back, never mind the details?
“It hasn’t been signed, Clay,” she said in that tone adults take with recalcitrant teens. “And this might be the best for both of us. We can both take some time to think. Maybe you should try your luck with a larger house. The book is certainly good enough.”
“Are you patronizing me?” I realized my voice had risen. “And we didn’t talk yesterday, Helen. You pulled me aside like a wayward student in the middle of the hall.”
“Clay, I’m sorry about that, but the fact is—”
“The fact is you have no idea what my life has been like. What I’ve been going through these last few months. You have no clue, Helen.” I was shaking, venting my anger as I waited, waited for the reversal that I knew must happen.
“Clay”— her voice steeled—“You’re not the only one with problems.”
“Exactly. And when Sheila put herself in the hospital after drinking herself half to death, did you fire her? No. I don’t think you did. You gave her time to get her act together. That’s some kind of double standard, Helen.”
I was on fire, all the tension of the last week, of the last three-and-a-half months, spewing from me as if from a cannon.
“Clay”—she rose and extended her hand—“I wish you luck.”
I stared at her hand for an instant before turning on my heel and striding out, slamming her door behind me.
In the hallway, the temp waited with a box. “I’m supposed to help you get your things.” What was she, twenty-two? Fresh out of college, maybe, if she had gone at all? Sheila had gone to community college at least. What did this temp straight from—wherever—know? What gave her the right to follow me into my office with a box?
I shoved items off my desk and into the box, threw in the contents of drawers: pictures and books, most of them signed by authors I had acquired, greeting cards accumulated through the years. I sorted through my card file, pulled a few to keep, Katrina Dunn Lampe’s among them. I threw in coffee mugs, a Cross pen set, a quote-a-day calendar from the year before opened to July 7. I left the rest—the manuscript pages, the proposals, the galleys, the covers—where they lay on my desk and then, on impulse, knocked the stack to the floor.
I undocked my computer and put it into the box. The temp chewed her lip. “That’s a company laptop, right?”
I stopped cold. My story was on that laptop. Almost as important, my calendar was on it too. It was the only one I kept, and every one of Lucian’s mysterious appointments had appeared on it.
I forgot the demon’s horrible smile, the dire awareness so similar to that first night in the cafe, the voice within me compelling me to leave the Starbucks. He had frightened me before, I had walked out before, and always there had been another meeting. But without my computer, what would happen to the appointments? How would I know if he made one?
I had no way to contact him. No way to tell him. He had told me never to attempt it again, and after what had happened the last time, I was too afraid to try. Would he know? Would his buzzing network tell him?
I rummaged around in the box, found a cheap flash drive, and copied my book onto it. Then I deleted my manuscript on the hard drive along with my sent and deleted e-mails and, facetiously, several drafts of edited copy.
No one stopped me. As I left, no one rushed out after me. I had arrived at work an editor, writer, and soon-to- be-published author and left the proud owner of a box full of junk. As I walked to the station, I noticed a dumpster outside a neighboring building. I set down the box, threw open the lid, and dumped the entire box, contents and all inside. It was all junk. The only thing of value, the flash drive with my manuscript on it, was already tucked into my coat pocket.
TURNING IN MY LAPTOP meant I had no computer. Despite the fact that I now had no idea how I would pay for my trip to Cabo, let alone a new computer, I walked the several blocks to the Galleria. Had I my own laptop, or had Helen given me any warning, I could have ordered one online. As it was, I was at the mercy of whatever the computer store had in stock.
After enlisting the help of a kid half my age, I chose the most affordable, basic model I could find and charged it to my credit card. I took a cab home via the local liquor store, my new computer resting on my knees in its small, white carrying box, a paper bag on the seat beside me.
FOR THE NEXT TWO days I drank, slept, and somehow set up my new computer, which came complete with its own schedule, contact, and mail software. I set up the calendar, which now had nothing on it, and opened a new e-mail account through a free online service. And then I waited.
How strange it was to see that expanse of pristine days, each of them legal-pad yellow, unmarred by meetings or deadlines.
It wasn’t, really, but I had just finished the second bottle of boutique merlot on an empty stomach, and terrifically funny seemed better than horribly sad.
THE NEXT DAY, AMID a pounding headache and tripping heart, my entire body sore and swollen, I called my family doctor and set up an appointment for the following week.
I checked my calendar, my e-mail. Nothing.
Perhaps with the status of my manuscript uncertain, he had no more use for me.
I ate and slept at odd hours. Helen’s new henchwoman called to request the last of the manuscripts on my desk at home. She would send a FedEx box for them—boxes again—no need to come in. Not that I had any intention of taking them in.
I almost asked about the contract but thought it best to wait. Meanwhile, the only thing that mattered to me was Lucian and finding an end to my book.
So I left my new laptop running, the calendar alive in the corner, waiting, the volume turned up so that I might hear that ping from any place in my apartment if I were away from my desk. But I was never away from my desk for long. I returned to my manuscript, combed through it, rewrote sentences and then entire passages that did not need it. My back hurt, and my eyes strained from looking at it in the half light of day and early afternoon twilight.
