“Working. Need to get fully up to speed. I’ve got a date with a pile of manuscripts. You wouldn’t believe how much paper they still shuffle around that place. George Vida doesn’t think you can really get the feel from e-manuscripts. It’s primeval, but in a nice way. My desk came with a stapler that looks like it’s been knocking around the building since about 1920. I’ve never even seen one like it. It bends the staples outward like wings, not inward. And I have a three-hole punch. I haven’t been close to one of those since high school English class, I think.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Now, you’re just making me jealous. Once you learn the lay of the land there, you have got to sneak me in and show me the famous slush pile. I hear all that stuff was stuck in the corner of a warehouse somewhere before Vida found it and had it moved to the boardroom.”
“It’s George Vida, sort of like an all-one-name. Not Mr. Vida. Not sir. Not George. George Vida—that’s what everyone calls him; just so you’ll have it right when you come to visit. Anyway, I’ll let you know if I hear any dish. Maybe Roger can tell me the hidden story of Slush Mountain.”
Bracing her hands on her hips, Jamie walked backward up the steps of her building. “I’d stay away from Roger, if I were you. He’s always had a thing for you, you know?” Jamie, Roger, and I had all started on the editorial assistant track at the same time. We’d hung out a bit, early on.
“Pppfff! Roger’s got a thing for anything under fifty in a skirt.”
We shared the look of rueful understanding that passes between single girls in the city, equally unlucky in love. When you work all the time, your odds of stumbling onto Mr. Right aren’t very good. All of a sudden, Jamie was deeply bothered by that. Maybe it was crossing the big three-oh mark, or maybe it was all the magazine stories about wedding fashions, but she had it in mind lately. When Jamie finally did plan a wedding, it would be a gorgeous, lavish affair filled with loved ones and paid for by the bride’s family. That kind of thing was as far from possible for me as the earth from the moon.
When you know something isn’t going to happen, it’s so much easier to just arrange your life so that there’s no need for it. The secret to happiness is to love where you are, and it’s hard not to love autumn in New York, especially when you’ve finally landed your dream job.
I was floating about six inches off the ground when I walked into Vida House. So far, I’d felt that way every day as I scanned my key card at the front door and circumvented the reception desk, still empty this early in the morning. Beyond the lobby, I walked down the long marble hall past rows of office doors and oodles of cover art from books that had made careers and started hot trends that were quickly chased by a horde of scrambling copycats. Rounding the corner, humming under my breath and in full stride, I slid across the tile like an ice skater, did a YouTube-worthy scramble, and caught myself on a half-height partition in the customer service area, barely saving my smoothie.
“That’s wet, sha.” Russell, the cleaning guy, poked his head out of a nearby office. Russell and I had become acquainted over the past few days. He was at least six and a half feet tall, thin as a split-rail fence, and not entirely pleased to have someone disturbing his usual morning routine by coming in so early. He’d been cleaning the building since the sixties, so it was definitely his domain.
“Sorry.” I backtracked across the freshly mopped flooring, my pumps leaving little tracks in the sheen of water. “You’d think I would’ve learned to watch by now.”
Russell lifted the mop from the dingy water bucket and plopped it into the wringer. “I got it. Boss man don’ like his flo’ track up at the beginnin’ a the day. Like a clean start.” His slow, Southern drawl ran in direct contrast to the three quick, efficient swipes that cleared the floor. Russell was a hard person to read. I hadn’t quite decided if he liked his job here or liked me, or if he was simply resigned to both as a reality of life.
I wanted Russell to like me. He seemed like a guy with a story, and I’d always been fascinated by stories. That was the first thing Wilda Culp had noticed about me all those years ago, after she caught me in her orchard. To pay back the damage, I became her Wednesday girl. She’d noticed right away that I understood the lure of a good story. Sometimes, a world that doesn’t exist is the only escape from the one that does.
I’d wanted to know Wilda Culp’s story from that first contentious, terrifying meeting. Little by little over time, I kept probing until I got most of it.
Russell’s silvery eyes narrowed, age wrinkles squeezing in, telling me he wouldn’t give up his secrets that easily. He was an interesting man to look at, his skin a warm brown, his cheeks burnished to a lighter color with an almost unnatural shine, like the face of a carving, lovingly touched many times by the hand of its maker.
“Guess you betta get’a work, sha.” He sidestepped to let me by, leaning on the mop handle as he nodded across the open area toward George Vida’s office. A circular glow shined against the dim after-hours lighting there. No matter how late I stayed in my new office or how early I came in, George Vida was always there, occupying his space. Amazingly, nothing went out of Vida House that hadn’t traveled through his hands.
That scared me a little, as I contemplated acquiring new manuscripts here. What if I got it wrong? What if my instincts ran counter to the big boss’s liking?
A woman must be confident! Wilda’s gruff reminder was the snap of a rubber band. A quick, sharp rebuke. When the negative comes against her, she must B-E-A-T. Be all that she was designed to be. Expand her vision of what is possible. Arise from every challenge stronger than before. Triumph over her own insecurity.
You, Jennabeth Gibson, have greatness in you if you want it.
I felt Russell watching me as I continued down the hall, rounded the corner, and slipped into my office at the end, where new editors began their careers, no matter how many years of prior experience they brought to the job. At Vida House, you started at the bottom and worked your way up. It wasn’t so bad, really. Being at the end of the nonfiction hall meant being on the corner of the building. My office fronted a four-sided turret, which made it quirky and interesting. Even if the shadow of the skyscraper next door did block both the sunshine and the view, I liked the place.
The fluorescent light flickered stubbornly overhead when I flipped the switch, the room light, then dark, then light, then dark.
“Oh, come on.” I slipped off the burnt-orange silk coat I loved to wear during these fall months. It would’ve been an indulgence, given the designer label, but it had been a gift from Jamie, a bribe to get me to stand in for a last-minute magazine shoot, in which she promised I would be carrying an umbrella, and no one would know who I was. Please, please, please. I need dark hair and skinny legs, and you can have the coat afterward. My short modeling career was worth it. I treasured the coat, partially because the color reminded me of my favorite maple tree growing up, the one I used to climb as a hiding place. The coat was secret reminder of the Blue Ridge, a small piece that wasn’t painful to remember.
The overhead fixture clicked softly, teasing me. I tried the switch again. Up. Down. Up. Down. No luck. Finally, there was no choice but to surrender and use the ancient gooseneck desk lamp that had come with the office. The lamp’s cast-iron base was rusty, and the built-in inkwell was of no use in this day and age, but I liked it all the same. It loomed over the desk like an all-seeing eye and gave the place a feeling of journalistic authenticity. I liked to imagine that the lamp may have once watched as a reporter hovered above a manual typewriter, tapping out stories about the spread of Hitler’s forces or the first words spoken on the moon or the sad sight of little John-John Kennedy saluting his father’s coffin.
Someone’s been messing with things on my desk. . . .
The thought wound past my momentary romance with the gooseneck lamp. I squinted at the arrangement of things. The next three reads in my queue, which I always stacked and placed just left of center at the end of the day, were dead center now. The pencil I had left lying atop them had rolled onto the desk.
Who would’ve come in here overnight? Russell, maybe . . . cleaning?
Nothing else seemed out of place.
And then I noticed it. Another area that hadn’t been the same yesterday. Something new—a brown-craft paper envelope, the crease along its edge sun-washed white, as if it had been sitting long near a window. It rested on the corner of my desk, slightly cockeyed. Had someone left it there accidentally while passing through my office? Who? And passing through my office for what reason? My little cubby wasn’t on the way to anyplace else.