Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,38

is this contest grossly unfair, it's positively insulting."

"Ditto," said Marla in an unexpected show of unity.

It was nice to see them finally agree on something, but it caused me to wonder where they'd been last night while Cassandra was falling down the stairs.

"Is that the waiter?" Sylvia asked. "Hey, you!" she shouted. "Over here!"

Philip appeared suddenly tired beneath his killer tan. He leaned forward and steepled his fingers, looking as if he were gearing up to deliver a history lesson. "I don't need to tell you that publishing has changed dramatically in the last three decades. Back in the old days of the business, the whole industry was kinder and gentler. The slush pile was a potential gold mine. I started out as a reader in a small publishing house and moved on to a position as an assistant editor, but even then, I read every manuscript that came across my desk and wrote letters to everyone I rejected. I always tried to blunt the blow with a few personal words of encouragement."

Aw, that was so sweet.

"These days, editors have no time to give personal critiques, and the slush pile is, regrettably, a relic of the past. Literary agencies have become clearinghouses, and literary agents are performing the tasks that were once the sole responsibility of in-house editors. It seems everything has become a little cockeyed, and a great deal more impersonal. Ask Gabe. He'll tell you."

Gabriel looked as if he wished he were somewhere else. "Whatever."

I caught his eye. "Did you start out your career as a reader, too?"

He sighed restlessly. "I started out as a reviewer. A miserable choice of employment for a kid straight out of college who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Bennington. I assigned stars to the schlock that came across my desk so readers could decide if they wanted to buy the latest action hero novel, sci-fi thriller, or pulp romance. The quality of the fiction was so pathetic, it gave me ulcers, so I moved on to a position where I could influence the quality of the books being published. I made Hightower's name synonymous with superior literary fiction."

"Oh, yes," Sylvia said, laughing, "you've improved the quality of literary fiction so much that it's completely incomprehensible to most humans -- even the pseudointellectuals who claim to understand what these bozo writers are talking about. Wake up and smell the coffee, bud. Commercial fiction is where it's at these days, and Hightower is finally realizing what I've known for a long time: people want to read stories that have plots!"

Gabriel seemed deaf to her words. "My authors don't need to be fettered by plots. Their vocabulary alone elevates them to a class by themselves. Their sentence structure is superb. Their verb usage is a thing of beauty. They learn from me, Sylvia. They don't use just simple present or past tenses. They intermingle the imperfect and the pluperfect with equal skill. Once, one of my prodigies even used the rare but ever dynamic...superpluperfect."

Gillian stared at him, agog. "What the hell is he talking about? Imperfect? Superpluperfect? If he tries pulling that kind of crap on me, I'm telling you right now, Sylvia, I'll want another editor."

"Me too!" Marla chimed in. "Barbarians don't use verb tenses. They grunt."

"Ladies, ladies," Sylvia soothed. "You're making way too much of this. It's all quite easy to understand."

A smile snaked across Gabriel's lips. His eyes snapped arrogantly. "Why don't you explain it to them then, Sylvia? Save me the trouble."

"Gladly. I'll even give examples. Shall we start with the present tense? That would be: The editor is an asshole. The perfect would be: The editor had become an asshole a long time ago. The imperfect would be: In fact, as a child, the editor would act like an asshole all the time. The superpluperfect would be: If only we would have known the editor was such an asshole, we would have asked to be assigned to someone else. Get it?"

Wow! I'd been using the rare but dynamic superpluperfect a whole lot and didn't even know it! But Gabriel wasn't looking any too happy about Sylvia's grammatical expertise. In fact, he was looking decidedly miffed.

Jackie's mouth dropped open. "That is so impressive. Were you an English teacher or something before you became an agent?"

I could swear I saw a flicker of unease cross Sylvia's face before she plastered a stiff smile on her mouth. "I attended Catholic schools for sixteen years. Does that explain anything?"

"But Jackie raises a good point,"