Romance Is My Day Job (13 page)

For about a month, I commute to work and gather information. Each day is another step forward. I'm moving away from that crying girl at the train station. And then I get a call I never expected. It usually takes a girl a few transitional steps to get to a desirable plateau, but not this time. The call is from Mecca and Disneyland combined into one giant ice-cream cone.

“Harlequin would like you to come in to temp for them . . . ,” my agency informs me.

Are you kidding me?
The
Harlequin? As in the biggest romance publisher in the universe, home of those cute books you can hide in your purse, the books that got me through high school, college, and finishing my depressing master's thesis? I practically run to my assignment, breathless and excited, ready to read these suckers full-time.

Someone up there is definitely looking after me. So it's only a temp job where I'll read “slush” and give my opinion, and also do tasks typical of an editorial assistant, i.e., transcribe notes, call authors, type up forms on the typewriter. Maybe by the end, I'll either quit reading those novels for good or never leave. Either way, I choose my side. I'm a “them.”

 • • • 

The elevator stops on the sixth floor in a midtown-east building. My first view is the receptionist's desk, and this perky older woman with dyed red hair welcomes me. Two redheads in one place. Sounds good to me.

I sit on the couch and wait. So far, this feels like a tranquil place. Quiet, no rushing around, books featured behind a glass showcase. All I want to do is sit in an office and read, learn about these romances I still devour during candlelit bubble baths.

My new boss, Tracy, comes out to greet me. I recognize her instantly, with her red corkscrew curls and youthful features. What could be better: a third redhead in the same company. I read about Tracy during my extensive research on the company. She was often profiled in industry magazines and in books about how to write a romance. Meeting her in the flesh, and having her as my boss, is like working with a movie star.

She is incredibly nice, and it's difficult for me to believe that she's my manager. On my first day, I sit with her in her office, where she goes over the structure of the company. Harlequin is based in Canada with offices all over the world, mostly in the UK, Australia, and New York, but with satellites in a host of other countries. The offices in Canada take up several floors, with full marketing, art, production, and editorial departments. In New York, there is one floor with roughly forty employees, comprised of editorial and a handful of production staff.

As one might imagine, I discover that there is a romance for every kind of reader: racy, historical, light and fun, a more classic story, suspense, creepy verging on paranormal, home and family focused—essentially, whatever you can imagine, there's a romance for it. I gasp when Tracy tells me how many books the company publishes a month. Over a hundred? Really?

Each line gets piles and piles of submissions. As I walk down the hall I see mountains of unread manuscripts on shelves. No wonder my services are needed, especially when Tracy tells me that Harlequin prides itself on the mandate that each submission be read.

These submissions are where I come in, albeit temporarily. Since one of her editors just got promoted, Tracy needs a set of eyes to read for the line that she manages, Harlequin Historical, which boasts some stars of the genre: Ruth Langan, Margaret Moore, Carolyn Davidson, Merline Lovelace, and Cheryl Reavis.

On the first day, she hands me some manuscripts. “Just read these and tell me what you think.” Exactly what I want to do all day long.

That seems simple enough. I taught high school and middle school, which involved high energy for eight hours, plus all the after-hours preparation and grading. This assignment—sit and read—is a piece of cake.

As I go through the manuscripts, I wonder about the people who work here. Where did they come from? Later, I hear that Tracy's background was in film and then she moved over to publishing, winding up here. Now she's a senior editor. Maybe her letting me work for her isn't so crazy at all.

In her department is Margaret, the next editor I meet. She's basically a supermodel—tall, blond, willowy—and if she wasn't so interested in what you think and fun to be around, you'd have to hate her. Not only is she perfect, with the perfect children and perfect husband, but she also displays high levels of enthusiasm for her job. She is funny, intense, and savvy—on the other spectrum from me right now, but I like her instantly and she helps me settle into my temporary position. Everybody is pretty darn nice.

I'm put in this large, recently vacated office with a window, which is pretty plush for a temp. The editorial assistants sit in a bullpen, these half-walled cubicles with no privacy. It's one of the rites of passage to endure before promotion to assistant editor. Though my office is good reason to resent me, my new coworkers are friendly. So it's me, a bunch of manuscripts, and the feeling that I could belong here. As I walk around the office, I notice it's lived in, with weathered carpeting, cubicles, and offices, and a close-your-door-if-you're- going-to-smoke policy. I smell some kindred smokers in a few of the offices. Mostly, though, the employees seem serene—overwhelmed with work but happy because it's fun work.

 • • • 

A few months later, I love my new job even more. Since I'm working on historical romances, I dash to my nearest bookstore to pick up some other samples, finding Julie Garwood's Clayborne Brides series:
One Pink Rose,
One White Rose,
and
One Red Rose
—about three brothers in the West who find their special “roses.” What fun to get lost in another time period, and so much more enjoyable than my American history and world civ classes (I always got a C). It seems like a special kind of heaven to read romances all day, but I'm given the submissions from the outside, the manuscripts called slush, which I find offensive since
Teacher's Pet
would be considered slush. Every writer thinks she's sending in a gem. But now that I'm a “them,” I don't fight the term
slush
. Some of it is real slush, which I go through at a faster and faster pace. I learn that I don't have to read the entire manuscript to know if it's a dud. There's no time to be nice. You can be a little nice and send a personal rejection letter, but the only way to make the pile go away is to keep reading and evaluating.

I find a few stories that I feel are Harlequin-ready and pass them to Tracy. She rejects all of them and explains why. Over time, I learn more about what Harlequin readers might like, and one afternoon, Tracy asks if I'd like to apply for an assistant editor position, which is one rung up from entry level. So I would be skipping over the editorial assistant level, which is way more than I expected. This is that moment in
Working Girl
when Tess goes in thinking she's going to be Philip Bosco's secretary, but instead is given her own office and a better job than she'd imagined.

Maybe this move to New York is the best idea I've ever had. I apply for the job, and by some miracle I get it.

 • • • 

“Don't you think we've watched
P and P
too many times?” I ask. After dinner, my mother and I retreat to the TV room and plop in videotape one of the BBC version of
Pride and Prejudice
.

The last version I saw was the
Masterpiece Theatre
version with my grandmother, back when I was fifteen, which made me want to read Jane Austen's book, which compelled me to read the rest of her books.

Here we go again. Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth—our newest obsession. My mother claims she loves the meddling Mrs. Bennet most, because she has the serious job of marrying off her daughters and she goes about it expertly. But I know my mother is secretly in love with Colin Firth also. Massively in love. Once, we watched the five-hour miniseries twice in one night, fast-forwarding through less interesting scenes and rewatching others. Suddenly, it was two in the morning. . . .

A woman on a mission, Mom keeps rewinding to watch Colin as he acts, reacts, then displays emotion.

“You see how he just stands there in the distance?” she comments, then rewinds again. As the carriage pulls away from Pemberley, Lizzie whips around and sees Darcy, ramrod straight, watching her. Romantic goose bumps.

“I do.”

I'm surprised she doesn't make me rewatch Darcy's emerging from the pond, shirt clinging to his manly breasts. That's the scene most girls want to see again, Darcy being sexy, because the sexiness is far more subtle in the book. The BBC lays it on thick. Diving into the pond indeed. There's a lot of crap in the pond. It's not a pool in Beverly Hills. I doubt very much Darcy would really dirty himself like this.

“I can't believe they kiss. It's just terrible. Jane Austen never wrote that,” Mom says at the end. Though she keeps watching.

“It's the nineties, Mom. We want the kiss.”

At moments like this, I'm sad to be moving into my own place. There's nothing more precious than being a girl with your mother and enjoying Colin Firth. I just pray that he does another movie. Otherwise, I'm going to hate him. For now, he's my imaginary dream man—and my mother's.

 • • • 

The question is: Who wouldn't love living in Manhattan? There is so much to do, so many stars to run into. Your parents can't cook for you or make you watch
Pride and Prejudice
forever. Apartment hunting in Manhattan is a grueling process, and I do cry on the train home to my mother's a few times. For my price range, I look at studio apartments that are a third the size of my apartment in New Mexico. Some don't have kitchens or private bathrooms. I know for sure that I'll be living on my credit cards for a good year so that I can rent a tiny Manhattan studio. And you can't just drive up to a sign outside a building and inquire within—or maybe you can, but I wouldn't want to. Instead, I look through want ads and don't contact the landlord directly so much as the “broker,” who charges a fee. On top of the months of rent ahead of time, I have to pay extra for someone to show me the apartment. There may be an easier way, but in my desperation to get my life on track, I don't find it.

I go from place to place with a perfectly nice broker, who eventually takes me up six flights of stairs in a reasonable, safe building on the Upper East Side, close to where rich people allegedly live, at least from what I see in the movies. Six flights, up to what is advertised as a one-bedroom but is actually a studio with a deep corner.

I know I won't find anything better than this unless I pay more or go to another borough. The idea of moving to yet another foreign place freaks me out, so I take this tiny apartment and build muscle going up those stairs. My brother tells me that no one will visit me. Ever.

“Wow, I get an apartment and a real job, all in one week,” I say to the broker.

“That's how it is here. Sometimes your life can turn on a dime,” he answers.

Just a few months after my giant meltdown on the train platform, I'm now a resident of the Upper East Side, on York Avenue in the high seventies. The more I walk around the neighborhood, the more I see young families, lots of women my age (I'm told later this is the “girl ghetto” since rents are cheap-ish), and the occasional celebrity if I walk farther west.

The first time I see Harrison Ford in my neighborhood, my “girl ghetto,” I drop everything—coffee, bag, jaw. The man may not live in Cleveland, but he's sure in New York. He gives me that one-cornered smile and keeps walking. On another day, on my walk home, I see this tall, elegant woman sauntering past me. She has actual hips, wears sunglasses—nothing out of the ordinary from other women in New York. At the last second, I notice the mole under her eye. I know that mole. I just walked by the real Julia Roberts! Before I can digest this and keep from fainting on the sidewalk, I walk into oncoming traffic and almost get hit by a car.

These kinds of sightings help offset the strangeness of living in Manhattan. This is no longer the City of Gunther, my tormentor of last year. I am home. But who wouldn't feel a little off-kilter going from wide-open spaces in New Mexico to cramped quarters with little sunlight? The lack of brightness adds a somber edge to my transition. Luckily, my mother and my brother live nearby. And given that we're still on decent terms, I can hop on the train to see my father, in Connecticut. I have family close, and they keep me from hiding in my cave-apartment.

The great part about Manhattan, I soon learn, is that it's full of people just like me—big messes, getting to work, trying to survive. As I walk to and from work, I go from nervousness to feeling a deep compassion for my fellow walkers, workers, city dwellers.

 • • • 

With so much on my plate, it seems natural to take a three-year hiatus from dating. After Gunther, I can't even think of romance, not even Mr. Darcy, who, as I learn from working at Harlequin, is the quintessential romantic hero. We love him for his flaws and his secret perfection. At the same time, real romance seems completely gross to me outside of the novel. There is no one from my past that I miss. No visions of Chris turning up on my doorstep or Gunther declaring he wants me back again. I'm just another single girl in the city—one who is not looking for complications.

By winter, I start to wonder if I've gone completely frigid. But I realize I work in an office of women. Ladies all day long: married, single, nice, some less nice, fun-loving, boisterous, sedate, energetic, neurotic, sane, compassionate females, all working for the cause of romance and love of books. And my colleagues read everything, from literary fiction to the most obscure nonfiction you can find. Many of them have had marathon tenures with Harlequin, which bodes well for my wanting to stay.