. . . . .
My apartment was only seven minutes from Steinhardt, which gave me a fighting chance of being on time, though I usually wasn’t. If Honey noticed, she didn’t complain. She herself got to work practically at dawn, but her office, at the end of the Hall of Grown-ups, was the farthest from the Cave. If she wanted me, she called rather than walked down.
I opened her mail; I answered her phone; I typed her letters. Instead of asking me to read manuscripts, she said, “Take a look.” Sent by lesser agents and friends of friends, these were the manuscripts she herself didn’t want to read; early on, I understood that my job was to tell her that she didn’t have to. A few weeks after she gave a manuscript to me, I’d return it to her with a typed rejection letter for her to sign. I used the language she herself used: “This story isn’t quite compelling enough”; “The characters don’t quite come alive”; or the ever-popular “This isn’t quite right for our list,” whatever that meant.
. . . . .
Those first weeks I worried about how to dress for work. I looked to my fellow Cave-dwellers for guidance.
Invariably, Adam wore a starched button-down Oxford-cloth shirt, khakis, and a black—not blue—blazer, his urbane twist on the classic ensemble.
Bettina had mastered the look of a bad girl from a good girls’ school—a cashmere twinset with a miniskirt or a crisp little blouse slyly unbuttoned just enough to whisper, Lacy bra.
Sue favored fuzzy angora sweaters in Easter’s palette.
Francine Lawlor alternated between two suits—one gray, the other a startling red-orange—and with them, she wore fluffy once-white blouses, the worst of which had a Louis XIV flap she decorated with a Phi Beta Kappa pin. She wore coffee-colored panty hose and navy blue pumps, low of heel, round of toe.
. . . . .
As floating assistant, Francine was supposed to help us when we were busy, but we never asked and she never offered.
Mostly, she devoted herself to slush, the unending supply of unsolicited manuscripts sent by authors. No one cared about slush except as carton upon carton of it narrowed the hall where the copier lived; no one appreciated Francine’s work except as it widened the path.
. . . . .
One rainy lunch, Bettina decided we should take turns reading slush aloud. She opened a fresh carton and handed out a manuscript apiece to Adam, Sue, herself, and me.
It seemed rude to leave Francine out, so I asked if she wanted to read one.
She barely shook her head, so anathema was the idea to her.
Bettina laughed as she flipped through her manuscript and said, “I’ll start.” She read a sex scene from a wild Western, making her voice twangy for the cowboy, who hollers, “Ride me, baby bitch.”
Adam read: “ ‘The witty journalists walked down Madison Avenue, where cabs swarmed like fireflies.’ ” He stood and raised his hand in imitation of hailing a taxi and called, “Firefly!”
Sue was about to read when her phone rang.
I got a dull thriller; every other paragraph began, “And then suddenly.” Before reading, I happened to look over at Francine. Her face was stricken.
“Is this mean?” I said.
Bettina said, “Oh, shut up.”
On principle, I returned the manuscript to the carton; the principle was I couldn’t stand being told to shut up.
Adam backed me up, though: “She’s right.”
. . . . .
Bettina said that Francine lived in the Cave and went through our desks at night.
Adam said, “What makes you say that?”
“She’s always the first in,” Bettina said, “and always the last to leave.”
“That’s your proof?” he said.
Bettina didn’t answer.
“Take it back,” he said, and he kept saying it until she did.
But Francine did seem guilty of something, even if it was just hating the rest of us.
5.
AFTERABOUTAMONTH, Honey came alive to my many failings, namely that I was slow—slow at reading, slow at typing, slow at understanding her directions—and her noticing how slow I was only made me slower.
A letter that would have previously taken me a morning to type now took an entire day, and looking over that letter, Honey remarked not only on how long it had taken me to do but how badly it was done; suddenly, she was anti-Wite-Out.
When she gave me a stack of manuscripts, she now told me when they were to be read by, and each “Monday” or “Wednesday” or “Friday” seemed to be a reprimand for how long I’d taken in the past.
One afternoon when I returned a manuscript to Honey, she read my rejection letter and looked up at me. “Why?” she said.
“Why . . . ?”
“Why isn’t Temple of Gossamer right for our list?”
By then Adam had explained that “our list” meant the books Steinhardt published, though I had no idea what unified them, except that they were books I wouldn’t want to read. By that criterion, Temple of Gossamer fit our list perfectly.
Usually impatient, Honey now seemed to have all of eternity to wait for my answer.
I said the only thing I could think of: “It’s bad.”
Honey turned the cover of the manuscript over and took a look for herself. I stood there while she read, not sure whether I was supposed to stay or go. Finally, she stopped reading and said, “Okay.”
She told me that if I was having trouble keeping up with my reading or typing I could always ask Clarisse for help—Clarisse was what Honey called Francine.
I nodded, as though I was on my way to ask Clarisse for help right now.
. . . . .
One morning I opened Honey’s mail to find a letter from a Jenny Ling, who said how nice it had been to talk to Honey; she’d enclosed her résumé, “as promised.”
I felt like I’d caught my boyfriend flirting with another girl and reflexively threw the letter and résumé in the garbage.
Right away I was horrified at myself and fished them out.
I went down the hall, past the restrooms, supply closet, and mystery doors, and opened the one that led to the tiny balcony where Adam and I smoked cigarettes.
I smoothed out Jenny Ling’s résumé. An editorial assistant only since June, Jenny had managed to acquire one novel and line edit two others she mentioned by name. She’d been the editor of a literary magazine at Yale, from which she’d graduated magna cum laude. Here, the résumé got a little repetitive—honors, honors, honors.
Her résumé put Lisa Michele Butler’s to shame, but it was Jenny’s cover letter that got to me: The girl claimed she could type sixty-five words per minute. I stared at that sixty-five until I finished smoking my cigarette, and went back to the Cave.
Adam must’ve seen how sick I felt; he looked at me for a long moment before turning to the crumpled papers I’d handed him.
He skimmed the résumé and letter and said, “I think Miss Ling will be fine without our help.”
“I am going to Hell,” I said.
“You’re Jewish,” he said. “You can’t go to Hell.”
I said, “You can if you’re really assimilated.”
I didn’t throw the letter and résumé away; I couldn’t. I filed them in my TOFILE file, where I put everything that I would figure out later; it was huge.
All that day I was so intent on avoiding Honey that I didn’t realize she’d been avoiding me until she called. It was just after five. She said, “Can you come see me for a minute?”
I said, “Sure,” which was what I always answered when I wanted to answer no.
After I hung up, I didn’t move. It seemed possible that in a few minutes my life was going to change, and I wanted to stay on this side of it for as long as I could.
Adam was on the phone, going over copyediting changes with an author. In the tone of repeating what had just been said to him, he said: “Page one-forty-three, the penultimate paragraph, third line from the top, delete the comma.”
As ev
er, Sue was on the phone, and I could tell by her posture—she was half lying on the desk—that she was crying. I knew this was not distress but joy: She always cried when her boyfriend admitted that he was a complete idiot.
It took me a second to register that Francine was looking at me. There might’ve been concern in her face, or maybe it was curiosity; she looked away too fast for me to tell.
Honey was on the phone, and I stood just outside her door, acknowledging myself as second fiddle to the fiddle she was talking to.
She said a Sweet ’n Low, “Have a good weekend,” into the phone and a pesticidal, “Close the door, please,” to me.
“Hi,” I said.
She swiveled her chair sideways so she was facing the wall instead of me. I got her profile: Honey in thought.
“Sophie,” she said, her eyes on the wall.
I waited. When she didn’t say anything, I said, “Yes?”
“Sophie,” she said again.
She swiveled face-front now and looked at me.
I nodded, I’m ready.
“I don’t expect you to come in when I do,” she said, and for the first time it occurred to me that she did. “But you come in later than anyone else,” she said. “You’re the last one in every day.”
I did not nod.
She said, “Do you know what that says?”
I didn’t; I didn’t even know if it was a rhetorical question.
“You’re telling Bettina and Sue and Adam and Clarisse that you’re special.”
I thought, I’m not telling anyone anything unless I’m talking in my sleep.
“You’re telling Wolfe that you don’t care about your job.”
His full name was Bernard Wolfe, but no one called him Bernard or Bernie. Wolfe was quiet and humble and seemed less like an editorial director than a clerk in a used-record store. The prospect of him noticing me—even because I was late—was exciting, but I kept it off of my face, as I waited for Honey to tell me what my lateness told her.
She was rubbing her thumb and fingers together the way people usually do when they’re miming money; she’d told me that handling books all day made her hands feel dirty, even if they looked clean. She was taking a good long look at me. “Why are you late every day?”
I panicked. I didn’t really know why I was late. The only reason I could give was that I had trouble deciding what to wear. I tried to think of a reason that would make Honey say, Well, why didn’t you tell me before? But what would that reason be? I’m taking care of my aging parents? I have three small children? I’m blind?
I said, “I’m sorry,” and when it didn’t seem to have any effect, I said it again.
Honey nodded, still waiting for an explanation. After another minute, though, she seemed to give up. She smiled at me then, and I had no idea why; it wasn’t a genuine smile, or a happy one. I guessed that it meant, Don’t be afraid, and I made myself smile back, Okay.
But my smile made hers disappear. “This is serious, Sophie.”
I let my face become as grave as I felt. I said, “I will come in earlier.”
. . . . .
I’d believed my vow in Honey’s office, but reporting back to my sympathizers in the Cave, I knew I couldn’t change for Honey.
“You’ll just come in earlier,” Sue said. In her face I could see both the weariness of her daylong phone fight and relief at its resolution.
“What difference does it make what time you come in?” Bettina said, picking up the phone to make a call. “She is such a bitch.”
Francine had stopped typing, and Adam and I noticed at the same moment. She immediately started up again, probably typing,
zzuuwwxxyy.
Adam said one word to me and that was: “Cocktail.”
. . . . .
He took me to a hotel bar with murals painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, the author and illustrator of the Madeline books I’d grown up with.
Adam ordered a martini for himself and one for me, the first of my life. While I sipped, he came up with lines in the cadence of the Madeline books:
In the middle of the night,
Honey Zipkin turns on the light,
It’s time for work, and sneakers on,
she braves the day and Wolfe and dawn.
I felt better; then I remembered Honey saying, Why are you late?
Adam saw the change in my face and told me to try not to take Honey’s behavior personally; he’d seen her pull this with another assistant. “She found fault with everything the poor girl did,” he said. “Sheila.”
“Was she fired?”
“Not exactly,” Adam said. “She didn’t come back from lunch.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing,” he said. “Sheila was . . . troubled.”
I said, “I am troubled.”
He smiled and shook his head.
I wanted to be like Adam, and yet after a few sips of my second martini, I said a sloppy, “I suck at being an editorial assistant.”
“You lack artifice,” he said. “You lack the instinct to be a good slave.”
This wasn’t a bad way to think about it, but it didn’t take me off Honey’s hit list. I asked if he’d ever had trouble with his boss.
“Lord, no,” he said. “But Wolfe is Wolfe and Honey is Honey.”
Adam insisted on paying the check. Outside he said, “Shall I put you in a firefly?”
. . . . .
I met Josh at the Paris Theater. I was late, but no matter: The movies Josh wanted to see were the ones no one else did; we had the theater almost to ourselves.
I could tell by the quick kiss he gave me and the way he drew back that he was annoyed—either at my lateness or at the martini on my breath. He was quiet, which was his way of saying I’d done him wrong.
Afterward, we walked toward the subway, not holding hands.
It was January, and Josh and I were pale and cold, and it seemed to me just then that our lives were smaller than they had to be. We were a check split down the middle.
He was unlocking the door to his apartment when he said, “I wish you’d be on time.”
I thought, Who doesn’t?
I knew I was supposed to say I was sorry, but I’d already used up my I’m sorry allowance for the day.
In bed, he switched off the light and turned to the wall, away from me. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that he’d put his second pillow on top of his head, like a sandwich, to drown out the sounds of the city so he could sleep.
I lay there thinking that I did not deserve this punishment. I’d only been a few minutes late, and early enough to see all the previews of the movies I didn’t want to see and, with the way things were going, never would.
Then I thought of him waiting outside the Paris. He’d probably looked at his watch about a hundred times. Maybe he’d worried about me. As he waited, he might’ve wondered if I cared about him.
When I looked over at him, he’d taken the pillow off his head and was lying open-faced.
I said, “I’m sorry,” and hearing myself say these words made me feel better.
. . . . .
I worried all weekend about being late on Monday. I didn’t stay over at Josh’s Sunday night because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep, which was what happened at my own apartment.
I was awake at two A.M. and then three and then four, thinking how much slower and dumber I’d be the next day.
I woke up at eleven.
I knew everyone was still in the editorial meeting, where I should’ve been, but I called Honey’s line and then Adam’s, and each time the call was bounced to Irene at reception; when she answered, “Steinhardt,” I hung up.
I took a shower; I made coffee; I hyperventilated.
Just before noon, Adam answered: “Editorial.”
“I overslept,” I said.
“I am going to hang up now,” he said, “and walk down the hall to tell Honey that your grandmother died.”
. . . . .
> I got to work early on Tuesday; only Francine beat me. So I knew that she was the one who’d turned on my tensor lamp, simulating my early arrival, as she would every day from then on. She was eating a butter sandwich that she’d brought from home, and when she looked up I thanked her with my face, and she nodded.
Honey came down to the Cave a little while later.
She half sat on the edge of my desk and said, “This was the grandmother you stayed with?”
I couldn’t lie into her eyes, so I lowered my head, as though in grief. “Uh-huh.”
It seemed possible that my lie would bring on my grandmother’s death. For a moment I felt like she had died, and I wished I’d been nicer to her in her lifetime. I thought, She only wanted what was best for you.
Honey said, “I’m so sorry, Sophie.”
I said, “Thank you.”
When I looked up, Francine was trying to conceal a smile, the first I’d ever seen.
. . . . .
By Thursday, Honey and I were back to normal.
She handed me a paper-clipped wad of receipts so I could compile her expense report to send to our business office in New Jersey; she said, “I want this to go out in the noon pouch.”
I said, “I will do it right away.” Everything I said to her now sounded like a written pledge.
I did do it right away and as fast as I could. I put all the slips in chronological order, hailing taxi receipts for every lunch and dinner and drink date and copying them all onto the request-for-reimbursement form. Bettina was away from her desk, so I couldn’t ask to borrow her calculator; I did my own math.
When I returned to Honey’s office, she was on the phone but, seeing the form in my hand, motioned me in and signed it.
I took the form down to Wolfe’s office for his signature.
His door was open, but all I could see were his long, long legs, stretched way, way out onto the coffee table. Wolf was about nine feet tall and one inch thick; basically, he was flat.
I knocked on the door, and he told me to come in. He had a manuscript on his lap.