The Last Book Party Read online

  In the kitchen, Franny was filling a big pot with water. He looked up at me and hesitated for a second, which made me blush. And then he asked, “What’s your method? Boil them alive or knife them first?”

  “Oh, definitely the knife,” I said. “It’s harsh, but humane.”

  He put the pot on the stove and took a long knife from a drawer. The lobsters were trying to claw their way out of the sink, but they kept slipping down the sides. Franny grabbed one and jabbed the knife in. I was standing close to him, our shoulders touching. He took the second lobster and held the point of the knife right at the joint of the shell where he would plunge it in. Then he offered the knife to me. I couldn’t stand to watch when my father killed lobsters this way, but I took the knife. I inhaled and pushed the tip through the lobster. We put them in the pot and Franny covered it. He looked at me and tilted his head. I moved my head in the opposite direction, mirroring his angle.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just … nothing,” he said.

  I wanted to touch his face, his still-damp hair.

  We were setting the table when the woman I’d seen dancing with Henry the night before came into the kitchen. Her thick hair was loose and fell almost to her waist. Her eyes were dark brown and piercing, her nose long and thin. In a kimono-like robe and flip-flops, she managed to look attractive, even somewhat regal, yet also like a distracted poet who had more important things to consider than her own appearance. She looked at me imperiously. “Who’s this now?”

  “This is Eve,” Franny said, and then introduced me to his mother, Tillie. I didn’t say that I had read her poems in college, or that I knew her latest collection had been well reviewed. I didn’t mention that I worked at Hodder, Strike and had read the first chapters of Henry’s memoir, with his breathless account of their steamy courtship and coming together as “literary soul mates.” I didn’t say anything about being at the party the night before or peeking into her bedroom. Franny told her about the surf and how we had pulled in the lobster trap. She lifted the lid on the pot. “You know, technically, you’re poachers.”

  Franny shook his head. “Nah, these little lobsters were children lost in the storm.”

  “We’re not really thieves, are we?” I asked.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Tillie said, opening the refrigerator and bending down to reach for something in the back. “Here, you can christen your bounty with this.”

  She stood up and held out a black bottle. “Freixenet,” she said. “You drink, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good girl.”

  She handed the bottle to Franny and put two wineglasses on the table. She said she and Henry were going to work for another few hours and have dinner in Provincetown at Napi’s. I wanted to know what they were writing and if they took turns reading their drafts aloud. Did they share an office, sit side by side?

  Tillie left, and Franny poured the champagne.

  “To the ocean,” he said, handing me a glass.

  “To the ocean.”

  I took a big sip. Then another. We ate sweet Portuguese bread, ripping chunks off a round loaf, until our lobsters turned bright red. The champagne tickled my tongue and rippled to my head. The lobsters were small and their meat was sweet and juicy. We tossed the shells into a metal bowl that sat between us on the table. It got darker in the kitchen, but we didn’t turn on the lights.

  Franny wanted to know what I loved about my job. I told him there wasn’t much.

  “I am a very educated typist,” I said.

  “So why do you do it?”

  I told him about my leap into publishing after graduation, how excited I was to learn the magic of making books and how hopeful I’d been that working with real authors and editors would give me back some of the confidence in my own writing that I’d lost in the midst of so many talented writers at school.

  “Were they really that good?” Franny asked.

  “They were. Prolific too. And arrogant. They carried themselves like writers with a capital W. I’m sure you had the type at art school—straight guys who wear eyeliner. Everyone seemed so sure of themselves. It was like they were preparing to become the ‘voices of their generation’ and I was struggling to clear my throat.”

  When I was hired as an editorial secretary at Hodder, Strike, I felt as though I’d won the lottery instead of a $13,700 annual salary that was barely enough to cover my rent in the cramped and dark one-bedroom apartment on upper Broadway that I shared with a former classmate named Annie. An assistant account executive at McCann Erickson, Annie kept trying to convince me to join her for “more money and better parties,” but for at least my first year at Hodder, Strike, I had loved my job.

  “It was a thrill to read every submission, to open every box of new books. I thought my instincts had been right and that working at a publishing house really would help me start writing again. But over time, being among people whose job was to judge books had the opposite effect.”

  I told Franny how Ron Ingot, the editorial assistant who was one rung above me, also working for Malcolm Wing, had a daily ritual of skewering submissions he didn’t like. We all laughed at his pithy critiques, but they left me feeling a little queasy, as if I’d authored the novels myself.

  “What would this Ronny-boy say?” Franny asked.

  “Well, he faulted one manuscript for its ‘pitiful irrelevance’ and took another author to task for the ‘circuitous exploration of her destitute imagination.’”

  “Ouch.”

  It turned out that reading and making fun of the slush pile, all the manuscripts sent in by hopeful writers with no connections, was not a confidence booster. Every line I wrote, I imagined Ron reading and saying, “Hey, everyone, listen to this doozy.”

  Tipping his wooden chair back and letting it balance on two legs, Franny asked me to tell him more about the slush pile. He pretended to be shocked to find out it was not a literal pile, just shelves of manuscripts, each a stack of papers in a cardboard box.

  “No pile? That’s terrible!” he said. “The manuscripts should be tossed into a pile, a huge messy pile of manuscripts. A mountain of dreams.”

  “Very boring dreams,” I said. “Few are well written.”

  “Who cares? I don’t want to read them, I want to photograph them. I want to take a whole series of photographs of the Hodder, Strike slush pile.”

  “Which isn’t a pile.”

  “I would photograph the pile from below, to show how big it is, how unlikely the climb out of obscurity, but close enough to see some of the titles, the hundreds of stories that need to be told.”

  “They may need to be told, but trust me, most of them don’t need to be read.”

  “No—better. I’ll photograph you bending down to pick up one lucky manuscript. Or you’ll be sitting on the floor in the middle of the pile—I know, I know it’s not a pile, but we’ll make it a pile—and you’ll be looking down, your face hidden, reading.”

  I loved that he wanted to photograph me. I was astonished, yet again, by the ease with which he floated his ideas, and how pleased he was with them.

  “Next time I’m in New York.” And then he stood up and put his hand on my head. “Well, my lobster girl. We will never have another meal as good as this.”

  “That is so very sad,” I said, looking up at him and not feeling the slightest bit sad. “And so very true.”

  His eyes were a dark, algae green. I willed myself to hold his gaze. I had been playing it safe long enough, letting myself get involved only with men I never really cared to know, and who I eventually realized had little interest in getting to know me. I had finally ended things with a law associate named Brian, the last in a line of unimaginative men, and was ready for something new. Annie had urged me to get out of my shell, to try new things and meet new people—new men—this summer. I’d gone to Henry and Tillie’s party and danced with abandon. I’d jumped into the surf and taken its treasure. I wanted to be the free
spirit Franny seemed to think I was.

  I tried to still my trembling legs as Franny bent down, brushed my hair back from my face, and kissed me. His lips were warm and soft. He took my hands and pulled me up. As we kissed again, I knew, with a mix of relief and fear, that I would follow him wherever he wanted to go, even if I ended up in way over my head.

  part two

  July 1987

  5

  Malcolm was in a closed-door meeting all afternoon, so I left my desk and went to the storeroom for a break. I ran my hands along the spines of the new Hodder, Strike hardcovers, stacked in tight, neat rows on the tall bookshelves. I pulled out a mystery with a bright red cover and opened it, hearing the slight crack in the binding. I took a deep breath and smelled the paper, which, despite being printed just weeks ago, had the same inky, musty scent of the picture books I’d loved as a child. I thought about sketching the storeroom and drawing an arrow to indicate a place on the floor for Franny’s slush pile of manuscripts. I could mail it to him, with a casual note stating that the room was ready whenever he was. Maybe I would let him know that I’d be back in Truro at the end of July and would love to see the beginnings of his mural. No expectations, just a friendly hello.

  For my first few days back in New York, a breezy letter to Franny would have been sincere. Returning to work, I held the memory of Franny like a seashell in my pocket. It had been surprisingly effortless in his bed. Something about him had made it easy for me to relax. Franny’s laid-back manner made Brian seem so uptight and self-conscious. With Franny, the fooling around was unhurried and casual, the lazy, circuitous conversation even better. At one point, he lay with his head on my stomach, tracing the lines on my palm. “Very interesting,” he said, drawing out his words as his finger moved along the bottom of my thumb. “I see you will take a long journey.”

  “That tickles,” I said, trying to pull my hand away. He held on and moved his finger to the center of my palm.

  “You will journey to a great height, the very top of a high mountain. No, the top of a tall, tall sand dune—in the middle of a dark, moonless night.”

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “Hard to tell,” he said, running his finger to my wrist and up my arm. “Hmm, I see a man. A mysterious and handsome man.”

  “Who is he?” I asked, shivering from the feathery tickle of his touch.

  “Who is he?” Franny flipped onto his stomach, the mysterious tone gone from his voice. He climbed on top of me, covering my neck with kisses. “He is me, of course!”

  The next morning, on my way back to New York, I was brimming with happiness. I liked the idea of myself as someone who could act on a whim and spend a night with Franny without needing more. I was relieved that Annie was in Toronto at a wedding. If she had been home, she would have wanted all the details and then come up with scenarios for my potential torrid romance with Franny.

  But by the end of the week, I was slipping. It was difficult to concentrate at work. I tried to hold on to that carefree version of myself, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Franny, replaying his words and wondering if he was thinking about me at all. I couldn’t help imagining the two of us together as an artistic couple like Henry and Tillie.

  Our magical evening had ended on a hopeful note. We had tiptoed downstairs from his room, long after we’d heard his parents come home from dinner and settle in for the night. Franny loaded my bicycle into the back of his mother’s old station wagon and drove me home. We stood for a moment by the car. I could see the moon over the top of the oak tree that my parents kept trimming to restore their neighbors’ view of the harbor. Franny put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me deeply. In a tone that sounded definitive but later struck me as noncommittal, he said, “I will see you soon.”

  I got back to my desk as Malcolm came out of his office with a pale, tall man with dark, curly hair and a strong Roman nose. He looked a few years older than me, but had the mannerisms of someone younger, his hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets as he chewed his lip. I knew before Malcolm said anything that this must be Jeremy Grand, who had written a novel about a love affair in a leper colony. I hadn’t read the manuscript yet, but Malcolm had told me he’d fallen for it immediately and made a quick offer to publish it. I stood up to shake Jeremy’s hand, but he kept his hands in his pockets. He dropped his chin at me, as if we had met before.

  In a vaguely British accent that belied his West Virginia origins, Malcolm said, “Jeremy tells me that he’s recently discovered you know a gentleman friend of his, the progeny of one of our esteemed authors.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said, with a smirk. “I hear you know Franny Grey.”

  The way he said it made me wonder how much Franny had told him. I felt my cheeks flush.

  “I met Franny in Cape Cod.”

  It sounded like a ridiculously simple sentence for something that had taken up so much of my thoughts for the past week.

  “So I heard,” Jeremy said. “I spoke to him Monday before he left for Maine with Lil.”

  “Lil?”

  I guessed the answer before Jeremy said it: Lil was Franny’s girlfriend.

  “Oh, right,” I said, although I could tell Jeremy knew it was the first I was hearing of Lil. My heart pounded. Franny hadn’t given any indication that there was a Lil, but neither had he said there wasn’t. I had been no more forthcoming. Were he to discover I had a boyfriend, he could have been just as surprised. But with no attachments to speak of, the existence of Lil made me feel foolish and angry.

  What had Franny told Jeremy? That I’d thrown myself at him pathetically? Had he described our time together as a convenient seduction while his girlfriend was away?

  Malcolm threw an arm around Jeremy and said, “OK, children, enough ‘do you know so-and-so.’ It’s full-moon drinks tonight, and I command you to follow me downstairs.”

  A tall, bald, dapper man with plump and rosy cheeks, Malcolm had a playful sense of humor and loved to banter with Hodder, Strike’s much younger editorial secretaries and assistants. Every month or so, he took a bunch of us for drinks at the Guardsman, a few blocks down Lexington at Thirty-Fourth Street. With bar food, darts, and tall wooden booths, the pub was not the kind of place Malcolm would ever take an older author for lunch—for that he favored Le Périgord—but he seemed to enjoy catching up on gossip and sipping dry vermouth while we put as many beers on his tab as we could manage in an hour or so. I loved talking with Malcolm, especially after he returned from a trip to his “beloved Britannia” and would tell me about having tea with his “dearest of friends” Frances Partridge, who was eighty-seven and the author of one of my favorite books, Love in Bloomsbury: Memories.

  I followed Malcolm and Jeremy and a few others to the elevator and down to the Guardsman. When we were settled with drinks, Malcolm smoothed his silk Hermès tie, lifted his glass, and proposed a toast to Jeremy, whom the other assistants watched with varying degrees of envy. Jeremy lifted his mug and quickly downed nearly half of it. I must have been staring because he quickly put his mug back on the table.

  “What—was I not supposed to drink?” He spoke directly to me, without a hint of friendliness.

  “Technically, no. Not when you’re the one being toasted.”

  “Right. Thanks for the etiquette lesson.” Jeremy picked up his mug and finished the rest of his beer in one swallow.

  When Malcolm went to get another pitcher for the table, I asked Jeremy how he knew Franny. Their friendship made little sense to me. Where Franny was all lightness and warmth, Jeremy seemed dark and cynical.

  “Boarding school at Choate. Freshman year,” Jeremy said.

  “Roommates?”

  He shook his head. “More like partners in crime.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Pot, Quaaludes, busting curfew—the usual overprivileged adolescent shit.”

  “It hardly sounds criminal,” I said.

  “What’d you do in high school, write in pen in the margins of a scho
ol copy of Wuthering Heights?”

  “Ink in a book? Never,” I said.

  “Dare a controversial new design for the yearbook?”

  “Literary magazine.”

  Franny and Jeremy together still perplexed me. Jeremy struck me as a quintessential prep-school snob who had already sized me up and judged me harshly as the suburban public school girl I was.

  I asked Jeremy if he’d ever been to Franny’s place in Truro.

  “Been there? I practically lived there. Had my best vacations there. Thanksgivings too.”

  He said this as if it were a badge of honor, and a claiming of territory. No wonder Jeremy seemed so full of himself; he was part of that literary world.

  Malcolm slid back into the booth and handed Jeremy another beer.

  “So, cherub,” he said to me, “did you know that Jeremy was something of an adolescent prodigy? When he was still in high school, he had a collection of short stories published—a small press, of course, but impressive nonetheless. A recasting of Winesburg, Ohio—but at Choate! An Enclave in Wallingford.”

  Jeremy seemed embarrassed.

  “The head of the English department made it happen,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but be impressed and a little jealous that while still a teenager Jeremy had hit the trifecta of literary success: talent, confidence, and connections.

  “Enough with the modesty,” Malcolm said to Jeremy. “Your teacher helped because you were that good.”

  Malcolm was usually more reserved with his authors, and even if his interest wasn’t purely professional, Jeremy wasn’t his type. Malcolm’s typical objects of affection were blond and droll. Jeremy’s novel must really be something.