Spanish Disco (3 page)

Maxine was the literary world’s equivalent of Jackie Kennedy. An eighteen-year-old free spirit when they met, she married the handsome, long-haired Riggs when she was nineteen and he was thirty. With long black hair and eyes described as emerald-colored, she dressed with grace and style, and beguiled the rare interviewer with witty comments and an infectious laugh. But after the veterans started seeking them out, Maxine and Riggs retreated to their home and sightings of them became gossip column fodder.

The papers reported it as a tragic accident. She had been standing outside the back door of their white clapboard house, when a trespassing deer hunter shot her. One minute she had smiled at Roland, saying she would go pick them some tomatoes for their dinner salad. The next she was a bloody heap a few feet from her carefully tended garden. Deer bullets leave gaping holes. The hunter never came forward. No one was ever charged.

Roland Riggs’s hair had turned completely white by her funeral. He aged ten years in four days. Within a week, he closed up his house in Maine and took off for parts unknown. He never published his next book. He never spoke to the press. He was never heard from again by anyone but his editor. Then his editor died of old age, and no one heard from him except his publisher’s royalty department.

“He said I’d understand,” Lou looked down at the dust
cover to
Simple Simon.
“He read the article in
Publisher’s Weekly
about West Side. How I came here after Helen died. Cassie, he wants
me…us
…to publish his next book.”

I thought, briefly, of falling off the couch for effect, but I stayed in my seat and struggled to sound intelligent. “Why you? Because you’re a widower?”

I stared at Lou. What little hair he had left was silver, and he wore gold wire-rimmed glasses. Short, with a slender build, he would be thought of as elegant. Until someone heard him open his mouth. Then “New Yawkese” came flying out. “Fuck if I know, really, kid. He talked about that night in Key West. How we had a connection. He talked about finding his wife by their garden. He said, ‘I’ve been living with her ghost for over twenty years. She never leaves me. And it never gets better.’” Lou looked up at me. “That’s how I feel about Helen.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“So he doesn’t want some faceless schlub somewhere handling his book. He wants me. West Side. Us. If he reads
PW,
he knows how publishers just gobble each other up. Soon, there’s just going to be one giant God damn publishing house, and every book will be owned by the same fucking conglomerate. In this day and age, no one will give him the kind of attention he deserves.”

“Bullshit. This is Riggs. This is the encore to
Simple Simon.
Publishers would sign their souls over to Satan for a chance to publish it. Just show ’em the dotted line.”

“That would imply that they have souls.”

“They’d give him a two-million-dollar advance. They
would. What kind of advance can you give him? Our standard fifteen thousand?”

“Well…actually, he doesn’t want an advance. He just wants a lot of control.”

“Control?”

“Specifically?” He raised his eyebrows, something he does when he’s about to tell me news I may not like. Raised eyebrows, edit this book in two weeks.

“He wants you to edit his book.”

My heart stopped beating, I think, and in the silence I heard the clock on Lou’s shelf ticking.

“Me?” I started breathing again. “He’s heard of me?”

“You were in the article in
PW.
”

“I’m flattered, but it’s not as if I’d let you give his book to anyone else.”

“Glad you feel that way.” Pause. Raised eyebrows. “Because he wants you to go stay with him while you do it.”

“What?” I put my mug of coffee down.

“Yeah. He wants you to move in for a month. Really hash it out.”

“Hash it out?”

Lou shrugged.

“Hash it out with Roland Riggs? You don’t hash things out with a Pulitzer-prize-winning genius.”

“A minute ago you were griping that
Simple Simon
meant nothing. That it didn’t change people. That they’d weep over my laundry list.”

“A minute ago, I wasn’t Roland Riggs’s new editor. A minute ago, I wasn’t leaving my beachfront condo for who
knows where to go
live
with this recluse, who, for all I know, is certifiable after all these years. Christ, he called you up in the middle of the night mid-stream in a thirty-year-old conversation.”

“Cass, even if he is certifiable, you’d chew him up and spit him out with your first cup of coffee. Besides, you’ve handled Michael Pearton. He’s not exactly small potatoes. He’s hit the
New York Times
bestseller list. Albeit infrequently. God, he takes a long time to write a book. Anyway, Pearton’s kind of weird. How bad could Riggs be?”

“Michael’s different.”

“Yeah. You give him phone sex.”

“You know, I told you that over a pitcher of margaritas, and you insist on throwing it in my face every chance you can slip it into a conversation.”

“I think it’s funny.”

“Funny? The guy calls me at three in the morning. He won’t let me be. He hounds me with e-mail.”

“And he’s made you and me rich.”

“Technically, you’re a lot richer than I am.”

“But for thirty-three years old, you ain’t doing so bad. And that’s nothing compared to what Roland Riggs can do for you.”

“And you.”

“Sure. But it’s not about the money. It’s about
Simple Simon.
It’s about closure for an entire generation of people who read his book and can’t forget it.”

“Maybe an encore isn’t so smart.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Lou, what did
Simple Simon
mean to you? Maybe that’s what some of this is about.”

He looked away.

“Okay, Lou. You don’t want to look at that, fine. But it’s not like I can just leave all my other authors and books for a month.”

“We have e-mail. Take your laptop. You’re not in the office all that much anyway. The guy has a phone.”

“I don’t know. It just sounds…weird.”

“It’s not like you’ll be living in a shack somewhere.”

“Well, where
will
I be going?”

“He has a big house over on Sanibel Island.”

“Sanibel? I’ll die there.”

Sanibel is a tiny spit of an island off the West Coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The Old Guard are strict about development. No high-level condos. No good rye bread. No NY-style cheesecake. No nightlife. Lord knows what kind of coffee I could get there.

“He has a housekeeper who doubles as his personal chef. He’s right on the beach. You’ll have your own guest suite. He has a pool.”

“You make it sound like I’m going to the Hilton.”

“Look, Cassie, we haven’t had a mega-hit in a while. I field calls every month from publishers who want to gobble us up. I’m getting old. I’m not sure I can keep up this independent thing forever. I need this book.
We
need this book.”

“You couldn’t sell West Side. You wouldn’t sell. This is your baby.”

“Baby or not, things are tight. We’ve had a couple of bombs. That damn actress’s book—why’d I buy it? So we’re in trouble, and I need you to pretend you’re going to Vegas. You’re going to Vegas, and you’re taking all our chips and you’re putting them all down on black. In the big roulette wheel of publishing, this is our chance to create a legacy. To leave our mark.”

“I need another cup of coffee. I need to talk to Grace about handling my shit while I’m gone. I have to make a dozen phone calls. I’ve had no sleep. I haven’t eaten. And I’m really cranky.”

Lou cocked a smile at me. “Just another day at the office.” When he smiled, which was much rarer than when Helen was alive, he was still that good-looking kid from Doubleday who made a name for himself by working longer and harder and smarter than anyone else. His blue eyes shone.

I winked at him and went to my office. I slipped off my shoes. Lou’s habits had become remarkably enmeshed with my own. I started my personal coffeemaker—I don’t work and play well with others, and I don’t share my pots of coffee. As I heard the sounds of brewing ecstasy, I leaned back in my chair and put my perfectly pedicured feet up on my desk—“Cherry Poppin’ Red” nail polish on my toes. What do you pack to go see a Pulitzer-prize-winner? Do you let him see you before your first morning cup of coffee?

I stared out the window at the Atlantic Ocean that a few hours ago I had described to Michael. Now, everything was different. I was taking all our chips and betting on black.

3

M
ichael took it rather badly.

“What do you
mean
you are jetting off somewhere for a month. A bloody month! We’re in the middle of my novel, Cassie.”

“Michael, as I’ve already explained, I have e-mail. Use it. I am taking my laptop. You can leave messages for me at the office, and I can call you whenever you need me. You have written seven books.
Aces High
sold out of three printings and is still doing well. You can handle this little, teensy-weensy inconvenience.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Michael, we’re already an ocean apart.”

“Precisely why I am so upset with you, Cassie Hayes.”

“I don’t quite see where we’re going with this. You live
in London. I live in Florida. We’ve worked together for five years. What’s another three hundred miles’ difference?”

“Cassie, some author calls Lou in the middle of the night, and you’re running off to live in this man’s house for a month, when you’ve never even agreed to come to London.”

“Well, you’ve never come to Florida.”

“I have. You were in L. A., remember?”

“A poorly timed trip, Michael.”

“Why won’t you even tell me who this chap is?”

“I can’t. I really can’t. He’s very famous but very protective about his privacy. Lou would kill me. I just can’t.”

As we talked, I threw the entire contents of my closet on my bed and started picking through my clothes and placing them in pack/don’t pack but keep/Goodwill piles.

“You could bloody fall in love with this man. A month! A month in the tropics.”

“Michael…” I spoke soothingly, as one might speak to a man about to jump from London Bridge. “I live in the tropics all the time. The warm, balmy breezes are not going to make me take leave of my senses.”

“A month in his
home,
Cassie.”

“Trust me on this one. I am not going to fall in love with him. Michael, this is ludicrous. And if I did fall in love with him, which I won’t because he’s too old for me anyway—it’s not like I’d ever stop working or stop being your editor. I’m not exactly the stay-at-home wifey type. Believe me. So this entire conversation is predicated on a fear that will never happen.”

“I could care less if you stopped being my editor. I want you to come to London.”

“Why? So you can feel like you’re just as important to me as this author? You know you are.”

“No.”

A long silence followed.

“Michael? Are you still there? Or have you been drinking, because you are acting totally off the wall.”

“For such a brilliant girl, Cassie, you can be impossibly thick as a plank.”

More silence.

“Are you so bloody stubborn that you are going to make me say it?”

“Say what?”

“That I am hopelessly besotted with you.”

My breath left me. I sat down on the Goodwill pile, and a belt dug into my ass. I moved over to the keep-but-don’t-pack pile. More silence.

“So I want you to promise me you won’t go doing anything stupid like falling in love with this decrepit old author you’re racing off to see—if he really is as old as you say he is.”

“I promise,” I whispered.

“And I want you to come to London when you return. Even if it’s just for a few days. A weekend.”

“Michael, what time is it there?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“You have been drinking. You’re slurring your speech.”

“Not a drop.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

“But…but we have a perfectly good working relationship. I’ll grant you that we have phone sex that, well, quite frankly, is more of a relationship than I have with anyone else. But why would we ruin this all by meeting?”

“Because you can’t love someone over the phone and over your bloody e-mail. I want to meet you. This has been the longest pre-coital relationship in history.”

“I don’t know about that. I think one of the Brontë sisters corresponded with her future husband for seventeen years or something drawn out and Victorian like that.”

“You’re not a Brontë.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I promise. But you think about it, too. We have the perfect relationship.”

“Long distance?”

“Yes. You know how grumpy I am. How I don’t rise before noon. How I need my coffee and have horrible eating habits. I have a two-bedroom condo and live alone, and I need a weekly housekeeper just to keep the place decent. I laugh too loudly. I drink too much. I play my music at decibels designed to rupture the human eardrum. I really am horrible at relationships. ‘We,’ whatever ‘we’ are, are perfect.”