One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [129]
“Why shouldn’t it be true?” Lola said with irritating confidence.
“The only guarantee of success is hard work,” James said. “Statistically speaking, that is. But even then, it’s not a sure bet. The truth is, there are no sure bets.”
“That’s why there’s true love,” Lola said.
James’s mood turned and his emotions began to chug upward like the little train that could. What a darling, he thought, looking at Lola. She didn’t know a thing about life, but still, she believed in herself so purely, it was almost inspirational. “It’s all about the numbers,” he said, nodding at this realization. “Numbers upon numbers upon numbers. Maybe it always was,” he went on musingly.
“Was what?” Lola asked. She was bored. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn not only away from her but into an area she equated with taxes. Meaning something she hoped never to think about.
“Ratings. Bottom lines,” James said, thinking he wouldn’t mind seeing Lola’s bottom line. But he couldn’t exactly say that, could he?
Or could he?
“I have to go,” she said. “Hug your teddy. Kiss him for luck. And text me later. I can’t wait to read the review.”
After she left, James got back on the Internet. He checked and rechecked his e-mails, his Amazon ranking, his Google ranking, and looked up his name on any possible media-related website, including The Huffington Post, Snarker, and Defamer. The next five hours passed in this most unpleasant manner.
Finally, at three-fifteen, his phone rang. “We did it,” Redmon said, his voice filled with triumph. “You got the cover of The New York Times Book Review. And they called you a modern-day Melville.”
At first James was too shocked to speak. But after a moment, he found his voice and, as if he had books on the cover of The New York Times Book Review all the time, said, “I’ll take that.”
“Damn right we’ll take it,” Redmon said. “It couldn’t be better if we’d written it ourselves. I’ll have my assistant e-mail you the review.”
James hung up. For the first time in his life, he was a success. “I am a man of triumph,” he said aloud. Then he began to feel dizzy—with joy, he told himself—and then oddly nauseated. He hadn’t thrown up in years, not since he was a boy, but the nausea increased, and he was finally forced to go into the bathroom to perform that most unmasculine of all rituals—spitting up into the toilet bowl.
Still unsteady on his feet, he went back to his office, opened the attachment on his computer, and printed it out, eagerly reading each page as it shot from the machine. His talent was at last recognized, and no matter how many books he sold, it was this acknowledgment of his place in the literary pantheon that mattered. He had won! But what was he supposed to do now? Ah—sharing the news. That’s what one did next.
He began to dial Mindy’s number but hesitated. Plenty of time to tell her, he thought, and there was one person who would appreciate the news more: Lola. She was the one who ought to hear first, who had sweated out this most fateful of days with him. Grabbing the three pages of the review, he went into the lobby, impatiently waiting for the elevator, planning exactly what he might say to her (“I did it”? “You’re going to be proud of me”? “You were right”?) and what might happen afterward. (She would hug him, naturally, and that hug might turn into a kiss, and the kiss might turn into…? God only knew.) At last the elevator arrived from the top of the building, and he got on and sent it right back up, looking back and forth from the slow ticking off of the floors to the words printed in the review and now imprinted on his brain: “Modern-day Melville.”
Full of brio, he pounded on the door of Apartment 13B. He heard scuffling inside and, expecting Lola, was shocked when Philip Oakland opened the