“Giddily. But it’s hardly the kind of serious work Charles Davis is known for.”
Derek leans forward, chuckling, all over this fifteen-minute flash like dirt on a dog. “Well, I must say, the literary world seems to be taking the book very seriously indeed.”
Vera smiles. They’re ignoring Charles.
“What does the literary world know, Derek? They’ve got their heads buried in books half the time.”
Derek laughs. Vera giggles. Charles manages a lip twitch that he hopes will pass for a smile.
5
As the elevator glides silently to the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Anne feels her anxiety level soar with a synchronous velocity. It’s been a hellish day. She’s taking Home on-line, and the madly creative Silicon Alley company she contracted to design the website is also madly undisciplined and four weeks behind schedule. Her Winter Warmth bedding is selling out and the mill can’t manufacture any more; it’s already turning out her Summer Breeze line. The result: hundreds of disappointed customers. Then she butted heads with her art director over the cover of the spring catalog. The capper-HG-TV postponed the taping after the office had spent the whole day on high alert and best behavior. Anne wonders if she’s in over her head, running a $30-million-and-growing business without a day of training. Well, as long as nobody else wonders, she’ll be okay. She rests her head against the elevator wall and closes her eyes for a moment. She puts a hand gently on her belly. How long can she keep it a secret? Now she has to face this party and make nice-nice with scores of friends, acquaintances, and ill-wishers. She flips open her compact and checks her lipstick. God, she looks pale. She gives her cheeks a quick pinch.
From atop the wide, fanned-out steps Anne surveys the crowd, the electric din, in the Rainbow Room. There is simply no place that distills the sheer heady excitement of Manhattan the way this glorious aerie atop Rockefeller Center does. The throng is just the right mix of publishing, society, celebrity, sprinkled with a touch of the art world, a dash of downtown, and the de rigueur drag queen or two. Glamour is like pornography, Anne thinks: I may not be able to define it but I sure know it when I see it. An enormous blowup of the jacket of Capitol Offense hangs from the ceiling, and a pyramid constructed of copies of the book sits on a round table in the center of the room. It’s all flawless-perhaps she can salvage the day.
As Anne accepts and offers greetings, an arm shoots up from across the room. An elegant black arm encircled by three antique gold bracelets.
“Nina!” Anne says, crossing the room to give Charles’s agent a strong hug. “Thank you for putting this together. It’s perfect.”
“Anything for our boy,” Nina says. “You look fabulous, Anne. Of course.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Nina Bradley wears her hair short, a cap of tight gray curls that sets off her sweeping jaw and long nose. Her dark eyes flash like obsidian; she’s tall and moves like water. Tonight she’s wearing a sleeveless black velvet top and black silk pants-one unbroken line of cool sophistication.
No one in New York gives Anne quite the same jolt of excitement that Nina does. The fact is that Anne with her Newport Beach pedigree-the Thatcher School, Stanford, swim team captain, country club superstar-Anne with the perfect legs, the perfect teeth, the perfect all-American ambition, idolizes black, savvy, self-made Nina Bradley.
Nina-somewhere in her sixties, in her very ripe prime, child of the Bronx, daughter of a subway motorman and a city clerk, both voracious readers who fed their daughter books-founded the country’s second black-owned literary agency in 1955. For the first two years she lived on peanut butter, her only client a cartoonist syndicated in twelve black newspapers. But Nina was determined, she was smart, she was funny, and, yes, she was intensely beautiful.
Book by book, lunch by lunch, she built the Nina Bradley Agency into one of the country’s top literary agencies, with a client roster that includes Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners. The writer who started the stampede, who really put her on the map, was a brilliant twenty-four-year-old, fresh out of Dartmouth, who’d written an electrifying novel based on his experiences as an army journalist during the Vietnam War. Charles sent Nina the book, having read a story about her in Ebony. They met for the first time, at his insistence, at a Ninth Avenue diner on a dark February evening twenty-five years ago. And ever since that day, she had presided over his career like a lioness.
“I hope Charles’s taping went well,” Anne says.
Nina reads Anne’s anxiety and gives her hand a squeeze. “Charles is a pro.”
Anne waves to an acquaintance and accepts a glass of Pellegrino from a passing waiter. “When do you think it’ll show up on the best-seller list?”
“Within the month.” Nina lowers her voice. “I hope.”
“What do you mean, you hope?” Anne asks.
“Sales have been disappointing.”
“How disappointing?”
Just as Nina is about to answer, a hush falls over the party. Anne and Nina turn. Charles is standing at the top of the entrance steps, leaning on the railing. They both know immediately: he’s tight. The hairs on Anne’s neck rise, and she shifts into damage-control. She sees a wave of sadness sweep over Nina’s face.
The crowd breaks into applause. Charles smiles boyishly. “Aw, shucks,” he says, all tousled hair and lopsided grin.
Anne is there quickly, ready. She gives him a kiss and leads him down the stairs, steering him through the throng with practiced grace. Her father once told her to learn from ducks on a pond: they glide across the surface seemingly without effort, but beneath the water line they’re paddling like mad. Nina goes to meet them. She gives Charles a kiss on the cheek, and he smiles at her sheepishly.
“How did the interview go?” she asks.
“Derek Wollman was his usual boorish self, and my co-guest was the delightful Ms. Vera Knee, flavor-of- the-week. I barely got a word in between wisecracks.” Charles reaches for a glass of champagne from a passing tray and downs it in one swallow. “Christ, I hate champagne,” he says before grabbing another.
Nina puts a hand on Charles’s forearm and applies pressure, keeping him from raising the glass to his lips.
“Charles, she’s a flash in the pan. Your work will endure,” Nina says, maintaining the pressure and looking him square in the eye.
“It will, darling,” Anne adds.
“Well, I don’t know if I can endure this party.”
A well-dressed man who dwells somewhere on the periphery of the literary world-neither Anne nor Nina can remember his name-pushes into their circle.
“Charles, I can’t wait to read this one,” he says.
“Let me give you a piece of advice: don’t bother.”
“Excuse me?” the man says.
“I said don’t bother. Read Honey on the Moon instead,” Charles says, his voice rising. In concentric circles the room quiets.
“Darling…” Anne begins, but Charles is off.
“No, I’m serious, I think this charming fellow should skip my ponderous tome and escape into the giddy fucking joys of Honey on the Moon.” By now you could hear a feather drop. “That’s what they’re lapping up at every airport and supermarket, cheap little feel-good books written in ten minutes by media-created hairdos with laptops who could retype the Brooklyn phone book, call it Sugar on my Pussy, and sell it for half a million dollars.”
Nina leans into the nearest waiter and whispers, “Coffee. Fast.”
Anne flashes a smile and says loudly, “Oh, Charles, stop quoting Shakespeare, this is a party.”
The party gradually regains an uneasy equilibrium. Charles and Anne’s allies pick up their conversations, a little too loudly. Many in the crowd are secretly thrilled by Charles’s public meltdown, but etiquette demands they keep their claws sheathed, at least until the guest of honor leaves. Phones will be ringing all over Manhattan on this balmy fall night.
