Blind Submission (24 page)

“I didn't know you were…
agganciata,
” Damiano said. I looked at him, uncomprehending. He pointed to his left fourth finger. “To be married,” he said.

“Engaged?” I said. “I'm not.”

“But Luciana—”

“She's mistaken,” I said.

“Do you listen to the CD?” Damiano asked after a minute, his voice lower than it needed to be.

“I do,” I told him. “I like it very much.” It was true. In the last few weeks, with more and more nights alone, I found myself playing Damiano's angel-themed CD late at night, using it to usher myself into sleep.

“And how's your
pesce
?” His smile was so bright it lit my face.

“You mean the fish?”

“
Sì,
the fish.”

“He's very pretty, Dami. I leave him at the office, since I see more of him there.” This was true, but the main reason I left the fish at the office was to avoid having to explain it to Malcolm. “It was such a sweet thing for you to do,” I added.

“It was nothing,” he said.

“How's the writing coming?” I asked him. “When you called the other day, you wanted to tell me something, didn't you? I feel like it's been awhile since we talked about your book. I…miss it.”

Damiano smiled. “I don't think anybody understands it like you do,” he said. “Would it be okay for you to look…? I know how busy you are. You have been…I don't know the word.
Ispirazione.
”

“Inspiration,” I said softly. “It's the same in English. I'd really love to read it, Dami.”

“Bravo,”
he said. He smiled again. “I should do something for you. You have done so much for me.”

I thought that the right thing to say was that I was just doing my job and that there was no need for him to repay me in any kind. But when I tried for those words, they became a dry wedge stuck in my throat.

“I would love that, too,” I said, and felt a solar blush spread across my entire body. I ran one hand nervously through my hair as if that could dissipate the heat. Damiano watched me with the same knowing look he'd been wearing all evening.

“Your hair,” he said.

“I know,” I said, trying to laugh. “It's a mess. I couldn't figure out—”

“No,” he said. “It's like a fire. Like the tail of a comet running down your back.”

I looked up sharply as he finished the sentence. Lucy and Malcolm had suddenly materialized at the table, as if they'd been beamed in. I hadn't seen them coming at all. Malcolm held a fresh drink in his hand. His face looked dark and I couldn't read the expression in his eyes.

“Good!” Lucy proclaimed, apropos of nothing. “Let's sit. I have an announcement to make.” She seated herself next to me and pulled her chair in close to mine. Malcolm took my other side, across from Damiano, and gulped his drink. So much for my designated driver. It was time for me to stop my own drinking for the night.

“A toast!” Lucy said, raising her glass. “Damiano, pick up a glass at least, will you?” Damiano obliged, lifting his mineral water. “Now, to books and all things literary.” She drank greedily and we followed suit. “Angel!” Lucy exclaimed.

“Lucy?” I felt as if I were back in the office. My hand twitched at my side, ready to pick up a pen and write a memo on the spot.

“As you know, I travel to New York at least once a year.” She swept her gaze over Malcolm and Damiano. “The heart of publishing is still in New York and it's important to have face time with these editors.”

“But you're so successful in California,” Malcolm said. I thought I detected the hint of a slur in his words. “And with the Internet and everything, is it still so important to be in New York? I mean, you're so well known. Seems to me they should come to
you.
”

I was so embarrassed at Malcolm's unadulterated idolatry, I could only look down. My plate of meats glistened up at me.

“Well, that's terribly kind of you, Malcolm, and all ego aside, it's probably true. However, to answer your question, I do indeed have to go. But I find New York exhilarating and there's always something to learn, isn't there? None of us can say we're ever at the end of our learning curves, can we?”

There was a murmur of assent at the table, although I suspected that, like me, Malcolm and Damiano had no idea what she was going on about.

“At any rate,”
Lucy went on impatiently, “the point of my mentioning this is not to give any of you a lesson in publishing. What I wanted to say was this: I have decided to take you, Angel.”

“Take me?”

“Yes, on my upcoming trip to New York. You will accompany me to the Big Apple. Gotham. The City That Doesn't Sleep. I know you've never been there, but surely you've heard of it, yes?” She gave a tinkling little laugh into her glass, as if I should find that very funny. “Anyway, Angel, I'm taking you to New York with me. That's what I wanted to say. You've earned it.”

“Wow, Lucy, I don't know what to say.” I'd found that saying I didn't know what to say was an excellent time-filler, and I lingered over the words, playing for as many seconds as I could until I could figure out the response she wanted and align it with the one that came from my gut.

“What an honor for you, Angel,” Malcolm said. “That's so very generous of you, Lucy.”

Lucy nodded and tipped her head to one side. She was fixing Malcolm with a very peculiar look, as if she'd stepped in a pile of dog crap and then decided to flirt it off her shoe. I turned my head slightly to gauge Anna's reaction to all of this, but she'd vanished. Damiano's head was bent down toward his plate, but I could see his lips pursed tightly against a grin he was barely holding at bay.

“I'm very excited, Lucy. Thanks so much.”

“Honestly, Angel, you don't sound very excited. You should know that I've never taken
anyone
to New York with me, let alone my assistant.”

Malcolm was glaring at me. Damiano raised his eyes to meet mine.

“I'm just overwhelmed, Lucy. It's so…such a great opportunity for me.”

“Exactly,” Lucy said.

“Luciana, what is it you do there in New York? I'm so new to all of this, I don't know.” Damiano shifted his entire body toward Lucy, his considerable charisma ratcheted up to full power, as though she were the most fascinating creature in the world. And he did it for me because he could see how I was struggling. It was an absolutely heroic save. Because he was focused on Lucy he couldn't see my eyes, but I sent my gratitude through them anyway as Lucy launched into a discussion of how she met with editors and publishers and pitched new projects. She talked about how exhausting the meetings were, scheduled back-to-back because every editor in New York wanted to see her. And then there were the parties, of course. There was always some kind of book “happening” in New York. She had several New York–based authors, she said, who had opted to go with
her
instead of the many well-known New York literary agents, and she always made time to see them. She was a native Californian, Lucy said, but she felt as if she had a New York sensibility. And at least she didn't hail from Southern California—she'd never be able to overcome
that
prejudice. At least those in the north had a little more credibility. Did Damiano find that as well, coming from Italy? Wasn't there a north/south split there as well? Which was somewhat surprising, considering that Italy was so much smaller than California. Her people, she said, hailed from northern Italy originally….

As she went on, Damiano occasionally interjecting an Italian phrase or exclamation, I stole a glance at Malcolm. His face was still dusky and he leaned forward in his chair, clinging to Lucy's every word. At some point, he felt my stare and averted his eyes slightly to look at me. I looked for the complicity that couples are supposed to have, that unspoken communication borne of shared experience, but he was offering none of that. He looked impatient and vaguely annoyed with me.

I turned my attention to Damiano, who was still leaning toward Lucy, making a pitch-perfect show of being completely fascinated by everything she was saying. Like Malcolm, he felt my gaze and, for the briefest of moments, his eyes caught mine. Desire hit me then, with the force of a piano falling from a skyscraper. It wasn't something as simple as attraction or as ladylike as longing. It had no relation to romance. It was wanton desire so strong it was painful. And it was Damiano I desired—probably had desired from the moment I read the first page of his book. I felt the weight of this realization as a physical sensation and it threatened to suffocate me. Damiano saw everything in that second—my shock, my sudden comprehension, the nakedness of my desire—and his eyes sparked with recognition.

“…and Angel's been working on something very interesting, haven't you, Angel? I'm going to blow their socks off with this one.”

I turned to Lucy's voice, but I was well and truly lost. “The Las Vegas novel,” I said, scrambling. “It's looking really good.”

“Not that!” Lucy snapped. “Our mystery manuscript.”

“Oh,” I said. “That.”

“Yes,
that.
We're taking it to New York, Angel! I have a feeling it will be the talk of the town.”

I was filled with sudden, unstoppable dread. I knew Lucy had been intrigued enough by
Blind Submission
to keep pushing for more, but what I hadn't realized was how much stock she'd put into its ability to sell. Now she was taking it to New York—and me to keep it company. And I would be stuck with an anonymous author I was starting to hate and a manuscript that was probably going to drive me crazy. The worst part was that I'd brought it all on myself. I'd given her the manuscript in the first place because I wanted so desperately to please her and to give her something to sell.

“It's terribly exciting, don't you think, Malcolm?” Lucy was saying.

“Exciting?” Malcolm seemed lost.

“Angel's work,” Lucy said. “Surely she—”

“I don't know,” Malcolm said, flustered, his color deepening. “Angel doesn't…I don't know.”

“Really?” Lucy said, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Malcolm bit his lip. Damiano leaned backward in his chair, his glass half-raised as if stopped in the middle of a toast. Lucy's expression was neutral, but her eyes glittered. I felt the tension settle inside me, clenching and twisting. The silence was becoming unbearable, a looming entity unto itself. I couldn't understand why nobody would speak. I cleared my throat and all three sets of eyes turned to me, waiting.

“I'd love another drink,” I said.

I GRIPPED THE STEERING WHEEL
at ten and two and stared straight ahead, petrified that I'd do something to alert the police that my blood alcohol level was way past the legal limit. Not that I was blurry, fuzzy, or felt even slightly drunk. The excess adrenaline in my body had somehow acted as an antidote to the gin, and I felt more sober than I had before my first drink. Which was a great deal more than I could say for Malcolm, who was completely potted and slouched in the passenger seat next to me. We were ten minutes from my apartment and hadn't exchanged a single word in the last twenty. The air between us was charged and smoking with resentment.

“I can fuggen drive, you know.”

“You can't even fu
ck
ing talk, Malcolm, let alone fu
ck
ing drive, okay?”

“You've got a mouth on you, Angel,” he said. “Better things you could be doing with it. Or maybe you already have.”

“What are you talking about? Never mind, don't tell me. I can't believe how drunk you are.”

“I'm not fuggen drunk, all right? And what if I was? How could you blame me? The way you treated me over there.”

“The way I treated you? Now you have to tell me what you're talking about because you're not making any sense, Malcolm.”

“You know what happened, Angel. You fuggen know.”

I saw the events of the evening unfold as a series of still frames on the black night in front of me. How Lucy had moved closer and closer to me throughout dinner until our legs were touching, her cold thigh pressing into mine. How Malcolm had taken his dialogue with Lucy from shameless flattery to overt flirtatiousness to something approaching lewdness. How every time I tried to eat, I choked on the meat. How Lucy ate a good portion of several animals with gusto. How Malcolm drank and drank and how Lucy encouraged him to have still more. How Anna stood in the doorway between the living room and dining room, shooting daggers with her eyes, until uncountable minutes later, Lucy told her, “You may leave now.” How Lucy presented us with dessert, a giant angel food cake in a spun-sugar basket, and explained that Damiano had baked it especially for me. How Lucy had invited us all to the deck for cigars.
Cigars!
How Malcolm had gladly accepted her offer, although he'd never smoked a cigar in his life, and left Damiano and me sitting at the table. How Damiano had leaned so close to me, I could feel the small hairs on my arms stand up with gooseflesh. How he had said, “Can I call you?” and how I knew exactly what that meant. How I told him, “I can't,” and how he'd said, “I understand.” How I'd watched Malcolm and Lucy through the glass deck doors. His gesturing hands, loosened with gin and vermouth, drifting ever closer to her until they touched her arm, her hand, her shoulder. How Damiano watched this tableau with me, saying nothing for a long time, then standing, telling me he had to go. How the rest of it happened very quickly—Damiano leaving, Lucy pressing foil-wrapped cake into my hands, telling me we'd be going over “our New York schedule,” ushering me and Malcolm out of her big white door, my taking the keys out of Malcolm's pocket, starting the car, not believing, even now, that any of it had actually happened.