Barcelona Calling, page 11
“That’s nice,” I say. “Maybe I should write a sequel. Might surprise a lot of people if I did. I’ve never written a series.” I couldn’t write that those two writers soon divorced. That would be a terrible sequel.
“But first … finish revising Miranda of La Mancha.”
“We’re working a list of new titles. Would you let Misty and Darlien know so they can be brainstorming too this weekend?”
“That sounds like fun! Do you want me to read more?”
“No, just bring the letters along. It’ll be something to look forward to.”
I knew it wasn’t wise to let one nice letter make my day, because that meant I could also let a bad letter ruin my day. Writing is about balance, and responding to total strangers’ goods and bads is like being on a teeter-totter. I thought my plan to make a bestseller would keep me in balance; but after the episode at the salon, my quest is more like a reality television show than finding a way to truly advance my career.
“Are you making progress in meeting Oprah?” Bette asks.
“I was close enough to hear her voice yesterday,” I say. “Wow, that’s great in so short a time. You’ve only been there a few days!”
“Yup. I heard her voice just before I was asked to leave out the back door and never darken their African-motif pet salon again.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I sort of derailed our plan,” I say.
“You’re always saying that a challenge doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake or that it’s a dead end. You have to recommit to the goal.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. The goal to have a bestseller by getting Oprah to know my name … maybe that’s the problem.”
“Is someone trying to call in?” Bette asks. “I hear clicking.”
I look at my cell phone. “It’s Randolph, my agent. I guess I better take this one.” Rethinking my goals would have to wait.
I carry the phone out through the living room of the condo. The main room wouldn’t be a place for a child, not with the heavy wooden tables and the designer fabrics on the dining room chairs, but then Kari and Clint have never talked of having children, at least not when I was around. It seems a shame, as it is for Oprah, I think, when good, loving people with resources decide to forestall families. Still, I wouldn’t be relaxing in such luxury if my cousins’ children roamed the apartment. I wouldn’t have a small dog keeping me company either. Maybe living with children leaves little room for accommodating visiting kin, though we girls have had plenty of sleepovers at Misty’s without incident. Well, without disasters. Ho-Bee snores beneath a living room chair, his black-and-white belly pushing in and out like a puffer fish.
On Clint and Kari’s small deck I pinch a dead geranium blossom, while leaving the others to act as guardians of red and white against the iron railing. Kari’s brought up wooden planters shaped like children’s wagons and spruced them up with red-and-white checkered bows. She’s planting daisies and other flowers, bringing a country look to Chicago’s grimy Cook County. Though the Fourth of July has long passed, a dozen tiny flags flutter in the wind amidst the blooms.
I call Randolph back, as I’ve missed his call. “How’s progress on the bestseller trail?” he says.
“I’ve actually gotten close enough to hear Oprah’s voice when I took my dog to her groomer’s,” I tell him.
“Thought you were a cat person.”
“I am, but one needs to adapt to the occasion. I signed up to take a class with her former chef too. At his restaurant.”
“You should just be writing. Let others take care of this promotion. This is why I’ve called. It will please you to know that I—drum roll please—can get you onto Oprah’s show.”
“As an author? Really?” I sit down crossways on a lounge chair. “She’ll know about my book? You’re a genius, Randolph.
Yes!”
“Well … not as an author, no. But as part of one of those loving reunions, where she flies people in to reconnect with family and friends.”
“What?” My mind trips through the family rolodex and finds no one whom I haven’t seen in years that I’d want to be reunited with on national television.
“You might find a way to mention the book and your work-in-progress,” Randolph continues. “That’ll be your part of the task. I think it’s inspired.” His words, just a moment before having such lift, now feel like bird droppings on my suntanned knees. They splatter me back to attention.
“Who would I be reunited with?” I say.
“Your long lost lover from Spain,” Randolph says. “I’ve read the manuscript. It fits right in. Brilliant, righto?”
Have I lost my mind and told him about Jaime, my Jaime? I’m sure I haven’t. Only my sister and Bette know about the real Jaime. Well, and my mother.
“It’s a novel, Randolph. There isn’t any Miranda pining for her Jaime,” I insist.
“I know that. But the stories are all made up anyway, so all you have to do is take on the life of your character for a week or so. Live your fiction, so to speak. You have firsthand information about the International Federation of the World Police and Firemen Games—that sounds so prestigious, doesn’t it? People are clueless about those games, and they’d find that interesting in itself. You could say you were reunited with an old childhood pen pal when you attended the Games last summer, a pen pal who is now a policeman in Spain putting all his money aside to help his mother, so he can’t afford to come to America and marry you. Oprah will love it.”
“But it wouldn’t be true,” I say.
“Neither is it true that you own a dog needing grooming or that you really want to be a chef of some kind. You’ve always said you can’t cook a whit. But that isn’t the reason you’re taking the class. So my little idea is as honest as your efforts to get Oprah to know your name.”
I wince.
“I didn’t think agents booked events like this. AP’s publicist might see this as meddling and —”
“It’s publicist work, righto,” Randolph says, “but you’re a mid-list author if not low-list author.” I must have choked. “I’m just telling you where we stand.” Está Aquí. “We need something big, your gal pals are right about that. Why not try it? It could prove a huge payoff if you managed to slip in even one word about the manuscript and suggested it has ‘autobiographical’ implications. Fun in the Sun in Spain. You can use that for a title suggestion.” Randolph knows the routine.
“Fun in the Sun sounds like a beach travel book,” I say.
“Go with me a little, Annie.”
I sigh. “All right. What kind of person would you get to play Jaime?”
“Antonio Banderas.” I gasp. “I knew I could interest you.”
“Antonio Banderas? You can get Antonio Banderas to play Jaime?”
“In a perfect world,” he says. “No, Oprah would know for certain it’s fiction then. They know each other. But there’s a guy who works at a Mexican restaurant here in Manhattan. His Spanish is pretty good and girls flock around him. He could be a fireman or policeman. He works out. He’d do it for a little cash.” Randolph coughs.
“Spaniards from Cataluña speak a Castilian Spanish,” I say. “It has a very different sound. Gra-see-us in Mexican is gra-thee-us in Castilian. Surely Oprah’s researchers would note that, not to mention it wouldn’t be too hard to find out he’s been shredding lettuce at a taco place in New York rather than fighting fires in Europe. I think her staffers are smarter than that.”
“He’d have to fly in from Spain, of course,” Randolph says. “So we’d have to get him to Spain first. You’ll need to front the money for that.”
“I’d pay for that?”
“Righto.” He coughs. “You have to invest money to make money.”
“I invest in cookies sent to reviewers or a web blog or giving my 10 free copies of books to strategic places.”
“Like the bathrooms of TMJ4?” He can be so brutal. “Just as you have to invest time and energy long before your book comes out. You know the routine, Annie.”
“You’ve got to quit smoking those cigars,” I say as he coughs again.
“Don’t change the subject. I’m just trying to do more for your career; work smarter, not harder. You focus on writing and I’ll focus on making a big smash.”
“I think that’s splash,” I say. “How did this all come about?”
“I ran into a producer at a party and we exchanged cards and I got all enthused about your book but I didn’t tell her that. I told her about my poor lovesick friend and her lover in Spain, and she actually proposed the idea! Maybe I should write a romance novel.”
“Maybe we should find real people trying to unite,” I say. “Just find them and then prompt them about my book, so I wouldn’t have to actually, you know, be there with my … fiction. Or your fiction.”
“Oprah might be so excited she might even cover the next world games or Skype the event. They’ll be in Montreal next, righto?”
“In Ireland next.”
“Marketing would be ecstatic. Fun in the Sun in Spain might have to be changed to something else, to take advantage of the Irish connection. Let’s see, Aflame in Ireland. That’s a good one.”
“Miranda of La Mancha,” I say. “That’s the title.”
“Whatever. It would sell, whatever you called it, even if Oprah didn’t pick it as her book club book. People would want to read the rest of the story, how Miranda and Jaime walk into the future. Maybe even a reality show could come of it.”
“Your scheme lacks the hopefulness of my gal pal ideas,” I say. “And it’s a whole lot more expensive.” I’d have to use my credit card to buy a ticket to and from Spain, and I wouldn’t even be the person on the plane!
“I’m not trying to get her to choose my book anymore, Randolph. I’m just trying to get a mention of The Long Bad Sentence, that’s all I want.” I might have stopped then, told myself the truth. Está aquí.
But Randolph says, “Oprah is a rain barrel for stories. We can fill that barrel with a good yarn full of love and tears and reconciliation. Everyone loves reunions, and with a little hype from the games and all those uniforms on muscled men, well, the possibilities are endless —they really are, Annie. It’s just good publicity, and it has a better chance of promoting The Long Bad Sentence than your scheme to get her to know your name.”
The uniforms did have a certain draw. “There are women competitors too.”
“So you’re willing to advance the airfare if I can work this out?”
“I’m a little short on cash, Randolph,” I say.
“I was meaning to ask you. I haven’t heard from Editorial saying they’ve accepted your revisions yet.” Randolph receives all my checks, takes out his commission, then sends the remainder on to me.
“Ah, it’s not officially accepted yet because I haven’t sent them yet.”
Silence. “You want my help with that?”
“No, no. It’s editorial in nature, nothing contractual.”
“Get them finished so we can claim the next portion of the advance, Annie. We don’t want to be too far off schedule.”
Randolph makes money when I do. Of course that also means Randolph, like my publishers, has an interest in my being successful. They want me to do well. They’re dependent on my doing well. Randolph might have a dozen clients funding his kids’ college funds, but that means a dozen writers’ hands to hold, hearts to encourage, to support. I should be grateful he’s thought of a way to promote my latest release.
I only have four little books to support my life, the last one not even yet accepted or published so we are living off of the advance for Miranda. My friends think I get the full seven dollars list price of the book, multiplied by the number sold. I wish.
Randolph keeps track of that sort of thing. I trust him completely. Then why was I struggling with his request that I put the airfare costs for his scheme on my credit card? We have like minds, Randolph and me, and I have my own notorious schemes to front.
“I’m working on the scene changes, I am.”
“Righto.”
“You’d have me waste money to bring a taco master from Spain over here?”
“Not waste, invest. Maybe you’ll be lucky and your numbers for this half of the year will be up and the royalty statement will cover what we need and then some.”
“I need that to live on, so I can write. I don’t have a contract for more books unless Sentence and Miranda do well. Maybe not even Miranda if I don’t get the revisions finished.” Irving might well recommend against future books, and then I’d have to repay the signing advance for it and try to find another publisher for that story and start this revision and promotion process all over again.
“A little testy, are we? Have you started that next book yet, Annie?” Randolph says. “That always increases your confidence.”
“I can’t begin the next book until Miranda is put to bed. Laid to rest. Until Miranda is accepted,” I say. “My editor has issues. He wants —”
“Victims,” he says. “Oprah loves victim stories where the woman discovers she isn’t really a victim at the end, that she can make things happen herself. You do know that you always have a couple of things you can do when you feel like a victim?” I wait for him to tell me. “You can get clear about what matters in your life and then have the courage to act on that.” He’s taken with his own advice. “Maybe I can work that angle in when I finalize with the producer. A poor, victimized woman writer abandons her Spanish lover so she can complete a novel that the publishing moguls won’t accept. It just might fly.”
He signs off, leaving me to wonder what I have to lose by his fictional ploy. My integrity, yes. This whole affair is like a pair of hairy legs being shaved with a dull razor: I get the feeling it’s going nowhere in a very painful way.
A few of Randolph’s words ring in my ears as I settle down to address Irving’s latest “concerns.” I don’t think of myself as a victim. I choose my own stories, I make my own expenses, pay my own bills, and I owe no one anything that I can think of. Well, I’ll be sanding down or hauling up a new cherry table for Kari and Clint and paying for the carpet to be cleaned; and Élan-Canine Salon’s attorneys might be in my future for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder damages as a result of Ho-Bee’s escapades. But beyond that, I feel pretty much in control of my life. I even remembered to cancel the check I wrote to Stuart since I gave him cash for the tires. A victim is someone taken advantage of, right? Oprah’s chosen books, even if they involve characters as victims, still celebrate men and women who eventually triumph. Miranda triumphs. Even Jaime does, in a way.
Ho-Bee’s up and carries morsels of food from our bedroom out to the deck where he eats each one, then makes a return trip. How is it he can be so well-behaved now but not when I had that moment so close to Oprah? I watch his steady crunching. At any moment he might jump up and begin spinning. He has no moderate speed; just intense or stop. When he cuddles close, I don’t miss my little students left back in Milwaukee nearly as much.
I am not a victim. While the trip to Spain hadn’t been my idea, once I decided to go, I found a certain pleasure in planning. One of Darlien’s colleagues had gotten ill and couldn’t compete, months before the event. When the time came, I took over her plane ticket and hotel accommodations. I’d roomed with Darlien, so except for a fear of the Atlantic crossing, I went willingly, proud of my impulse to do something out of the ordinary. I’d been writing a book about the games and a girl falling in love with a fire-fighter before we ever left. Darlien had told me about previous games in Sweden and New Zealand she’d gone to so I had a structure. Miranda wasn’t even in it though. But once there, everything changed. It was my story now.
Well, ok, it wouldn’t have been the vacation I’d have chosen for myself, spending all that time with athletes. I stumble over my exercise mat and as a teenager spent as much time in emergency rooms getting stitched up as I did dating.
Though older than me, Darlien is much more athletic and outgoing. She is someone who loves an adoring audience, which I happily oblige her with. I made the trip for quality time with her. I hoped I could discover what it was in our family genetic code that made poor mate selection worse than random. Darlien’s three marriages all began with such joy and then ended with acrimony. Still, once the divvying up of the season tickets for the Packer games was settled, all her husbands seemed to get along with her and each other quite well. They sit together at the games.
I had my own failed marriage to assess as well. I must have been in love when we married. I fell for Stuart’s languid smile, his encouraging words when my first novel had been accepted. The aura of the conference, up-beat and happy, infused us both with hopefulness. He told me he was “too lazy to work and too nervous to steal” so he’d taken up writing.
“Isn’t that the title of a book on writing?” I’d asked him.
“You caught me,” he said and reached across the table to push my glasses up on my nose. His touch took my breath away. I’d caught him, and he’d caught me.
Sadly, I didn’t learn until later that he was too lazy to work or write and even stealing would have taken too much energy. I supported us and then when Sweet Charity did well, I quit my preschool position to finish out the other books in the contract. I hoped that would inspire Stuart, but it only inspired him to carp and complain until I filed for our divorce. My mother said maybe getting married in the library with just a judge to officiate left out God, the most important ingredient in helping a marriage last. I intend to change that if I ever marry again.
