Allen looks up at me. “Your mother?”
I put my finger on my nose. “I don’t know what she thinks. She hasn’t read it.”
“What do you mean she hasn’t read it?”
“I asked her to read it, she gave me a tomato.”
“She threw it at you?”
“No, just offered it. To eat. I asked her a second time and she said she’d still rather not.”
“Rather not what?” Allen conjures another pen, removes the cap, and hands it to me. It’s a promotional giveaway from a paper supply company in New Jersey and the top of the pen has bite marks. It feels anticlimactic, to say the least. I imagine if Jackie were the one to countersign these agreements (and not some business-affairs person) she would do so with an elegant fountain pen. I guess we all work with what we have.
“Read it, I guess. But I suppose she’d rather it not exist at all.” I hover the pen above the contracts and my hand shakes. Allen notices my hesitation.
“It’s a loving portrait,” he says.
“It’s an honest portrait.”
He chuffs. “She’ll come around. If not, now you’ve got a spare.”
“What, who—Jackie?” My face turns as red as Allen’s back.
“Editors are mothers of sorts.”
I’m annoyed the shutters aren’t more open so that I can stare dramatically out the window onto Fifty-Ninth Street. This is my last chance to do the right thing by my mother. Yet would that be the right thing for me? Is the mark of adulthood putting others first? Or is it standing behind your own vision, your own work, your own view of the world? Beads of sweat form on my forehead and I have to wipe my brow.
My hand still trembles, but I manage to sign all four agreements. I stare at my signature, barely recognizing it as my own. My name looks foreign. Like it’s not mine but my father’s—someone else who let my mother down. I thought this would be fun, I thought I would want to remember this moment, but in truth I just want to move on. “When do we get paid?”
“First check upon execution!” Allen takes the contracts from me and I place the pen in an empty mug, which I’m hoping is a pencil jar and not the remnants of his morning caffeine. He flips through the agreements to make sure everything is in order.
I suddenly see the wisdom in paying someone to hit me. I even consider asking Allen for his guy’s number. If I’m indeed causing my mother pain, wouldn’t some in return be rightful penance? And even if not, I already feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me—perhaps a few swift punches could knock it back in. I lean forward and put my head between my knees.
“You okay, kid?”
“Thought I dropped something.” I don’t tell him I’m suddenly nauseated.
“One for you, one for me, two for them. I’ll have Donna send them over this afternoon. Whenever Donna returns from Donnaland.”
I sit up as he stacks the contracts, fastens them together with a binder clip, and slides them into a large envelope. “We good?”
I nod, unable to say anything more.
“One more thing.” Allen thrusts a piece of paper with a phone number in my direction. “Your new mommy wants you to call her.”
It’s two minutes before five o’clock when Lila guides me back down the long hallway that leads to the conference room, her coworkers packing up to go home. I try to make eye contact with everyone, smile to diffuse their annoyance. I can read the stress on their faces. Who is this arriving just as we are leaving? Do I have to stay? Will I miss my train? Lila keeps her usual pace; had we not met before, I would feel she, too, was itching to leave. She probably is, but Lila has only one setting: rushed. This time when we hit the conference room we bear a sharp right, down another hall, toward, I assume, Jackie’s office.
“Do you want coffee?”
I can picture the coffee mugs washed and put away for the day and the kerfuffle it would cause if I said yes. “No, thank you.” And then, because I can’t help myself from babbling around Lila, “Caffeine makes me jittery this late in the day.” I don’t want to say what we both already know: I’m jittery enough already.
A young, fair-haired man, handsome, maybe twenty-five, approaches us while pulling on a blazer in a windmill-like fashion I imagine members of a varsity rowing team do. He locks eyes with me like we’re cruising for random sex in an out-of-the-way park, and while unnerved, I can’t look away. I’ve spent years wanting to belong in these halls; glancing down would send the wrong message.
“Oh, hey.” Lila stops us. “This is Mark. He’s Mrs. Onassis’s new assistant. Mark, this is James Smale.” Lila punctuates my name with an air of disinterest.
“James Smale,” Mark says, shaking my hand while trying to place my name.
Lila rolls her eyes, I hope at Mark and not at me. “Jackie’s new acquisition.”
“Right.” Mark clasps his other hand on mine, they are soft and warm.
“Acquisition?” Like I’m some antiquity she’s acquired on an exotic foreign trip? “I guess we’ll be working together.”
“I look forward to it.” Mark lets go of my hand, but not before he winks. Thankfully, Lila doesn’t see that, her eyes might roll fully back in disgust. He walks past me and we both turn back for one last look. I’m one who feels invisible more often than attractive, so I’m almost giddy when I see him smile at me. Not to say Daniel doesn’t do his best to prop up my self-esteem, but he’s obliged to; the return date on me has long since passed and he doesn’t have a receipt. But was this flirtation? Or just aggressive friendliness. I stumble forward to catch Lila. Whatever that was, I don’t have time to process it.
We stop in front of a door that’s only slightly ajar.
“Here we are.” Lila raps on the door three times. Loudly. I would have knocked gently, with decorum; I’m instantly horrified. I turn to protest, but she’s already gone.
“Found it!” The unmistakable voice rings out from inside the office.
I knock again, quietly this time, and open the door a few more inches. “Mrs. Onassis?” I peer around the open door into the office and see no one. I bite my lip just in time to keep from saying “Jackie.” I peek farther into the room and find her standing by a bookshelf in the space behind the door. “Oh, hello again,” I utter awkwardly. I realize I have no idea what’s going on and hope for my own sake that what she’s found isn’t a manuscript more intriguing than mine. “What did you find?”
“A book I brought from home. Come in, come in.” She ushers me inside her office and I push the door closed most of the way behind me. I have the good sense to leave the door cracked, enough, at least, so that I can’t be accused of doing something untoward; it feels inappropriate to be entirely behind closed doors with her.
The office is not what I would call small, although it’s decidedly not palatial. It’s quite nice—comfortable, even. There’s nothing that would have prevented us from meeting here when we were first introduced. I’m wondering now if she didn’t select the conference room as neutral territory to put me more at ease, and I feel empty-handed suddenly, a gentleman caller without flowers or wine or chocolates.
“So