A writer and agent have a stormy meeting.
My agent peers at me across the table, her triple-shot nonfat latte poised for a sip. Her blue-diamond colored eyes are harder than usual and a lock of gray-streaked blond hair hangs down in front of her ear, ready to be pushed back at any moment. Some might call letting that hair fall down and pushing it back every few minutes a nervous tic. But I know better. Her confidence, like her Pilates-hard body, is impenetrable. Not even the three-inch red stilettos she has on under the table could hack through it. That confidence is one of the things I love about her. (And one of the things I hate about her.)
Another thing I love about her is that she’s all business, not one for small talk. Like, when I sat down half a minute ago, a Bloody Mary already waiting for me on the table, she didn’t bother making a passing comment about the mega-storm barreling toward us.
“Arnold Malone called me,” she says after her latte sip. “He’s planning to flame you online and wanted me to talk him down. You hit on his wife, Becky, at the Seven Rivers Book Gala last night?”
I stir my drink with its celery stick and look out the window at the whitecaps churning on the ocean. “Carline said it was more like heavy flirting, but I didn’t really hit on her.”
“Carline had to tell you? You got blackout drunk again?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“And she didn’t mind you doing that?”
“Of course she minded,” I snap, taking a long gulp of the spicy elixir in my hand. And then another, waiting for it to soothe my pounding head. “She always minds.”
Her eyes burn into me. “You’re going to lose her, you know.”
“What are you,” I say loudly enough to draw looks from neighboring tables, “my agent or my shrink?”
With an angry sweep of her hand, she pushes her hair back behind her ear, her eyes even harder than when I’d sat down. “You’re going to lose me, too, you know. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Just so you know.”
My face scrunches up making my head hurt even more. “Just so you know,” I force out, “I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, too.”
We look at each other for a couple of minutes, her sipping her coffee, me gulping my drink, the wind howling outside. I raise my empty glass for the waitress to see. She nods and heads toward the bar.
“It’s awfully hot in here,” I say as I stand up to take off the San Francisco 49ers hoodie I have on, my favorite one.
“Still going to the gym, I see,” she says, probably trying to flatter me back onto solid ground.
“Yeah. I have to for Carline. Her boyfriend’s not going to be a puny wimp, she says.”
“Well, for whatever it’s worth, it’s still working.” She twists her hair for a few seconds before pushing it back this time. “So, can we start over?”
I run my hand through my own hair that I keep cut short, also for Carline. “I don’t know, can we?”
“Let’s try. At least until last night, Arnold loved Boom Boom Buttercup. Even better than your first two books, he said, which is very high praise. He loves the way you juxtapose and at the same time interweave the soft and the hard, the masculine and the feminine, the pleasure and the pain of it all.”
“Yeah, thanks. Carline said that’s why he was talking to me.”
“He was talking about publishing it, with a big advance for you. If–”
The waitress lays a coaster sporting a red rooster in front of me and sets my drink on it.
“Thank you,” I say, but just look at the drink instead of picking it up right away. “If what?”
“If you stop being such a dick all the time. He said that even before you hit on his wife. And if you step up your online presence. You need to sell yourself better, he said.”
“I might be able to do the first of those. But you know I can’t do the second.”
“No. I know you can do the second. You just won’t.”
I stir my new drink and take a healthy gulp. “I don’t want to keep going around and around with you about this. You know I think social media is a big steaming pile of profit-grabbing, information-stealing, brain-washing bullshit.”
“Social media may be all of that. But writers need it to be successful these days.”
“I’m already a successful writer.”
“No, you’re already a brilliant writer. Hands down the best I’ve ever worked with. But to be a successful writer, you need readers.”
“I sold over a thousand books last month.”
She looks at me with a little squint, as though trying to judge how big a puddle of gasoline she’ll be throwing a match onto if she keeps talking. “That thousand books should have been fifty thousand.”
“I–” I say too loudly, but stop myself. I take a slug of my drink and look out the window at the sheets of rain pummeling us almost sideways. “Salinger didn’t need to be on social media.”
She takes another sip of her latte and smiles, a genuine smile, not a mocking or condescending one. “Times are different now.”
“Are they? So, what if I’m happy with my thousand books a month?”
She pushes her hair back. “Then you don’t need me. What would Carline say about that?”
“About the same thing you just said except backwards. If I’m not going to bust my ass to get famous in this crazy business, then she doesn’t need me.”
“You should think really hard about it, then. You might find another me. Maybe. But you’ll never find another her. I can guarantee you that much.”
“I’m sure you’re right. She’s pretty much perfect in every way. Maybe too perfect.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s very demanding. Being with her is exhausting. Enough to drive a guy to drink.” I force a smile and raise my glass toward her to toast my little joke.
She isn’t smiling; the opposite, in fact. “Why do you stay with her, then?”
“You said it yourself. I’ll never find another woman like her. Especially a guy like me.”
She shakes her head at me. “She probably sees what I see in you, you’re brilliant.”
I shake my head back at her but don’t say anything.
Her frown gets deeper and firmer. “Am I too demanding? Is that why we …?”
She trails off and a pain shoots through my head, adding to the nausea I’m already feeling. I fight to compose myself, weighing whether to make a run for the men’s room or not. “If a genius falls in the forest with no one around, does he make a sound?” I finally ask, because I’ve been wondering about that lately.
“Okay, change the subject. I’ll bite. Are you the genius?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I don’t know either. What I do know, though, is that, if you are the genius and you do fall in the forest with no one around, it will be very sad.”
She lifts her hand off the table. “Wait!” I say and reach across the table. She moves to swat my hand away, but doesn’t, letting me finish pushing her hair back behind her ear for her.
“Arnold’s wife last night wasn’t enough for a little while?” she says with a flush of her cheeks I’ve rarely seen.
“I wasn’t hitting on you, or even flirting. I wanted to do that for you just once more. To let you know I still care about you.”
Her cheeks burn deeper red. “Unexpected. But sweet in a way, I guess. Why did you say ‘just once more?’ Are you firing me?”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head slightly because I’m not sure. The rain outside is slowing and falling more downward than sideways now. Finally, I say quietly, “Yes, I think I am.”
“But I…” she says and stops, masking the pain on her face. But I know it’s there because I feel it too. She takes the last sip of her latte and stands up. “I wish you the best, then. And I hope you’re able to find and slay the demons clearly tormenting you.” She turns and walks away, her three-inch stilettos click-clicking smartly on the black-and-white tile floor.
“Thanks,” I whisper when she’s out of earshot. “I think I may have just slain my first one.” I push my Bloody Mary away, feeling I don’t need it quite as much now, and stand up to go find and slay my second one: Carline.
Story copyright © 2023 by David W. Palmer
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