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The way editorial meetings work is this: all of the editors sit at the table; there are chairs around the wall for the editorial assistants, publicists, and other marketing personnel. Leigh went around the table, giving each editor a chance to talk about the manuscripts they wanted to buy. There were ten of us at the table, and given the fact that all of us had a stack of papers, it looked like the session would last at least two hours.
Astrid Norstromm, the pasty-faced, stringy-haired white woman who was due to get the job I wanted, sat as close to Leigh as possible. She always did that—I guessed it was to remind the rest of us that the two women were close, personal friends. Astrid had no ass, no tits, buck teeth, and freckles. Yet she carried herself in a regal manner—almost as if she looked in the mirror every morning and saw the late Princess Diana staring back. Astrid had been hired to acquire and edit literary nonfiction for the company and had “a very big interest in Black people.” She was constantly either in my office trying to get me excited about some project that would be of absolutely no interest to African-American book buyers or tying up the editorial meeting for long, agonizing minutes while she stumbled and stammered her way through book ideas about Black life that were so ridiculously off the mark that they would be laughable if it didn’t happen so often.
I smiled at everyone except Astrid as I sat down.
Leigh started us off by announcing that she had purchased the American publishing rights to a first novel by a young British woman. The story was a love triangle set in the Victorian era.
Astrid was next. She tucked her thin, mousy brown hair behind her ears and flashed everyone a smile. “I’ve received a couple of terrific manuscripts over the past week.” She spoke in a whispery voice that made us all strain to hear her and had a habit of placing her hands delicately in the center of her flat chest when she got excited. We were supposed to believe that too much emotion would send her into a fit of the vapors. Her whole presentation was straight-up Melanie Wilkes from Gone With the Wind, and it made the other women at the table exchange angry glances whenever we could get away with it.
“The first one,” she breathed, “is a fictionalized version of Harriet Tubman’s life that I’m hoping Jackie will take a look at. The author is a history professor at Vassar and she has done extensive research in this area. I really love this project because the professor’s writing is so vivid and colorful that you feel like you are really sitting in the Tubman cabin watching the events unfold.” Astrid paused, her hands went to her chest, and she fastened her blue-eyed gaze briefly on each one of us. “I learned so much! Most people don’t realize that the people in those slave cabins were not just workers. They were real families and behaved like genuine human beings.”
I tried not to sound angry. “Real families? Genuine human beings?”
“Yes. Most people don’t see the slaves in that light. Can you read it overnight?”
I ignored the question. “Is there any other news in the book . . . besides the announcement that Harriet Tubman and her family were genuine human beings?”
She seemed delighted at my interest. “Yes. The author is a feminist and she takes a look at the misogyny that was rampant among Black men in the slave quarters.”
Pam Silberstein gasped and shot me a sympathetic look from across the table.
My throat was closing up and my next question (which I’d already guessed the answer to) squeaked out between my clenched teeth. “Is the author African-American?”
The stupid fool finally realized that the room was silent and something was very, very wrong. She looked at Leigh Dafoe for help. “The author is white. Does that make a difference?”
Leigh looked very uncomfortable. “Of course it doesn’t. I’m sure Jackie was just trying to get an overall sense of this book. Do you have anything else to share with us?”
I glared at Astrid. She glared back.
“No. That’s it for me but I’d like to make a generous offer on this project and we’ll have to move quickly. The agent already has interest.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Leigh answered smoothly.
We all breathed a sigh of relief as the romance editor launched into a tale of the search for Mr. Right set on the French Riviera.
And then it was my turn. But before I could speak, Leigh’s assistant rushed in and whispered something in her ear. Whatever it was caused Leigh to turn ashen and rush from the room without a word.
We gossiped and chitchatted among ourselves for almost twenty minutes.
By the time Leigh came back, we were beginning to run out of small talk.
Leigh’s face was completely devoid of color. She looked somber. Just as our rustling and whispering stopped, Leigh burst into tears. “I don’t know how to say this . . . it’s just too awful,” she said.
Astrid patted her on the back. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m . . . um . . . all right,” Leigh sniffled and stuttered. “There is . . . um . . . no easy um . . . way to . . . um . . . say this.... Annabelle Welburn . . . um, oh, God . . . has been murdered!”
7
I’M NOT LOOKING FOR THAT
Cries of grief, dismay, and disbelief ripped through the crowd but I was too astonished to react in any way until I saw Pamela Silberstein sag in her chair with tears running down her face. Although I had friendly relationships with all my colleagues with the exception of Astrid Norstromm, Pam was my hands-down favorite person on the staff. She was a tall white woman in her mid-fifties with shocking red hair and a razor-sharp wit who had been in charge of the health books for the past two decades.
I managed to reach her on legs that felt wobbly. I leaned down and asked the same stupid question that one always asks in these situations. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at me, her green eyes filled with pain, and said, “Never felt better, Jackie. How about you?”
How about me? It had been fourteen years since I’d received such stunning news. During the summer between high school and college a neighborhood girl named Carmen Rivera had been thrown from the roof of a dinky hotel over on 46th Street. According to pedestrians, Carmen screamed as she fell and then pretty much exploded when she hit the unyielding concrete. Her boyfriend was on the roof with her when it happened but, even though the Rivera family pressed the police to arrest him, nothing was done because he said they’d been sniffing cocaine together and she lost her balance. Carmen was known to dabble in drugs and there was no one left to contradict his story, so he went free.
