“Don’t bother. You won’t learn anything from it. You’re a kiss-ass, Alex, that’s the only reason she gave you the grades. You make me sick.”
“Maybe you should read Green’s last chapter again. It might help you finish your book. See ya.” She waved and darted up the stairs, as he stood staring after her. No one had ever treated him like that before, and surely no girl. He had no idea what she meant about his reading the last chapter again. He wondered if she had read the book. It sounded as though she had, which startled him. Otherwise, how would she know about the last chapter, where a struggling young writer steals someone else’s book, and murders him for it?
She told Bert about the encounter with Scott the next time they had lunch, since they weren’t working on anything for the moment. She was taking a break after finishing the last book. The reviews of her first book had been excellent, and the publisher said that sales for the first month had been better than expected. She was waiting to hear from Rose, who had sent Darkness and Hear No Evil to her publisher to make a two-book deal for her.
“Beware of writers, my friend,” Bert said to her as they finished lunch. “They’re a jealous lot, particularly men. They usually don’t want women stealing their thunder or their turf. You’re a hell of a woman and a hell of a writer. There are going to be a lot of angry men in your life,” he predicted. At least she had seen this one coming and had caught on to him quickly, before he did any real damage to her soul or her heart.
“I hope you’re wrong about that,” she said quietly, remembering what her father had said too. It struck her as sad suddenly that she had to publish her books pretending to be a man. Even her publisher didn’t know the truth, only her closest friends and her agent.
“I don’t think I am,” Bert said wisely. “You’re too good a writer for most men to be able to tolerate it, not another writer anyway. Go out with a doctor or lawyer, or a policeman. Stay away from other writers, Alex, they’ll punish you every time.”
“I don’t want that to be true,” she said sadly.
“But it is, my dear,” he said as he poured himself another glass of wine. They both knew he drank too much, but it never affected his work. “If you go out with writers, and worse, if you fall in love with them, they’ll try to steal your magic. But what you have to remember, always, is that they can’t. It’s your magic and it only works for you, on command.”
She thought about it after he said it, and all the way back to the dorm. That’s what Scott had tried to do, steal her magic, and maybe Bert was right. It couldn’t be stolen or borrowed, or tarnished, or used by someone else. It only worked for her. The magic was hers. The others had to find their own.
Chapter 10
Two things happened to Alex in the summer before her senior year at Boston College. Rose Porter sold her second and third books to the same publisher for twice the money for each book as Alex got for the first one. Alex was thrilled with the deal. The reviews on her first book had been excellent, sales better than projected, and the publisher was rushing to publish Darkness, her second book, in time for Christmas that year. And the third one, Hear No Evil, would be published the following summer. Rose hadn’t offered them her recently finished fourth book, since Alex and Bert wanted to polish it a little more. And Rose wanted to see how the next one did. If it was as successful as she hoped, she was going to ask for a lot more money on the next contract.
And the second thing that happened that summer was that totally by accident, through the creative writing professor who had raised her grade, she got a summer job in New York working for a major publisher for two months.
The professor called her and asked if she’d be interested, and Alex wanted the job. It was a different publisher than her own, and she wanted to learn more about the business. She discussed it with Mother MaryMeg that night, who encouraged her to do it, and she accepted the next day. It was an internship so the pay was minimal, but she had the money from her book deal, and still more than enough of what her father had left her, and she found a summer sublet in the East Village, a walk-up, to share with four other girls, and it was dirt cheap. It was going to be an exciting summer for her. She was between books at the moment, so she didn’t feel guilty taking the time away from her writing. Bert growled about it, and thought she should work on the outline for the next book, but finally agreed that it was a good idea, and it would be fun for her.
She left for New York on June 28 to settle into the apartment, and on July 1, she appeared at Weldon and Small in a navy blue suit she had bought for work, and high heels, with her straight dark hair pulled back, and she felt very grown up. She was assigned to work for Penelope Robertson, who was the senior editor of their very lucrative romance department. She had wild curly red hair, swore like a sailor, drank coffee all day, which Alex had to bring her at a dead run, and smoked in her office although it was forbidden. The tension around her was palpable, everything was an emergency and a crisis, and Alex felt like she was working in a war zone, but she loved it. Her boss had a good sense of humor and treated Alex like she knew what she was doing, which she didn’t. She didn’t have a clue, but it made her feel competent and important that her boss trusted her to figure things out and threw her into the deep end of the pool, instead of making her just pour her coffee. And there was a flock of other interns there that summer, from a variety of schools all over the country. Alex liked her roommates, three of whom were students at NYU, and one, Pascale, was an exchange student from Paris. They all had summer jobs, and were in and out with their various friends during the evening.
Alex loved being in New York and learning more about publishing, and a completely different kind of book than she wrote. She had lunch with Rose Porter to talk about her recent book sale and the fan base she was building with her first book and its terrific reviews.
“You know, sooner or later, your publisher is going to want to meet you, Alex. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to keep them in the dark about you forever. I want to take you to the next level with your next contract, and for bigger money, they’re going to want to see who they’re buying. They tried to insist this time, and I wouldn’t let them. But I doubt we can refuse again,” Rose warned her. And Alex liked her editor, Amanda Smith, a lot, via email. Rose had taken her to lunch at Le Bernardin, which made Alex feel very important. It was one of the best restaurants in New York.
“Why do they have to see me? They have the books, they don’t need to see me too.” She was living in a bubble, and she liked it.