HEADACHY, CONSTIPATED, AND guilt-ridden: a morning like every other. On the table, a ragged stack of paper: early drafts, comments from beta reader, vacation ideas folder (as if), bills awaiting payment. The cat is napping next to the dead printer. Dead. The writer is a deadbeat parent, at a dead end, brain in deadlock, approaching deadline.
The writer needs a break and browses Facebook. Reheats cold coffee. Picks nose, stares at screen. Cannot go on like this. Nevermore, quoth the raven, but how to quit? According to lawyer, the writer cannot quit: child support, IRS, contract, lawsuit. Over-priced lawyer. How does he justify $285 an hour? Loathes lawyer. Feels used. Loathes publisher, agent, editor, ex-spouse. Each wants a piece but pie plate is empty. Wants to be happy. What would make me happy? Easy. The writer envisions a stone cottage on the coast of Maine, cat dozing by blazing fire, a plate of fried trout, champagne. Weight of obligations has crushed the writer’s spirit and creativity but not will. The writer Googles “arsenic.”
THE FAMOUS LITERARY agent awakens to synchronized ice picks jabbing into her skull. Her mouth is full of old carpet and her guts are tremulous like Jell-O. She screws her eyes shut but the skull stabs and internal quivering don’t stop so she creeps to the bathroom for a BC powder, her favorite hangover treatment. There, top shelf, one envelope left. She drops it into water and sips the fizzy concoction slowly. She gags a little but it stays down.
I will never have another drink as long as I live. She can’t remember the last time she felt this sick; forty-five is too old to chug White Russians. It was a fun boozy evening with her ex-husband, still her best friend. She divorced him after he confessed his penchant for dressing in chiffon, heels, and lipstick—and dating men—but he was still the most fun ever. They drank Pernod over ice at his apartment, then Rob Roys and Cab with dinner; so far so good, all under control, until the drinks at the club where her ex-husband’s new friend Stan was performing. She isn’t a music critic, but she formed an opinion of the new friend anyway—too much vamping and attitude to cover up his off-key crooning. Nonetheless she and her ex-husband applauded enthusiastically, and after his set, Stan joined them. He was an electric jazzy guy, a writer of gay sci fi erotica, and she remembers laughing too much at his stories. Her ex-husband ordered them all White Russians. The drink was delicious, like coffee ice cream. She ordered another one, and perhaps a third. She doesn’t remember the trip back to her apartment. Her ex-husband must have put her in a cab.
The BC powder does its work and she begins to feel better. She makes coffee and takes a mug into the far end of her living room, stopping to feed the tank of betas. They dart to the top as she drops in a pinch of fish food. Snails have taken over the tank and it needs cleaning, but she can’t abide the smell of it. It will wait until tomorrow.
Along the wall is the Pile; a stack of thousands of query letters and manuscripts. Each day’s mail brings fifty letters or so, almost twice as many as she can process on a good day. Which today is not.
Two hours later the famous literary agent has made her way through seventeen envelopes. She has stuffed and licked fifteen SASEs, thirteen with form rejection letters and two with a request for a partial. Two queries didn’t include a SASE—those she throws away.
At noon she gets dressed and leaves the apartment. She has projects to pitch to a senior fiction editor from The Press over lunch. She’ll just have a salad because she still feels queasy. And no alcohol.
The famous literary agent makes it as far as the mail box. As she slips the letters into the slot, she’s gripped by a sharp cramp in her gut. Her legs turn to jelly, the world spins, and she collapses to the sidewalk. A pimply kid in baggy jeans and a Mets ball cap leans over her. “You OK?” She moans, helpless, as he slides her wallet out of her purse and jogs down the street. She’s never had a hangover this bad. I am never going to drink again.
And she never does.
THE SENIOR FICTION editor of The Press removes the lid from the purple box containing Magical Fire, Quincy Quaid’s latest manuscript, its pages emitting the faint bug spray fumes of the author’s perfume. For the past thirteen years it has been the senior fiction editor’s job to turn Quincy’s sludgy prose into readable books. She knows what she’ll find: untethered participles, extraneous talky characters, confusing POV shifts. She scans page one. The word “actually” leaps out at her. She actually, really hates that word. She makes a purple dot in the margin.
Quincy Quaid’s books are virtual heaving seas of emotion: longing, despair, lust, pain, humiliation, joy. Writing-wise, Quincy has slacked off in recent years, each new manuscript a half-ream of clichéd descriptions, flat characters, and unresolved plot threads. Whole passages are copied from earlier books, as though her readers won’t remember. But of course they will; they are eagle-eyed spotters of lazy writing and sloppy editing. Obsessed fans have created Quincy Quaid websites where they post the mistakes and errors the senior fiction editor has overlooked, relatively few for over a hundred books but nonetheless embarrassing.
The senior fiction editor sighs and looks at her watch. Thirty minutes to lunch; enough time to reject a batch of queries, a mindless activity that will give her the illusion that she is, actually, working. She pushes aside the purple box and starts opening envelopes. By noon, three dozen SASEs are stuffed with a photocopied rejection letter, licked, sealed, and dropped into the mail slot. She sets aside the non-fiction queries to give to her boss, the publisher of The Press (and ex-husband of a famous literary agent) and then wanders down the hall to the break room. Some generous soul has sent a gift box of fruit. She selects a pear and bites into it. Crisp, juicy, an almost citrusy flavor. Very good.
Feeling refreshed, the senior fiction editor pours herself a cup of decaf and walks back to her office to tackle Magical Fire. She sits down and picks up the purple felt-tip pen. The first time through she always reads for story, making dots in the margin as errors catch her attention. Dot, dot, dot. Rachelle, an innkeeper, encounters Damon, a sexy brooding ghost who time-transports her to his Wales castle and the year 833. The senior fiction editor scans Chapter 2 several times; something is missing. Rachelle zips back to the ninth century whenever Damon summons her. But why does Damon pick her, out of all the women available to him throughout the span of human history? Oh God, this is going to be a real slog. She feels a little nauseous. Nine more years until retirement, she thinks. Maybe earlier if I cut back, move somewhere cheaper, someplace warm. Lower taxes. She turns on her computer and begins to search real estate prices in Raleigh. Suddenly, saliva fills her mouth and she retches. A godawful cramp seizes her gut and she feels faint and clammy. Quite ill, then even worse, actually.
THE PUBLISHER SLIDES his feet into the pair of red Marabou slip-ons, women’s size fourteen, that he keeps hidden under his desk. He waggles his toes, feeling the feathers brush against his instep. The shoes calm him. They are a source of solace in difficult times, a bit of contentment. He isn’t hung over, exactly, just exhausted; after they left the club last night, and he sent his ex-wife home, he spent the rest of the night trying to appease his new friend Stan, the club performer, who was turning out to be a jealous control freak, threatening suicide if the publisher doesn’t end it with his ex-wife for good. The publisher’s sour love life is a perfect book-end to the seemingly inevitable demise of The Press, sinking like the Titanic punctured by an iceberg of relentlessly bad sales.
Is it time to find a therapist, someone to listen empathetically? A therapist might be able to help him prioritize, give him some action verbs, such as “vanish.” Jumping from a cruise ship might be easy to fake; they hardly ever recover the body, do they? He could buy a balcony room on a ten-day cruise, drink mai tais for a week, and then disappear. Leave a note in case no one notices he’s missing, then hide out in the life boats or under a buffet table; there must be lots of good hiding places on those twelve-story floating cities. Stroll off the ship in Cozumel and never look back.
He gingerly rolls his head from left to right, bothered by a persistent ache in his neck. He tries to focus on the quarterly sales report. The Press’s historical romance titles only broke even; it’s impossible to compete with Harlequin, Random and Penguin in that category. Erotic did better; smutty sells. Quincy Quaid’s revenues were a bit down, he notices, swallowing hard. If it weren’t for her four books a year, The Press would have closed down years ago. Problem is, Quincy’s advances deplete their capital, and where once he could borrow to keep the business running, now the banks act like every day is Sunday. If banks quit loaning money, how do they keep their buildings heated and all those vice-presidents paid? Oh, that’s right—lifeblood-sucking extortionate credit card fees. The Cozumel cruise could go onto his Master Card, hee hee, soak up the last dollar of his credit limit.
Sighing deeply, the publisher speed-dials his ex-wife. He’ll have to meet with her (without telling his new friend Stan) and renegotiate Quincy’s contract. No one answers, so he leaves a message.
He picks up a handful of non-fiction query letters. The Press has a psychology “how-to” imprint, mostly books about codependency, of the “women-who-love-(fill in the blank)” variety. They published a blockbuster five years ago when sex addiction became such a, ahem, hot topic, and since then the publisher has read the best non-fiction queries, looking for the next big book. Alas, none of these is it. He slips a standard rejection into each of the SASEs and seals them.
His stomach growls. He never eats breakfast. It’s a waste of good calories, better used on something tasty, something to lift his mood, like chocolate or smoked salmon. He takes off the slippers and walks down the hall to the break room for some coffee. He sees the pears but the publisher avoids fruit unless it’s baked in a pie. He pours himself a cup of coffee, adds cream and takes a sip; it tastes metallic and he feels a bit shivery all of a sudden. Then dizziness tips his world sideways and clobbers him to the gritty floor. He groans loudly, clutching his chest, feeling his heart pound like an off-balance washer in spin cycle.
Not long after, his worries about Stan’s jealousy and The Press’s finances become, in effect, irrelevant.
THANKS TO THE Internet, within hours the news sweeps over the publishing community like a tsunami: a famous literary agent, a senior fiction editor, and a publisher have died from apparent poisoning. The literary agent’s clients frantically dig out their contracts looking for a death clause (there isn’t one). The editor’s friends blog tearful eulogies recalling their common love of scrap booking and Chihuahuas. The publisher’s death seals the suspicion that the entire industry is under siege from terrorists.
Then the rumor spreads: the three victims ingested arsenic from the glue of a self-addressed stamped envelope. Traces of the poisoned glue have been found on their tongues. Hundreds of fragile agent-author relationships dissolve from mistrust. Paranoid editors view each query like a live grenade. Interns refuse to lick, ever again. The more astute writers run out and buy self-sealing self-addressed stamped envelopes, or SSSASEs, to improve their chances in the slush pile.
NYPD DETECTIVE MIKE McIntyre is assigned to investigate the three homicides. He scans the lab report on the doctored envelopes, which have been returned, “address unknown,” to their three (dead) senders. Their sticky edges were laden with arsenic trioxide.
Mike begins with the apartment of the famous literary agent. He pulls aside the yellow tape and surveys her living room. The first thing he notices is the mountain of unanswered mail. He imagines his own query letter is buried in there somewhere. He wrote a police procedural, a story of gangs, drugs, and corruption á la Joseph Wambaugh. He spent three years writing and revising, then another year fruitlessly looking for an agent before abandoning his dream of early retirement and a beach house in the Outer Banks. He knows he queried the famous literary agent but doesn’t think she responded. He sniffs in disapproval, knowing each letter represents a person who’d reached out to the famous literary agent in vain, begging for a kind word of validation. The mountain of letters represent a pile of broken dreams and broken hearts. A pile of suspects? Did a writer commit this murder?
Mike sifts, reads, and speculates that highly offended writers would come in three flavors: ignored, rejected, and mistreated. He calls for assistance and a uniformed cop shows up; together they go through every scrap of paper in the pile, logging names and addresses.
Next, he sorts through her project files. Mike recognizes the name of her star client, Quincy Quaid, author of over a hundred romance novels, many of them best-sellers. Quaid’s folders fill an entire file drawer, with contracts for foreign rights and movie options and even merchandise deals. Whew, lookee that: a promotions budget that exceeds his detective’s salary. Nice. He shoves the folder back into the cabinet and goes out to pay a visit to the offices of The Press.
“EVERYONE’S BEEN MURDERED, how do you think I feel?” The Press’s only remaining employee—an editorial assistant—wears excessive eyeliner and a silver stud in her slightly inflamed upper lip. A tattoo of a dolphin leaps out of her cleavage.
Mike feels repelled and confused. And old. “Can I get a list of Press authors?”
She leans onto one curvy haunch as she paints her nails a shiny black, probably not in mourning. “Going back how long?”
He shrugs. “Ten years?”
She waves her talons in the air to dry them, then turns to her computer and begins typing, the clicks of her fingernails hitting the keys like corn popping. “My question is, like, will I get a paycheck this week? Cause I have, like, bills. And I haven’t been paid in a month.” The printer spits out three pages, and she hands them to Mike.
“Who would want to cause . . .” (he almost says “like”) “ . . . harm to the Press?”
She pushes silky hair behind her curled-shell-like ears and taps the stud in her lip. It looks painful. “Omigod. It was high drama around here 24-7. New boyfriends, old boyfriends, bill collectors, banks cutting us off, writers wanting their money. Better than a soap opera. But murder? I don’t think so.”
Mike scans the list of Press authors. Three of them are also clients of the famous literary agent.
QUINCY QUAID’S APARTMENT smells like Raid and cat. The source of the latter odor, a yellow kitty with fur as fluffy as a dandelion, drapes itself at Mike’s feet and begins a rumbly purring as he rubs its head. Quincy Quaid is a delicate petite woman with a writhing mass of blonde hair, too much make-up, and a fluttering manner. “You’re a big strapping fellow, aren’t you? My, yes, nothing wussy about you. You may call me Quincy.” She gives his knee a flirtatious squeeze but he senses that her heart isn’t in it; her face is ashen, her eyes bloodshot.
“It’s almost as though your career was a target,” he says.
A tear slides down her cheek, carrying a speck of mascara with it. “I can’t go on. My creative spirit is broken.”
He feels a stab of sympathy; she seems fragile and vulnerable. “That would be a shame. I’ve enjoyed your books.”
“Mike, I’m terrified. I keep thinking they died because of me! Meanwhile, I’m not licking any envelopes!” She half-laughs, half-shudders.
HE TAKES THE subway to the address of the next author, a disheveled man reeking of bourbon, never a good sign at ten a.m. The writer shoos a tuxedo cat off the couch then clears a space by pushing aside an accumulation of unread newspapers, mail, beer cans, and pizza boxes. “Sit here. Want a drink?”
Mike declines. The writer picks up a glass of something that looks like water, but isn’t, and takes a goodly swallow before he says, “I’ll confess to an abiding, deep, permanent hatred for all three of them.”
“I confess I haven’t read your book.”
“You and the rest of the English-speaking world. Does literary scandal sell books? The question wasn’t answered, because The Press pulled back all copies and burned them.”
“A memoir?”
“It was fiction, baby, utter fiction. I’m a great writer, and it was a great story. But I’m a bald dork from Ohio and nobody wanted it. So screw ’em, I rewrote it as memoir, sent it to the dead agent who sold it in an auction to the dead publisher, to be edited by the dead editor. All three well aware it was fiction.”
Mike knows the book’s premise: a married couple, parents of four kids, find out they are siblings. The writer had written it as the story of his parents, a tragic yet vaguely icky tale. “So it wasn’t true? Your parents weren’t brother and sister?”
“You’re sharp, Sherlock. That’s what I said. Fiction. And those three left me nailed to a cross to die for their sins.”
“So you hated them.”
“Makes me a suspect, right?” He holds out trembling hands as if to be cuffed.
“Did you kill them?”
“No. But I’ll shake the hand of the sorry bastard who did it.”
Mike isn’t sure he is telling the truth. “I’ll be in touch,” he says. Should he come back with a search warrant? Somewhere in this sad clutter, would they find traces of arsenic trioxide?
HE PHONES THE third writer on both lists, a child psychologist from Charleston, the author of five books of advice for parents, starting with Baby Your Baby and ending with Talk to Your Teen. She has a breathy sexy voice with an accent marinated in grits, collards, and ’que. “Ah’m devastated. Ah’m readin’ galleys and suddenly the rug’s yanked and bam, Ah’m flat on ma ass with no agent and no publisher.”
Envisioning a pissed-off Daisy Mae in horn-rims, Mike apologizes for the intrusion and asks if she knows of any conflicts involving the victims.
“Absolutely not. We were a team, Mike. Teamwork is what Ah’m preaching in ma new book, Families That Flourish. But now ma team is gone and ma book with it.” She whispers, “Ah cain’t talk about it now, darlin’. Ah have to take ma kitty to the vet.” Mike hears a mournful piercing howl that gives him chills. What is it with writers and cats?
STAN, THE CLUB performer and new friend of the now-dead publisher, isn’t surprised that the detective wants to talk with him. He has mad ideas for who might have murdered his sweetheart and is dying to share them with a professional.
The detective is a bit overweight but in a firm not flabby way, with a nice face, kind of chiseled and Roman. Stan’s tortie cat likes him too; she weaves around his legs.
“The neighbors heard you arguing,” the detective says.
Stan jumps to his feet in horrified astonishment. “We were arguing? Discussing our feelings! That’s what people do who care about each other!” He can’t believe he might be a suspect. “Furthermore, I never even met that editor. Why would I kill someone I didn’t know?”
The detective shrugs his broad shoulders. “Accident, maybe. What were you two arguing about all night?”
Stan almost forgets his loss for a moment, so wrought up by the unfairness of it all. Also, he is sidetracked by the detective’s pecs and quads. Yummy. Too bad the fellow is a cop; Stan could get arrested, he supposes, for the slightest insinuation of a proposition. This dating thing is damned tricky, like traveling a pot-holed rutted highway, a dangerous bumpy journey almost not worth the effort. So when he’d met the publisher (now dead) and they’d hit it off so well (except for the intrusive presence of the publisher’s ex-wife, also now dead), he’d been so relieved, so glad to have someone who’d understand his emotional needs, assuage his fear of abandonment, tolerate his moodiness and outbursts. In return he had complimented the publisher’s gowns and make-up, suggesting in the most gently tactful way styles that flattered, that disguised the publisher’s burly body and stumpy legs. Now the detective is asking him about the deaths, as though he’s Snow White’s stepmom slipping poisoned apple slices into everyone’s lunch box.
“I loved him,” Stan says, “we were like that,” waggling his crossed fingers. “You can’t possibly believe I would do anything violent.”
“Poisoning isn’t violent, actually. It’s indirect, removed,” the dreamy cop says.
“Semantics. I could never murder anyone.” He closes his eyes to shut out the distracting man in a well-cut suit—clothes are so important—and thinks about his friend the publisher, now dead, gone forever. He is alone, again. Tears well up in his eyes and he pinches his nose to stop them.
THE WRITER NOTICES new tremor in hands. Must taper Xanax. One more letter to prepare, difficult with shaking hands. The cat jumps on the counter, almost spills little jar of powder. Writer shrieks, “Get away!” and then feels bad for yelling at the cat. Lick & stick glue is a great invention. The writer feels stressed.
Doorbell rings and the writer opens door to the hot detective and a uniformed cop pointing a gun. Detective doesn’t miss a trick. The writer is afraid that what is to come will be horrible. The writer runs into kitchen, picks up little jar of powder and throws a good bit down throat. Curious how arsenic trioxide is tasteless.
The detective calls for an ambulance, takes writer in his arms and asks why? The writer explains, enjoys the snuggle, for a little while.
THEY WATCH THE ambulance take the body away, and then the uniformed cop begins to cordon off the apartment with yellow tape. “It looked like she was preparing another envelope,” he says.
“For her ex-husband,” Mike says. “She told me she was empty, she had to get off the treadmill of four books a year. But she owed so much money she couldn’t afford to get out of her contracts. Somehow, she thought that murdering her publishing team would end her problems.”
The uniformed cop, who wants to be a homicide detective someday, has been following the case. “What made you suspect Quincy Quaid?”
“The lab found yellow cat hairs on one of the doctored envelopes. I obtained cat hairs from the most likely suspects, and only Quincy’s cat was a match.” Mike reaches down to pat the cat’s thick golden fur.
“One of the writers lived in Charleston, didn’t she? You didn’t go there.”
“I heard her cat yowl and that was enough—it was a Siamese.”
Seriously impressed, the uniformed cop realizes there is more to detecting than wearing a well-cut suit.