Her elbows scooted closer. “Pablo said it was.”
“Well, maybe it’s just some big coincidence. But I know I’ve read something very like it, if not this exactly.”
“Where?”
“Here. It must have come in over the transom. For the first six months that’s all I did—read unsolicited manuscripts. I’m sure we never published it.” He drummed a loose fist on his desk. “I wish I could remember more.”
“Is it still here?” Her glance flew around the cluttered room. “Do you keep manuscripts you don’t want to publish?”
“Most publishers don’t, but this place is so careless we can’t even manage the stuff we reject. It’s probably around here somewhere, waiting for someone to write a letter to the author. It could be on anybody’s desk, or—”
His eyebrows rose. “There’s a big pile of them on a table in Horace’s office. He tries to spin through everything so he can at least recognize it if some nervous author buttonholes him at a party. He can do that—ten minutes, and he can size it up. We do the grunt work, actually read a good chunk to be sure, but Horace wants them to think he did too. Anyway, odds are good it’s there.”
“Let’s go look.”
“Right now?”
Julia jumped to her feet. “Right now.”
CHAPTER 29
They retraced their steps along the dark corridor and up to the top floor of the silent building. Straight ahead, Julia saw through the murk the large room that a few weeks ago had been full of partying editors and authors. To the left yawned another black hallway and the lavatory where she and Eva had retreated for repairs. Austen turned to the right. “He’s forever losing his keys,” he whispered, “so there’s a spare over here.” He felt along the molding above the door to the party room and returned with a key. He unlocked the door to Liveright’s office and swung it open. Reaching across Julia, Austen switched on the light.
A loud wail nearly buckled her knees. A woman’s tousled platinum head dangled upside down over the side of a divan, her arms waving uselessly in the air above her. Her dress was twisted into disarray beneath her chin. The woman squealed again in a shrill expletive, wriggling her knees in an effort to pull herself upright.
With a crude curse Liveright’s contorted face rose into view. “What the hell—!” he roared, squinting in the sudden light.
Austen punched off the light switch, shoved Julia back into the hall, and leaped out after her. The slamming door sliced Liveright’s furious epithet in half.
“God almighty!” Austen gasped. “I’m cooked!”
Julia pulled him recklessly down the dark corridor and onto the stairs. In a miracle of gravity, their feet stayed beneath them in the freefall descent. They spun around the corner one flight below and plunged into the black hallway, Julia hanging on to the waist of Austen’s trousers by the wrenched length of her arm as he groped for a doorknob that was not locked. He found one, Julia careened into his back, and a storm of blasphemies came thundering down the stairs behind them.
They dived into the room and pushed the door shut with agonizing care, registering only a soft click. The corridor flooded with light. They leaned against the door, Austen gripping the knob for want of a lock. The curses came toward them, a cyclone of rattling doorknobs and pounding on wood.
“I’ll find you, you little shit,” Liveright yelled, his voice nearing.
Julia could hear his hoarse pants and garbled curses as he reached their door. The knob tensed beneath Austen’s hands. Liveright caught his breath. In the abrupt silence Austen clutched the knob in both hands, bracing himself for a wrenching twist. Liveright gave it a hard but unwitting jiggle.
“Damn!” The knob went slack. Liveright pounded the wall as he moved on. “Damn damn damn.”
Liveright’s progress along the rest of the corridor was less distinct, drowned by the roar of blood in Julia’s ears. The commotion turned and approached again. Still grumbling, curses and expletives somewhat less loud, Liveright returned as he had come. After he had passed, Austen cracked open the door. They heard his furious climb back to the top floor and the distant slam of his office door, and Julia imagined the emphatic click of its lock.
Some moments elapsed, the darkness filled with their thudding breaths. Julia pressed her palm against Austen’s ribs to calm his rocketing heartbeat.
“What a smash of things I almost made up there,” he said when he was able. “Christ almighty. My job flashed before my eyes.”
“He may not remember this on Monday,” she whispered. “I don’t think he actually saw us, not enough to recognize. He wasn’t focusing. On us, I mean.”
Austen began to laugh. “Some sheik I turn out to be,” he sputtered. “Are you all right?”
“Breathing helps. Where are we?”
“In a room between the lavs we dignify by calling the SHH, the Secretary’s Hidden Helper. It’s where we stash all the work that will never get done, mostly filing and correspondence. Any decent secretary would take care of this stuff, but Horace is such a bear to work for we can’t keep the good ones. Terrible way to run a business, but Horace scrapes along.”
He turned to grope ahead, Julia following, her hand on his back. He found the light cord, and a feeble yellow light revealed they were in a small anteroom. Between the two lavatory entrances was a door opening into another narrow space. Thick black pipes flanked it, disappearing like snakes into the shadows overhead.
“Would that manuscript be in here?” Julia asked, stepping in to pull another light cord.
The SHH was well named, about six feet wide and some twelve or fourteen feet deep. Each long wall was lined with shelves crowded with boxes, bundled
