children’s fiction, or from all kinds of books?’
‘Let me check.’
Michael’s pulse sped. up as the smaller man ,ruffled through the papers. Already he had begun to formulate schemes for his revenge. What if he came out with a new poetry line, accessible stuff, or. maybe travel guides, or even
‘Yes.’ Motta’s tone was final. ‘I’m sorry. You cannot
work in the book business for the next year.’
‘Thank you,’ Cicero said.
He paid his bill on the spot, at the receptionist’s office. This was an episode in his life he wanted over and done with.
I7
He pictured Ernie Foxton, waiting to get his revenge
for having to beg him to re-enter his offices. Michael had
to give him credit. It had been pretty complete.
You little fuck, he thought to himself. I’ll get you.
The problem was, he had no idea how.
First Michael had sex with Iris. Then he told her.
‘I’ve got no money, no bonus, no company and no job.
From now on, it’s cooking ourselves from the discount produce left over in the deli at the end of the day. You can cook while I look for work.’
Iris had looked at him and laughed. ‘This is a joke,
yes?’
‘No.’ Michael noted the look of shocked horror on her
face and enjoyed himself for the first time that day. Iris’s skin was still flushed and pinked from her long session of sex. Ever since she’d assumed he’d come home with two hundred and fifty grand, Iris had been even more insatiable than usual.
Far be it from him to deny a desperate woman. Too
thil for his taste, Iris was at least eager and inventive. She sucked him like her life depended on it, and liked to try to ride him, bucking on him like he was a prize horse at a rodeo. But Cicero didn’t let women take control. It was an easy thing to reach up and grab Iris’s wrists with one hand, and laugh as she struggled to free herself, while he plunged harder and harder into her. It never failed to turn her on. When he took control .of her, so simply and ruthlessly, her half-faked moans of ecstasy turned into surprised, real ones, her pussy slicked up wet and tight around him, grabbing helplessly on to him, and he sensed the contractions just starting to shudder up in her flat belly.
Michael didn’t like feminists. He agreed with the fat
radio ‘shock jock’ who labelled them Feminazis. As far as Michael was concerned, the history of the world was the
218
history of men. They talked about equality of opportunity, but for every Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Margaret Thatcher there were ten Irises, ten Diana Foxtolas. Beauties who would eschew work for weddings. Still the quickest, easiest route to riches.
‘It’s not a joke. I got nothing, and I don’t cook, so I hope you know a lot of recipes, babe.’
She ranted and raved for ten minutes, and then, as he’d known she would, Iris packed up her stuff and got the hell out.
‘And if you think about calling, don’t,’ she said.
‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Michael said, wryly. To her fury, he patted her on the ass as she swept out the door.
Gold-diggers. Women were gold-diggers, 99 per cent of them. W, hat had the sexual revolution done for them? Not too much, as far as he could work out. Any girl who had the chance would give up her job in ten seconds if she could wind up a kept woman.
He thought of that joke Seth had told him, about the Hollywood studio head who got fired and called his trophy wife from a pay phone. ‘But you still love me, right?’ he asks her. ‘Honey, of course I still love you,’ she says sweetly, ‘and I’ll miss you, too.’
Iris couldn’t get out fast enough once she realised that he wouldn’t be .her cushy ticket to the big time. Michael was glad. It saved him the inevitable scene when he had to dump her. He liked things to be crisp and clean.
He took a week to gather his .thoughts, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. His dwindling bank account would only make the rent here for two more months, maximum. Susan Katz called, crying and asking when she was coming back to work, and Michael had nothing to tell her. His contacts, built up over the last year, were useless. He couldn’t take a job in publishing. He couldn’t even set up another company. Foxton had him hamstrung.
Barnes & Noble called. Waldenbooks rang up too. Two of the most prestigious independents in New York City, offering him a buying post. But Michael couldn’t reconcile himself to that. He’d be working with books, sure - but not creating, not influencing. He’d be a numbers guy.
He turned the offers down, politely, and rented a tiny space on East Eleventh, where he set up shop as a consultant. Except that Motta told him he couldn’t consult to publishers, which made the whole thing academic.
Michael couldn’t afford an assistant to answer the phone, but that was OK, because it barely rang. A friend at Amazon gave him two thousand dollars to write a paper for them on finding independent book com?anies and getting them involved in the online revolution. It was the only commission he’d ever had, and it was a drop in the ocean of expenses that comprised living in New York.
He sat on a rickety chair, in his cramped office, mopping up his sweat and trying to concentrate on the woi’ds blinking up from his laptop. It felt like a sauna in here, and the hot, heavy scents of the Dunkin Donuts next door filled the room and threatened to choke him. His jacket had long been surrendered and hung on a peg on the door. He’d downed two large jugs of iced tea and he was going to need to go out for a third one any minute now, because he was thirsty enough in this heat to start licking the condensation off the cracked glass fronting.
Nothing was neat about this place except for the brass plate outside the door. Cicero Consultants, it said, in small, businesslike letters. Michael had it hand made. It cost him seventy bucks he could barely afford, but it was worth it. It felt like the last touch of class he had.
The tiny, hand-affixed bell jangled. Michael sat bolt upright, annoyed to be caught without his jacket on. Finally, a customer. He thanked God. He needed one
right now. Maybe a rep from one of the major stores would be looking for a complete overhaul of their stocking policy. Better yet, maybe an agency would isk for his help. He’d managed to make stars of five complete unknowns before he got canned. Who knew who it might be?
The door swung open.
‘Hi, Michael,’ said Diana Foxton.
He stared at her. She wore a simple cotton dress in an Indian print, flat sandals, and was carrying a tote bag. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail that made her look even younger, and a breath of perfume wafted in
wi h her.
She wore no make-up, and seemed amazingly beautiful. ,
‘Come to gloat?’ Michael demanded. ‘If so, please, enjoy yourself, Mrs Foxton, and then get out. I’m a busy man.’
‘I can see that,’ Diana said, looking around the empty office. It was devoid of furniture apart from a fax machine and a phone.
‘Charming as ever.’ Michael gritted his teeth. ‘Now you have your report to take back to your husband, please leave me to get on with my work.’
She stood in the centre of his room, hesitantly. The thought crossed his mind that it was the first time he’d
ever seen Diana Foxton nervous.
‘Can I sit down?’
‘If you must.’ Cicero was puzzled, but maybe the heat was making her faint, or something; He didn’t want the chick crashing to the ground on his property. He indicated the hard chair positioned in front of his desk. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I need to ask you a favour,’ she said, quietly.
Michael’s brow lifted. ‘Yeah? Amusing. What favour would that be? To provide your husband with more
amusing anecdotes of how his little spy kept him updated?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I told you, I tdidn’t spy on you. And
he’s not my husband.’
Cicero shrugged. ‘If you’re not Diana Foxton, you’re a
dead ringer for her.’
‘I am Diana Foxton. For the moment. I’m also separated, in the process of being divorced.’ She tossed a folded copy of the News across the desk to him. ‘That’s me, and that’s my ex-husband. I found out about Green Eggs the same day you did. Ernie had served me with divorce papers the night before. I think it was his idea of a joke.’
He was sceptical. Diana sat across from him, blushing
with the embarrassment of being forced to wash hr dirty linen in front of him. He was so butch. Ridiculously masculine. A big gorilla, she told herself, with all that silky black hair.
‘Yeah? And you’re telling me you really worked at that
job?’
‘My work got done, didn’t it?’ she asked coldly. ‘I
don’t think you need to ask questions about my motivations. I did what you asked me to. And now I need a reference.’
Cicero grinned suddenly. ‘You came here to ask me for
a reference?’
‘Yes.’ She shifted in front of him; her slim body, with
all those curves, moved deliciously. ‘I - I—’ she blushed,
and fell silent.
‘Go on,’ he prompted, mercilessly.
‘I can’t find a job.’ Diana’s cheeks flamed. ‘I had no reference from you, and vorking for my husband’s company didn’t seem to count.’
‘But you’re a rich girl. Why don’t you just go back to England?’
2.2.2.
‘I don’t give up that easily’ she said, magnificently cold.
Cicero couldn’t help it, he quite admired her. What it must have cost her to come in here and ask him for help. So, the spoilt little brat was getting her first reality check. He looked down at the pictures in front of him. One showed the weary Diana, the other the glittering Felicity, and all he could think was what a moron Ernest Foxton was to pick the second girl.
‘I’m not going to ask your reasons,’ he said, ‘because I don’t care about them. But I guess I misjudged you. I suppose I owe you a favour. First, a reference from me would be worthless, because Blakdy’s discredited me. Second, you need one to get hired. It’s Catch-twenty-two. You gotta lave a job to get a job.’
Diana lowered her blue eyes. ‘That’s just great. How the hell can I swing that? I only worked eight months in my whole life, and that was a year ago on another continent.’
‘You can come and work for me,’ Michael said. Surprise made her rude. ‘Work for you? I don’t think
SO.’
‘It’s the best offer you’ll get.’ Cicero shrugged. ‘Look, lady, I don’t like you either, but this is an office. You don’t need to like me, you just need to do what I tell you and turn up on time. I can only hire you for maybe a month. It’s real short term, too, but at the end of it you get a reference. I can pay you eight hundred dollars, no benefits.’
Diana looked across at him.
‘I’ll take it,’ she said.
223
The days crept by, and the temperature crept up.
Diana learned things she’d never thought herself capable of learning, and it stung her. She learned how to get up twenty minutes earlier to avoid the worst of the subway crush. She comparison shopped at the delis and supermarkets for the cheapest washing-up liquid, and bought last-day discounted meat and fish. To keep the bugs out of her apartment, she learned to clean twice a day. She bought a small portable fan she couldn’t afford, and learned how to sleep in her bra and panties lying uncovered on top of the bed. The heat in Manhattan see.ped up from the sidewalk, cooked a little more between the close-set concrete valleys, and thickened through the dirty windows of her apartment. It was a full-time job to keep her skin cool and her make-up on her face.
Meanwhile, there was Michael Cicero.
She disliked him, but she had to respect him. Each day he was out there, hustling. Sometimes he left at nine and pounded the pavement until fou forty-five. Diana sat in his cramped office, watching a phone that never rang. She did what she could. She tidied the place and swept it, made minor repairs, and even repainted one cracked wall. She fetched coffee and magazines, and pretended she was interested. She talked to a bargain-basement accountant about maximising Michael’s tax write-off.
Diana knew she’d have quit long before if she were
zz4
Michael. There was stubbornness, and there was stupidity. Cicero had a degree and an employment history; he could get work elsewhere. An English teacher, somethirg like that.
But Michael wasn’t interested in some other job. He came in each day, wrote up whatever tiny project he was working on - if there was any work - went to knock on all the doors that stayed closed to him, and then left.
And she sat at her desk in the stifling heat and read magazines.
Time was running out for them both.
The doorbell jangled, and Michael. came in, his white shirt crisp, his pants pressed. He didn’t look like someone about to go, under.
‘How did it go?’
He shrtgged. ‘Same as usual, I guess. How about you?’ ‘I reorganised the office,’ Diana lied. She got the office straight two weeks ago, but she figured it would make him feel better.
‘I bet.’ He gave her a slow, knowing grin, and she
1
blushed. Cicero had a disturbing habit of making Diana feel undressed when he looked at her. Nobody could be
more formal, more reserved, but still, it was as though her dress was being peeled from her shoulders, her bra cups tugged down from her breasts. Annoyed with herself, she felt her nipples harden. Desire was a trick. It never got satisfied.
He came across to where she was sitting and loomed over her, and Diana shrank from him, like she always did.
‘What are you reading?’ he asked.
Diana handed over the magazine. ‘There was an article on the Internet about how computing is making kids dumber. Concerned Parents of America, that sort of thing.’
‘Yeah.’ Michael flipped through it. ‘I can see why, too.’
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.
Cicero was surprised. He looked down, which was a mistake. Diana was leaning forwards eagerly, and her large, lightly freckled breasts were pushed together right under his nose. He caught a glimpse of the caramel lace of her bra. Damn. What a body she had.