He represents—er … used to represent me, I guess. I was calling him about a … well … uh … about a book.”
“You don’t sound too sure of that, Ms. Grayson. Are you sure it’s a book?” he said, laughing at her, and she could feel her face flush bright red. This was harder than she had expected, and she was nervous enough about it, without having her agent die and sell the agency to someone else.
“Well, actually I’m not, sure it’s a book, I mean. I don’t know what it is. I was going to ask him.”
“I see,” the new agent said, although he really didn’t. She wasn’t sure if it was a children’s book, a book for adults, or a fantasy of some kind that fell through a crack somewhere between the two. “Would you like to show it to me?” She really wouldn’t, but if she backed off now it would seem rude.
“I … well … it’s kind of a strange little fantasy book. My sister-in-law, who teaches literature at Princeton, hated it. And then my mother read it and she loved it. She said I should call you, so I did. But that was when I thought you were Charlie Halpern. Now that you’re someone else, I don’t think you represent me, do you?” She sounded utterly confused.
“I can if you want me to, if he represented you, since I bought the agency from him. Of course, if you want to take it to someone else, I understand, and you have no obligation to me.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She felt utterly frightened and confused.
“And with all due respect to your sister-in-law who teaches literature at Princeton,” he continued, “academics aren’t usually the best judges of commercial fiction. So your mother might have the right idea.”
“That’s what she said. About academics, I mean.”
“Precisely. Would you like to come in to see me? I have some free time this afternoon.”
“I … uh …” She hadn’t expected him to offer her an appointment so soon. “I just came back from Europe yesterday, and I have a lot of laundry to do.” She couldn’t believe she was saying that to him. She was willing to use any excuse to escape having someone read her book who might hate it as much as Sarah had, and then she decided to screw up her courage and go into the city to see him. If she didn’t, her mother would be on her back until she did. “Okay, never mind. What time this afternoon?”
“Is four o’clock too late for you?”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be there … oh … did you move?”
“No, same place. I’ll look forward to seeing you at four, Ms. Grayson,” he said formally.
“Liz. Call me Liz.”
“Fine, see you this afternoon then.” She felt like a total idiot as she played the conversation over in her head, and slid under the covers with a groan. This was harder than she’d expected it to be, now that it involved someone new.
She got out of bed at one o’clock, showered and put on blue jeans and sandals, and at two-thirty she got in her car with the manuscript and drove into the city. She was at Charlie Halpern’s old address ten minutes early, and she had a knot in her stomach the size of a fist. She could hardly breathe. She parked her car, waited ten minutes, and then went up in the elevator, wondering what the new agent was like. Charlie had been in his late seventies, and had always been very fatherly, which worked for her. The person who had replaced him sounded like a grown-up. The British accent made him sound formal and official, and she was convinced he was going to hate her book. He didn’t sound like a man who liked fantasy, and if he had free time on this hands the day she called him, he was probably no good.
She walked into the outer office, in the small building on Madison Avenue where his offices were. Charlie had had an ancient secretary she’d always suspected he was sleeping with, but she was gone too. Liz sat down in the waiting room, and a moment later a very attractive man walked in, wearing blue jeans, an impeccably cut striped shirt, and immaculately shined shoes. He looked about her own age. And he was so handsome, she didn’t know what to say. She sat mute in her chair, clutching her manuscript to her