McGuire took her call right away and sounded delighted that she had finished. “Jesus! You could probably write a whole book in two weeks. Bring it on down. I’ll read it tonight.”

His friendliness puffed her up with confidence. She breezed into his office and tossed her manila folder with the chapter inside on his desk.

“I’m telling ya. I should pay you by the hour. Save me a fortune.” McGuire got up and moved around his desk, heading for her. He was short, five-six, only a few inches taller than Patty. He had a plump face, with benign red cheeks and small twinkling eyes that seemed to think everything was funny. He wore jeans and a wrinkled white dress shirt with a narrow tie that looked too small for him, as if it belonged to a prep-school boy’s uniform. He had thin bloodless lips that now kissed her full on the lips, staying only a fraction of a beat longer than was polite. She smelted Scotch on his breath and backed quickly into a chair to make sure nothing more happened.

“God, you look great!” he said loudly, as if he were only a drink away from throwing all caution to the winds. He reminded Patty of her alcoholic uncle who, by the end of every evening, would tell rambling, incoherent stories with punch lines that would cause him to go into gales of laughter and leave his listener frozen with a mystified and embarrassed smile.

“Thanks. I’m in love,” she said, to prevent a repetition of that slobbering kiss.

“Oh,” he said with a puzzled look, as if he were smelling something bad but didn’t know its origin.

She felt despair, realizing that Betty was with her when she met McGuire and that he might have decided to give her a chance with a quickie in mind, and hadn’t made that clear because they weren’t alone. His reaction to her announcement seemed to confirm this fear; and that meant he would turn her chapter down now. “Isn’t that great. Joe?” she said, looking at him slyly. “Aren’t you happy for me?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said, encouraged by her teasing manner. “At your age, I fell in love every afternoon. Didn’t mean a thing.”

Patty crossed her legs. She was wearing a light blue skirt, slit up the right side, so that her action showed her thin and graceful leg. McGuire’s amused eyes went to it and focused. Patty did this without reflection, although, if she had thought about it, she wouldn’t have lied to herself about what she was attempting. Sometimes, with men, it was possible to let hope spring eternal without letting them actually do any springing. She didn’t reflect because she would have disapproved of herself; and her disapproval might not have been sufficient to stop her from flirting. Better to do it without allowing any self-criticism. “And now you don’t fall in love every afternoon?”

“No, no,” McGuire said, not bothering to conceal his stare at her bare leg.

“What a pity, Joe. How unromantic. Especially for a romance-book editor.”

This reminder of his job — which Patty assumed was a bitter fact for him (Betty had said being made editor in chief of Shadow Books was considered being kicked upstairs)— seemed to kill his sexual drive. His eyes left her leg and drifted boozily up to the shelves behind her chair. “Right! I only sell the stuff. Don’t buy it.”

“You must buy mine. I’m desperate.”

“Ah. I like desperate women.”

“Oh, Joe. You’re so cruel.”

It went on like this for what seemed an eternity to Patty. An unpleasant, forced, and silly flirtation that made her so irritable she almost wished he would simply unzip his fly so she could hitch up her skirt and let him get it over with. At least that would be the end of it. Sitting there and having to fake interest was sickening and quite difficult. But she lived in dread of not playing the game. She had lost one job because she didn’t have the brains to go along. If an hour of imbecility with Joe was going to get her a contract to write this romance novel, then why not do it?