“So. When one of my writers blew her schedule, I had a hole to fill. It won’t make anything better, but the publicity and marketing campaigns have been very successful. Foreign rights sold in twenty countries so far, and they’ve been literary marvels since publication in March, colossal best sellers now in their fourth month.”
From thousands of miles away, Joan hears Iger release her breath, through lips in her signature red no matter the late hour. She can picture Iger standing at her enormous mirrored desk, up on a high floor in her Manhattan office, a warrior marshaling the written dreams of others.
“Neil Silver, Daniel’s agent, or rather former agent, is humiliated by all of this. He’s doing all he can to be helpful. Forwarded second interview requests from Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, O, and NPR. Daniel refused their requests for interviews because they wanted to meet with him personally. It doesn’t make sense now to put the books back together, but at some distant time, we can reveal you as the writer. If that’s what we want to do. Or if sales flag. We don’t have to make a decision now.”
“Iger,” Joan says. To stop her old friend—now her publisher—from doing what Iger does best, spinning words until she achieves her desired result.
“Iger, there can’t be any interviews. I can’t pretend to be J. D. Henry. I don’t want to pretend to be J. D. Henry. I don’t want to lie. Daniel’s lie is what caused all of this. And I’m not ready to consider public ridicule and shame for him. Or for me.”
“I get it. That’s fine. We don’t have to do anything now. Because the books are selling. I promise you, I’ll make this right. I’ve got calls with your lawyers in the morning about everything that needs to be done. Rescinding the old contract between J. D. Henry and Annabelle Iger Books, drafting a new contract between you and AIB. I understand that your lawyer here in New York will claw back from Daniel the AIB advances he pocketed, and the West Coast lawyer is assuming the reins from Neil Silver for negotiating the film options.”
There is too much information for Joan to process.
“Iger,” Joan says. “I haven’t hired any lawyers.”
“You have. Or rather Martin has for you. He took care of all that while you were flying. Listen, try to let this all go if you can. We’re making it right on this end. I’ll call you again after I talk to them. How is India, by the way?”
*
It’s her first full day in Dharamshala, and if Iger had said it was midnight in New York when she called, it’s now one in the morning there, and in Rhome. She punches in their home number.
“I’m here and I’m safe, but I don’t want lawyers. I wrote to Iger from the airport, and I just got off the phone with her,” she says, when Martin picks up.
“You have to have lawyers, Joan. People to look out for your rights. Right now, both the agent and Iger are in precarious positions. You could sue the agent. You could sue Iger, the publishing house, her imprint, and you could sue Daniel. She has to do everything she can, and so does the agent, but you have to do the same thing. I’ve gotten everything going. I called our lawyer, who gave me the name of a New York lawyer, someone top in publishing, and she’ll handle those aspects. I gave her your account details, told her to execute whatever legal steps she needed to take against Daniel. I know she’s already contacted him, but I don’t know anything more than that. And she gave me the name of a movie lawyer in Los Angeles, and that lawyer is up to speed. I know it’s not everything you want, your name on the books, but at least you’ll benefit as you should. Both of them are going to call you, not today, I guess, or not my today. It’s nearly one thirty here. What time is it there?”
“Eleven. In the morning. I’m nine and a half hours ahead of you.”
“Listen, try to enjoy being there if you can. I hope the weather’s nice. I miss you already.”
“It is nice weather,” Joan says, crawling out of bed, pulling open the sheer curtains, confirming the truth of what she has just said.
“Martin—”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
*
So Daniel knows that she knows. She wonders when she will hear from him, if he will send careful words arranged in a feeble defense, provide verbal reparation, a chest-beating apology, drown himself in a shower of mea culpas.
She remembers Kartar said breakfast would be outside of her door early each morning, and there is the tray with a covered bowl, a covered cup, a pale pink flower in a purple vase. She sets the tray down on the pine desk. The cooked lentils and barley tea are both cold, but the tray has been sitting out there for hours. She steps onto the balcony, feels the sun on her face, glad the two lawyers Martin hired for her are women. Men have messed up her life and now it’s time for the women, herself included, to fix it.
Her reflection in the bathroom mirror is a shock. There is a leonine, savage cast to her eyes, something anarchic even, and inside, a ferocious desire to maul something, or someone, that fired up at Dulles the moment she sent the email to Iger, and only intensified during all the airborne miles, while riding the trains that brought her to this place.
She will let the lawyers Martin hired fight for her. She will let them go as far as they can. She will not be bested, even by a once-favored son. Whether she will expose Daniel as a filial thief and plagiarist is a much larger decision she is not yet prepared to make.
The severity of her expression does not alter while she brushes her teeth, washes her face, plaits her long black curls into a thick braid, thinking that if Daniel voluntarily returns the money, the bank account she opened when she was twenty-one will soon receive a mammoth deposit. Iger told her the amount of the book advance, seven figures for both. She tries to smile at herself in the mirror, to pretend she is part of the living world. Then she gives up and puts on lipstick, blushes her pale cheeks.
At the closet, she finds a fresh pair of linen pants, another loose top, the golden sandals gleaming with crystals she swore she would never wear until she made it to India. Slipping her feet into them, she thinks: Now I am here.
She is starving, the first vigorous hunger she has felt since she was at the limestone island, staring down at Daniel’s Lewis Carroll quotes, those preposterous, infantile challenges. She retrieves a wad of rupees from her wallet, tucks them into her pocket along with her room key.
The pine suite door closes solidly behind her. Only now does Joan notice the expansive width of the hallway, the bright natural light streaming through large windows at either end, making the gold, copper, platinum, and clear crystals of her sandals pop and gleam. The stone floor is smooth under her soles. She has not been outside of the hotel since Natwar delivered her here yesterday afternoon. She is eager to feel Dharamshala air on her skin, the sustaining warmth of its sun, to see the wildflowers she saw along the dirt road when Natwar was biking so hard. She wants the sharp tang of coffee on her tongue, she wants something delicious to eat.