Chapter 2
“So you were saying?”
I’ve decided the least explosive way to restart this conversation is by pretending the break in between never happened.
Oh, ha-ha. No, silly. I never left. That was just a little bubble in your imagination. You were daydreaming. I’ve been here
this whole time. In fact, you were saying very nice and encouraging things to me before you daydreamed off. And the casual smile on my face, as if we are having
the most mutually lovely conversation of all time, is proof of it.
I slide into the seat opposite him, and to say he is startled—his feet again propped on the table—is an understatement. His
sneakers kick back, jostling the coffee mug in his hand and throwing little drops over that pretty blazer of his on the chair
beside him. All four legs of the folding chair land on the ground with a thud as he drops his phone and coffee mug on the
table and begins rubbing the droplets off his hand.
There’s an expression on his face as he looks at me during all this. Something I’m not accustomed to seeing in my life’s goal
of never inconveniencing anyone.
His mouth is open. His eyes are bulging at me like I am an alien. An alien who’s come in the middle of the night to stand
over him while he sleeps soundly in his bed. And instead of reaching over for a little glass of water for a 2:00 a.m. sip,
he finds himself being handed an Oreo from me. Green alien with an Oreo, smiling and full of goodwill me.
A new friend.
“I think you were saying the book was a bit on the long side,” I continue casually, pulse thrumming at the back of my throat.
“I could cut it. If you would read just a few chapters first to see what I mean though, that’d be very helpful in making sure we’re on the same page. I know that some books are allowed to break the rules of commercial fiction. If they prove to have enough to say in this respect. Think of Middlemarch —”
“You are not George Eliot. And this is not the nineteenth century. And you do not have her level of talent.”
“How would you know if you haven’t read it?”
His brow quirks. And if I’m not mistaken, a tiny pilot light ignites in his eyes.
I shrug casually, like this is an ordinary conversation between friends. Because to me, it seems as if what Jack Sterling
likes, given the twelve Instagram photos I’ve seen and the way he’s responded with general indifference to the conference
directors following him into the elevators, is to be surrounded by successful people. He respects people who respect themselves.
Now, I don’t respect myself, but I can pretend.
He blinks a few times, surveying me. Then he leans forward. Just a smidge.
“What’re you doing?” he says, and his eyes flicker down for a half second to my badge. “Bryony?”
The announcement of my name feels like a little shower of trumpets, letting me know I passed the first level and may proceed
to the next. My smile broadens. Casually, of course.
Then dims a little in case it’s too much.
“I’m discussing my book proposal.” I clutch the folder to my chest. The folder feels tarnished now. As though if he looked
at it now, he’d reject it all over again. Better to just keep talking. Focus on the fact that I am a human. It is simple to reject a piece of paper. Look in my eyes, Jack Sterling, and let’s talk this out rationally. “And your amenability in reading a few chapters as we take this conversation further. I think you will find I’m a very agreeable
person to work with.”
He laughs. Chortles, more like. A chortle of disbelief, but not altogether... unhappy sounding. One corner of his mouth lifts as he peers into my eyes. “Amenability, huh? Where are you from? A Jane Austen novel?”
“Florence, New York. Present day.”
“Nobody lives there.”
“ I live there.”
His phone buzzes, but to my surprise, he ignores it. A long moment of silence ensues before he speaks. “Well, here’s the thing,
Bryony of Florence: I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody, actually. I’m really only here because I was sent here by the
agency. Metaphorically drew the shortest straw. So, unfortunately, despite how much I appreciate your... pluckiness, I’ll
have to apologize, again, and tell you, again, that this”—he motions between us—“isn’t going to work. But go try your luck
on Davis over there.” He points over my shoulder. “He takes on a new client every week.”
And then he gives an apologetic smile. As though he is sorry but this is a good alternative. As though suggesting that Davis,
who collects authors like a kid collects marbles, is not only impossible to get in touch with, given I have no appointment , but also a terrible choice.
Even I as a rookie know it would be better to go without an agent altogether, what with his rows of client authors on his web page
and giant advertisement of that one semi-successful political book he represented fifteen years ago.
If there’s one thing other attendees have harped upon the past three days, it’s that just because you could technically get an agent doesn’t mean you should. I’ve heard enough horror stories to last a lifetime.
So.
I have a choice here.
And really, I’ve gone this far into a land so far outside myself, I might as well just go all the way. “Terrific.” I smile
in return. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Keep your shoulders straight, Bryony. Staple that confident grin on. “So. Are you big into skiing?”
That I’m-politely-letting-you-go smile slips off his face. “What’re you doing?”
“The way I see it, I have”—I glance down to the large clock on his phone—“eight minutes and twelve seconds until our meeting
is over. I’d like to make the most of it.”
“And proving you stalk me on Instagram is the way to do it?”
I shrug. Although I’ll be honest here, I feel like I’m about two ticks away from throwing up. “You have to know everyone does.
I’m sure it’s tiring, pretending you don’t see everyone gawking at you. Might as well have it out in the open. So. Skiing?”
His brows crumple a little. He leans forward. “Tell you what. I’ll give you your five minutes—”
“Eight minutes and twelve seconds.”
“—but we’re going to spend it doing something advantageous for the both of us. You say you’re a team player, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to break into publishing, yes?”
“Yes. My ambition,” I say, chin lifting as I rattle off my prepared speech, “is to spread awareness about the immigration
services center in my community and use the proceeds to keep The Bridge from going under—”
“Then take a look at this.” And now it’s my turn to have something swiveled around and pushed to my side of the table. The
screen is open to a document. A book proposal. Simple and yet roughly a hundred times more professional looking than mine.
I bite my lip, immediately regretting the eight-by-eleven stock photo of a bridge plastered across the cover of my folder
and the title in 48 Times New Roman font.
“What’s it missing?” he says in a serious tone.
“And this is... mutually beneficial... for me how?” I let my eyes drift down the page.
He waves a hand at the phone. “Don’t make me say the obvious out loud.”
It only takes a handful of milliseconds to see what he means. Ah. It’s an example of what is a good proposal.
A boulder lodges in the pit of my stomach, but I ignore it. My nerves are going into overdrive from the length of this manic,
adrenaline-inducing conversation. This is, oddly, both a nightmare and a dream come true, and I’m not entirely sure how much
longer I’m going to make it until I pass out.
I’m meeting with the prestigious Jack Sterling. But he’s rejecting me while informing me how absolutely laughable it is that
I tried to hand off my preschool-level proposal to a man who represents—
My eyes land on the name on the proposal just above his own name and agency seal. I bite my lip, and a painful zing zips through
my body.
Amelia Benedict.
No.
Can’t be.
I can’t have... in my hands... a super-secret book proposal from Amelia Benedict . I’ve passed books with her name on them a hundred times at the bookstore. Her little romances are usually on some table
beside the register, always with a new cover. Always with something bold and bright. Somehow this woman puts out a new book
faster than my milk expires.
“So.” He leans in till his head is hovering over the phone, his eyes inches away from mine, bouncing from me to the screen.
“Take a stab at it. What’s it missing?”
Text notifications are dinging alongside a banner at the top of the screen every few seconds, all of which he ignores, so
likewise I try to do the same.
I take a breath.
Focus, Bryony. You can do this.
But now I’m not just looking at a super-secret book proposal from a terrifyingly aloof agent who represents one of the biggest
in the biz; I’m also seeing snippets of his private text messages from his private life on his private phone and trying very
much to ignore them.
A message from someone named Ty saying: Just told Walt. He says he’s going to sue you under tort law for negligently causing him to break his tailbone falling off
his chair. Laughing.
A message from someone named Richie saying: Hanor’s gone upstairs. Trying to get you fired. Not going to work but heads-up.
And then a message from Hanor that sounds very official and terrifying: I want to see you in my office the second you get back. With a solution.
And one from someone with a contact name of 2nd Floor Jann with the 300 Flower Pens saying: Are you kidding me, Jack? Could you just, for once, please leave Benedict’s writers alone?!?
I try to politely ignore the notifications, despite the fact they are coming in from clearly important people in his life
talking about very important details of his life.
Though he obviously cares less than nothing about the fact I’m reading them.
I’m that insignificant to him.
I’m the fly buzzing around someone’s tea at a mobster’s lunch meeting while said mobster is revealing clandestine codes to
clandestine locks safeguarding clandestine money. I’m so unimportant that it doesn’t matter that I hear.
Which I suppose is fair.
Who, after all, can I tell?
I run my eyes down the first page. Then realize the sum of it is only one page. One page before digging into the actual sample
chapters.
Crap.
How many pages was mine? Sixty. With twenty pages dedicated solely to character descriptions.
Terrific.
The embarrassment nips me right in the face, and I feel two flames of crimson burst on my cheeks.
I really am pathetic, aren’t I?
These past few days, the agents had been trying to tell me, and I hadn’t quite gotten it. I hadn’t quite clued in . They weren’t the enemy, as it turned out. If anything, they were the nice guys trying to let me down easy.
They aren’t the villains. I’m just the village idiot.
I glance up toward Agent Tim Graves with fresh sympathy and even more personal horror. I will never live down the humiliation of these past three days.
Focus, Bryony. You’ve still got —
“Three minutes!” a young conference volunteer calls out, and I turn to see her three fingers in the air as she stands in the
center of the room, grinning madly. Three minutes left.
“So... you want me to find—?”
“What’s missing, yes. A fresh eye.”
Because that’s literally all I can possibly be, I see now. That’s truly the only thing I have that he doesn’t right now. A fresh eye.
Something every person on the entire planet can bring right now: a different brain than his.
Super.
It’s clear through the way he’s sighing right now and pulling back in his chair that he expects very little. Even his eyes
are glazing over my shoulder, and I realize this very well may be a ploy to get me to stop talking and leave him alone. If
not physically, at least mentally. He’s thinking, brainstorming about something important. This something that’s important. And of course little old me is expected to consider this special book viewing and enlightenment
a gift for my silence.
I read the first page, trying to concentrate.
“Two!” a conference volunteer mouths merrily, circling around the room with pageantry as she drops one finger and leaves the remaining
two. This is, very clearly, an exciting job for her.
“Well...” I stumble, eyes back on the proposal. I try to keep reading, to formulate an intelligent answer, but the words under this type of pressure have become alphabet soup. All the letters are just floating around, a name here, an adjective there. There’s a block somewhere between my eye and my brain that is seeming to stop the flow from seeing to understanding.
I scroll to the next page.
You have to do something.
Thumb up the screen to the next.
There’s gotta be something better to reading this first chapter. A hook. My eyes rage down the pages, and my thumb begins
flying from one page to the next.
“One minute!” the volunteer cries, panning the room with her gigantic lanyard of a thousand fancy ribbons and sadistic glee.
Where were we?
Oh yes.
A woman is leading the fun activities on a cruise ship. Singing. Dancing. A man is the leader of the cruise ship. Keeping the whole thing afloat. He is ordered to fire her, I grasp pretty quickly. But secretly
he is in love with her. All fairly fluffy stuff that goes great with eating Doritos in the checkout line.
Nothing new.
Nothing to blow people’s minds.
Nothing to expand their horizons and give them a deeper appreciation for the goodness of mankind.
And a lot of the word glorious . A glorious sunrise. A glorious lounge chair. A glorious schedule. Gloriously clean hair that frames her gloriously beautiful
face.
Beautiful: That’s all we get for character description here.
No, wait—we’ve got another one. Hot.
A hot, beautiful character with gloriously clean hair and a gloriously glossy face.
It’s screaming for a Pulitzer Prize, really.
I jump, my backside literally breaking contact with the chair, as the volunteer rings a cowbell directly behind me. “Time’s
up!” she cries, and proceeds to give gracious nods and winks at various agents as if to say, “ I know, right? You’re so welcome. ”
Chairs begin sliding backward. Bags are being picked up off the floor. Weeping, or shrill laughter, commences.
“Well, it seems our time is up here.” Jack pulls an apologetic face, although his tone is entirely otherwise. He pushes back
his chair and reaches out a hand toward me as though he is about to offer up a consolation prize of a handshake to make sure
I know without question this is the end of the line. Our interview is over.
This is it.
This is my five seconds to say something. And it will be dazzling or nothing.
Come on, Bryony. What can you say now—NOW—short, concise, and knocks him off his feet?
I look down at the chapter, nothing coming to mind.
Nothing.
I can’t say anything .
Well... that’s not true, is it?
I’m supposed to say it’s wonderful. I’m supposed to gawk and confirm that this book, the book he represents, is absolutely
inspiring . Except for this teeny tiny typo right here on page 12 that could change the whole thing.
Before he is standing all the way, I blurt out the one thing that is true.
And, unfortunately, the one thing I’m not allowed to say.
“The one thing wrong with this is... everything.”