Just Friends (9 page)

The truth was, he was hellishly uncomfortable on the molded plastic seat, raised on its slim chromium stalk to an awkward height that left him pawing alternately for the footrest and the floor. These things might look cool, but they were made for Italians, not a six-foot-four American who liked to slouch. But he wasn’t about to complain. When it came to a free lunch he could take the rough with the smooth.

They were sitting at a shiny horseshoe-shaped bar that projected deep into the room, imprisoning two ludicrously handsome barmen, one black, one white, who coordinated beautifully with the decor—couches and chairs in charcoal and beige leather, casually grouped around a scattering of zebra rugs. Color came in brash primaries from paintings on the wall, and piles of oranges and lemons in steel baskets on the bar. Something by U2 was playing on the sound system. There was a buzz of chatter from the lunchtime crowd, a mixture of sharp suits, leather jackets, ponytails, and arrestingly short dresses.

This was Club SoHo, a new members-only media hangout, sited in a handsome old cast-iron building embellished with Italianate pillars and curlicues, like a New World palazzo. Jack had read about its glitzy membership—screenwriters, actors, agents, producers—but this was the first time he’d been inside. He liked it. The atmosphere was casual, classless, antipuritan and about as far as you could get from the old-fashioned college clubs with their scary acoustics, moribund attendants, and preppie clones. Although he had not actually noticed a sign outside saying “No admittance for the over forty-fives,” the message hung in the ether: no corporate geeks, no has-beens from the seventies, no old money. If you were here you were hip. You could write your own rules. The fact that Leo was smoking and hadn’t been lynched spoke for itself.

“I’m serious,” Leo persisted. “People don’t have time to figure things out for themselves anymore. You have to tell them what to think. Get the juices flowing. Connect.”

“ ‘Only connect,’ ” Jack muttered vaguely. “Who wrote that?”

Leo plucked at his tie, a bold snakeskin pattern aggressively teamed with a crimson shirt. “No idea. I never went to college.”

This was a daring admission from someone in the literary world. Jack was curious. “How come?”

“No time. No money.”

“Didn’t your parents—?”

“My dad was a failed boxer, my mother an Irish Catholic who left school at fourteen. Both boozers. Both dead. I came to books late. But I’m making up for it now.” Leo gave a sly grin and stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s go eat.”

Jack followed him up the stairs, trying to fit this interesting piece of information into the Leo jigsaw. The two men had been aware of each other for some years, as they both circled the literary pond, waiting for an opportunity to jump in and make a splash, but they’d been acquaintances rather than friends. Leo used to be almost a figure of fun, a shameless networker and publishing wonk who could cite every major author’s advance and sales figures, and name the winner of each literary prize for the last twenty years. The joke was that he took facts and figures to bed with him every night, instead of women. Until the other week, when they’d got talking at some book party and Jack invited him on impulse to the poker game, the two men hadn’t met in a long while. But Jack was well aware of Leo’s rocketing reputation. However weird his approach, the fact was that in the last couple of years Leo had emerged as a hugely successful literary agent. He was still only thirty-one. Not everyone approved of his methods of acquiring writers—often “rustling” them from the quieter pastures of other agents—but there was no denying that when he zeroed in on talent he knew how to make it pay. Jack wondered if he was about to be wooed and felt a kick of excitement.

The dining room was on the first floor, plain but stylish, lit by three high arched windows overlooking the street. You could see partway into the kitchen, where a wood oven shaped like a giant beehive took up most of one wall. Its iron door was open, offering a glimpse of glowing embers and the seductive, smoky smell of roasting food. On the way to their table, Leo stopped to say hello to a man who turned out to be Carson McGuire, though he didn’t look anything like his author photograph. McGuire’s first novel,
Vanderbilt’s Thumb,
had been on the bestseller list for weeks. Everyone said it was a masterpiece. Jack hadn’t read it yet, in case it was.

In the flesh McGuire was unprepossessing: squat, fortyish, Bruce Willis haircut. Yet the sheen of success was upon him. His cheeks were plump and smooth, his jacket uncreased, his body language subtly assertive. With him was a tempestuous-looking young woman with slanting cat’s eyes and a thrilling acreage of bare flesh. Jack hovered at Leo’s shoulder, a half-smile on his face, while the others chatted about a party they’d all been to, laughing and bandying names. He was beginning to feel painfully conspicuous in his jeans and shabby jacket when Leo at last turned to include him in the group.

“Carson, do you know Jack Madison? He wrote that terrific collection,
Big Sky
, a couple years back.”

“For sure.” McGuire did the professional handshake/eye contact number. “Great book. Nice to meet you, Jake.”

“Yes. Thank you. Uh, great.”

What wit! What suavity! Carson McGuire would certainly remember
him
next time. Jack lumbered after Leo to their table, feeling as ridiculous as a dancing bear. It was obvious that McGuire had never read
Big Sky
, probably not even heard of it.

“Great guy, Carson,” said Leo, once they had taken seats. “Absolutely one of my favorite clients. I
think
I’m just about to clinch a Hollywood deal for him—enough zeros to make his eyes spin—but don’t tell him, huh?” Leo winked.

“How would I? We don’t move in the same circles.”

“You will, Jack, you will.”

Leo spoke with such confidence that Jack felt ashamed of his sulkiness. He made an effort to rise above it. “A movie deal, Leo: that’s wonderful. Carson’s a lucky man to have you for an agent. Good taste in women, too.” He cocked an eyebrow at the dark temptress.

“That’s Mercedes. She’s a model, from Venezuela or somewhere. Carson’s married, of course, and he’s planning to move his family to New York, but there’s a glitch. The house sale fell through, or his wife’s mother is dying—I forget what. Still, while the cat’s away . . .” He shot Jack a man-to-man smile.

“Yeah.” Jack chuckled. “Cute mouse.”

“By the way, what happened to that poor woman the other night?”

“What poor woman?” Jack’s smile faded.

“Your fancy English friend who threw the calculator at you. She was hilarious!”

“She’s fine.”

“Got rid of her okay, did you? Some ditsy woman once passed out like that at my place, and I caught her crawling into my bed at five in the morning. I told her, ‘If you’re sober enough to get here from the couch, you’re sober enough to go home.’ I put her in a cab, quick, before she started getting ideas.”

“Freya’s not like that.”

“Come on, Jack, once they pass thirty they’re all like that. Hormones in overdrive, bodies in free fall, careers a little shaky. They put those soft pussycat paws on you and suddenly—ouch!—in go the claws.”

Jack gave a weak laugh. Freya was probably moving her things into his apartment at this very moment.

“Older women are so demanding!
Talk to me. Listen to me. Not like that, like this.
They feel they have some goddamn right to criticize how you look, your tastes, even what you do in bed.”

“Freya’s just a friend.”

“They’re the worst. They think they ‘understand’ you.” Leo grimaced. “They squirm their way in by making you dinner, or doing little favors like stocking your fridge or taking your stuff to the repair shop. One minute they’re telling you that they’ll always ‘be there’ for you; the next, they’re always
there
, period.”

“Ha ha.” Jack wished Leo would order some more booze.

“Secretly, of course, older women
hate
men. They know we can wait forever to get married and have children, whereas they have to do it by the time they’re forty—and they
can’t stand it
. It blows their equality theory to hell. I like to stick with the under twenty-fives, myself. All they want is fun.”

“And they think we’re God, right?” Jack grinned, remembering Candace. “I’m seeing an adorable twenty-two-year-old at the moment.”

“Way to go.” Leo reached across to give him an approving punch on the arm. “Now, what are you drinking?”

A pretty waitress took their order and brought a bottle of wine. To Jack’s relief, Leo began talking about the publishing industry. Jack watched his sharp, clever face and emphatic hand gestures, half listening to an energetic commentary on takeovers, book fairs, trips to LA, six-figure deals, seven-figure deals. From time to time he gave an intelligent grunt.
Relax,
he told himself. Leo didn’t know that he was stuck on his novel. Leo didn’t know how he woke suddenly in the night, breathless with the fear that he might never write another word—that he was no good, had never been any good. Leo liked
Big Sky
; he’d said it was “terrific.”

“She’s got her nerve, coming in here.” Leo broke off from his lecture on Internet selling. “See that woman over there, the desperate-looking blonde? She’s been banned from Barnes and Noble because she went into her local store every morning and put piles of her book
Susan’s Secret
on top of
Vanderbilt’s Thumb
, hoping people would buy it instead.” He gave a malicious chuckle. “Last time I looked she was number ninety-five on the list.”

“The book’s no good, then?”

Leo found this question so amusing he choked on his focaccia. “It’s totally irrelevant whether the book is good.” He wiped the crumbs from his face. “The point is that it was never
positioned
. Nobody knew whether it was a girlie romp or a feminist rant or a plate of cupcakes. Nobody had been
told
that it was good.”

Jack was puzzled. “But surely it would sell if—”

“Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.” Leo shook his head sorrowfully. “People think that if you write a brilliant book the world will recognize it. Ain’t so. Nobody has time to read the actual book, so you sell the idea instead, preferably in under ten words. Let’s see . . . Abused woman finds love—and a psycho in the attic! Recognize that?”

“Jane Eyre?”

“You got it. Wealthy adulteress commits suicide on Moscow train track.”

“Anna Karenina.”

“Student’s dilemma: marry his girlfriend or avenge his father’s murder.”

“Hamlet.”

“See, it’s easy. You can do it with authors, too. Man in a white suit.”

“Tom Wolfe.” Jack was enjoying this. He felt like the smart aleck on a TV quiz program.

“Out-of-town lawyer defends the little man.”

“John Grisham.”

“Manhattan cokehead beds blondes. Shit! Don’t answer that. He’s over there.”

Jack busied himself with a mouthful of guinea fowl before turning his head surreptitiously to catch a glimpse of literature’s latest enfant terrible. This was a cool place.

“You see, in the old days publishers relied on good reviews to sell a book—but who gives a shit about reviews these days? In the eighties and nineties, they advertised a book into the charts—but that got too expensive. Nowadays you have to be smarter. It’s like the movies: the pitch is everything. You have to make a book sound hot, irresistible, must-have.” Leo pushed away his plate, his food half-finished. “So, Jack. Tell me about your new book.”

“Oh. Well it’s, you know, okay. Going well, in fact. Slow, but—”

“What’s it called?”

“The Long Summer.”
Saying it aloud was painful. “At the moment.”

“Good title. Don’t change it. Is it long?”

“Longish . . . probably.”

“Contemporary setting?”

“Yes, but it sort of weaves back, you know, into some family, uh, history.”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“Not
history
history, dates and stuff, but the—you know, the—”

“The past?”

“Right. The past,” Jack accepted the word gratefully. “And there’s a kind of love story except it doesn’t—well, anyway, a love story. Kind of. I’m not too good at describing my plots.” Understatement of the year! Why hadn’t he rehearsed? Jack grabbed his wineglass and drained it.

“A Southern setting?”

“Yes.”

“Anything about slaves?”

“No.”