Anyone but You (19 page)

"Like what?" Charity said. "Nina, you're killing me here!"

"Like 'funniest sex farce in years,'" Nina read to her. She picked up another review. "Like

'Moll Flanders meets Odysseus.' Like 'Jane Errs will do for boutique owners what Jane Eyre did for governesses.' Like 'Read Jane Errs and find out all the things your mother never taught you about sex.'"

"That's good, right," Charity said dubiously.

"Well, it's going to sell books," Nina said.

"Didn't they notice the other stuff?" Charity said. "How she changed? What she learned? Didn't they notice the important stuff?"

Nina flipped back through the reviews. "They seem to be concentrating on the sex, but that's probably because they weren't expecting it. Howard Press doesn't usually publish a book like yours."

Or as one of the reviews put it: "This book blows a hole in the side of stuffy old Howard Press and lets the light of the twentieth century in. The surprise is that it's the bedroom light."

Jessica was going to have heart failure when she showed her the reviews.

* * *

But what Jessica did instead was fire her.

"It's fiction?" she screeched to Nina when Nina gave her the reviews.

"It started out as a memoir." Nina clasped her hands in front of her. "It truly did, but in the last rewrite, Charity changed it to fiction, and it was better that way, and the reviews are good—"

Jessica waved a review at her, apoplectic with rage. "Listen to this review! 'Jane Errs makes the rest of the Howard Press output look like a bad blind date.' That's what you call a good review?"

Nina gave up. "Well, yes. I call that a good review."

Jessica stopped waving paper around and leaned on her desk. "You're fired."

Nina stepped back. "I'm what?"

"You're fired. You're out. And you take this book with you because I'm not releasing it. Not now, not ever. Howard Press will never print trash."

Nina regrouped. "Okay, fine, fire me, but release Charity's book. It's not trash. You haven't even read it yet, how can you say it's trash? That's intellectually dishonest. For heaven's sake, Jessica, it's already in production. You can't—"

Jessica leveled a look at her that stopped her cold. "I can do anything to save the reputation of my father's press. And I will. Now get out."

* * *

That night, Alex tried to comfort her. "It's all right, you don't have to work, anyway. I can support you. That's what I wanted to do, anyway. It'll be just like when you were married to Guy.''

"That's a great comfort to me," Nina said. "And I'm sure it will be a great comfort to Charity, too."

Then she went to Charity's apartment to tell her in person.

Charity's face went blank with shock as she sank onto her wicker couch. "She's not going to release it? It's printed. Why won't she release it? I'm not going to have a book, after all?"

Nina sat beside her. "Let me think. I'll fix this."

"Why didn't you tell her it was fiction?" Charity asked.

"I thought it was better that she didn't know," Nina said. "She didn't want to know. I thought she'd just have to accept it."

"You thought wrong," Charity said, her voice dead.

Nina jerked her head up. "Listen to me, I'm going to fix this."

Charity shook her head, defeated. "How? It's over."

"The hell it is." Nina stood up. "There are other presses and this is a great book. It even has advance reviews. Well just buy it back from Jessica and sell it somewhere else."

Charity nodded but her heart wasn't in it. "Sure, Neen. Whatever."

"I'll fix this," Nina said.

* * *

"I'm not sure I can fix this," Nina told Max the next night at dinner.

It was his father's birthday and the family had gathered for cake and booze. "It's a Moore tradition,"

Max had told her, filling her glass. "By the time the candles are lit, so are we." His mother and his sister had toasted his father briefly and coolly and then left the room, and now it was just Nina and the three Moore men, who were looking more and more alike: tall, good-looking, strained and unhappy.

Max was looking particularly miserable.

"Are you all right?" Nina had asked him, searching his eyes.

"No," Max said. "But thanks for asking." He smiled at ler, a small smile but a genuine one. "I hope to hell Alex talks you into marrying him soon. It's about time we got a human being in this family."

"I don't think marriage is a good idea," Nina said.

Max snorted. "Why, because you want to give him an out in case he grows up and changes his mind?"

Nina set her jaw. "It could happen."

Max shook his head. "Not if he has any brains. And notwithstanding his performance lately, he has brains."

"I don't," Nina said. "I just lost my job because I'm stupid."

"Tell daddy," Max had said, and Nina had dumped it all in his lap.

"I'm sorry to bore you with this," she said when she was finished, "but Alex tells me not to worry about it since he'll be supporting me, anyway." She looked across the living room where Alex was discussing something somber and cardiac with his father. "So I told Fred. It was a help, but lot like telling you."

"Forget the book," Max said. "Save Alex. Hell, save me."

Nina watched Alex across the room, nodding at something his father said, and he looked so much like his father that she felt cold. "He doesn't laugh anymore. We've been together for almost two months now, and he doesn't laugh ainymore. We don't watch movies or jog because he's too tired. Even Fred knows something's wrong. He whines until Alex pays attention to him. It's like he knows Alex has to be reminded to live life."

"Send Fred to my house," Max said. "Do you want another drink?"

"No," Nina said. "I didn't want this first one." She turned to Max. "And neither did you. If you're so unhappy, do something about it. Stop anesthetizing it with alcohol."

Max blinked at her anger. "Hey, don't take it out on me because Alex is turning into the old man.

I told him not to do it, but he wanted to give you the rich life."

Nina stopped. "What are you talking about? Are you telling me he doesn't want cardiology for himself?"

Max snorted. "Of course not. He loves the ER. He's doing it for you."

Nina gritted her teeth. It was Guy all over again. Doing it for her when she didn't want it. Alex and his father came to join them and she glared at them with such passion that Max patted her hand, but they didn't seem to notice.

"Alex and I have worked out a wedding present for you, my dear," his father said.

The hell you have. Nina smiled tightly. "We're not getting married."

His father smiled back at her, oblivious. "Now, now, Nina, there's no need to feel guilty because you're past childbearing age. As Alex has pointed out, it isn't that important. Max isn't married yet."

Alec winced, and Max looked at her and said, "I'll flip you for the right to say something nasty here."

"So we bought you a house," his father finished, and Nina rose straight out of her chair like a banshee.

"You did what?"

"We bought a house," Alex said, blinking at her. "Dad gave us the down payment. It's on Lehigh Terrace."

Nina gritted her teeth. "I used to live on Lehigh Terrace."

"I know," Alex said. "That's why we bought there. So it'll be just like when you were married to Guy."

Nina gritted her teeth harder, so hard she thought her gums were going to shove through her cheeks.

"I left Guy. Why are you turning into him?"

His father intervened. "Really, Nina, I hardly think—"

"Yeah, we know," Max said. "That's why you drink. That's why we all drink, so we don't have to think about anything but work and booze. You know, we have a problem here."

His father scowled at him. "What are you talking about?"

Max scowled back. "You're an alcoholic workaholic, and you raised the Drunk Brothers in your own image." He looked at Alex. "Turn back now, boy, or you're going to lose everything."

Alex glared at him. "I don't see why I'm the bad guy because I want Nina to have it all."

"This isn't about me. You don't care about me," Nina said. "If you cared about me, you'd listen to me.

All you can hear is your own ego shrieking, 'If I don't give her everything Guy gave her, she'll leave me.'" She grabbed her purse from the table. "I love you, you jerk, but I'm not going to live that damn life again, even for you. I like the apartment, and I like my dog, and I liked my job, and I just screwed up my best friend's life, but I don't have to screw up my own." She shook her head at him, close to tears, so angry she wanted to kill him. "I hope you and your father are very happy in your house and your career. I wouldn't have any of it as a gift, or you, either, for that matter. I was right. You're too young for me. You're so caught up in your own insecurities that you can't even see me standing in front of you."

Alex put his drink down. "I can see you. And you're wearing that damn Incredibra. You think I don't listen to you? You don't listen to me! How about—"

"Good night," Nina said. "I'll find my own way home."

Max stood up, too. "Nah, I'll take you. I'm not going to be popular here, anyway. And since I'm giving up the sauce, I doubt I'll be invited back."

Nina headed for the door, but she heard Max tell his father, "Retire and dry out. It's the only thing that'll save you." When she turned back, he was looking at Alex. "God knows what's going to save you," he told him.

"Wait a minute," Alex said, but Max was heading for the door, taking Nina's arm. "Let's go, kid."

"Will you wait a minute?" Alex roared, but Nina walked out into the night, grateful she had Max to lean on, already wishing he was Alex instead.

Eight

"And then what?" Charity said, the next night over non-Amaretto milk shakes.

"And then I went home and cried myself to sleep," Nina said. "But I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing because I feel so relieved. I even spent the day at the library making a list of publishers and planning our book strategy so Alex couldn't find me and convince me to go back to that lousy life he was building for me. I mean, I'm miserable because I love the rat bastard, but I couldn't have gone through another marriage like that one. And Alex was crazed. He was bound and determined that I was going to have my old life back whether I wanted it or not. And the only thing he could think to say was that crack about the Incredibra."

Charity frowned. "I don't get that part. Why did he hate the Incredibra?"

Nina closed her eyes and groaned. "Because I wouldn't take it off until the lights were off."

Charity put her milk shake down. "Let me get this straight. You slept with this guy for two months, and you never took your bra off with the lights on? He never saw your breasts?"

Nina frowned back at her. "Don't make it sound so stupid. I'm forty, for God's sake. I—"

"Did he care? Did he say, 'I hate your forty-year-old breasts, wear a bra to bed'?"

Nina glared at her, shocked. ''Of course not. He'd never say anything like that. Alex was wonderful.

He'd tell me how beautiful I looked, and ask me to take it off but—"

"But you didn't listen to him," Charity finished. "You cared more about your own ego than what he wanted. You were just like him."

Nina straightened. "Don't even try to compare us. He bought a damn house, and all I—"

"All you did was refuse to let your lover see you naked because you didn't trust him to love you no matter what you looked like," Charity finished. "You don't believe in unconditional love. Neither does Alex. So you both threw away the best thing you ever had because you didn't believe in each other or yourselves."

Nina tried to think of something to say, some way to tell Charity how wrong she was, but it was hard because she sounded so right. Then someone knocked on the door, and her heart lurched, and she thought Alex, and scrambled to her feet to let him in.

It was Jessica.

Nina blinked at her on the doorstep. "You're kidding me."

"No," Jessica said. "I've been trying to call you all day. Where have you been?"

Nina gaped at her.

"Never mind. May I come in?"

Nina jerked to her senses. "Oh. Right. Sure."

She stepped back and Jessica walked past her and saw Charity sitting on the floor, feeding a pretzel to Fred. "Hello, Charity," she said. "I read your book last night."

Charity looked wary. "Did you like it?"

Jessica nodded. "Yes."

Charity gaped in unison with Nina this time. "You did?"

"Yes." Jessica looked around for a nearby chair and, not inding one, sat gracefully on the floor next to Charity. 'What is that you're drinking?"

"Chocolate milk shakes," Charity said. "We used to put Amaretto in them, but we've seen what alcohol can do so we're not doing that anymore."

"Good for you," Jessica said. "I need you to keep your mind clear so we can talk about your book."

She looked at Nina. "You were right. After you left, I thought about what you said, about my being intellectually dishonest by refusing Charity's book without reading it. I read it, and it's wonderful."

"But Howard Press doesn't publish fiction," Nina said.

"It does now," Jessica said. "Times have changed. We're going to change with them. You're hired again."

Nina swallowed. "Oh. Good. I'll get more ice cream."

When Jessica had her own milk shake and they were all eated on the floor, Fred included, Nina said,

"So does this mean you'll publish the book, after all?"

Jessica nodded, her mouth full of chocolate and ice ream. "Yes," she said when she'd swallowed,

"but we're lot going to use those stupid reviews. They missed the point if the book. They missed Jane's growth."

Charity sighed with happiness. "I love you, Jessica, have a pretzel." Fred moaned, so she fed him another one, too.

"That book is Kierkegaard," Jessica continued. "Pure Kierkegaard."

Charity blinked. "Who?"

"Soren Kierkegaard," Jessica told her. "A Danish philosopher. He said, 'Life must be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.'"