Vintage Contemporaries, page 27
“Please,” she said. She was crying? “Please, please, put her down, put her down.”
The previous year, their refrigerator had stopped working, but not all at once. First she noticed that sometimes stuff in the freezer wasn’t as frozen as she would have liked, and then she noticed that the milk didn’t last as long as it should, and then one day the ice cream was melted. The repairman told Alan that they could special order a new condenser for the twenty-year-old fridge, or they could just buy a new fridge for slightly less money. The one they bought was resolutely middle-of-the-line, but when it was installed she couldn’t believe how cold everything got in it, and by extension how not-cold everything in her fridge had been for so long. It had happened so gradually she’d never quite noticed how everything was not the way it was supposed to be.
When Alan asked her, as kindly as he could, whether she might need to go back on her antidepressants, she knew immediately that the same thing had happened. She hadn’t known how sad she was. She couldn’t believe how grim she had gotten without really noticing. When she started taking her pills again, she was filled with gratitude that she could feel things in appropriate ways. She’d forgotten what that was like, and forgotten that she’d forgotten.
Being herself, she wasted countless brain-minutes feeling guilty about putting her husband and her daughter and coworkers through the bad time. “You didn’t put us through anything,” Alan said. “You were the one going through something,” and she knew he was right, but she couldn’t help but notice that she believed him more after a week on the meds. But this was progress, such as it was.
And as the summer approached she felt, in her bones, the days getting longer, the mornings getting warmer, the light lingering into the evening.
* * *
Lisa called to tell them that Michael died. He’d been sick with cancer, and in those final years he had clashed with some of his old compatriots, but that didn’t matter now. “There’s a memorial Tuesday at Tompkins Square Park, then an East Village march Wednesday. All-night dance party Thursday at See Skwat, then a rally Friday. Saturday they’re doing a benefit concert.”
“Jesus,” Emily said. They were standing at the kitchen counter with the phone on speaker turned way up to counteract the sound of their daughter dancing to Laurie Berkner in the living room. “That’s a lot!”
“Oh, and they’re staging his squat opera, too. What can you two do?”
“Definitely the memorial, right?” Alan asked. “I don’t know if we’re the target audience for a dance party.”
“The concert’s gonna be insane,” Lisa said. “Joe’s band is getting back together.”
“I couldn’t even listen to them with twenty-five-year-old ears,” Emily said. “I’d like to see Joe, though.”
“He’ll be at everything,” Lisa said. “I’ma go to the rally. You know apartments in Sunrise are renting for three grand a month?”
“Is that what we’re protesting?”
“I think we’re just generally protesting. Protesting against it all.”
“Against the march of time,” said Emily.
Alan nodded. “It does seem unfair, when you think about it.”
The memorial was a little sad, but it was also a reunion, a rally, a celebration of a guy who packed a lot of living into forty-five years. It was held in a little plaza near the dog park. (A dog park, in Tompkins Square!) Someone had mounted dozens of photos from Michael’s various squats to posterboard, and Emily and Emily spent a few minutes browsing through them, reminding each other of people’s names. There was one photo taken inside Emily’s old room, blown up huge on its own piece of posterboard: Michael and Emily sitting on the couch laughing about something. The wall behind them was covered in notes and slogans in Magic Marker. Getting up close to the photo, she could see the section of the wall by the telephone devoted to phone numbers. There was her old phone number, the last four digits of which were now the PIN she used for everything. There was her number at the Safer Agency, and Rob’s number, and Michael’s number, and Lisa’s, and Kim’s Video. All the numbers were seven digits, not ten; the 212 went unstated. Above all the numbers, near the ceiling, she saw what one or the other of them had written late, late one night: VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES.
Framed on its own was a photo of Michael in the window of Sunrise Squat. It was the day that he had led the reoccupation of the building, and he leaned out a second-floor window, his long arms crossed, shouting down at the unseen cops below. Above him hung a bedsheet sign reading NO TANKS IN OUR CITY.
Emily sat in a folding chair next to Emily and Lisa. Alan pushed the stroller in a loop around the sidewalks, listening, and Emily smiled each time she saw him trundle behind the speakers’ stand.
Friends from Sunrise, from the other squats where he’d lived before and after, took the mic. “Michael didn’t count sheep at night,” one said. “He counted politicians, figuring out how many he’d have to kill to get title to his squat.” Laughter rippled through the crowd. There were no politicians here, but Sofia said she recognized a lawyer from the city who’d squared off against Michael through the ’90s.
After about forty-five minutes, one of the speakers said, “Let’s take a walk, huh?” People started beating drums and trash can lids, making a glorious racket. Everyone got up and stretched. It was cloudy, but the rain had held off. The mourners, two hundred strong or more, set off down Seventh Street, blocking traffic, pissing off truck drivers. She picked Jane up from her stroller and had Alan click her into the backpack so she could see what was going on. The toddler pounded on Emily’s head in time with the drums.
Emily couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked down Seventh, once the main street of her life and the focus of her daily anxieties. They passed the squat at 209 where Michael moved after Sunrise, got sick, and died, and the crowd chanted, “Michael Sammons! Rest in peace!” They passed Emily’s beloved garden, now condos, and chanted for that. They passed The Germans and 278, where Michael had lived for a year or two, and cheered for squats still standing. 278 was on the other side of the street from Emily’s first apartment, but all the buildings looked the same and now she couldn’t pick out which stoop had been hers, which subterranean windows she’d hid behind those first frightened months in New York, before she met Emily. She wondered if the mushroom had ever grown back.
Up Avenue D, back west on Ninth Street. Serenity, still standing. Dos Blocos, rest in peace. Fetus Squat, rest in peace. See Skwat, still proud on C Street. At Twelfth, they turned left and Emily took Emily’s hand. The facade of Sunrise still stood, but the building had been gut-renovated and upgraded. Joe mentioned he’d gone to an open house once and couldn’t believe how nice the countertops were. She could see the window where Michael had hung his sign, and above it, the window from which Emily had dropped keys to her. She remembered the way the keys drifted down on their parachute, fluttering and turning like a leaf from a tree.
When she was first seeing Alan, after he’d quit reporting, gone to Washington for law school, and come back—and Lisa had reintroduced them, and their first official date had concluded two days later—she’d asked him why eviction had ended things, why no one had appealed the adverse possession case for Sunrise. He’d written about it for his law review. “It’s hard to pursue a case without a home base,” he’d said. “People were scattered and exhausted. And the cops trashed everyone’s docs, anyway. A lot of the paperwork proving continued occupancy ended up in the Dumpster.”
On the other hand, he’d pointed out, the fact that a judge had even suggested the tenants might have a claim spooked the city, which was why for the most part they didn’t forcibly evict squats anymore. These days, they negotiated. No tanks in our city. Many of the old squats were working through the process of transferring ownership—and, yes, debt—to the residents. That had its own pitfalls, as seen in the debates that had driven a wedge between Michael and many of the other early squatters, but it was a kind of victory in Sunrise’s name, nonetheless.
“Sunrise Squat! Rest in peace!” they chanted, and chanted, and chanted. The drums got louder and louder. The horns of cars stuck on Twelfth added to the cacophony. Alan took a photo of them and then showed her the screen of the camera, and she knew instantly that she would get that shot printed: she and Emily, fists raised, mouths open in angry protest, and behind her head in the backpack Jane, floppy hat on her curls, raising both hands above her head and grinning like a maniac.
When it was over, she said goodbye to Joe, to Sofia, to Frank, to Lisa, to Juana and her mother, to the punk kids and Michael’s friends and people whose faces were familiar but whose names she had long forgotten. She couldn’t say goodbye to Emily, though. She had already taken off.
* * *
Emily’s new phone also shot video, and she spent a lot of time pointing it at her daughter, taping—she’d need to think of a new word for this—everything she did. One night she and Jane were having a dance party in the living room, a frequent rainy-night activity. She was playing her music on shuffle—Emily’s invention, as she always thought of it—and a Spoon song came on, and Jane loved it. “Again,” she said when it was over, so Emily played it again and taped her singing along, sort of phonetically: “You gano fearada underdogs!” she sang, shaking her naked booty with abandon. They weren’t exactly potty training but they were letting her go around without a diaper sometimes, to see what happened. She positively snarled: “Thass why you willna surVIBE!” In the video Emily took, Jane appeared to be furious, but in fact she was so happy singing the way the man in the song sang.
When Emily showed the video to Alan, he said, “We should get one of those coat of armses”—
“Coats of arms?”
“Right, like viscounts have. And that would be the family motto written along the bottom. ‘The Underdogs.’”
Emily put the video up on the Internet for her family to see. The next time she talked to her mom, Donna said something about Jane still looking a little chubby, and Emily surprised herself by telling her mother, clearly and firmly, that under no circumstances was she allowed to discuss Jane’s weight or her eating choices. She would not bring them up to Emily, and she was not to discuss them in front of Jane. She would not give Jane a complex about her body the way she’d given Emily one. As far as her mother was concerned, the topic did not exist.
“I’m sorry, honey,” her mom said.
“I accept your apology,” Emily replied. “And I’m serious about this.”
Many years later the video of Jane dancing was taken down by YouTube as algorithm-identified child pornography, and Emily mourned its loss as she would that of a favorite photo album, lost in a fire.
* * *
The best thing about book parties was seeing the incredible apartments of every author’s richest friend. Lucy Deming’s richest friend, posthumously, was Benjamin Bannon, and it was into his gorgeous SoHo loft that Emily and Peter stepped, directly from the elevator, on a June night. The air had been disgusting outside, but here it was cool and dry. Central air in an apartment. She was aware this was the least of the extravagances she was about to witness, but it still felt decadent as hell.
On a table near the front were stacks of the four books, each with their perfect covers. Even having held them in her hands before, she couldn’t help but pick up a copy of the new collection. “Hey, did I tell you I took this photo?” she asked Peter.
“About a thousand times. You took it at a book party very like this one, as I recall.”
“Not that much like this one.” Lucy didn’t have any rich friends when she was alive. It was too bad. She would have been a fun person to be rich with. “It was at her friend Lorraine’s house. Nice, but modest. Oh shit, there’s Bob Fox—how do I look?”
“Like a hot mama. Let’s go get him.”
“Bob!” she said, kiss, kiss. In his perfect suit jacket and just-so unbuttoned top button he looked entirely at home in this beautiful apartment, which, come to think of it, was probably a dollhouse by the standards of wherever the hell he lived.
“Hello, my dears,” he said. “Congratulations. Emily, you look stunning.”
“Thanks for making this all happen,” she said. He’d convinced Bannon to host, though St. Martin’s was footing the catering bill.
“Bob, level with me,” Peter said. “How close did we get on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel?”
Fox laughed. “Oh, shop talk right off the bat!”
“I’ve been itching to ask,” Peter said, dancing around as if scratching a dozen mosquito bites.
“You were very competitive,” Fox said. “Jonathan loved you, Emily. He just felt more comfortable where he was.”
“Well,” Peter said, putting his arm around Fox, “at some point you’ve gotta let us win. You can’t just use us to jack up the price forever.”
“Why, Peter, that’s not the only thing I’m using you for,” Fox said, with a look at Emily.
Well, she had made an effort tonight, she supposed. “You should see me most days. I’m covered in cheddar bunnies. Want to see a photo of my two-year-old?”
“Oh, let me introduce you to Benjamin,” Fox said smoothly, steering them over.
In contrast to cartoon Fox, Benjamin Bannon seemed positively asexual, a brain still uncomfortably adjusting to the body it carted around. He shook Emily’s hand and told her how grateful he was for her rediscovery of “the tahdig essay.” (He pronounced it with a careful Persian accent.) He paused frequently while speaking, making a repeated circular gesture with his hands, seemingly to haul forth each new noun from the depths. “It’s such a transformative . . .” (hands circle) “. . . piece in our . . .” (hands circle) “. . . consideration of Lucy’s . . .” (hands circle) “. . . body of work.” She wanted desperately to finish his sentences, but he was a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Sarah was there, too, and offered her an olive off her plate. “It’s a fruit, remember,” she said. “Heh-heh-heh.”
Emily worried Benjamin Bannon was going to give a . . . (hands circle) toast, but he demurred. Peter called for everyone’s attention and introduced himself. “I’m not going to go on and on, because there’s someone else who should speak to you tonight.” Emily felt herself blushing. “I’ve worked with her for more than a decade, and I’ve watched her grow into one of the best editorial minds around. Emily Thiel is truly an editor, what do I mean by that, I mean she’s not one of those editors who thinks of himself as an author.” This got a laugh. “And maybe she’ll write a book someday, I don’t know, I’m sure she’d write a fabulous book. But she’s also no Gordon Lish, imposing her voice on a project, cutting a story to her vision. What she does is she finds people with great stories, and she helps them tell those stories the best they can. She has great eyes. She sees the best version of everyone she works with, and puts that version out in the world. I’ve benefited from this myself, and I can tell you, anyone who gets the benefit of Emily’s eyes is lucky indeed.”
Emily saw Lane, her old assistant, standing near the bar. He’d left for his new job back in 2005, a few months after Marta. She gave him a wave, but he was listening to Peter, arms crossed, frowning. Well, he had never been Peter’s biggest fan.
“A lot of people made this book happen. Let’s run down the list. Benjamin Bannon, whose incredible Times essay started the ball rolling; Bob Fox; Sarah Deming, Lucy’s daughter, who’s here with us today. She’s this lovely young woman right here. Say hi, Sarah.” Sarah did a whole ta-da wave to the crowd. “But no one is more responsible for this book than Emily. Emily knew Lucy, she cared for Lucy. Emily helped her shape her work the first time around, Emily saved an essay for fifteen years, and Emily packaged these four books brilliantly. That’s all the work of an editor. Everyone, please give a hand to my colleague and friend Emily Thiel.”
Emily was a little dazzled as everyone applauded. She stepped forward, concentrated on looking as normal as possible. If her armpits could stop it with the sweating now, that would be fantastic.
“Well, thank goodness Peter didn’t go on and on,” she began, and it got the laugh she needed to collect herself and remember her speech. Peter clutched his chest as if to say, A palpable hit!
“First of all, Lucy loved a good cocktail party. She loved people talking, sharing, eating, and drinking. She loved staying up late. As she wrote, the last half hour of a cocktail party is when people really tell the truth. So with the blessing of the great Benjamin Bannon, we’re not putting a cap on this party. It’s done when it’s done.”
“Hear, hear!” someone called, and there was a smattering of applause. She was counting on the fact that almost everyone was even older than her to keep from going too far over budget.
“When I first read Can’t Complain, I sent Lucy an editorial memo I hope is never unearthed, in which I asked her, basically, to sex it up a little.” Everyone laughed. “I wanted more conflict, more desperate unhappiness. I was twenty-two, in my defense. It took me a while to understand what these novels were. Back at twenty-two, I wanted the book to be more timely. I forgot that the opposite of timely is timeless.
“I guess what I mean to say is that I don’t view these new editions, or this party, or all you wonderful, fancy people at the party, as evidence that Lucy has somehow reached the exalted halls of literature. What’s happening is that literature is finally broadening to include Lucy. I think that’s good news for everyone who loves reading, who loves writing, and, yes, who loves literature. Thanks for coming, everyone, and thanks for your support of these books.”
“A manifesto!” Peter said in her ear as everyone clapped. “I love it.”
Emily made a beeline for the bar, but was interrupted so often by kind people that she despaired of ever getting a fresh drink. One person who stopped her was Lorraine Louie, who hugged her. Her bob was gray now, but she looked otherwise unchanged. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” Emily said. “I wanted to hire you for these covers, but our art director said you’re, like, a doctor now?”
The previous year, their refrigerator had stopped working, but not all at once. First she noticed that sometimes stuff in the freezer wasn’t as frozen as she would have liked, and then she noticed that the milk didn’t last as long as it should, and then one day the ice cream was melted. The repairman told Alan that they could special order a new condenser for the twenty-year-old fridge, or they could just buy a new fridge for slightly less money. The one they bought was resolutely middle-of-the-line, but when it was installed she couldn’t believe how cold everything got in it, and by extension how not-cold everything in her fridge had been for so long. It had happened so gradually she’d never quite noticed how everything was not the way it was supposed to be.
When Alan asked her, as kindly as he could, whether she might need to go back on her antidepressants, she knew immediately that the same thing had happened. She hadn’t known how sad she was. She couldn’t believe how grim she had gotten without really noticing. When she started taking her pills again, she was filled with gratitude that she could feel things in appropriate ways. She’d forgotten what that was like, and forgotten that she’d forgotten.
Being herself, she wasted countless brain-minutes feeling guilty about putting her husband and her daughter and coworkers through the bad time. “You didn’t put us through anything,” Alan said. “You were the one going through something,” and she knew he was right, but she couldn’t help but notice that she believed him more after a week on the meds. But this was progress, such as it was.
And as the summer approached she felt, in her bones, the days getting longer, the mornings getting warmer, the light lingering into the evening.
* * *
Lisa called to tell them that Michael died. He’d been sick with cancer, and in those final years he had clashed with some of his old compatriots, but that didn’t matter now. “There’s a memorial Tuesday at Tompkins Square Park, then an East Village march Wednesday. All-night dance party Thursday at See Skwat, then a rally Friday. Saturday they’re doing a benefit concert.”
“Jesus,” Emily said. They were standing at the kitchen counter with the phone on speaker turned way up to counteract the sound of their daughter dancing to Laurie Berkner in the living room. “That’s a lot!”
“Oh, and they’re staging his squat opera, too. What can you two do?”
“Definitely the memorial, right?” Alan asked. “I don’t know if we’re the target audience for a dance party.”
“The concert’s gonna be insane,” Lisa said. “Joe’s band is getting back together.”
“I couldn’t even listen to them with twenty-five-year-old ears,” Emily said. “I’d like to see Joe, though.”
“He’ll be at everything,” Lisa said. “I’ma go to the rally. You know apartments in Sunrise are renting for three grand a month?”
“Is that what we’re protesting?”
“I think we’re just generally protesting. Protesting against it all.”
“Against the march of time,” said Emily.
Alan nodded. “It does seem unfair, when you think about it.”
The memorial was a little sad, but it was also a reunion, a rally, a celebration of a guy who packed a lot of living into forty-five years. It was held in a little plaza near the dog park. (A dog park, in Tompkins Square!) Someone had mounted dozens of photos from Michael’s various squats to posterboard, and Emily and Emily spent a few minutes browsing through them, reminding each other of people’s names. There was one photo taken inside Emily’s old room, blown up huge on its own piece of posterboard: Michael and Emily sitting on the couch laughing about something. The wall behind them was covered in notes and slogans in Magic Marker. Getting up close to the photo, she could see the section of the wall by the telephone devoted to phone numbers. There was her old phone number, the last four digits of which were now the PIN she used for everything. There was her number at the Safer Agency, and Rob’s number, and Michael’s number, and Lisa’s, and Kim’s Video. All the numbers were seven digits, not ten; the 212 went unstated. Above all the numbers, near the ceiling, she saw what one or the other of them had written late, late one night: VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES.
Framed on its own was a photo of Michael in the window of Sunrise Squat. It was the day that he had led the reoccupation of the building, and he leaned out a second-floor window, his long arms crossed, shouting down at the unseen cops below. Above him hung a bedsheet sign reading NO TANKS IN OUR CITY.
Emily sat in a folding chair next to Emily and Lisa. Alan pushed the stroller in a loop around the sidewalks, listening, and Emily smiled each time she saw him trundle behind the speakers’ stand.
Friends from Sunrise, from the other squats where he’d lived before and after, took the mic. “Michael didn’t count sheep at night,” one said. “He counted politicians, figuring out how many he’d have to kill to get title to his squat.” Laughter rippled through the crowd. There were no politicians here, but Sofia said she recognized a lawyer from the city who’d squared off against Michael through the ’90s.
After about forty-five minutes, one of the speakers said, “Let’s take a walk, huh?” People started beating drums and trash can lids, making a glorious racket. Everyone got up and stretched. It was cloudy, but the rain had held off. The mourners, two hundred strong or more, set off down Seventh Street, blocking traffic, pissing off truck drivers. She picked Jane up from her stroller and had Alan click her into the backpack so she could see what was going on. The toddler pounded on Emily’s head in time with the drums.
Emily couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked down Seventh, once the main street of her life and the focus of her daily anxieties. They passed the squat at 209 where Michael moved after Sunrise, got sick, and died, and the crowd chanted, “Michael Sammons! Rest in peace!” They passed Emily’s beloved garden, now condos, and chanted for that. They passed The Germans and 278, where Michael had lived for a year or two, and cheered for squats still standing. 278 was on the other side of the street from Emily’s first apartment, but all the buildings looked the same and now she couldn’t pick out which stoop had been hers, which subterranean windows she’d hid behind those first frightened months in New York, before she met Emily. She wondered if the mushroom had ever grown back.
Up Avenue D, back west on Ninth Street. Serenity, still standing. Dos Blocos, rest in peace. Fetus Squat, rest in peace. See Skwat, still proud on C Street. At Twelfth, they turned left and Emily took Emily’s hand. The facade of Sunrise still stood, but the building had been gut-renovated and upgraded. Joe mentioned he’d gone to an open house once and couldn’t believe how nice the countertops were. She could see the window where Michael had hung his sign, and above it, the window from which Emily had dropped keys to her. She remembered the way the keys drifted down on their parachute, fluttering and turning like a leaf from a tree.
When she was first seeing Alan, after he’d quit reporting, gone to Washington for law school, and come back—and Lisa had reintroduced them, and their first official date had concluded two days later—she’d asked him why eviction had ended things, why no one had appealed the adverse possession case for Sunrise. He’d written about it for his law review. “It’s hard to pursue a case without a home base,” he’d said. “People were scattered and exhausted. And the cops trashed everyone’s docs, anyway. A lot of the paperwork proving continued occupancy ended up in the Dumpster.”
On the other hand, he’d pointed out, the fact that a judge had even suggested the tenants might have a claim spooked the city, which was why for the most part they didn’t forcibly evict squats anymore. These days, they negotiated. No tanks in our city. Many of the old squats were working through the process of transferring ownership—and, yes, debt—to the residents. That had its own pitfalls, as seen in the debates that had driven a wedge between Michael and many of the other early squatters, but it was a kind of victory in Sunrise’s name, nonetheless.
“Sunrise Squat! Rest in peace!” they chanted, and chanted, and chanted. The drums got louder and louder. The horns of cars stuck on Twelfth added to the cacophony. Alan took a photo of them and then showed her the screen of the camera, and she knew instantly that she would get that shot printed: she and Emily, fists raised, mouths open in angry protest, and behind her head in the backpack Jane, floppy hat on her curls, raising both hands above her head and grinning like a maniac.
When it was over, she said goodbye to Joe, to Sofia, to Frank, to Lisa, to Juana and her mother, to the punk kids and Michael’s friends and people whose faces were familiar but whose names she had long forgotten. She couldn’t say goodbye to Emily, though. She had already taken off.
* * *
Emily’s new phone also shot video, and she spent a lot of time pointing it at her daughter, taping—she’d need to think of a new word for this—everything she did. One night she and Jane were having a dance party in the living room, a frequent rainy-night activity. She was playing her music on shuffle—Emily’s invention, as she always thought of it—and a Spoon song came on, and Jane loved it. “Again,” she said when it was over, so Emily played it again and taped her singing along, sort of phonetically: “You gano fearada underdogs!” she sang, shaking her naked booty with abandon. They weren’t exactly potty training but they were letting her go around without a diaper sometimes, to see what happened. She positively snarled: “Thass why you willna surVIBE!” In the video Emily took, Jane appeared to be furious, but in fact she was so happy singing the way the man in the song sang.
When Emily showed the video to Alan, he said, “We should get one of those coat of armses”—
“Coats of arms?”
“Right, like viscounts have. And that would be the family motto written along the bottom. ‘The Underdogs.’”
Emily put the video up on the Internet for her family to see. The next time she talked to her mom, Donna said something about Jane still looking a little chubby, and Emily surprised herself by telling her mother, clearly and firmly, that under no circumstances was she allowed to discuss Jane’s weight or her eating choices. She would not bring them up to Emily, and she was not to discuss them in front of Jane. She would not give Jane a complex about her body the way she’d given Emily one. As far as her mother was concerned, the topic did not exist.
“I’m sorry, honey,” her mom said.
“I accept your apology,” Emily replied. “And I’m serious about this.”
Many years later the video of Jane dancing was taken down by YouTube as algorithm-identified child pornography, and Emily mourned its loss as she would that of a favorite photo album, lost in a fire.
* * *
The best thing about book parties was seeing the incredible apartments of every author’s richest friend. Lucy Deming’s richest friend, posthumously, was Benjamin Bannon, and it was into his gorgeous SoHo loft that Emily and Peter stepped, directly from the elevator, on a June night. The air had been disgusting outside, but here it was cool and dry. Central air in an apartment. She was aware this was the least of the extravagances she was about to witness, but it still felt decadent as hell.
On a table near the front were stacks of the four books, each with their perfect covers. Even having held them in her hands before, she couldn’t help but pick up a copy of the new collection. “Hey, did I tell you I took this photo?” she asked Peter.
“About a thousand times. You took it at a book party very like this one, as I recall.”
“Not that much like this one.” Lucy didn’t have any rich friends when she was alive. It was too bad. She would have been a fun person to be rich with. “It was at her friend Lorraine’s house. Nice, but modest. Oh shit, there’s Bob Fox—how do I look?”
“Like a hot mama. Let’s go get him.”
“Bob!” she said, kiss, kiss. In his perfect suit jacket and just-so unbuttoned top button he looked entirely at home in this beautiful apartment, which, come to think of it, was probably a dollhouse by the standards of wherever the hell he lived.
“Hello, my dears,” he said. “Congratulations. Emily, you look stunning.”
“Thanks for making this all happen,” she said. He’d convinced Bannon to host, though St. Martin’s was footing the catering bill.
“Bob, level with me,” Peter said. “How close did we get on the Jonathan Safran Foer novel?”
Fox laughed. “Oh, shop talk right off the bat!”
“I’ve been itching to ask,” Peter said, dancing around as if scratching a dozen mosquito bites.
“You were very competitive,” Fox said. “Jonathan loved you, Emily. He just felt more comfortable where he was.”
“Well,” Peter said, putting his arm around Fox, “at some point you’ve gotta let us win. You can’t just use us to jack up the price forever.”
“Why, Peter, that’s not the only thing I’m using you for,” Fox said, with a look at Emily.
Well, she had made an effort tonight, she supposed. “You should see me most days. I’m covered in cheddar bunnies. Want to see a photo of my two-year-old?”
“Oh, let me introduce you to Benjamin,” Fox said smoothly, steering them over.
In contrast to cartoon Fox, Benjamin Bannon seemed positively asexual, a brain still uncomfortably adjusting to the body it carted around. He shook Emily’s hand and told her how grateful he was for her rediscovery of “the tahdig essay.” (He pronounced it with a careful Persian accent.) He paused frequently while speaking, making a repeated circular gesture with his hands, seemingly to haul forth each new noun from the depths. “It’s such a transformative . . .” (hands circle) “. . . piece in our . . .” (hands circle) “. . . consideration of Lucy’s . . .” (hands circle) “. . . body of work.” She wanted desperately to finish his sentences, but he was a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Sarah was there, too, and offered her an olive off her plate. “It’s a fruit, remember,” she said. “Heh-heh-heh.”
Emily worried Benjamin Bannon was going to give a . . . (hands circle) toast, but he demurred. Peter called for everyone’s attention and introduced himself. “I’m not going to go on and on, because there’s someone else who should speak to you tonight.” Emily felt herself blushing. “I’ve worked with her for more than a decade, and I’ve watched her grow into one of the best editorial minds around. Emily Thiel is truly an editor, what do I mean by that, I mean she’s not one of those editors who thinks of himself as an author.” This got a laugh. “And maybe she’ll write a book someday, I don’t know, I’m sure she’d write a fabulous book. But she’s also no Gordon Lish, imposing her voice on a project, cutting a story to her vision. What she does is she finds people with great stories, and she helps them tell those stories the best they can. She has great eyes. She sees the best version of everyone she works with, and puts that version out in the world. I’ve benefited from this myself, and I can tell you, anyone who gets the benefit of Emily’s eyes is lucky indeed.”
Emily saw Lane, her old assistant, standing near the bar. He’d left for his new job back in 2005, a few months after Marta. She gave him a wave, but he was listening to Peter, arms crossed, frowning. Well, he had never been Peter’s biggest fan.
“A lot of people made this book happen. Let’s run down the list. Benjamin Bannon, whose incredible Times essay started the ball rolling; Bob Fox; Sarah Deming, Lucy’s daughter, who’s here with us today. She’s this lovely young woman right here. Say hi, Sarah.” Sarah did a whole ta-da wave to the crowd. “But no one is more responsible for this book than Emily. Emily knew Lucy, she cared for Lucy. Emily helped her shape her work the first time around, Emily saved an essay for fifteen years, and Emily packaged these four books brilliantly. That’s all the work of an editor. Everyone, please give a hand to my colleague and friend Emily Thiel.”
Emily was a little dazzled as everyone applauded. She stepped forward, concentrated on looking as normal as possible. If her armpits could stop it with the sweating now, that would be fantastic.
“Well, thank goodness Peter didn’t go on and on,” she began, and it got the laugh she needed to collect herself and remember her speech. Peter clutched his chest as if to say, A palpable hit!
“First of all, Lucy loved a good cocktail party. She loved people talking, sharing, eating, and drinking. She loved staying up late. As she wrote, the last half hour of a cocktail party is when people really tell the truth. So with the blessing of the great Benjamin Bannon, we’re not putting a cap on this party. It’s done when it’s done.”
“Hear, hear!” someone called, and there was a smattering of applause. She was counting on the fact that almost everyone was even older than her to keep from going too far over budget.
“When I first read Can’t Complain, I sent Lucy an editorial memo I hope is never unearthed, in which I asked her, basically, to sex it up a little.” Everyone laughed. “I wanted more conflict, more desperate unhappiness. I was twenty-two, in my defense. It took me a while to understand what these novels were. Back at twenty-two, I wanted the book to be more timely. I forgot that the opposite of timely is timeless.
“I guess what I mean to say is that I don’t view these new editions, or this party, or all you wonderful, fancy people at the party, as evidence that Lucy has somehow reached the exalted halls of literature. What’s happening is that literature is finally broadening to include Lucy. I think that’s good news for everyone who loves reading, who loves writing, and, yes, who loves literature. Thanks for coming, everyone, and thanks for your support of these books.”
“A manifesto!” Peter said in her ear as everyone clapped. “I love it.”
Emily made a beeline for the bar, but was interrupted so often by kind people that she despaired of ever getting a fresh drink. One person who stopped her was Lorraine Louie, who hugged her. Her bob was gray now, but she looked otherwise unchanged. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” Emily said. “I wanted to hire you for these covers, but our art director said you’re, like, a doctor now?”
