Chapter 24

“Are you okay in there?”

“Yes. I mean no. I’ll be out in a minute,” I tell the female voice accompanying the knock on the restaurant bathroom door.

“You were gone so long,” Irving explains as he stands when I return. “I was worried.”

Irving’s taken me to a four star restaurant marked by waiters hovering, wearing white towels over their arms (among other items of clothing). “I took another call,” I say and change the subject to dessert.

The Crème Brule’s a four star dessert, and it’s all I can do to not lick my fingers and poke at the crystallized sugar pieces that like confetti are sprinkled around the gold ring on the dark blue plate. Chamber music plays in the background. I have no intention of telling Irving any of Randolph’s gory details but somehow the music, the fine cuisine, and his cello voice, not to mention his gun-sight steady gaze, act as catalysts for confession and I tell him about Randolph and Jaime, about how in the book I added that Jaime had really paid to go into the museum so readers would like him when in fact he hadn’t. And that was why Miranda refused his proposal.

“Marketing will be enchanted with the details,” Irving says when I finally finish.

“So you can see I can’t marry Jaime, not even if the whole affair is paid for. He wasn’t really offering marriage anyway. He got caught up in the romance of the games and the beauty of Barcelona.” I ignore the repeated proposal he’s sent in his letter.

“Easy to do,” Irving says. “That’s right, you’ve been there.”

“A long time ago but I loved Barcelona, especially the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Imagine designing a cathedral to honor the Holy Family knowing you wouldn’t likely live to see its completion. It was only a quarter finished when he died in 1926. But he had a vision and pursued it despite the critics or his own mortality.”

“It’s still not finished. Not for twenty more years they figure. Is that where you bought your Gaudi-like cat? I bought mine there, too,” I say. “We have something in common.”

“Many things, it seems,” Irving says with that gun-sight gaze.

My heart skips a beat.

Irving waits into the silence then says, “It doesn’t really ring true in your story, Annie, the reason Miranda decides not to marry Jaime.”

I clear my throat. “Doesn’t it?”

“I really want us to find another scene, something with more drama to it, to create the case for Miranda’s final decision, that pivotal event on which the whole story turns. What are the values of Miranda’s life, and what causes her to do the things she does? It lacks … causation that she wouldn’t marry the man simply because he didn’t pay to go into the museum. We need a cause that will make Annie’s decision memorable.”

“Miranda. It’s Miranda’s life. You said Annie.”

“Did I?”

I nod. “Vanity maybe? She fears she’ll disappear inside Jaime’s family, inside Jaime’s country, inside Jaime’s job, and she’ll lose herself.”

“She couldn’t write while in Spain?”

“Miranda teaches preschool,” I remind him. “I’m the writer.”

“Indeed. So she couldn’t work with children in Spain, until they start their family?”

“I wonder if they have any more Crème Brule.” Irving looks toward the waiter, raises his hand, and then asks for another dessert. Irving avoids my eyes and we’re both silent until the dessert appears. The note inside my refrigerator — IT’S NOT IN HERE—passes before my eyes but doesn’t stop me. With enough sugar to barricade my heart, I can hear Irving tell me anything.

Irving says. “So will you go through with it?”

“With what?”

“With the pre-nuptial counseling and the Oprah wedding? It sounds like your agent would be quite disappointed if you didn’t and I know our team will find the publicity too much to resist.”

“Will AP publish the book whether I do or not?” I ask.

“Whether you get married on national television is not the issue,” Irving says. “But we’ll have to come up with something pretty amazing if I’m to convince the editorial team that this book meets AP’s expectations.”

“Even with all the revisions?” I feel my hand shake as I lay down my spoon.

“I’m afraid so.”

“But we’ve worked so hard.”

“Indeed, but the truth is much of the book, though beautifully descriptive, is composed still of what most people skip over. They want to be involved in your story, Annie. They want to see themselves in Miranda’s predicament. You’ve held yourself back from that and thus from authenticity, the very thing you were hoping to convey. I’m not sure we can rediscover that without a fair amount of additional work and time.”

“I’ll put the work in, I will,” I say.

“Looks like there are two deadlines heading your way then.” He folds his napkin. Time’s up. “This book and your agent’s plan for your future.”

“Both twined together,” I say.

“Fact and fiction often are. Take one last crack at that pivotal, life-changing scene. If it’s strong enough with the revision, I’ll go back to the team and see if we can firm the final publication date. That’s all I can promise.”

I almost told him what the pivotal scene should be but I couldn’t. Risking got me into trouble with Stuart; it got me into trouble with Jaime. Some things are just better left unsaid.

“And didn’t you say you had another thought about a title?”

I nod. “What about Spanish Knight,” I say.

Irving smiles. “I like it. I like it a lot.”

I lick the spoon of the Crème Brule and look into eyes that could be someone’s Spanish Knight, indeed.

Irving and I agree to meet first thing in the morning to make final attempts to have him happy about the manuscript. I fear that his decision is written in stone along with my ticket to debtor’s prison. Irving drives me to the annex of the Brown Palace hotel where Miss Sweetheart has arranged a room. He gets my luggage from the trunk. A taste of winter’s in the crisp mountain air.

“Thank you. For dinner, for driving me back.”

“Annie …” he says, his voice low. He clears his throat. “I want —”

“To assure me we can work this out, I know. I appreciate that. But you don’t owe me any miracles.”

“No,” Irving says. “I want, I wasn’t prepared to … it’s with some trepidation that I —”

“—Try to produce a decent book out of nothing? I believe it’s where the phrase ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ comes from. I under —”

“— Appreciate your hesitation about your agent’s idea.”

“You do?”

“Longfellow wrote that fame is like a footprint in the sand of time. It doesn’t last long if it does arrive and how it arrives makes a difference, it seems to me. It takes courage to set a limit, to have a line beyond which you will not go. Some people will do anything for a moment of fame. I’ve often wondered how far I’d violate my principals in order to achieve what I think is satisfaction. That you have a limit is admirable, indeed.”

He leans toward me. For a kiss? I don’t need this complication.

It’s a gentle hug held for a moment longer than expected. Still, it’s a simple period in a long mostly bad sentence of an evening. I drop my red floppy hat I’ve been carrying.

“I’m sorry,” he says as he steps away, both of us bending for the hat. “I had no right to confuse things. You looked so —”

“Pathetic,” I say as he hands me the hat.

“Sad. And genuine,” he adds as he steps away. “Please, forgive my intrusiveness.”

“You were being kind,” I say.

He clears his throat and sounds like an editor again. “See if you create a better reason for Miranda to say no,” he says. “We’ll look at it in the morning. Goodnight, Miss Shaw, Annie. Sleep well.”

The squeak-squeak of my luggage wheels is the only sound to break my walk down novel death row to my room.

“It’s midnight,” Bette yawns into the phone. “I was up anyway,” Misty says.

The conference call feature on my phone actually works!

“Norton’s got a stuffy nose,” Misty continues. “It was time for his medicine. What’s up?”

“This better be good,” Darlien says. “I got an early shift.” She doesn’t sneeze.

“Are you on, Kari?” I hear an “hmmm” before I lay out the scenario. “It’s really awful,” I tell them. “First I thought, no, no! Then I was angry and then I tried to bargain and I really wanted to just cry.”

“Sounds like the stages of grief,” Kari says.

“Am I through them all?”

“Not until you reach acceptance,” she says. “And then the grief can start again.”

“Maybe I’m still back on bargaining. If I tell Randolph no, he’ll probably drop me as a client. If I tell him yes, I’ll be miserable having done something I don’t believe in, not to mention hurting Jaime, letting him come all this way thinking I’m going to marry him.”

“Won’t the producers interview you first anyway?” Bette asks. “They’ll never go along with it if they don’t think you’re really in love.”

“That’s what Dr. Phil is supposed to help us figure out, work out the love part, but I’m sure Randolph hasn’t told them that Jaime wants to marry or that I don’t.”

“Take that out of your nose right now!”

“What?” We say in unison.

“I was talking to Norton,” Misty says. “We planted beans in a bucket today and he tried to stuff one into his nose. Speaking of substances in the wrong places, I’m not going to send out any more cat nip mice to radio and television stations.”

“Why not?” Darlien asks.

“Because I got a call from a radio station saying they weren’t sure what was in them, that the filling looked suspicious and they were going to call Homeland Security.”

Oh for heaven’s sake!

“Maybe Mavis can do follow up calls to set up interviews and explain,” I say.

“We’d all come to California to see you on Dr. Phil.” Darlien gets us back on track and I’m grateful. I think.

“Randolph sent a fax to my hotel with the arrangements so far. They’ll pre-interview in Chicago with Dr. Phil in LA, something preliminary, using Skype I suspect. Maybe it’ll all end right there and I won’t have to go through with anything more.”

“What does your editor think of all this?” Darlien asks.

“He can’t really pass up a possible Oprah link to the book; his team would bean him if they ever found out he discouraged an opportunity like that. But I think he doesn’t want me to do it because … it’s not really me.”

“He knows you that well?” Bette asks.

“He wants me to write a scene with a better reason for why Miranda didn’t marry Jaime. He thinks Jaime’s not paying to go into that carriage museum isn’t enough.”

“What do you want?” Kari asks. “That’s what really matters.”

I know what my editor wants; my agent; Jaime; my mom. I even know what my friends want for themselves and for me: to be happy. But what do I want? I think of the Proverb, the one I really love that reads: Desire realized is sweet to the soul. I don’t know what will make me have that sweetness. I tell them that and they tell me that like good friends we’ll stick together and that we should all pray about it, too. And we do.

I sit for the next few hours like a fat cat with my back against the headboard, legs straight out and David Letterman’s tiny television face lying in between my toes. I barely hear his top ten and think I can give him numbers: Ten Things to Keep a Book from Becoming a Bestseller. Number Ten: Write a Book Composed of Parts People Skip Over. Number Nine: Write a Book Based on Your Life and Fudge the Ending. Number Eight: Let Your Editor Hug You Good-Night to Complicate the Plot.

I can go on? I’m a writer after all? Maybe I can get work writing for Letterman? Miss Sweetheart’s uplift endings are contagious.

I’m letting my subconscious work on the final scene while I flip to an old movie. I anesthetize myself with its mindless car chases and explosions. My life is exploding too. I’m not going to get the acceptance or the advance. I’ll probably have to pay back what I’ve already gotten if the book is rejected. The book won’t get published. I have no visible means of support. If I do what Randolph wants, I’ll probably be sued for deception or worse, ruin the life of a nice Taco True employee or a policeman from Spain and never forgive myself for the deception. And if Oprah ever found out … well, I’ve seen her be upset with an author who claimed truth for fiction (I can’t remember his name) but it wasn’t pretty.

Thanksgiving Day commercials already pepper the airwaves. Soon it’ll be Christmas and then the end of the year and the end of my career despite all the work of the team, all of the effort of Irving and Randolph, my friends and even my mother.

I wish Ho-Bee sat on my lap. I miss hearing John’s purr of contentment.

The car chase in the movie rages on. Despite my numbed state, I notice a car parked on a certain corner that the protagonist frequents. The car is covered with an advertisement for an insurance firm. Not only a logo on the door, but all around the car, the roof, the sides, the hood and trunk, all covered like a biker with tattoos.

Visual. That’s what people notice. Visual things. I sit up. I need one visual snapshot, one visual connection that can go viral on You Tube and if Oprah was in it too, my book would become a bestseller for sure. Visual! Of course! It’s how children’s books invite adult readers — all those lovely illustrations, whether flotsam or fields. Then later, the text weaves its way into a reader’s heart and children create their own pictures in their imagination. Words are the wings of imagination, not the wings of destiny. But first, the pictures have to capture.

It’s all about getting attention. That’s what I have to do before Randolph makes any more U-turns in my life. If I can get Oprah interested in the actual book, we won’t need the fake relationship. It’s about the book, not me, not my name!

Authenticity, that’s what Miranda wanted. It’s what I want too, to be real and to feel as though the me I am is the me I’m presenting to the world in my stories and in my life.

I turn off the television. A plan forms on the wings of imagination and it inspires my revision of that final scene—let the Spirit help me do what I know how to do.

I hand Irving the new final ending the next morning in his office. I’m wearing a sapphire blue sweater and my Smith Travel pants, the one’s I’d worn on the Barcelona trip so I’m feeling connected to my story. My lacy black bra is on me and thus not hanging out of my carry-on bag. While people walk by the tall glass windows looking out onto the hallway, Irving reads the manuscript changes. I chew on the sides of my nails; poke my toes into the plush carpet.

He looks up at me at last. “It smelleth of the midnight oil.”

“You think it stinks?”

“No, no! It gives the impression of hard work and effort. It’s something an old English professor of mine used to say.” I have worked half the night.

“Indeed. It’s a surprise ending but one that makes sense, is congruent and consistent with the characters. I think we might have a chance with this. Especially if your agent’s efforts bear fruit as well.”

“About Randolph’s plan … I have another idea that came to me last night,” I tell him. “If it works, I won’t have to go through with this Dr. Phil-Oprah-wedding-thing that really has nothing to do with the book or even my life. It really doesn’t.”

“Based on this new ending, I’m not so certain of that,” Irving says.

His eyes are like lasers right into my soul.

I swallow. “Could you give me until after Thanksgiving to work out my other promotional plan? Maybe just before Christmas?” I’m back to the bargaining stage of grief. “Marketing and publicity will be happy with it, honestly they will. I’ll even rework some of the other scenes and put a little bite into them. No sex, mind you, but some bite,” I tell him.

“Ardor Publishing does like passion,” Irving says. “Readers need a plot driven by desire. Passion and betrayal. Acceptance and forgiveness. The emotions of the human heart struggling against itself.

“On more than the cover you mean.”

He laughs. “I’ll work at that end, to get the cover to be more reflective of your story, and see if they’ll hold off with their final decision until after Thanksgiving. Make it an early Christmas present if I can.”

“If we can get the cover a little more contemporary and the title a bit more reflective of my book, with these changes, we’ll be back on schedule, won’t we?”

“There’s a good chance of it. But Annie, if I’m not able to push this …”

“I’ll buy it back.” The words pop out but it feels right. I have one more option to rescue Miranda even if these plans don’t work out. I can publish it myself. It doesn’t all depend on Ardor Publishing.

“Indeed. That’s a major commitment,” Irving says. “It honors the story.”

Once one makes a true commitment to something, then Providence moves. That’s what the Himalayan adventurer, Murray, wrote, and Irving believes, too. I’ll commit and the wings of destiny—or my friends’ hopes and prayers—will carry me through.

From: Website Contact Form
To: Annie Shaw
Name: John Wilson
oldreader@librarynet.net

I have to say I’m quite surprised that I found your work, Miss Shaw. I was in my library looking for an old bestseller from 1948 titled The Young Lions. It’s my goal in my retirement to read every New York Times Bestseller ever written or at least since they began keeping record. The Young Lions was checked out but there your book was next to where his titles would have been so I picked it up. Location, location, location, as they say. I likely would never have selected a book by a young woman writing of romance but I have to say the book was quite charming and I intend to buy a copy for my granddaughter so I hope it is still in print. She’s a hopeless romantic and I do like to nourish that in an adolescent reader. Teenagers have such a hard time as it is with all their ups and downs in life that if they can find stories that celebrate family and faith, then truly, it is a gift given to help them survive the travails of life. Have you considered writing for young adults? They really do need good reading material. Anyway, The Young Lions was written by Irwin Shaw. Is he a relative of yours? If so, I’d certainly tout that on the back of my books if I were you. It would surely help you become a bestseller. Not that I know about such things you understand. I’m a retired lawyer. My wife died last year and my only son and his family live hundreds of miles from me. Now that I have more time for them they’re off onto their own adventures so I have lots of time to read. Thank you for giving me new authors to look for and new stories to nurture my days.

Sincerely, John Wilson, Esquire