“Which way is this Peony Press?” she called up to me on the fire escape.
“That depends. Do you have a bomb?”
“Darling, I’m wearing Chanel. It doesn’t really go.” My grandmother jerked a thumb at the idling taxi behind her. “I’ve got this very handsome gentleman waiting to take us there, so please come down. We’ll wave goodbye to the one that got away, I’ll buy you a martini, and tomorrow, I’ll take you home.”
We sat for hours at the café across the street from Peony’s office. She told me the same stories that never got old about my mom when she’d been twenty-two. She was adding new details, things I didn’t know about the time Mom skipped her graduation to see Prince on his Purple Rain tour—when I realized there was something I had never asked my grandmother.
“BD.” I brought out my old copy of Ninety-Nine Things from my canvas bag. I’d kept it with me, like a totem, ever since I’d come to New York. “Do you remember what Mom said to me right before she died?”
“You could fill a book with all the things I don’t remember, honey,” she said, but with that little wink that let me know she did remember, only she wanted me to tell the tale.
“She said she wanted me to find someone I really, really loved. But she didn’t say how. Or when. I just can’t figure out if I’m going about it—my life—in the right way.”
“If I could solve the mystery for you, I would,” she said, patting my cheek, “but then, what the hell would the fun of life be?”
I knew she was right, annoying as it was. BD took a picture of me holding the book, with the Peony office through the window in the background.
“One day,” she said, “in the comfort of your unknowable future, you’ll look at this picture, and you’ll be glad we took it today.”
And that was when Alix de Rue stepped into the café for a decaf cappuccino.
I recognized her from the photograph accompanying the only interview I’d found online related to Noa Callaway. She was five feet tall in kitten heels with a short blond bob, glossy lips, and a giant purple scarf. I nudged BD.
“That’s the one who got away.”
“The editor?” BD gasped. “Go talk to her.”
“Hell no.”
“If you don’t, I will,” BD said. She was one large dirty martini in. “I’d hate to see you lose the job to me.”
I downed the cold rest of my coffee and stood up. “You’re right. That would suck.”
I moved toward the bar, heart suddenly pounding. “Miss De Rue?” I offered my hand. “I’m Lanie Bloom. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a huge fan of Noa Callaway.”
“Me, too,” she said and smiled at me briefly before returning to her laptop.
I took a breath. “The editorial assistant position—”
“Has been filled.”
“Oh.” Even though I already sensed this, even though I’d never even gotten a form email back from HR, I felt my heart collapse like a detonated building.
“Did your new assistant do this?” BD asked, suddenly behind me, thrusting my copy of Ninety-Nine Things under Alix de Rue’s nose. It was opened to the back pages where I’d written out my list.
I could have sunk into a puddle of shame watching Alix de Rue read what I’d written about Scorpios in the sack. When I’d made this list, I’d felt free. Now I thought about my mother and wondered whether she would be embarrassed.
“I told Noa readers would fill this out,” Alix said, more softly now, touching the page with cuticle-bitten fingertips.
“This book changed my life,” I confessed as Alix handed it back. “I guess I don’t have much to show for it yet, unemployed and begging strangers for jobs at cafés with my drunk grandmother—”
“Tipsy,” BD corrected me.
“But someday . . .” I said to Alix, with a little laugh, attempting levity.
“My new assistant hates ‘love stories,’ ” Alix said. “He’s someone’s nephew from our parent company and I was asked to give him a trial period.”
“Is that so?” BD asked, giving me a vaudeville wink.
Alix narrowed her eyes and seemed to take all of me in at once: my atrociously heavy tote bag, my scuffed white tennis shoes, the eight pounds I’d lost that summer from worry and walking and late-night discounted bodega salad bars, my slightly greasy, too-long bangs, my college girl’s jean jacket, and my desperate, romantic hope that my dream might not actually be absurd.
“What I love about love stories is their bravery,” I said.
“What other writers do you love? Not only Noa Callaway?”
“Elin Hilderbrand. André Aciman. Zadie Smith. Sophie Kinsella. Madeline Miller. Christina Lauren—” They tumbled from me. I might never have stopped if Alix hadn’t waved me off.
“All right, all right.” She laughed. “Good.”
“But most deeply”—I held Noa Callaway’s book to my chest—“her.”
Alix took a ream of papers from her leather bag. She riffled through them and eventually handed me a thick stack bound by a rubber band. She slapped a business card on top.
“Read this tonight. Email me your thoughts tomorrow.”
* * *
Now—seven years, twenty-nine thousand paper jams, two apartments, three promotions, one inherited tortoise, eighteen flings ranging from scorching to moronic, two world-ending highlights mishaps, and eight bestselling novels later—is it all coming to a sudden, screeching end?
Sue walks back to her white chair, holding an ominous stack of papers. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs.
“Lanie,” she says. “Alix isn’t coming back.”
As I probe deep for a poker face, I feel shock spreading over my features. This is not what I’d prepared myself for.
“She’s decided to stay home with Leo.”
I’d known Alix was anxious about coming back to work, about putting her son into day care—but she loves this job. Sorrow weighs in my limbs. Alix is my mentor and my friend. Alix is my advocate at Peony. I want to talk to her, to hear this news in her words, but as I sit across from Sue, I become aware of the quizzical look on her face. She hasn’t brought me here only to deliver this news. There’s also my fate to attend to. Collateral damage.
“We need to talk about Noa Callaway,” Sue says.