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M
argot Yarborough was not deluded about the sort of person Jackson Miller was, and she knew his talk of love was certainly overblown. But it was clear he was genuinely enamored of her. In the weeks that followed the nasty contretemps between Jackson and her father, she avoided her father almost completely and spent her time weighing various contingencies. Sometimes she imagined that her book would earn a lot of money—she entertained vague ideas about book-club sales or a film option—or that Jackson would invite her to live with him soon. In the absence of either of these life-changing events, her options were more limited. She sent copies of her résumé to the several area colleges that hired adjunct composition instructors, and, once in awhile, she browsed the New York apartment listings. She read the brochures sent by
MFA
programs around the country and looked at their websites showing some combination of natural splendor and intellectually engaged twenty-somethings, pencils in hand. She pictured herself among them, drawing inspiration from the surrounding mountains or the shimmering Pacific and sustenance from peers more interested in the writing than the publishing.

Punctuating her holding-pattern of a life were contacts from her editor about the approaching release date of her book. Margot pressed herself to relish every step and task: writing the acknowledgements page (on which she thanked her mother and Jackson and her beloved third-grade teacher but not her father); hearing that foreign rights had been sold in Portugal with other languages still possible; receiving an endorsement from a mid-list writer whose work she admired as solid and who termed hers as “heartfelt” and “quietly moving”; sending her editor a list of her institutional connections (a list limited to her alma maters and the writers’ union she’d had to join to publish book reviews in the
Hudson Valley Free Weekly
). This is really happening to me, she told herself.

She also tried to savor her times with Jackson, the night or two she spent at his place every couple of weeks. But the disturbing truth was this: it was the
idea
of him that made her happy. While she was with him, she fretted over saying the wrong thing or sounding stupid, about talking too much or too little, about the time passing too quickly or too slowly. And sometimes—she needed to face this—his rants were repetitive. He espoused the same ideas over and over; they never seemed to develop or move toward any deeper truth.

She was happiest, perhaps, when looking forward to their next meeting or reflecting on an earlier encounter. She would go over each weekend spent together as if shuffling photos from a nice vacation to a country you don’t necessarily want to visit again once you remember the details—the cold water or mosquitoes or unsettling food—that aren’t visible in the snapshots.

Yet each time she started to draw the obvious conclusion—that she probably wasn’t in love—she stepped back from the line. She wanted to be in love. And she didn’t like the idea of being post-Jackson, of not having him as her boyfriend, of not celebrating their twin publications. Such were her thoughts one morning when the phone rang while she was alone in the house. She gulped a small breath and readied to hear Jackson’s voice.

“It’s Lane,” said the voice. “I need you to steel yourself. There’s nothing to worry about, mind you.
Circus
reviews are always first and commonly negative, even vicious. Just remember that it was written by some thirty-five-year-old loser still living in his mother’s basement and picking his zits.”

“That’s not a very kind characterization,” Margot said, processing what Lane was trying to break to her.

“Believe me, sweetheart, you’re going to have worse things to say about him after you read the review.”

Her stomach clenched. “Review of my book?”

“Can I fax it to your father’s number?”

It took Margot a moment to realize that she was nodding rather than answering Lane’s question in an audible manner. “Sure,” she croaked.

“Remember, now: first and worst. The good reviews will follow in short order.”

Margot’s hands trembled just a little as she lifted the sheet from the fax machine in her father’s office. Her intestines churned as her eyes skimmed phrases like “term-paper-like,” “curiously unmoving,” and “childishly romantic.”

Only when the urge to spit had safely passed did she try to call Jackson. She hung up on his answering machine once before calling back and leaving a message: “I really need a friend to talk to. Please call me.”

Later she checked her email and found a message from her ex-boyfriend the guitar player saying he’d learned to appreciate a soft-spoken woman. She laughed and felt a little better.

W
hen people asked her if she was excited about the impending publication of
The Progress of Love
, Amanda Renfros said “I’m very happy about my book.” What she felt was not the excitement of striking gold or matching lottery-ticket numbers but the pleasurable satisfaction of settling into destined success after a cosmic foul-up that had threatened to snatch it away but in fact had only delayed it. She felt as though she had been born to lead the life she was about to lead.

“Just wear a black turtleneck,” Eddie told her when she’d returned to their place with several bags of a mix-and-match wardrobe, selected to last the duration of her twenty-city author tour without repeat combinations.

“I’m not that kind of writer,” she said, clipping price tags with her manicure scissors. “And I hope that’s not what you’re planning to wear to your own publication party.”

“It’s hardly a party, Amanda,” Eddie said. “Just a cordoned-off corner of a bar so my editor can repay a few vodka-and-tonic debts and not be accused of having done nothing at all for my book. It’s right next to nothing at all.”

“I suppose they’re all sensitive after that poor young woman—what was her name?—was in that plane crash. Remember? Her parents chartered the plane because her publisher cancelled her author tour after the editor who acquired her changed houses. And then it crashed right after her second stop. Her dad had just learned to fly. She hardly sold any books at all.”

“Yes, my ever-supportive wife, that’s likely why they’re at least bothering to liquor me up.”

“Perhaps they’ve noticed that you don’t need much help in that area.”

After that bleak connubial conversation, Amanda made Jackson her confidante in all publication-related matters. In Jackson, she recognized a kindred spirit with whom she could discuss those details she knew would only demoralize her husband.

“I understand,” Jackson said when she’d explained this over coffee one afternoon. “It’s the same with me and Margot. She’s elated her book is being published, and I don’t want to tell her anything that will make it small to her.”

Amanda looked around the diner, noting the plastic vines wrapping the coat racks, the brown-rimmed translucent plates supporting white toast and eggs, the Eastern European servers whose beauty was quickly fading now that they’d become waitresses instead of models. In them she saw herself as she might have been if she hadn’t noticed the boat pulling away, or hadn’t leaped across the widening gap of water and landed safely on deck. “You’re not really still seeing her, are you? She works in a bookstore, right?”

“Worse. She’s living at home for awhile, with her insufferable father.”

“Is Andrew Yarborough insufferable? He looks so, well, avuncular.”

“Trust me. He’s an oaf.”

“Regardless, he’s certainly last year’s model, soon to be obsolete. He’s like a car without air conditioning.”

“You do have a way with words,” Jackson said. “At any rate, I’ve been crossing my fingers that Margot’s book will do really well. I don’t have the heart to tell her everything my publisher is doing for me. She doesn’t write for the kind of audience we aim for, of course, but she’s really very good. Gorgeous sentences.”

“Well, that’s enough to keep someone like Eddie or Henry Baffler reading a book, but let’s face the fact that most people aren’t much like those two.” Amanda tried for an inscrutable smile.

“Her first review was a massacre. I mean out-and-out mean spirited. Worse than if it had been written by an ex-boyfriend. I don’t understand why any reviewer would pick on someone like her. Someone like me, sure, and it would only help my cause. But it has decimated Margot.”

“Where’s the review?”

“Just
Circus
, but it might be one of the only reviews the poor girl gets.”

“But your own prospects continue to brighten, I have no doubt.”

“Of course, but I had hoped that Margot and I could be something of a literary couple—two big books out at once.”

“My, Jack, are you that serious about her? I always figured you’d opt to marry for money or at least operate as a gigolo. A sweet little crafter of fine sentences with curly hair? This throws new light upon your character. I thought you were more ambitious in every way.”

“Do you think me so desperately scheming and ice-veined that I could never marry for love?”

“Sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean it that way. And for all I know, your Margot may be perfectly suited to you. I certainly hope she is.”

“In ways that I wouldn’t have imagined, yes, she is. Of course she is a much better person than I am.”

“Terrific. I take it she’s witty and gracious to boot?” Amanda hated her catty tone and didn’t understand why she sometimes reverted into the unhappy teenager she had been in Wilkes-Barre. She sipped the weak coffee, reminding herself that she could afford to be generous to other people, that she wanted to be generous, that it was a better way to be.

“I believe you’ve already asked me that. I hope you aren’t slipping? Anyway, those aren’t the exact words I would use first. She’s soft-spoken and sincere. She appreciates a good sense of humor, but she’s more sweet than witty.”

“So you’re giving up your old social ambitions for love. I admire that.”

“Just like you did.” Jackson held her gaze steadily in his own.

Amanda held still and was careful to give nothing away. She waited for Jackson to speak first.

“Just like you,” he continued, “I am at last claiming the success that is mine, and I want to share it with someone who can appreciate what it means.”

Amanda ran a section of her hair repeatedly through her thumbs and forefingers, bicycling her hands as she smoothed the width of hair. She dropped her hands when she realized what she was doing. “Sorry, old habit.”

“I remember it from workshop, but I never knew if it was a calculation or a compulsion.”

“Sometimes one becomes the other, doesn’t it?” She smiled, feeling back in control as her cup was refilled by a dyed-blonde poured into black stretch pants and a sweatshirt.

“You’ll like this,” Jackson said when the waitress had moved on. “I submitted one of Chekhov’s finest stories to twenty literary journals under the name Anthony Chernesky. It’s for a piece for
The Monthly
.”

“You’re a very bad boy.”

“I’ve only got a few responses back so far, but I can already tell it’ll be a hoot.
The City
and the other glossy I submitted to sent immediate form rejections.
The Adirondack Gazette
, which must have a circulation smaller than its contributors list, sent a handwritten rejection saying that the editors did see some merit in the story but were concerned that the characterization was a bit thin and the characters’ motivations didn’t seem rooted in their back stories.”

“And no one has recognized the story?”

“Not yet. Not one. I’m dying for some editor to say that it’s too Chekhovian.”

“Will you name names in your piece?”

“Of course.” Jackson pulled a small spiral notebook from his bag.

“Don’t tell me you’ve become a note taker or—worse—a journal person.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I thought we might compare cities.”

As they finished their coffee, they mapped out the crisscrossing flights of their author tours.

“We’re bad,” Jackson said, drumming rhythm and blues on the formica with both hands. “We’re nationwide.”

“I wonder why you’re being sent to Cleveland but not Kansas City,” Amanda said as a long-haired girl in tight jeans passed their table. Amanda watched to see if Jackson’s eyes would follow her.

Still looking directly at Amanda, he said, “Who knows. But most of our cities are the same. You’re going to look great in L.A.”

“Next time we meet,” Amanda said, “I pick the restaurant.”

D
uring the year between the acceptance and publication of
Sea Miss
, Eddie Renfros had savored the process as if each event were a course in a long, delicious meal. Early on, there were days on which he would forget he was on the verge of authorship. Then he’d remember, smile mid-street and think author, authority, authorship, my ship has come in. Calls from his adoring editor were like fine chocolate in his mouth. The week the check came, he’d drunk the most expensive wine of his life: a 1982 Croizet-Bages Pauillac he may have been too young to appreciate.

The author-photo session had taken place in the studio of a Tribeca photographer, whom his publisher had paid to shoot seven rolls of color and black-and-white film. “We want you to look accessible yet mysterious,” his editor had cooed. “Friendly but foxy.” He still remembered the photographer’s dog: a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Chester.

After the emotional ransacking of submitting
Vapor
serially and without success, Eddie looked forward to having the new book in production regardless of his ambivalence about the novel’s worth. He also saw the impending publication as a chance to renew his marriage and his friendship with Jackson: three graduate school friends all with books coming out around the same time. Even if he didn’t quite approve of the kinds of books Amanda and Jackson had chosen to write, they were capable writers. And if their advances dwarfed his own, he could take comfort from the thought that the critics were more likely to give him the nod. And if he didn’t always like the way that Amanda peered at Jack sideways, he could tell himself that a little outside flirtation only brought energy to a monogamous relationship.

And yet, despite his honest efforts, the months ahead did not hold the pleasures that the year of
Sea Miss
’s production had.
You’re only as good as your next book
—a phrase whose origin he couldn’t place—played over and over like some one-track eight-track in his head. There was no Tribeca shoot this time, either; the editor argued for “brand consistency” and bought extended rights to his old author photo. Eddie worried that people would think he hadn’t updated it because he was trying to look younger than he was.

Still, other steps in the process did offer small pleasures. The assistant art director came up with a terrific cover on which the body of a faceless woman and the body of her viola mirrored each other’s shapes in ways that suggested the story’s sensuality. The presence of a small shell in the corner hinted at the themes of sound and hearing, and of the pivotal conflict over the daughter’s deafness, in a manner that would be obvious only after the book was read. The flap copy was pretty good, given that it was flap copy. It made the book sound interesting to a general readership without pandering, and the editor had agreed to Eddie’s few small changes, agreed to change the word ‘promiscuous’ to ‘adventurous’ in describing the slutty Scandinavian violinist and the word ‘tragic’ to ‘disturbing’ in mentioning the lover’s demise by air accident.

Eddie had heard the horror stories of books orphaned by editors’ mid-life-crisis trips to the Amazonian rainforest. He’d heard about psychotic jacket designers and illiterate copyeditors, and so he was pleased with the production of his book—so long as he didn’t think about the advertising or marketing plans. Perhaps it was this repressed concern that made him sulk. Because, despite his real attempts, he just couldn’t be as wildly happy as Amanda and Jack appeared to be.

“It’s like sex with a condom,” he told Jack one day as they walked through the park on their way back from a movie Amanda had had no interest in seeing. “It’s better than nothing, but it doesn’t feel the same.”

“It’s just that you’re no virgin,” Jack overextended the metaphor. “You know what it’s like to wake up with the girl morning after morning, watch her turn to soap operas and donuts and trade in those tight jeans for sweat pants.”

“Charming,” Eddie said. “I don’t know if I’d be madder if I thought you were talking about my novel or my wife.”

“Neither of course. I hold Amanda and
Sea Miss
in the highest regard. I’m just trying to show you how absurd you’re being. I doubt either of us will ever see Amanda don sweat pants—not unless the fashion mavens dictate it a must and then we know she’ll look fantastic in them.”

“You can stop right there.” Eddie stopped walking as he said it, light snowflakes cooling tiny circles of his nose and cheeks. Those that touched the ground melted with the contact. Eddie didn’t think the snow would stick.

“Sorry, just stating the obvious,” Jackson said, still in motion.

“A particular talent of yours, it would seem.”

By a coincidence that seemed nearly perverse, the three friends’ publication dates were within a few weeks of each other. Jackson’s and Amanda’s were at the beginning of April. Eddie’s book would be released later in the month, after the other two were off on their tours. So Amanda arranged an early celebration, reserving a good table in one of Grub’s private rooms. Jackson asked Doreen to ensure they would have one of the restaurant’s best servers, someone who would take good care of them.

“Promise not to even peek at the check,” Amanda had instructed, and Eddie decided to obey. He ordered up and celebrated with those he had long thought of as his two favorite people.

Like many people who drink a lot, Eddie was generally unhappy sober, in great spirits during his first and second drink, either extremely happy or getting edgy by the end of the third drink, and turning sour fast after that. On that night, he decided to let himself feel important—more important than Amanda and Jack because of the quality of his writing. He chose to believe that quality would lead him to a longer and more prestigious career than the splashier flash-in-the-pan stuff written by his companions. As if to bolster his temporarily inflated self-worth, Amanda and Jackson steered the conversation to less successful writers: not one but two of their fellow alumni had recently killed themselves over failed writing careers.

Jackson shrugged. “But one of them was a poet.”

“Still have it in for poets?” Amanda asked.

“Until the day I die,” Jackson said.

A group of poets at Iowa had abandoned a reading at the intermission—after a fellow poet had read, but before Jackson had taken the podium to give his first-ever public reading—and had then showed up at the after-party to feel each other up in the jacuzzi. Jackson had never forgiven them and chose to scorn all poets from that moment on.

Almost keeping pace with Eddie, Jackson drained the last of a bottle of champagne into his flute and called for the wine list. “How’s Baffler holding up? Has he awakened to the smell of money and the bell of his publicist’s voice?”

“I doubt it. He told me he was glad that
Bailiff
was being published but that he was through with the book. ‘Once it’s written, it’s over for me.’ That’s what he said. And he’s developed serious reservations about his theories, says New Realism may not be all he’d hoped.”

“Still obsessed with that bleeding-edge girl? Clarice something?”

Amanda chimed in. “I think Henry’s sweet, and we would all do well to begin thinking about our next books.”

Unable to help himself, Eddie said, “I suppose that comment was for my benefit.”

“Not at all.” Amanda gave him a china-cold look. “I was chastising myself, if you must know. I think the ideal is to have the next book finished before the last one hits the stores. I wasted too much time this go round, but that’s my plan from here on out.”

Eddie worked on his fillet and horseradish mashed potatoes and had to admit that the food at Grub was nothing short of very good.

“Oh, I have news,” Jackson said, tapping his water glass with his fork. “I’m appalled, of course, but happy for her. My former girlfriend cum former roommate has betrothed herself to Whelpdale.”

Amanda laughed so hard she choked on her water.

“He became a regular customer here and apparently was quite smitten by her complete disinterest in all matters literary. He’s going to marry her and put her through cooking school. She says he’s the perfect eater.”

“He’s going to put her through cooking school with what?” said Amanda, now recovered from the skirmish with her water glass.

Jackson’s bangs fell across his eyes as he shook his head, laughing. “I would have been annoyed if my own lot hadn’t improved so much since the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference, but Whelpdale’s non-writing writing career is going very well. He’s making a lot of money as a ‘manuscript doctor’ and gets scores of referrals from an unscrupulous agent he’s befriended. The agent hints to the authors of the lackluster novels that populate his slush pile that their work has real promise and that he might take them on with a bit of restructuring. He includes in these rejection letters a flyer touting Whelpdale’s services. Great racket, no?”

“That’s criminal,” Eddie said, glad he wasn’t one of the unfortunate souls.

“It would be,” Jackson agreed, “if it preyed on anyone who wasn’t completely lacking in both intelligence and talent. Anyway, Whelpdale’s fishing deeper waters now. He read some book about getting rich by hanging out around rich people, and, sure enough, he found some wealthy literary-wannabe to finance a publication. He’s calling it
ProProse
. Every story in the thing will be a contest winner, meaning he’ll clean up with entry fees. It’s like vanity publishing for the short story, but he’s also including interviews with real writers and what amounts to a literary gossip column—who’s publishing where, which prize judges are selecting their friends, that sort of thing. That will give the magazine some legitimacy and no doubt boost circulation.”

“Not so unlike what Fadge has done with
The Monthly
,” Eddie said and then wished he hadn’t.

“Well, I’ve got to hand it to him,” Amanda said quickly. “If he pays for Doreen’s culinary training while removing some of those horrid stories from the desks of real journals, then maybe he’s actually doing the world some good. Speaking of real journals, how’s the Chekhov project coming along?”

“Speaking of literary gossip columns for the vain?” Jackson gave Eddie a pointed look, but smiled it away. “You’re not going to believe this: I actually did receive a rejection that accused the story of being too Chekhovian and another suggesting that Anthony Chernesky would benefit from reading more Chekhov. Eighteen of the twenty journals rejected the story, and the rejections contradict each other all over the place. Not enough setting. Too much setting. Not character-driven. Flimsy plot. Of course, the form letters all say the same thing.”

“What about the other two?”

“One journal still hasn’t responded. The last—some tiny magazine I’ve never heard of that publishes out of some woman’s house in Idaho—actually recognized the story. The editor sent a long letter about the evils of plagiarism but conceded that my choice was, at least, in good taste. She’s the one person I’ll allow to come off looking good in the piece I write.”

They finished with Stilton and port, and Eddie experienced as a warm swell the satisfaction he’d been missing. At that moment, he felt right with the world because he again felt a part of it. He sipped just a little more port, listening to the sounds of conversation and eating from the open dining room behind him, and set his gaze on his lovely wife, who—flushed from her wine and softly lit—seemed to glow from within.

It was a few weeks later, after Amanda left on her tour, that the sourness arrived and lingered, helped along at regular intervals by whiskey and its morning-after aftermath. Eddie knew he was turning feral and promised himself a return to structured living as soon as Amanda was back home. But for now, he needed to survive the four weeks alone. He told himself not to watch the calendar; instead he watched the clock.

At first twice a day and then giving way to hourly counts, Eddie checked the Amazon sales rankings of
The Progress of Love
,
Oink
, and
Conduct
. His book had not yet been officially published, so it was unsurprising albeit disappointing that his number was over a million while Amanda’s and Jackson’s ranked in the thousands, then hundreds.

Two weeks later, though, his book was in the stores and had been reviewed in a few places, including an in-brief review in
The Times
. He’d expected a full review, but any review in
The Times
was good. Beside, the in-brief reviews were almost always neutral or slightly positive, whereas the full reviews could be vicious, as Chuck Fadge had found out the hard way. The West Coast papers had ignored him so far, but
Conduct
had been reviewed in the Chicago, Philly, and Minneapolis papers. The reviews were guardedly mixed, but he hadn’t been savaged. Most reviewers ended with some variant of “We’ll look forward to seeing what the author of
Sea Miss
writes next” or by suggesting that any sophomore book by a talented writer is expected to be a tad disappointing, a small letdown between the charming debut and the break-out third book.

Still, Eddie’s Amazon numbers hardly budged once publication pushed him into the high six figures. Occasionally, what he presumed was the sale of a single book spiked
Conduct
into five-figure territory, but it always dropped back into the hundreds of thousands within a few hours. Eddie’s misery only increased, against his best efforts at magnanimity and high-mindedness, when Amanda and Jackson both entered bestselling territory: Amazon numbers under one hundred and reviews in
America Today
, not to mention everywhere else. His and hers bestsellers, Eddie thought, king and queen of the prom. What they wouldn’t understand is that his sourness wasn’t simple envy. He craved bigger reviews and higher sales—yes, it was true—but he didn’t envy them authorship of their books. He did not want to be the person who had written
Oink
.