The Last Book Party Read online

  Presumably to change the subject, Jeremy asked if my family was part of Tillie and Henry’s crowd in Truro. I half choked on my beer, then wiped the foam from my lips.

  “God, no,” I said.

  “Not writers?”

  “Different social circles,” I said. “Artists unsettle my parents. They find them too unpredictable, I think.”

  Imagining my mother at Henry’s party, I saw her running a finger along a bookshelf checking for dust. Sneering at Tillie’s long braid, pronouncing it too girlish for a woman that age. It was hard to believe that my mother, so controlled and pragmatic, had once dreamt of an artistic career.

  Uncomfortable with Jeremy’s questions, I turned the conversation back to his writing. I asked Malcolm if he’d read Jeremy’s stories.

  “I have not,” he said, a glint in his eye. “Perhaps we should organize a reading.”

  “Yes, let’s!” I said.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Oh, gee, golly whiz, how great. Can we use your barn for a stage? Can you sew up some curtains?”

  Malcolm patted Jeremy’s shoulder.

  “Now, now, enough nasty.”

  I didn’t let it go. I was curious to know what this privileged guy had written as a teenager and if there was anything in his collection that might explain his friendship with Franny.

  “Where can we find your stories? I’d love to read them.”

  Jeremy didn’t answer right away. Then, as if genuinely uncomfortable with the attention, he said, “It was a limited edition. You’d be hard put to find a copy.”

  6

  I imagined Lil with long blond hair, the kind that never got frizzy like mine, but curled into perfect little ringlets around her forehead and tumbled thickly down her back. Henry and Tillie would adore her. She would be a poet, or a painter, or do something surprising with batik. I pictured her with Franny roaming woodsy footpaths on an island in Maine. He would lie on pine needles taking photographs of tree trunks while she gathered scraps of bark for a sculpture. After wandering the island, they would make love on a mattress on the floor of an old lighthouse and then sleep until the sun went down. When Lil woke up, she would stretch like a cat. She would say she wanted something like chocolate pudding for dinner, and Franny would oblige.

  At noon on Friday, I was sitting at my desk, a submission from the slush pile in front of me, imagining Franny and Lil afloat on their backs in a pond, when the phone rang. It was Malcolm, at his house in Bucks County, with an urgent errand. He wanted me to go into the storeroom “posthaste,” find a particular bound galley, and bring it to 160 East Twelfth Street, the basement apartment.

  “Do hurry,” he said. “Jeremy asked for it today as he might be heading out of town this evening.”

  Jeremy. I had little desire to see Jeremy. I cringed at the idea of appearing before him as the lowly errand runner that I was. I looked around for one of the summer interns, but they’d all skipped out early to start their weekends. I dragged myself into the storeroom to get a galley of the novel Armenian Rhapsody, by a writer who’d emigrated from Yerevan to Chicago as a teenager. It annoyed me that Jeremy was already feeling entitled enough to ask for a delivery to his apartment. I had no idea why it was so urgent that he get the galley today.

  It was nearly one hundred degrees and muggy outside, and the air felt thick and dirty. I took the bus downtown and walked the last few blocks to Jeremy’s apartment, the leather straps of my sandals cutting into my feet, which had swelled from the heat. I twisted my hair into a bun and pulled a pencil from my tote bag, sticking it through the knot to keep my hair off my neck.

  His building was a narrow brownstone. I went down the steps to the basement and pushed the bell. When the door opened, Jeremy stood in front of me with a spoon in his mouth and a jar of peanut butter in his hand, wearing a plain white T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts. He looked thinner than I’d remembered.

  “Hi. Malcolm said you had a desperate need for Armenian Rhapsody.”

  I reached into my bag and took out the galley. Jeremy slowly pulled the spoon from his mouth and put it and the jar of peanut butter down on a table by the door. He took the galley, flipped through the pages, and set it on the table.

  “Do you want to come in?” he asked, without smiling, seeming almost nervous.

  My eagerness to learn more about Franny trumped my wariness of Jeremy. “Just for a minute—to get out of the heat.” I moved toward the wheezing air conditioner in the window by the door.

  The room was small and tidy, with one wall of exposed brick. There wasn’t much furniture—a navy-blue futon couch, an antique rocking chair, and an old camp trunk used as a coffee table, on which sat a glass milk bottle filled with dried flowers. Books were lined up neatly on two long wooden shelves propped up on cinder blocks. A pair of pink ballet shoes, their ribbons wrapped tightly around them, and pair of light-blue leg warmers were on the floor near the futon. A tiny kitchen with a half-size fridge, a stove, and a narrow sink was tucked into the corner. On top of the single kitchen cabinet was a clay pot containing an ivy plant with wilting brown leaves.

  “Is this your place?” I asked.

  “Mine? Are you kidding? Does this look like the kind of place I’d live in?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

  Jeremy pointed to a framed poster of Joni Mitchell on the wall.

  “You know me enough to know that this couldn’t possibly be mine.”

  “I like Joni Mitchell,” I said.

  “Of course you do. As does my little sister, Debbie, which is why she hung it in her apartment.”

  I was surprised to hear that he was someone’s older brother. From the small fridge, Jeremy pulled out two bottles of Bass Ale and handed one to me. He sat on the futon with his long legs stretched onto the trunk, leaving me the rocking chair. He told me his sister was at a dance festival in North Carolina for the month and he was staying at her place until he figured out where to go next.

  “Next?” I asked.

  “I’d been thinking of heading up to the Cape to hang with Franny for a while, but I think he’s staying up in Maine with Lil.”

  I rocked a few times in the chair, then asked, “So where in Maine are they?”

  Jeremy smiled slightly.

  “At Lil’s mother’s house in Vinalhaven. Lil’s working at some lobster place where Franny’s hoping to get work too. It’s absurdly remote. You have to drive forever and then take a ferry to get there.”

  I shook my head.

  “What?”

  “I had imagined them on an island,” I said.

  “They are kind of an island to themselves,” he said.

  When he didn’t continue, I asked, “Is Lil an artist too?”

  “She would say so,” Jeremy said.

  “Would you?”

  He said nothing, which was enough for me to understand he didn’t think much of Lil. Perhaps he found their relationship as illogical as I found his friendship with Franny. We sat in silence for a moment, Jeremy watching me rock in the chair. I stood up and stepped to the kitchen to put my beer in the sink.

  “I’m just going to pour the rest out; I should get back to work,” I said, my back to Jeremy, as the amber liquid flowed into the drain.

  I was about to turn to go when I felt my hair slip out of its bun and tumble down to my shoulders. I turned around and Jeremy was standing right behind me, holding the pencil that I’d used to keep my hair in place. He looked as surprised as I was.

  “Sorry—I couldn’t resist,” he said.

  For a second, his face appeared tentative, even open. Had Jeremy been making a pass at me, at Franny’s “easy mark”? Then, tapping the pencil against his palm, he seemed to regain his composure.

  “Can I take this?”

  “I think you just did,” I said.

  I told him I’d see him around, and without looking at him again, I let myself out.

  7

  Other than May Castanada, the new receptionist, who wa
s listening to her Walkman with her eyes closed when the elevator opened onto the third floor, Hodder, Strike had cleared out by the time I got back. I felt guilty going into Malcolm’s office without permission. Malcolm guarded his authors’ manuscripts carefully, often keeping them even from the assistants, until he’d gotten through a few rounds of edits. Before he’d left for the country, he’d mentioned that Jeremy’s novel was in the “percolation” stage, which meant that he was going to let it sit for a while before he tackled it again.

  Malcolm’s vast mahogany desk gleamed as if it had just been polished and was nearly bare, except for a black leather blotter, a row of six perfectly sharpened pencils, a thick pad of white paper, and a single silver pen, which I knew contained a cartridge of green ink, as it was my responsibility to keep the supply closet well stocked with them.

  I found Jeremy’s manuscript in a cardboard box on the credenza behind Malcolm’s desk. Not daring to stay in his office, I took the box and returned to my desk just outside his door. I don’t know why I felt so nervous. If Malcolm found out I’d read the manuscript, he’d probably do little more than show his displeasure by waiting a week or two before asking what I’d thought of it. But my heart raced as I lifted the top off the cardboard box and saw the first page, which read “An Untitled Novel by J. Grand.”

  When Malcolm described Jeremy’s novel, the idea of a young American writer setting his first novel in a leprosy colony in Nepal seemed ridiculous to me. I figured the protagonist would be a barely veiled version of Jeremy who found “unlikely adventures and life lessons in the heart of the Himalayas,” as the jacket copy would inevitably put it. The novel would be slick, darkly funny, and a little empty.

  By the time I’d read the first two pages, though, I knew how wrong I had been. It was not just the writing, which was simple and clear and without any of the pretentious literary pyrotechnics I had expected. It was the voice. The book was not narrated by a young man like Jeremy, but by a teenage girl with a distinctive, lilting tone. In the first chapter, she was perched in a tree, gazing at the thick vines that wrapped tightly around the branches in a way that she feared no one would ever embrace her.

  I stopped reading for a moment and exhaled. Jeremy could write, and he appeared to have a heart. It was hard to reconcile his snide manner with the tone of his novel, but more puzzling, and intimidating, was the tender specificity of his story. His protagonist, Sarita, was infatuated with the son of the colony’s doctor and would watch as the boy walked through the rhododendrons. When he left, she would follow his path, placing her own bare feet into his footprints, balancing one foot in one print for a few seconds before stepping her other foot into the next one.

  I read all afternoon and into the early evening, until I finished Jeremy’s astounding novel.

  8

  One of the first things I discovered when starting my job at Hodder, Strike was that the assistants on the third floor are of two distinct tribes: editorial and publicity. The editorial staff—lowly editorial secretaries, like me, and the higher-ranking editorial assistants, like Ron—are more serious and pretentious, as well versed in postmodern writers like Angela Carter and Robert Coover as in John Steinbeck and Jane Austen. We favor studiously casual clothes, usually in black, that are as likely to be thrift-shop discoveries as expensive indulgences from the parents who often subsidize this low-paying profession.

  Then there are the young publicists, all female and all pretty, the kind of girls who wear velvet headbands to pull back their shiny blond hair and show off their bright faces. They start and end the day perky, apparently without a dependency on coffee, and relish their role as cheerleaders for books. Unlike the more introverted editorial assistants, many of whom are angst-ridden about working in publishing rather than being published, the publicity girls love their jobs and think nothing of mixing work and pleasure. So it wasn’t surprising that it was a trio of young assistant publicists who decided to host the first party of the summer.

  “It’s a progressive party,” said Mary Noonan, who had walked over to the editorial department to extend invitations.

  “Politically progressive?” I said. “That’s interesting. I think.”

  “Very funny, but no,” Mary said. “Progressive, as in we progress from one apartment to another. We start at my place, then move on to Callie’s, and finish up at Mindy’s.”

  Not one for office parties, with the exception of Malcolm’s monthly happy hour, I was reluctant to attend one such gathering only to have to move on and endure the awkward start to another. But I was tired of spending evenings trying not to think about Franny while watching Bette Davis movies alone at the Regency.

  “And you have to bring a writer,” Mary said. “From our list.”

  “Bring Your Own Writer. That’s new,” I said. Mary waited for it to dawn on me that she meant I should invite Jeremy, the sole Hodder, Strike writer who was under the age of thirty.

  “You really think Jeremy Grand will go to a progressive party?” I said.

  Mary looked at me in a knowing way that reminded me she was no fool, that in addition to having been the captain of the women’s field hockey team at Hamilton, she had double majored in American literature and psychology. “He will once you tell him the party is hosted by the people responsible for promoting his book,” she said.

  “You think he’s that pragmatic?”

  “I have no idea!” Mary said, with a shrug. “I just think he’s cute.”

  Half hoping Jeremy would have other plans and be unable to come, I waited until the end of the week to call. But he accepted the invitation readily, without questioning the “progressive” nature of the party. He suggested we meet on the corner of Eighty-Sixth Street and York to walk up to the first installment together.

  He was there before me, leaning against a NO PARKING sign, hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans.

  “Ready for some preordained spontaneity?” I asked.

  “Are we committed to all stops on this party train?”

  His frown suggested that he’d accepted the invitation only for professional reasons, as Mary had suggested he might.

  “You’re free to do as you please,” I said. “I’m not your minder.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that,” he said, his voice softening.

  He asked about the girls who were hosting, and I told him about the publicity clan, and which of the editorial assistants were likely to show up. I warned him about Ron, who had yet to admit to liking a single book on Malcolm’s list. “He’s skeptical of any novel with a traditional chronology. Or even a clear narrative arc. He claims that his own novel-in-progress is written ‘inside out and backward.’”

  “I have no idea what that means,” Jeremy said.

  “I’m not sure Ron does either.”

  I was tempted to compliment Jeremy on his own novel but decided I didn’t yet want him to know that I’d read it.

  When we got off the narrow elevator in Mary’s building, we followed the sounds of the Eurythmics down the hall to apartment 6J. The door opened into a corridor that led to a living room with a single window, a couch covered with an Indian-print bedspread, and a round table filled with bowls of potato chips and onion dip and a platter of brie and crackers. Mary was standing by the table talking to some preppy guys in penny loafers. The room was too bright for a party, which gave it the slight unease of a gathering that had not yet found its flow.

  Mary, wearing a thin-strapped yellow sundress, held a glass of white wine. “You came!” she said, punching me and then Jeremy lightly on the arm. I expected him to scowl at her but he smiled and thanked her for the invitation. I walked over to a small table near the windowsill, where Mary had arranged the drinks, and took a bottle of beer. Ron, looking professorial as ever with his round glasses and trimmed beard, was standing by the kitchen alcove, his arm around a girl slightly taller than he was, with short, spiky hair and a row of silver earrings in her left ear. He indicated I should join them and clinke
d his beer against mine.

  “This is Kayla,” he said. Spotting Jeremy talking to Mary by the drinks table, Ron asked, “Your date?”

  “Hardly. Mary asked me to invite him.”

  Kayla turned to see who we were talking about. “I feel like I know that guy,” she said.

  “That’s the guy I’ve told you about,” Ron said. “The ridiculously talented Jeremy Grand, aka God’s gift to lepers.”

  “Was that an actual compliment?” I said.

  Ron shook his head slowly. “I said he has talent. I didn’t say he had broken new ground.”

  Kayla peered behind Ron, squinting toward Jeremy. “That’s Jeremy Greenberg,” she said. “I sat next to him in social studies at Millburn Junior High.”

  “He changed his name?” Ron said.

  “He’s Jewish?” I said. “From New Jersey?”

  Kayla nodded. “Yes, yes, and yes.”

  Ron turned toward Kayla. “You’re from New Jersey?”

  She gave him a withering stare. I looked at Jeremy, who was laughing at something Mary was saying. I had gotten Jeremy completely wrong. He had no more been born into Franny’s world than I had.

  Kayla walked up to Jeremy and, ignoring Mary, held up her hand and waved her fingers at him. He looked at her without recognition, and then as she spoke, pointing at her hair, which probably wasn’t so edgy back in eighth grade, it seemed to dawn on him that he did know her. I tried to hear what they were saying, but Mary, who had been pushed out of the conversation by Kayla, turned toward the rest of us to announce that our estimated time of departure to progress to the next location of the party, at Seventy-First off Third, would be in precisely ten minutes.

  I downed my beer, grabbed another, and stood by the door so that I could be one of the first to leave. Jeremy followed. Without waiting for the rest of the group to come downstairs, we started walking west. For about a block, I debated saying anything at all, but then I couldn’t resist. “Nice to meet you, Jeremy Greenberg.”