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“Uhhhh.” Lincoln can’t speak.
The boss glares at his employees as if he’s caught them in flagrante. “Can I see you alone for a moment,” he says to Lincoln.
Duddleston leads Lincoln down to Lincoln’s office and shuts the door behind them. The boss doesn’t bother to sit, so the two of them stand uncomfortably in the small space. A whorl of wrinkles between Duddleston’s eyes makes Lincoln think of a tornado. “Have you spoken to your writer Antonio Buford lately?” the boss demands.
“Ah, yes.” (So it’s happened: Lincoln’s world has come to an end.)
“He keeps calling Matt Breeson, telling him we should increase the print run of his book. He’s being a real pest.” Duddleston doesn’t try to suppress his disdain. He learned long ago in the screaming chaos of the trading floor never to pick over decisions already made, contracts already bought or sold. They’ve settled on printing one thousand books. End of discussion.
“I told him it wouldn’t happen.” So this isn’t about the blog?
“He thinks you’re distracted by your divorce—you’re too distraught to focus on the problem. I hope we haven’t made a mistake getting involved with this guy.” The thought fuels the tornado, which grows and spawns several others that rage across the plains of the boss’s forehead.
“It’ll be all right,” Lincoln assures with no good reason.
“I hope so. Now, as for this.” Duddleston places Amy’s manuscript on the corner of Lincoln’s desk, then strokes it as if it were a small dog. “I read Amy’s book,” he says.
“Oh?” Stay calm.
“It’s very sexual, isn’t it?”
“Well, not unduly so, I think. It touches our cultural moment, the sexualization of quotidian life. And, of course, there’s the coming-of-age phenomenon. Done literarily...” In his anxiety, Lincoln babbles.
“Oh, it’s very well written,” the boss interrupts. “I was impressed. A bit shocked, I must admit. Our innocent little Amy.” He can’t suppress a boyish grin. Duddleston married relatively late, in his early forties, and his two kids, a boy and a girl, are just entering adolescence. Lincoln wonders if the good Presbyterian walked chastely through his own young manhood or if he’s simply forgotten.
“Good writers have rich imaginations,” Lincoln suggests.
Duddleston puckers his lips, forming a thought. “I just don’t know how to judge it. I mean, if I were in a bookstore, would I pick this up?” He pretends to consider, sniffing the air. “No.”
“But do you ever read fiction?”
“You’re right. Not often, not often.”
“See, I think this can be a good test for us. I’ve got some ideas how we can promote it. We can use it to really pump up our skills in social media.”
Duddleston nods coolly, and Lincoln quickly tacks sideways. “We can publish incredibly cheaply,” he points out.
“I suppose it would be good for staff morale,” Duddleston muses. “Publishing a book by one of our own.”
“Exactly! Who knows what sort of talent you’ll stir up.” Lincoln gets a disheartening vision of Matt Breeson marching in with a three-hundred-page police procedural or Hazel Lanier with a picture book of children and kittens.
Fortunately, Duddleston is already on to another issue. “What do you suppose we should pay Amy?”
“Well, she doesn’t have an agent.” It occurs to Lincoln that he has a serious conflict of interest here, since he’s hardly in a position to defend Amy’s financial stake. But never mind. She’ll be happy enough just to see the book in print. “We can give her a small advance—maybe a thousand dollars—and a standard contract, then if the book’s a success, she’ll get her payoff with the royalties.”
Duddleston offers a genuine smile. “Well, what the hell, let’s do it,” he says. “But it’s only a test. We’re not back in the fiction business yet.”
“Right.” Lincoln wants to let out a whoop. Instead, he follows Duddleston’s lead and places his hand on the manuscript. Nice puppy.
On their way back to the editorial meeting, Duddleston says, “Let me tell Amy, if you don’t mind. I want to see the look on her face.”
For Lincoln, the two-hour meeting passes in moments. When he returns to his office, he’s still too wound up to sit down. He wanders to his porthole window and glances down at the alley below. With its grim layer of gray and flattened snow, its sombrous pyre of black bags of garbage, frozen now in the cold, the view provides a useful antidote to Lincoln’s joy. This is only a tiny first step, he reminds himself. A whole Everest of obstacles stretches between here and the success of which he’s dreamed. Still, still...you’ve got to start somewhere.
Of course, he’s too careful to seek out Amy. But at around three that afternoon, he’s at his desk when she walks by outside his door. She pauses and looks up and down the hall. Certain she is alone, she turns to him, sticks out her tongue, and shakes her head and body violently, her tongue flapping wildly around her lips, her arms flying in all directions. She maintains the bedlam performance for maybe five seconds before stopping abruptly, straightening her skirt, and walking on like a proper young woman.
24
THERE IS SO much to do. The timeline for The Ultimate Position has to be telescoped to meet Lincoln’s plan to publish the book for summer. He sends the manuscript out for copyediting to the elderly woman, a Tribune vet, who handles Pistakee’s manuscripts, and he orders Gregor to design a cover. (“Maybe something that brings together the sex and the mystery,” Lincoln suggests, and the designer produces a picture of a pair of shapely legs in glittery stilettos marred by drops of blood. Lincoln sends it back.) He scribbles some promotional copy for a last-second addition to the Pistakee catalog, and he prepares a press release to go out with advance copies. The distributor has to be coaxed to crash yet another Pistakee book (with the Cubs’ season ending ignominiously, Wrigley Field: A People’s History died on third). All this—on top of all the chores for Lincoln’s other books. He’s working weekends again and staying late at the office, but he appreciates being busy. Locking up one night, the last person to leave the twelfth floor, Lincoln realizes he’s hardly thought about Mary for days, and he hasn’t even been bothered by the soul-crushingly gray February weather.
