The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [33]
“What? Of course not,” the woman insisted.
“You’re sure?”
“Are you suggesting—? Young lady, this award is an honor that is—”
“Or are you in the employ of young Alexander’s family?”
The woman paused. “Not full-time, of course, but—”
Lisbeth hit the Stop button on her tape recorder and chucked her pen against her desk. Only in Palm Beach would a mother hire a publicist for her eleventh grader’s elbow macaroni art masterpiece. “It’s a national award,” Lisbeth muttered to herself, ripping the sheet of paper from her notepad. But as she crumpled it up, she still didn’t hang up the phone. Sacred Rule #2: A crappy source today might be a great one tomorrow. Sacred Rule #3: See Sacred Rule #2.
“If I have space, I’ll definitely try to get it in,” Lisbeth added. “We’re pretty full, though.” It was an even bigger lie than the thinning and de-aging effects of her lime-green glasses. But as Lisbeth hung up the phone and tossed the crumpled paper into the trash, she couldn’t help but notice the near-empty three-column grid on her computer screen.
Twenty inches. About eight hundred words. That’s what it took every day to fill Below the Fold. Plus a photo, of course. So far, she had five inches on a local socialite’s daughter marrying a professional pool player (B+, Lisbeth thought to herself), and four inches on a week-old cursing match between some teenager and the head of the DMV (C- at best). Eyeing the balled-up paper in the plastic garbage can, Lisbeth glanced back at her still mostly empty screen. No, she told herself. It was still too early in the day to be desperate. She hadn’t even gotten the—
“Mail!” a voice called out as a hand reached over the top edge of the cubicle, wagging a short pile of envelopes in the air. Looking up, Lisbeth knew that if she reached for the stack, he’d just pull it away, so she waited for the hand . . . and its owner . . . to turn the corner. “Morning, Vincent,” she said before he even appeared.
“Tell me you got something good today,” Vincent said, his salt-and-pepper mustache squirming like a caterpillar on his lip. He tossed the pile of mail on Lisbeth’s already oversubscribed desk. It wasn’t until it fanned out accordion-style in front of her that Lisbeth saw the tear in each envelope.
“You opened my mail?” she asked.
“I’m your editor. That’s my job.”
“Your job is opening my mail?”
“No, my job is to make sure your column is the best it can be. And when it is, and when every person in this town is whispering to their neighbors about whatever scandal you so cleverly unearthed, we usually get about twenty to thirty letters a day, plus the usual press releases and invitations. Know what you got this morning? Six. And that’s including the invites.” Peering over her shoulder and reading from the mostly empty grid on Lisbeth’s computer screen, Vincent added, “You spelled DMV wrong.”
Lisbeth squinted toward the screen.
“Made you look,” Vincent added, laughing his little huffing laugh. With his navy and red Polo-knockoff suspenders and matching bow tie, Vincent dressed like Palm Beach royalty on an editor’s salary.
Annoyed, Lisbeth pulled his left suspender back like a bowstring and let it snap against his chest.
“Ow . . . that . . . that actually hurt,” he whined, rubbing his chest. “I was making a point.”
“Really? And what was that? That I should find more stories about handjobs in hot tubs?”
“Listen, missy, that was a fun story.”
“Fun? I don’t want fun. I want good.”
“Like what? Like your supposed top-secret source who whispered all those promises in your ear, then jumped off the face of the earth? What was her name again? Lily?”
“Iris.” As Lisbeth said the word, she could feel the blood rush to her ears. Four months