The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay) (18 page)

Chapter Fifteen

THE IVORY PALACE OF THE ICE QUEEN

With Flora and Dan following behind us in the truck, we headed toward San Francisco and settled into our usual routine. Doris issued instructions from map-reading headquarters, Ethel stared out the window, and Annie caught up on two days of her missed soap.

A lot had happened since we’d been stuck in the snow. The doctor had been shot, his wife was arrested for the hit, and the secretary had given birth to her alien baby that had now also been abducted.

Phew, things sure happened fast on that show.

The sights changed again as we entered California; we left behind the stately cedars of the Northwest and traded them for the majestic splendor of the redwood trees. We stopped briefly in Redding for a coffee, but with the end in sight, we didn’t stop for lunch but opted to eat the last of Doris’s baked bread. Doris had made a ton of sandwiches to get us all the way through until we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, which was just before 6:00 p.m.

As we came up and over the brow of a long slow hill the sun was just starting to set as the bridge appeared in our view, its vivid red framing glistening in the waning sun, an impressive and welcoming host beckoning us into the city.

“We’re going to be staying at my cousin John’s place in the north,” Doris informed me, giving me the exact directions.

“Did you let him know you’d be arriving today?”

Doris looked at me as if I’d just dropped off Mars. “My cousin never goes anywhere,” she snapped.

But when we turned up at his little brick house, there didn’t seem to be anyone there, no matter how hard Doris banged on the door.

“Fishing!” shouted a neighbor as he was getting into his car. “If you’re looking for John, he’s gone fishing. He won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.”

Doris shuffled back despondently.

“Look, why don’t you come over to Stacy’s house? You could have some dinner and then call a motel from there.”

“Okay,” she muttered, but I could tell she wasn’t very happy about it.

When we arrived at my daughter’s clean, sprawling suburban house, we all sat in the car for a minute and looked around. She lived in one of those buttoned-up neighborhoods where everything was just a little too perfect to feel comfortable. It was a place that seemed to say, “Welcome to our version of the American Dream. Now stay the hell off our pansies.”

Walking up her whiter-than-white driveway, I passed the koi pond and lollipop-sculptured bushes and trees. The garden, manicured to death, gave the aura of being afraid to let a twig grow out of place.

The girls stared at me through the car window.

I rang Stacy’s doorbell and an odd melodic chiming pattern rang out as I waited. There was no reply, so I rang once more, and she pulled open the door in a manner as if she were going to hit me. Then her expression changed.

“Mom, at last!”

Enveloping me in an enormous bear hug, she started to sob on my shoulder. I almost pulled her off to say, “Who are you and what did you do with my daughter?”

Wow, this was going to be a fascinating visit to the hormone amusement park.

She was on her third full sob when she noticed the girls all staring at her from the car. She stopped crying abruptly, as if she were doing it on cue, saying indignantly, “Who are they?”

“They’re the women I was on the road with,” I answered matter-of-factly.

“What are they doing here?” she spat out, as if I’d just brought her a gang of terrorists.

“The guy they were supposed to be staying with wasn’t home. I was hoping they could come in here and use your telephone, maybe get a cup of coffee . . . or something?”

It felt as if I were asking my mom’s permission.

“I suppose they could come in for a short while.” She furrowed her brow, obviously not too hot on the idea. “Just make sure they remove their shoes!”

We all skulked into Stacy’s foyer, dutifully doing as we were told. I shivered. Her house always felt more like a mausoleum than a home to me; its stolid reverence couldn’t help but encourage an atmosphere of whispering and tiptoeing. Her walls, sparse and dark, were counterbalanced with lots of heavy white marble. All about the house, expensive art pieces balanced precariously on lofty, spotlighted plinths.

A long hour later, we sat lined up on the couch in our stocking feet, a group of nuns under a vow of silence. One person would attempt to start a conversation, and everyone else just appeared to be afraid to respond. Even Doris seemed subdued. Stacy’s intense demeanor always seemed to have that effect on people. It was as if we’d been invited to tea with a stern old spinster aunt. Only Dan, who was seated on the other side of the room, seemed to be making comfortable inroads with her. Unbelievably, Ethel thawed the ice.

“I’m getting hungry,” she said, not unlike a five-year-old child.

I realized I was hungry as well. We hadn’t eaten anything since Doris’s sandwiches on the road, hours before.

“I don’t have a thing in the house. No point. I just honk it up anyway.”

“Would you mind if I used your kitchen to cook something?” inquired Doris, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

“No, of course not,” responded Stacy in a tone that gave the impression that was the last thing she wanted them to do.

Doris, Flora, Ethel, and even Annie exited toward the kitchen as if someone had just yelled, “Fire,” leaving me and Dan to entertain Stacy.

As I finished my second cup of coffee, Doris poked her head into the room, and boomed. Apparently, she also seemed unaware that any sudden vibrations might knock the exotic backlit crystal from its delicate pedestals. “I think we’re going to need some supplies.”

“I’ll go,” I whispered back, sounding a little more excited than I’d intended.

“Can I come?” inquired Dan in his regular tone as I was putting on my coat. He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the precariously balanced décor.

When we got back an hour later, I found Annie curled up on the sofa next to Stacy. They were both giggling and talking about soaps. It was nice to see Stacy connecting at last.

As we were clearing the dinner plates later, my phone rang. It was Martin.

“Hey there, I hadn’t heard from you for a couple of days, so I thought I’d give you a call.” His voice was a calming sea. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” I joked in our familiar banter.

I stepped outside into Stacy’s bleached backyard to talk to him. I knew he was really inquiring about Stacy.

“Actually, it
is
going well. We had a crazy day yesterday, but I arrived at Stacy’s a couple of hours ago, and it’s slowly starting to thaw here.”

And he knew I wasn’t talking about the weather.

“I see,” he said in a knowing tone.

Then he wanted to know all about the snowstorm and landslide in detail, so we chatted for a good while before I eventually hung up the phone.

When I stepped back into the house about thirty minutes later, there was a party atmosphere. Stacy had put on some sixties music and was singing along as she helped the other girls wash up in the kitchen. Grabbing a dishtowel too, I watched in a curious awe as Annie jigged and sang along at Stacy’s side, like they were best buddies.

Suddenly, Stacy announced we were all going to play charades. I nearly dropped the exquisite swan-shaped gravy boat I’d been carefully drying.

So there we were, one hour later, armed with popcorn and a bottle of wine, trying to figure out why Doris was pretending to be a chicken and pointing and pulling at one leg of her pantyhose.

“
Chicken Run
!
” shouted Stacy at the top of her voice, jumping to her feet, and bouncing up and down like an excited child.

If only my husband could have been there to see it. Swept up in the fun of the evening, Stacy had insisted everyone stay at her house overnight, so Doris never bothered to call the motel, and we all settled down into our museum-like rooms. It took all my might just to get the cardboard sheets to let go of the underside of the mattress, but I finally managed to sleep.

The next morning I wandered into the kitchen and found Doris at the breakfast table, strategizing. Everyone else was gathered around her like a pack of obedient puppies. Doris pointed her pen at each member of the group, one by one.

“Each of you will have a job to do. I’ll be our main speaker and make sure we get in to see this editor. Janet, we may need you for strategic planning if this attempt fails,” she informed me over her shoulder as I prepared my morning coffee.

I nodded absently, though I hadn’t the foggiest what that really meant.

“Annie, you are to help Ethel chain herself to the toilet if we need it, and, Ethel, have you got what we need for plan B?”

Ethel nodded and went off toward the bedroom.

Dan appeared to be highly amused by all of this. “What’s my job?” His eyes blazed excitedly, though his tongue appeared firmly in his cheek.

“Well, young man,” said Doris, sucking in her cheeks as if she were thinking of exactly where to place him, “I think we may need you if things get ugly. Not bad to have a little muscle on our side.”

Dan nearly spat out his coffee, and Flora’s face registered horror.

Ethel arrived back, ceremoniously dumping onto the table a bag of chains and a leather bustier.

“Flora, if we have to go to plan B, I have this outfit for you. Your job is to use all of that youthful, sexual energy to wow him to our way of thinking.”

Flora swallowed hard as another flash of amusement crossed Dan’s face.

Doris slammed her hand down on the table. “We’re ready,” she announced in her best team player voice.

The plan was I would drop them all off at the office building and then come back to pick up Stacy and take her to her conference.

Within an hour, the whole group was sandwiched into my car in a determined mood as we trundled into downtown San Francisco. It was as if we were part of an episode of some old seventies TV show. All we needed was a flashy van and a theme song. I thought, not for the first time, that I was so glad I was just the getaway driver.

Chapter Sixteen

A BAG OF CHAINS
&
A FANCY-PANTS SETUP

When we arrived downtown, however, the group’s buoyant mood disappeared faster than a ten-pound note dropped by mistake on a Scotsman’s table. Even I felt intimidated by the enormous shiny office building with the words “Welcome to the World of Publishing” etched in black on a brushed stainless steel sign. Behind me, I heard Flora draw a breath.

Doris took control as I circled the block to find somewhere to park.

“Don’t be thrown off by this fancy-pants setup,” she reminded them. “Remember, we’re here for our group, not to mention getting this manuscript back for Momma’s sake.”

That was all the pep talk her cohorts needed. As I slid into a parking space, they all bounded out like ninjas—well-aged ninjas or the mothers of ninjas, perhaps, but there was a definite clip in their steps as they bounded toward the building.

Only Doris hung back and motioned for me to lower the window. “Can you wait here for a while? If things go well, we should be back soon. If not, I’m planning a media-encouraged sit-in. So if you see helicopters, you know it’s going to be a long night.”

I nodded absently as I watched her join the others striding defiantly toward the building.

I took a moment to call Martin. It took him a while to answer. When he did, I could tell he was in the middle of something.

“Can I call you back?” his tone was strained. “I’m at the doctor’s.”

“At the doctor’s? Are you okay?”

There was a pause. He was hiding something.

“Honey, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” he bounced back with the speed of a child being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I just needed to get a . . . rabies shot.”

“Rabies shot!” I shrieked so loud that someone who was passing the car looked in at me with concern.

“Yeah,” he murmured humbly. “One of the dang raccoons bit me!”

This was why I never went away.

“The doctor’s here. Have to go. Talk to you later.”

Hanging up the phone, I sighed. I already needed more coffee.

It was as I got out of the car that I noticed it: Doris’s bag, complete with chains and a leather bustier, waving at me from an unzipped corner. I sighed again. I had the feeling it was going to be another sighing day. Staring at it for a long, hard moment, I considered the alternatives. Doris would want that bag, but taking it to them could risk association with the loony brigade inside, and I didn’t really want to be on the local six o’clock news. But not taking it to them meant the wrath of Doris. The choice was easy.

Grabbing the bag and locking the car, I headed into the gleaming gray-stone building with the black-tinted windows. Entering the foyer, I felt totally underdressed in my gray tracksuit and sneakers. Bustling, coiffed people sidestepped around me, going on their businesslike way.

The publisher Doris had mentioned was on the eighth floor. I hurried to the elevator, arriving just in time to watch the slick, onyx-colored doors close, buttoning in its heaving mass. I stepped back and pushed the “Up” button. The building had another three elevators, and with a quick scan, I noticed one was exceedingly high up in the building. The third had an “Out of Order” sign, and the last one had a woman—the slowest cleaner in the world—mopping the floor inside. She was obviously paid by the hour.

Frustrated, I hit the button again, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the cleaner shaking her head at me as she continued to drag her mop around on its snaillike crawl. Pacing back and forth, I made a decision and headed toward a sign for the stairs. After all, it was only eight floors, and I thought of myself as pretty fit.

Or I had.

It was as I rounded the stairwell on the sixth floor that I collapsed into a heap on the top step and tried to catch my breath. The thick leisure suit I had put on, feeling cold that morning, now felt as if it were strangling my hormone-flashing body. Breathing in long, deep waves, I pulled aggressively at the collar and mopped beads of sweat from my forehead. As I sat looking around the bleak, dark stairwell, I asked myself for the umpteenth time why I was doing this.

After a short break, I pulled myself back up. That bag now felt heavier than ever. Holding on to the handrail, I literally hauled myself up the last two flights, dragging the bag behind me. It bounced melodically off each step as the heavy chains clashed together, the sound ricocheting off the concrete walls in stereo.

Eventually, I reached the eighth floor and fell through the door into the quietest office on the planet. It would have made our library manager proud.

Gathering my composure and my breath, I closed the door quietly behind me. As I turned, I observed the office was full of people, and every eye fell curiously upon the bag now dumped at my feet. I realized they had no doubt heard me dragging it up every one of those last two flights of stairs. Pulling back my shoulders and wiping a new bead of sweat from my forehead, I tried to gracefully traverse the immense room toward a waiting secretary aloft in a marble tower. She eyed me all the way, a disapproving look already on her face as she fixed her eyes keenly upon the bulging mass I was now dragging toward her. Beyond her, I could see Dan and the group all seated together in a row, as if they were waiting for a bus. Even from a great distance, I could tell that Doris did not look happy to see me.

As I neared the desk, the secretary stepped out from behind it, and taking her eyes from my bag to me, she slowly looked me up and down. She was a gray, homely woman with an expression like a dried-up old teacher. Her face tightened.

“Can I help you?”

I tried to speak, but my voice was dry and rasping. I coughed to clear it. “I’m with my friends.” I absently pointed at Doris in between gulps of air. “One of them forgot her purse.”

I lifted the weighted bag and dropped it onto a nearby coffee table. As it hit the smoked glass, the chains clanged together in a mangled cacophony. The weight inside threw the bag over onto its side, forcing the zipper open and spewing the chains and bustier onto the floor. I didn’t dare look down and just fixed my gaze upon the secretary. Doris swore behind me as Flora scrambled to help, stuffing the contents back inside.

Eyeing the mangled heap with disgust, she said, “This group is for you!” in the direction of a thin mouselike woman who practically fell through a side door, scattering a pile of folders everywhere. Then she tripped and fell against a table, and Annie caught her by the hand to steady her. The poor creature pushed her enormous spectacles back up her nose, muttering, “Oh my, not again!”

We all sprang into action to gather up her scattered papers and steady her. The schoolteacher-secretary appeared again and harrumphed.

“All these people are here to see Mr. Gilbert?” mouse-lady asked as she double-blinked nervously.

“Yes, ma’am. Please remove them. They are clogging up our foyer,” the secretary demanded as she marched back to guard her granite castle. She made us sound as if we were a hairball in her sink.

With that, mouse-lady tried to choke back tears and ushered us toward an office. She opened a door etched on the front with the name Mark Gilbert.

We all followed, and Annie gave our grief-stricken maiden a flowery handkerchief. She motioned for us to sit down. “Forgive me. It’s already been a terrible day. I’m Andrea, Mark’s assistant,” she finally managed to say as she blew her nose.

As we waited for her to pull herself together, I looked around the sparsely decorated office. It had that new-furniture smell and was a mass of leather, black chrome, and glass, a retro eighties theme with a modern twist. Smooth and sleek, but dang uncomfortable to sit or be in. The sort of office you could comfortably fire people in. There were only two leather-and-chrome seats in front of an imposing smoked-glass desk and a tight black leather chaise lounge below a window. The only other adornments were odd modern art pictures and a smooth, black marble shelf with a single white orchid placed meticulously in a pink cut-glass vase.

Doris opted for one of the chairs, which, honestly, didn’t accommodate her bulk. It had high chrome armrests. As she sat down, some of her made it into the chair. The rest of her squished out under the arms. We were going to need WD-40 to get her back out, I thought to myself. Annie took the other chair and automatically settled down to knit. Dan wandered around the room, looking at the abstract art, which left Flora, Ethel, and me with the chaise lounge.

We all eyed it carefully, but when we turned to look at Andrea, she motioned for the rest of us to sit. So, like the three stooges, we all plopped down in unison, accompanied by an overwhelming squelch of tight black leather.

Andrea appeared to be getting her second wind and blew her nose again with determination. “Sorry,” she said, placing the files she was carrying on a table. “Where are my manners? Can I offer you some refreshments? Tea, coffee, juice?”

“No, we’re all fine,” said Doris before the rest of us could speak, oblivious to the fact some of us might need something after dragging a bag of chains up eight flights of stairs.

“I need a coffee,” Andrea said and then busied herself making one.

As she prepared it, she poured out her story without taking a breath.

She’d been working at this job for three months. She’d always wanted to work in publishing. Her boss was a dear, but often gone, leaving her to deal daily with the gray schoolteacher, who’d been trying to get her fired since the day she’d arrived.

She took a sip of her coffee, and Doris took the opportunity to speak.

“As you know, we’re here to see your boss, Mr. Gilbert,” said Doris.

Andrea swallowed nervously. “That’s impossible. There’s absolutely no way you can see him.”

Doris appeared to be about to say something brisk in response when a phone started ringing in a side office.

Andrea raised her hand apologetically. “Excuse me for a minute,” she said and went to answer it.

Doris jumped into action. Well, not jumped, exactly. She de-sandwiched herself from the chair, then snapped in a hushed tone, “Looks as if it’s going to be harder than we thought. We’re going to have to go straight to plan B.” Doris reached into the bulging bag, ferreted around, and threw the black bustier toward Flora. “Flora, go and put on the leather outfit. Ethel, to the toilet. And, Annie, you help her with the chains. We’re not leaving until we see Mr. Gilbert.”

Ethel jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and tried in vain to pick up the bag of chains, but it didn’t budge from where it was planted on the floor. In the end, Annie came to her rescue, and between the two of them, they dragged it out the glass door and down the hall to the bathrooms. Flora clung to the bustier like a scared rabbit. All the color had drained from her face. Dan, who’d wandered over to Mr. Gilbert’s desk, started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” snarled Doris under her breath.

“There’s no way Flora is going to put on that leather gear.”

Doris’s face tightened like a drum. “Oh yes she will! Everyone must play his or her part, and she is our femme fatale. It is her job to wow him with her seductive charm.”

“It will never work,” said Dan, continuing to grin.

“Never work!” said Doris indignantly. “Let me tell you, the art of seduction is the oldest and most trusted trick a woman has up her sleeve.”

“It will never work, because if anyone should put on the leather gear, it should be me.”

“You! You’re a man!” said Doris, incredulously. “Besides, the bustier would never fit you!”

“It should be me, because Mr. Gilbert’s persuasions appear to go in a different direction.”

Dan then held up a picture from the publisher’s desk. It was of two men holding hands, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. Doris took the photo from Dan, and all the blood seemed to drain from her face. However, all the blood seemed to return to Flora’s. I heard her let out a breath next to me. Dan took the bustier from Flora and held it up against his body. We all burst out laughing, even Doris.

Once we had all finished and wiped our eyes, there was a comfortable after-laugh silence as we collected ourselves again. Just then, Andrea walked back in.

“Andrea, it is imperative that we see Mr. Gilbert and see him today! We have come all the way from Washington State, and we are not going anywhere until we meet with him,” said Doris.

Annie arrived back, breathless, and gave Doris a thumbs-up. Doris nodded and then turned her attention back to Andrea, who was wringing the hankie Annie had given her.

“That is most unfortunate. But you see, you can’t see him because he is not here at the office for the next couple of days. He’s at the San-Bay Writers Conference. He’s the keynote speaker.”

San-Bay, San-Bay. That name meant something to me. What was it? Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I knew that name.

“Well, how do we get to it?”

“Get to it? You can’t. They won’t let you in. That conference has been sold out for months.”

Doris looked bereft.

“And unfortunately, Mr. Gilbert leaves for a vacation right after the conference. You should make an appointment to talk to him after he gets back.”

“That’s impossible. We’re only here for a short time, then we’re driving back home.”

All at once, it came to me.

“San-Bay,” I said, jumping up. “That’s where I’m going to drop Stacy this afternoon. That’s the conference she’s going to.”

“I thought your daughter worked in advertising?” said Flora, speaking for the first time since the bustier incident.

“She does, but she was talking last night about this new publishing account her firm is taking on. She’s meeting with them this afternoon. Maybe she can get you in there that way?”

“What time is she going to leave?” Doris asked, her manner almost chirpy.

“One o’clock.”

“Great. That gives us some time to come up with a plan. Let’s go. We have no time to lose.”

I thanked Andrea for her time, and as she moved to see us out, she managed to knock over another stack of manuscripts that were tottering in a high pile on the corner of her desk.