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?I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the photo of the woman who had been my first agent displayed on the screen. The photo was me and Gloria from a lunch five years earlier to celebrate my first sale. Gloria was a short, slightly chubby woman, gray-haired and bespectacled. In the photo, I towered over her and was the complete opposite with my Irish coloring, green eyes, and flaming-red hair.
?I returned the phone to my ear. “I guess since I’d agreed to it…”
?“That’s the spirit!” Gloria chuckled. “Besides, I heard that Mark Watkins will be there.”
?I exhaled loudly. “Probably another misogynist who is pissed off that a woman is writing Sherlock Holmes books.”
?“Not every guy is like that! Jeff Moss is his agent, and he told me that Watkins liked your work.”
?“Wow,” I jeered, “what a great review.”
?“Oh, now you’re just being pissy!” Gloria grunted. “You know Moss would be a good fit for you. He even knows the genre…”
?“Okay, okay, I’ll do the damn convention. But please don’t set me up with an agent I haven’t even met yet.”
?“There you go,” Gloria chortled. “I can’t see why people say you’re difficult.”
?“Who says I’m difficult?”
?“Bye, dearie.”
?She ended the call. I stared at the phone for a moment, a little surprised that my agent had dismissed me.
?She did have a point though. I was well aware that people said I was difficult. But there were a lot of men in the club who just didn’t like the fact that “Randall’s little wifey” ended up being a better writer than they were.
?Especially that weasel, Allen Alexander, who’d been trying to seduce me even when I’d been married to Randall. The fact that my books had done so much better than his pathetic attempts only encouraged his lust.
?I could imagine that for him it was all about dominance.
?I thought about everyone in the group. We had members who were just glad to come and talk about mysteries. But then we had the triumvirate: the club president, Charles Nederlander, average height with a receding hairline and that pair of half-glasses perched at the end of his Romanesque nose; vice -president Jon Kane, thin, though not skinny, with curly black hair that sported a spray of white at the temples; treasurer and my ex, Randall Lawrence, with those bedroom eyes, full head of hair, and boyish good looks I thought I would never grow tired of.
?Turned out, he grew tired of me.
?A financial investor and a wannabe writer, and I had the audacity to go out and write a book that did very well.
?My mother suggested I not publish, that it would be too hard on Randall’s ego. I thought more highly of him than that.
?I’d been wrong.
?Coming home and finding slim, blonde Candy Poole in my bed with him…
?I looked around my large downtown condo. This had been one of the perks of divorcing Randall—I got enough to buy this place. Right on West 4th Street in Manhattan, it was an expensive piece of real estate, but Randall was quite wealthy, and my lawyer was a shark.
?But I had to admit, it still hurt.
?I grabbed the heavy glass paperweight off the nearby computer desk and felt an overwhelming desire to throw it across the room.
?I squeezed it until the feeling passed. It would be a stupid thing to do. Toss the heavy ball of glass and it might shatter or break something else. A year since the divorce and I’d only finished unpacking completely two weeks ago.
?I should have quit the stupid club. How could I move on with my life if I was still surrounded by the same people? It was odd, they all encouraged me when I started, even Randall. They all liked my early drafts of the novel. It was when I got an agent and sold the book that it all changed. And then it hit the USA Today best seller list, and I was suddenly the enemy.
?Even with Randall.
?He went out of his way to make snide comments, especially when I was writing. In defense, I ended up writing in coffee shops or when he was at work.
?I was coming home from a great writing session, feeling that high a writer gets when they know they’ve done good work. I was excited to tell Randall about how well it had gone, share that with him. Then talk to him about his day while I made dinner, and perhaps we could crack open some wine and get naked. At the time, he hadn’t touched me for weeks.
?I had come through the door, quietly, because if Randall was on the phone or busy at the computer, I didn’t want to distract. It was when I put my purse down that I heard the first moan.
