CHAPTER 3
My agent’s office was just as intimidating as she was. Large brown leather couches were scattered across her dark-wood floored waiting room. They were the kind of couches that, if you had a sweaty ass, you would stick to. The kind that required you to peel yourself off with a spatula. I lowered myself on to the couch as one of her little minion assistants—they always looked terrified—rushed up to me with a toothy grin.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” she asked in a small, fast voice. She smiled quickly and then moved her head from side to side, like a little meerkat might do.
“No, thanks.” I didn’t think coffee was a good idea right now; it might be like adding petrol to a fire, since my heart was already racing like a pack of greyhounds. In fact, it felt like my heart might burst through my chest at any moment and splatter itself across her shiny wooden floor. I smiled nervously as I imagined one of her assistants having to mop up the mess. My agent would ask, “What the fuck happened here?” (she swore a lot) and her speedy meerkat assistant would reply that one of their former so-called authors, “a nobody, really,” had her heart explode out of her chest.
I folded my arms across it and attempted a long, meditative in-breath. But trying to rein my emotions in was like trying to wrangle a wild, galloping horse. It was just too hard to control the nervous panic that was rushing through me, flushing and prickling my skin, dropping cold marbles into the pit of my stomach and shaking them around. Some doomsday soundtrack started playing in my head. The kind that starts as everybody drops their grocery bags in the street and stares up at the sky as the massive mothership moves in and blocks the sun . . . Duh, duh, duuuhhhh.Do you hear that?
“Where the fuck is she?” I heard the scream. It wasn’t subtle. And I knew the “she” she was referring to was me. The meerkat who’d offered me the coffee raced across the room nervously and stuck her head around the door.
“She’s here,” she whispered sweetly. So sweetly it was almost bitter, like sucking on a packet of artificial sweetener.
“Send her the hell in.”
I stood up and started walking towards her office. Slowly. The soles of my feet felt like they were coated in sticky gum and it was hard to move. I needed a distraction and I reached for the beads on my handbag. But it wasn’t there. Shit, I felt so exposed right now. I needed my bag like a child needed its favorite blanky. I slid half my foot over the threshold of her door and paused. I couldn’t do this, so I lurked in the doorway like a creepy stalker for a few seconds, until . . .
“I can fucking see you!” Her loud voice came at me like tossed daggers. “Get in here.”
And so I did. I walked in and there she was. Sitting behind her huge wooden desk, leaning back in her old leather chair that looked like it had once inhabited the halls of government. Thick smoke hung in the air as she pulled on a strong Camel cigarette . . . Okay, so that last part was a lie. She wasn’t smoking. But she should have been, because she was the kind of woman who looked like she gave zero fucks. The kind of woman who would use your rotting corpse as a lifeboat, who drunk petrol shots from a poisoned chalice and ate men alive after sex . . .That’s if she even had sex.
“So, tell me,” she said in her gruff, raspy voice. “Has someone figured out a way to halt and reverse global warming?” She leaned forward in her chair; it creaked loudly.
“Sorry, what?” I asked nervously.
“I don’t know, or has someone discovered all the secrets to the universe?”
I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”
She stood up; another long, loud creak. I wondered if it was intentional. Did her chair have an “intimidating creak” setting?
“I’m asking if a miracle has suddenly occurred and you have some actual words on a page that can be made into this thing commonly referred to as a ‘book.’ ” She gestured air quotes. It was so slimy and patronizing, and, had I been a different person, one with a much firmer backbone, I might have picked up that pompouslook-at-me-I-hunttaxidermy pheasant that she had on her desk and stuffed it down her throat, or at least plucked its tail feathers out and poked her with the hard parts.
“I mean, to be honest, it doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve been down this road before with other authors,” she said, all sharp-tongued.
“What road?” I asked.
She sighed. “It’s more common than you think.”
“What is?”
“The ‘one-hit wonder.’ The author who’s only good for one book. I suspected it, though; you didn’t strike me as someone who had a lot of stories in you. I guess it’s par for the course, really.”
“I beg your pardon?” My jaw almost hit the floor. She was confirming my worst fear out loud:my first book had been an accident and I didn’t have another one in me.
“I guess not everyone can be a Steve King—that reminds me . . . Natasha!” she called out loudly to one of her assistants and they came skidding in. “Please call Steve’s agent and remind her of our late luncheon tomorrow.” Natasha nodded and then skidded out the door again. Daphne turned back to me. “Now, Steve—he has a lot of stories in his head.”
“I . . . I . . . have a lot of stories in my head, too,” I stuttered defensively. It didn’t sound very convincing though.
She chuckled. It was very witch-around-a-caldron-y. “It doesn’t seem like it.” She was as acerbic as a sulphuric-acid-soaked lemon.
“I do. I have a lot of stories and I amnota one-hit wonder. I have more to tell, more to say, more to . . .” I stopped talking when she rolled her eyes. This gesture was like a hot knife into my buttery gut. Her disbelief in me was evident and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. Well, I was going to prove her wrong, I was going to . . . to . . .
And then her chuckle turned into a laugh.
“What?” I asked, stepping backwards as if she was about to thrust a toad at me and curse me for all eternity.
She shook her head. “I’m just having déjà vu.”
