“It would have proved something.”
“It would have proved you have too much time on your hands.”
“Spike—”
“Please don’t talk to me anymore, Melanie Joan.”
Melanie Joan put her head down. She looked hurt.
I heard the doorbell ring, Tony outside saying, “It’s me.”
I opened the door. Tony was wearing his Zegna suit, with a neon-greenA Girl and Not a GodT-shirt that he’d no doubt taken from Melanie Joan’s suitcase. He looked rumpled. Exhausted. There were purplish circles under his eyes.
“Melanie Joan, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Tony said.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Melanie Joan said.
Tony pressed on. “You’re out. Scepter is dropping you. Greg Scepter wants no more books from you. No memoir. No fiction. Nothing.”
Melanie Joan’s eyes widened. “But I have two books left on my contract,” she said.
“Greg claims you breached it with your, uh, recent behavior,” Tony said.
Melanie Joan’s eyes widened even more. “What part of the contract did I breach?”
“Morality clause,” Tony said.
“You can’t be serious,” Melanie Joan said.
“Unfortunately, I am,” Tony said. “Scepter claims your public statements have been indecent, not to mention riddled with swear words. He says it’s had a direct and obvious impact not only on your sales, but on Scepter Books as a whole.”
Melanie Joan gaped at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means you have to pay back your advances on the memoir and the next two novels. It means he wants nothing more to do with you.” Tony said it gently, soothingly. I could tell how much it hurt him to tell her this. I knew it was a blow to Tony, professionally and personally. But he’d survive. I wasn’t so sure about Melanie Joan. The hardest part of this whole ordeal was watching her learn that the one thing in life she could rely on—her writing career—had been yanked out from under her and burned to a crisp.
Who knew that one crappy review could cause so muchdestruction—and that it could happen in less than forty-eight hours? I supposed that was just the way things worked these days. Quickly and brutally. No wonder I hated the Internet so much.
“I’m sorry,” Tony told Melanie Joan. “I spent a long time on the phone with Greg. I offered to take a pay cut, all kinds of concessions. I even told him you’d go to rehab. But he’s not changing his mind.”
“You told Greg I’d go to rehab?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I need to go to rehab?”
“If it means they’ll publish you again? Yes. Yes, I do.”
Melanie Joan folded her arms on the table. She rested her head on them, like a child forced into naptime. “I’m done,” she said quietly. “Everything I’ve worked for. My dreams. It’s all over with.”
Spike watched her. His features softened. “Screw it,” he said. “You’re a famous author. There are plenty of other publishers out there.”
“Not many, actually,” Tony said. “There are maybe three that could pay Melanie Joan in the manner she’s accustomed to. And in light of what’s happened, I don’t expect my phone to be ringing off the hook.”
Melanie Joan lifted her head. “I guess I’ll just lay low for a while.” She sounded strange, defeated. Not like herself at all. It could have been tiredness, but it seemed more permanent than that. “Maybe Ishouldgo to rehab.”
“People have short attention spans, Melanie Joan,” I said. “A few weeks from now, nobody will remember any of this.”
Tony shook his head. “They won’t remember specifics,” he said. “But they will remember that Melanie Joan was canceled. And they’ll probably think it was for something worse than what actually transpired.”
