The Accidental Bestseller (4 page)

The ballroom began to empty and Mallory began to make her way toward them.

Kendall and her two human bookends had not yet exchanged a word. Kendall was simply too numb to move or speak, and she suspected Faye and Tanya were experiencing similar technical difficulties.

Kendall watched Mallory’s progress as if watching through a fog. People stopped her, called out to her as if they knew her, and Mallory dealt with each and every one of them with that peculiar mix of warmth and distance.

Finally Mallory reached them. “I’m so sorry!” She moved a group of chairs out of the way and swooped down to hug Kendall. “I wanted to warn you as soon as I saw that damned card, but I didn’t know how. I’d convinced myself your name would be on it—it should have been,” she added hastily, “and I almost said it anyway. Wouldn’t that have been interesting?”

Kendall still couldn’t speak. And apparently neither could Faye or Tanya. All three of them just sat silent and staring.

“OK.” Mallory stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. “Which one of you is ‘see no evil’?”

Tanya broke the silence. “I wish you woulda announced Kendall instead. Hillary Bradford Hines is already so big she could hit the
New York Times
now with a grocery list. This win won’t make a speck of difference for her.” She put a protective arm around Kendall. “I think we should demand a recount.”

“Yes, because that worked so well for the Democrats in Florida,” Faye weighed in. “This is not the end of the world; it’s just a temporary setback. Kendall doesn’t need a Zelda to have a career. It might have helped, but plenty of people have done just fine without one.”

Kendall knew she should reply but she just couldn’t seem to manage it. Stray words and images formed in her brain but she couldn’t form them into thoughts, let alone complete sentences.

Loserloserloser
continued to echo in her mental abyss. For the life of her, she couldn’t come up with a word to replace it.

“Kendall?” Mallory whispered her name. “Are you all right?”

Kendall opened her mouth but nothing came out.

Faye cupped Kendall’s chin. “Kendall?” She spoke very clearly and slowly. “Everything’s OK, Kendall.”

Kendall was horrified when her vision blurred, beyond horrified when the first tear fell and she had to fight off the urge to bury her face in Faye’s pillowy shoulder and wail like a child.

She just couldn’t figure out what to do next. She’d spent the last two months convincing herself that winning a Zelda would turn things around. Now she was supposed to convince herself it didn’t really matter?

The four of them remained huddled there, locked together in Kendall’s misery.

The cleanup crew began to break down the ballroom.

“Listen,” Mallory said. “I have to leave for the reception. I need to have a quick word with Zoe and Jonathan,” she said, mentioning her editor and publisher.

Kendall’s editor and publisher were probably out there, too, as was her agent. But they were the last people in the world she wanted to see right now. Kendall shook her head, sending the tears dribbling down her face onto the bodice of her gown.

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can,” Faye said. “And you will.”

Kendall sniffed and swiped at the tears. Her whole stupid face was awash with them.

“You are not going to slink off like some loser,” Mallory said.

Kendall’s head snapped up on hearing the word that was still filling her brain spoken aloud.

“So you didn’t win,” Mallory continued. “Neither did Karen or Laura or Susan or Dora. In fact, the number of people who didn’t win tonight is a lot longer than the list of those who did. The Zelda would have been a good way to try to get your editor and your house more firmly behind you. Maybe Sylvia could have negotiated a few more bucks out of them on your next contract. Or taken you elsewhere a little more easily. But like Faye said, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll just have to give your next move some real thought. I’m sure if we all put our heads together we can come up with a plan of attack. Let’s just get through the night and we’ll start the discussion over breakfast.”

Kendall sniffed and dashed away the last of her tears and resisted the urge to remind Mallory that this was all very easy for her to say. She didn’t need a Zelda or anything else to boost a sagging career. Her career was in even better shape than her body.

Kendall’s chin shot up. She was not going to take this out on Mallory. Or allow herself to appear as pathetic as she felt.

“Right.” She stood and her henchwomen stood with her. “Just let me go fix my face. I’ll meet you at the reception.”

“I’ll go with you. I need to powder my nose.” Kendall saw the look Tanya shot the others as they separated, but she was too lethargic to protest.

In the ladies’ room, Kendall sat in the stall for a very long time, holding her dress up off the floor while she searched the veins of pink marble for the strength to get through the rest of the night.

A loud knock on the stall door roused her from her contemplation of the floor.

“Are you coming out anytime soon, Kendall?” Tanya’s voice reached her from the other side of the door. “There’s a good-sized line of desperate women waiting out here, and if we don’t hurry all the hors d’oeuvres will be gone.”

“Be right with you.” Reluctantly Kendall left the stall, smiled an apology to the waiting line of women, washed her hands, and repaired her makeup all without forming a single coherent thought. She then followed Tanya obediently out of the bathroom and toward the roar of voices. Her brain seemed to be moving at half its normal speed, but she was too glad of the protective numbness to wish it away.

They passed clumps of writers as they crossed the expansive upstairs lobby. The women wore everything from short black cocktail dresses to long formal gowns aglitter with sequins, their shapes ranging from hourglass to building sized. The men had dressed up too, after a fashion, and everyone juggled plates of finger foods and cocktail glasses. All of their mouths were moving either to talk or chew. Or in some unfortunate cases, both.

“Oh, shit,” Tanya whispered under her breath as she checked her pace. “Plain Jane at six o’clock.”

Kendall glanced up and sure enough there was her editor, Jane Jensen, wearing shapeless black, her short dark hair held off her pale face with child-sized barrettes.

A split second after Tanya’s warning, Jane Jensen glanced up and made accidental eye contact with Kendall.

“ ‘Oh, shit’ is right,” Kendall agreed, knowing her editor would now feel compelled to acknowledge her. Which would compel Kendall to respond.

Kendall resisted the urge to flee as the younger woman approached; it took even more effort to keep a pleasant smile on her face.

“Sorry you lost,” Jane said, her tone neither regretful nor surprised. “I thought
Dream
might have had a shot.” Her plain face was as devoid of expression as her voice. “It was probably the best thing you’ve done.”

The backhanded compliment carried the weight of a slap. In all their dealings with each other, Kendall couldn’t remember the woman ever displaying an ounce of real enthusiasm for Kendall or her books.

Beside her, Tanya’s jaw jutted out in a combative way; Kendall could feel her friend practically pawing the ground like a bull ready to charge.

Kendall placed a hand on Tanya’s arm. She was too weary even to let someone else start something on her behalf, and Tanya didn’t need to piss off an editor at a major publishing house at this stage in her career.

“Thanks, Jane.” Kendall tightened her grasp on Tanya’s arm and tugged gently. “That means a lot coming from you.” She purposely kept her tone as expressionless as her editor had. “If you’ll excuse us, we’re going to get something to eat now,” Kendall said, as they made their exit, though not even the normally therapeutic qualities of junk food were likely to cure what ailed her.

They hadn’t covered much ground when Kendall heard her name called. “Hey, kiddo,” Daisy Maryles, the executive editor of
Publishers Weekly,
said as she strode up to her. “Tough luck. I really thought you had it this time.” Daisy’s friend and sidekick, Bette-Lee Fox of
Library Journal
was with her and held her arms out to Kendall for a bracing hug. Carol Fitzgerald, founder of Book Report Network, completed their triumvirate.

Kendall had met and bonded with the threesome early in her career and always enjoyed the way they riffed off each other. Drawn to their warmth and collective quick wit, she made a point of seeing whichever of them was available whenever she was in New York. They were smart and funny and, in an industry where people rarely meant exactly what they said, they could always be counted on to speak their minds.

“Scarsdale should be ashamed, burying that book the way they did. The only thing they gave it was a cover,” Carol said, as she stepped up to hug Kendall.

Bette-Lee nodded her agreement. “I loved
Dare to Dream
. It was your best yet.” Funny how her comment mirrored Plain Jane’s but managed to be so positive.

“Thanks, ladies.” Kendall’s smile was wobblier than she would have liked. “You remember Tanya, don’t you? She writes for Masque and is working on a new single title idea that’s absolutely killer.”

They talked for a few minutes and Kendall felt herself regaining some of her equilibrium. She saw Mallory at the center of a group of women not too far away and spotted Faye coming out of the reception ballroom. All she could think of was burying herself in the midst of them and letting them comfort her until it was time to fly home.

She and Tanya said their good-byes to Daisy and crew and began to move toward the buffet tables, but they didn’t get far. “Oh, no,” Kendall said, coming to a stop.

“What? What is it?” Tanya asked. “If it’s that Plain Ole Jane again, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind this time. That woman doesn’t know good writing from a hole in the ground.”

“Not Jane,” Kendall said. “Worse. Over there next to that potted palm.”

She waited while Tanya focused on the sight that had stopped Kendall in her tracks. Her agent, Sylvia Hardcastle, was engaged in deep conversation with Plain Jane’s boss, Scarsdale’s associate publisher, Brenda Tinsley, and even from a distance Kendall could tell it wasn’t going well. They stood watching while Sylvia shook her head hard then stepped in to crowd the other woman, her body language clearly combative.

“Oh, God, they must be talking about me,” Kendall said with a moan.

“Whoo-eee, Sylvia’s looking mighty hot under the collar,” Tanya observed. “Look how she’s squared off. Any minute now she’s gonna go for her six-shooter. Who else does she have at Scarsdale?”

“Nobody,” Kendall said. “Nobody but me.”

As they watched, the associate publisher pursed her lips and turned her back on Sylvia. The panic she’d been fighting off all night wedged itself in the pit of Kendall’s stomach.

“I’ll be right back.” Kendall left Tanya and moved toward her agent, trying as she walked to come up with scenarios that she could live with for the scene she’d just witnessed. There weren’t any.

“What just happened?” Kendall asked in greeting.

Sylvia shook her head slowly.

“What?” Kendall’s panic intensified, though she would not have thought that possible. She had never seen Sylvia Hardcastle at a loss for words. Never. “What did she say?”

“You want a blow by blow or you want me to cut to the chase?” Sylvia was originally from Brooklyn and when agitated her Manhattan veneer began to peel away.

“The chase.”

“They don’t want to go back to contract. They’re dropping you. Oh, except that they want the book you owe them before you disappear.”

Now it was Kendall’s turn to be speechless. She’d come to hate it at Scarsdale, couldn’t bear working with Plain Jane, resented everything they had promised and then failed to do for her.

But she had always assumed she’d leave them for a juicier contract at an even bigger publisher. It had never occurred to her that they’d dispose of her first.

Kendall’s mind filled with disjointed images of what lay ahead: the gossip and speculation, the expressions of sympathy from writers who would be thanking their lucky stars that it was her and not them who’d been cut loose.

Being homeless and adrift with no publishing house behind her, she would no longer be operating from a position of strength. What were the chances another publisher would be excited about her when Scarsdale had decided she wasn’t worth keeping?

Kendall looked Sylvia in the eye. “They actually expect me to write another book for them under these circumstances?”

“Yep.”

“Can’t I just give them back the advance and call it a day?” Not that she still had the advance they’d paid her for the last book of her current contract. In fact, almost every penny of it had gone toward Jeffrey’s and Melissa’s college tuitions.

And even if she’d still had it, Cal would never support her giving it back. He already thought her grossly underpaid for the amount of time it took her to write a book. He’d just tell her to write the book, hand it in, and move on. But of course he was an accountant not a creative type—to him a novel was a product, something you produced and sold like a stick of deodorant. He had no understanding of the gut-wrenching required to write a four-hundred-page manuscript.

“Brenda just made it abundantly clear that they intend to hold you to your contract,” Sylvia said.

“But they’ll just bury it. They’ve done almost nothing when I was supposedly of value to them. What will they do now that they’re getting rid of me?”

“I told her you’d want out. She told me we’d have to call their in-house litigator to pursue that conversation. I don’t think you want to get caught up in that.”

“But I can’t write a book for them under these circumstances. They can’t be serious. There’s just no way.”