Josephine smiled at her. “I’ll definitely be better once I have a glass of wine, you know how the first days of these things are, so rushed and busy.” She glanced down at Izzy’s name tag. “Oh, that’s right, you’re over at TAOAT now. Who are you working for?”
Priya melted away. She knew Izzy’s history with Josephine.
“Marta Wallace.” Izzy gestured to the room. “She’s here somewhere.”
Josephine laughed. “I’m sure I’ll run into her at some point tonight. It’s always so funny at these things—we all work just blocks from one another in New York, and yet we’re on the other side of the country and I run into people I haven’t seen in nine months.”
The bartender handed Josephine a glass of wine, and she nodded her thanks. Izzy started to back away—she assumed Josephine would need to go talk to more important people. But instead, Josephine stepped to the side and motioned for Izzy to follow her.
“I haven’t seen you for a while. How’s it going for you, Isabelle?”
Izzy knew how she was supposed to respond to questions like this, what people wanted to hear. She did it all the time.
“Oh, everything is great! Busy, but a lot of fun! Working in publishing is a dream come true, and it’s so exciting to be here!”
Whenever she said this, she put on a bright smile, she threw conviction in her voice, and her audience was satisfied. But somehow, this time, her heart wasn’t in it. Maybe she’d done it too many times, maybe it was because she knew Josephine, at least a little, maybe it was because of what Gavin had told her the week before, but her words came out flat, almost angry.
Josephine winced. “Oof, that bad?”
Oh no. She had to recover from this. She didn’t want Josephine to think she was ungrateful.
“I didn’t mean to say it like that! It’s just—”
Josephine stopped her. “Yes you did. Come on, this is me you’re talking to.”
Izzy was surprised into laughter. Josephine grinned, too, but from the look on her face, Izzy could tell she really wanted to know the answer.
“I’m okay,” she said, after thinking about it for a little while. “There’s a lot I love about working in publishing. But it can be hard sometimes. For…a lot of reasons.”
Izzy could tell from the look in Josephine’s eyes that she understood.
“Yeah, it really can be.” Josephine gestured to the room. “When I started out, I was one of only a handful of Black people in these rooms. Now I’m one of maybe two handfuls.” She sighed. “I really thought it would be better by now.”
She felt so much more comfortable with Josephine than she did with Marta. If only…No, she couldn’t think that way.
Josephine took another sip of wine. “Are you getting good work to do? Marta has some great authors over there.”
Izzy nodded automatically. “Yeah, she does. But—” She swallowed. She needed to stop now. What was she doing, even thinking about confessing her feelings about Marta to anyone who wasn’t Priya? This industry was way too small for that. “I’m learning a lot,” she finished.
Josephine gave her a knowing look. “I’m sure you are,” she said. “Learning how to juggle very well, I bet.”
Izzy laughed. “Yes, absolutely.” She needed to shift this conversation—she’d probably already said too much. “Anyway, I don’t want to complain. I’ve had some really great opportunities.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” Josephine said. “Look, the first few years especially can be really hard in this business, but—”
Someone touched Josephine on the shoulder.
“Josephine, there you are. Leah Jackson is here, she’s looking for you.”
Josephine’s face lit up. “She made it! Fantastic!” She turned back to Izzy. “Isabelle, I have to run, but we’ll continue this later, okay? If not here, let’s get coffee or lunch when we’re back in New York. I’ll email you.”
Izzy nodded. “I’d love that,” she said.
She knew, though, that as much as Josephine might mean it in the moment, given how busy she was, the likelihood of her both remembering this conversation and then actually reaching out was slim to none. But then, Izzy wasn’t sure she could deal with another pep talk about how you just had to stick it out a little while longer, how Marta would have never hired Izzy if she didn’t see how talented and smart she was, how publishing could be a cruel business, but if you kept your head down and worked hard, you’d succeed.
Izzy turned away to go find Priya when she heard Marta’s voice.
“…the bane of my existence, you mean?”
Izzy stopped and took a sip of wine so she could pretend she wasn’t listening. What—or who—could Marta be talking about? She turned slightly, to see who she was talking to. Hmm, that was Will Victor, another one of the big-deal editors at TAOAT. Izzy pulled out her phone to give herself cover for eavesdropping.
“I can’t believe it’s been a full year since you’ve heard anything from him,” Will said.
Marta took a gulp of wine. “Well over a year! His agent gave me some bullshit about how hard he’s working, but I haven’t heard a peep from him, and haven’t seen a page—haven’t seen a word!—so I don’t believe any of it.”
Ahh. She must be talking about Beau Towers. The “bane of her existence” seemed strong—it wasn’t like Marta sent emails to him every two weeks that got ignored. Though Marta was the one who had committed to a seven-figure book deal for him. To be fair, Marta probably didn’t care about that—she’d just want the book.
“My poor assistant is probably tired of sending her little polite, cheerful emails to check in with him and his agent.”
Izzy hid a grin when Marta said that. She definitely hadn’t read any of Izzy’s emails to Beau in a while.
“It’s not even the blown deadline I care about,” Marta continued. “Please, I expected that from him—for people like that, a deadline is more of a suggestion. But it seems like there’s no path to ever actually getting a book out of him. I thought maybe being here in LA would mean I could beard him in his den, take him out for a drink and figure something out, but according to my assistant, he’s not even in LA! He’s holed up in some house in Santa Barbara! I don’t want to cancel the deal—all that would do is make him pay the money back, and I don’t care about the money. It’s not my money. I want this book, Will! But I’m stumped on how to make it happen, and you know I’m rarely stumped.”
Izzy had honestly never heard Marta admit defeat before. This was fascinating.
“At this point, you might have to threaten to cancel the deal to make anything happen,” Will said. “Sometimes people like that only respond to threats. I don’t understand why he’s not just using a ghostwriter. Is it an ego thing? You’ve told him no one will know he didn’t write it, right?”
Marta let out a sigh that was almost a hiss. “Of course I’ve told him that. So many times now. I did, my assistant did, his agent did. Do you know what he says to that? Nothing! I swear, I need someone to go to his house and pound on the door and ask him what’s really going on with his book.” Her eyes widened. “Actually, I’m brilliant. Yes, that’s exactly what I need. The only way we’re going to solve this is if someone goes straight to the source.”
Izzy had no idea what made her do it. A burst of courage, a lightning bolt, a momentary lapse in judgment, the three sips of wine she’d had while she’d eavesdropped on this conversation. But suddenly, she turned around and took a step toward Marta.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll go talk to Beau Towers.”
“I don’t know what got into me, Priya! Suddenly, I was talking with no control over my mouth, and when I stopped talking, I thought Marta was going to laugh at me, but instead she told me that it was a great idea and said she could always count on me?”
Izzy and Priya were back in their room at the end of the night, eating a pizza they’d had delivered to the hotel, and drinking vodka tonics. They’d busted into the mini bar, despite the astronomical prices. It was an emergency.
Priya shook her head. “Marta said she could always count on you? Did an alien take over her body?”
Izzy reached for her drink. She couldn’t believe it either. “It seems unlikely to me, too, but I wouldn’t have made it up even in my wildest dreams, so she must have said it. She even said I was the perfect person to do this!”
Priya’s eyes opened wide. “Okay, now I’m concerned. Either an alien really did take over Marta’s body, or this is some kind of a trap. Are you going to get out of this alive? Isn’t Beau Towers a nightmare?”
Izzy grabbed another slice of pizza. “Of course he’s a nightmare! Why do you think he got a book deal for his memoir, after all? He’s basically your typical celebrity asshole—bar fights, car accidents, etc., different actress or model on his arm every other week, you know the type. The last major thing was when the press caught him on video screaming at his mom at his dad’s funeral. Real classy. They had a messy divorce, but still.”