liar. ‘Why should I be? You set this up with Balthazar from the beginning.’
He exhaled in disbelief. ‘Is that your take on this – that I’ve been scheming to get this book away from you? Are you serious?’
She shrugged and looked away.
‘It’s the last thing I need, Dorothy. Can’t you see that? This isn’t about Balthazar and me – he doesn’t even want Carlson to stay with us. But Balthazar’s not calling the shots; Carlson is. And the coach doesn’t want me – he just doesn’t want you.’
‘Shit,’ she said wearily, putting a hand to her head in what he felt was her first honest reaction since the conversation had started.
‘I don’t want to know about the coach and you,’ he said, and was pleased to see he had her full attention now. ‘That’s your business. We all have baggage that way – even me, as you know. But I don’t want to buy this book if you’re not going to be behind it.’
He knew what her dissension could mean: a fatal gnawing away at the book’s chances – by marketing, by publicity, even by sales, all orchestrated by a publishing director making it clear that the boss had paid way over the odds for a stinker. With Dorothy’s help, the title would become the focus point of any animus he had managed to attract in his brief tenure.
Dorothy sat there thinking for a moment. At last she said softly, ‘Buy it.’
‘You sure? You’re going to have to be behind this, Dorothy, or so help me, I will fire you.’
She laughed out loud. He sensed relief in her that this fear had been forced out into the open. ‘You know your problem, Danziger?’
‘If I do, I think you want to tell me anyway.’
‘You don’t know if you want to fuck me, and you don’t have the balls to fire me.’
He shook his head wearily. Where had she got this idea?
‘Shee-it,’ she said, in a parody of a ghetto voice. ‘You mean I guessed wrong. You know what they say, “Once you go black you never come back.”’
Latanya Darling bites again, he thought. ‘You’re batting five hundred, Dorothy. Great in baseball but not so good when your job’s on the line.’
‘I’m not resigning if that’s what you’re hoping.’
Her lips pursed like a cloth bag as its drawstrings were pulled. He didn’t want to reassure her, but felt he had to. ‘I don’t want you to resign. If I did,’ he continued, ‘we’d have had this conversation a long time ago. Don’t ever think I’d hesitate, balls or no balls.’ He looked pointedly at his desk. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got other things to do.’
She didn’t rise to go. ‘Latanya Darling said you were tough. She was right.’
He turned and looked out the window at the playground in the grey light of the overcast day, empty except for a park employee emptying a litter bin at one corner. Keeping his eyes on the view, he said softly, ‘Latanya Darling got me wrong. Just as you have.’
5
‘There’s not a lot to eat,’ he said, peering first into the fridge, then the freezer compartment next to it. ‘You can choose, and I’ll cook. How’s that sound?’
‘When’s Mom coming back?’ Sophie replied.
He laughed. ‘Tomorrow. Is my cooking that bad? Tell you what, how about if I get—’
She beat him to the punch. ‘Chinese takeaway?’
And sixty-three dollars and a Chinese grand bouffe later (Sophie always insisted on Peking duck), he was putting down his chopsticks when the phone rang. ‘Why don’t you get it?’ he said.
He listened as Sophie talked with her mother, promising to go to bed soon, describing their feast.
Then he spoke briefly with her as well. She sounded perfunctory: yes, she had arrived all right; yes, the hotel was very nice; now she was going to bed because she had a breakfast meeting.
He put Sophie to bed, ignoring her complaints that she wanted to stay up since her mother wasn’t home. Once she was tucked in (though he suspected she was reading under the covers) he cleaned up in the kitchen.
He felt nervy, uncomposed. He and Anna were rarely apart, since he was able in the new job to keep travel to a minimum. When he was away – usually New York, and just for a night – he felt that Anna, staying at home, functioned as a beacon for him, throwing out light from a hub to give him his bearings. But now that he was the hub, he felt