I sit up on her love seat. “Meg, I have a confession.”
“You don’t want to drunk pack together?”
“It’s not that.”
She’s checking her email, not entirely focused on me. “Is it about Noa Callaway?”
I get up and close the door to her office. I come back to sit across from her, clasp my hands together on her desk. Now I have her attention.
“Uh-oh,” Meg says. “Is she . . . not delivering a manuscript for summer?”
“She is not delivering a manuscript for summer.”
Meg spits out her sip of mocha.
“He is delivering a manuscript for summer,” I say.
Meg wipes her mouth. “Wut?”
“Noa Callaway is a man. Like, anatomically. Facial hair, Adam’s apple, the works.” I make some gestures with my hands. “And you can’t tell anyone I told you.”
Meg bursts out laughing, waves me off—then freezes. “Oh sweet lord, you’re not kidding. How? What? When? Who!”
I stand up, pace the room. “His real name is Noah Ross. I only found out three months ago. Right after my promotion. Which Sue kept saying was provisional, so I couldn’t tell you until I got the manuscript. But now, well, here I am. Assuming he does deliver, assuming it’s good—I might want to explore what it would look like to tell his readers.”
“I understand,” she says, putting up a hand. “Complicity, the patriarchy, et cetera.”
I nod. I feel increasingly committed to telling the truth, to showing Noah’s readers what I’ve seen in him. “Can you help?”
I look at Meg, needing hardened, streetwise, Meg-like reassurance. But she is pressing her button in the hollow of her throat, trying to calm herself down.
“Should we take a cleansing breath together?” I ask.
“Let’s do that.”
We both inhale deeply. We let it out. We repeat. And soon, Meg gets a focused look in her eyes.
“Let’s start with the publicist’s first question,” she says. “What is he actually like? Is the guy playing GTA in his mother’s basement with a boa constrictor and a sack of Doritos? Is he a trench coat flasher? Does he torture dogs? Because my powers of spin are only so strong. . . .”
How to describe Noah Ross? How to sell him to Meg as an asset? Over the past three months, Noah has shown me so many surprising sides of himself, I don’t even know where to begin. Should I tell her about the motorcycle lesson? Our co-felony in D.C.? Calla Ross’s bookshelf in the assisted living home? Should I tell her about Javier Bardem eating sushi? Then I realize, Meg’s met him before.
“He’s Man of the Year.”
“No. Way.” Meg squeezes her eyes shut. “You are messing me up right now.”
“I couldn’t tell you. I still can’t tell you.”
She opens her eyes. “But everything is making much more sense. That’s why he was at the launch that night. That’s why you hid from him at Emergency Brunch. You don’t secretly want him—you secretly work with him!”
“Well, yes.”
It’s funny she put it that way, because it’s not that I actively don’t want Noah Ross. Especially this past month, when we’ve barely corresponded and haven’t seen each other . . . let’s just say I’ve had a couple of very stirring dreams. But I can’t tell Meg this—not right now. Her throat button can only handle so many pushes per hour.
“Lanie, does he want to go public?”
“We’re . . . in conversation about it,” I say. There have been a couple of emails from Noah, feeling out the particulars. Would we leak it to the press? Would he write an editorial? Would the two of us give interviews? Together? How close to publication should such a thing take place? And with what tone? What would be the rip cord if everything went to hell?
I’ve played it casual, optimistic, and slightly vague in my responses to him. The truth is, I need Meg to brainstorm a strategy with me. And then there’s Sue . . .
“What about Sue?” Meg asks.
I look away, do some thumb twiddling. “You know, I think she’s sort of interested in keeping things status quo. . . .”
Meg snorts. “You’d need to leverage her with a killer manuscript.”
I nod.
“And Noah needs to want this for himself. No equivocating. If that’s the case, and you’ve convinced Sue not to fire us all, I think we could spin a story to the press.” She raps her nails on her desk, thinking. “What we wouldn’t want is the Post scooping it first—the headline would kill us.”
“ ‘Dude Writes Like a Lady.’ ”
“New York mag would be good, or we could see about Jacqueline covering it for the Times. We’d have to get Patrisse involved for marketing.”
I give her a cross-desk hug. “Thank you, Meg.”
“It will be a giant effing headache,” she says, slurping her coffee with a shake of her head. “Let’s just pray this book is good enough to ride it out.”
My phone buzzes with a text from Aude: Guess what arrived? Attached is a picture of the metal Brinks briefcase sitting on my desk, with a mason jar of golden tulips atop it.
“I’ll do more than pray,” I say, and flash my phone at Meg before sprinting back to my desk.
* * *
My calls are held. My door is locked. My email set to OOO. The rain out my window is a bonus, as my noise-canceling headphones pipe in soothing river sounds.
I light a Diptyque candle, dim my overhead lights, and pour a cup of rooibos tea from the giant pot I brewed. Altogether, my first-read setup is something close to bliss. I’m ready to leave this world, with all its anxieties, and enter Edward and Elizabeth’s:
CHAPTER TWO THOUSAND
It was sunset, as it always was for them in Central Park. The caviar glistened in its tub as Edward skated a blini across the top and fed the first bite to his wife.
“Happy anniversary, Collins.” His pet name for Elizabeth was her maiden name; it was how they were first introduced, and over the years it had stuck. “Here’s to fifty more.”
“Do you believe your life passes before your eyes when you die?” Elizabeth asked, dabbing her napkin to her lips. They had been discussing their mortality since their first date. Her husband was a poet, after all. But recently the timbre of the conversations had changed. Her sister had died the month before. His oldest friend, Theo, had passed that spring.