The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [34]
—•—
I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced—the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again.
I doubt my reaction was new to her, but it couldn't have been pleasant. Even so, she tried to be kind and took me under her fluffy white wing.
She brought in lipsticks she no longer wore, silk scarves she thought I'd like. She let me know when a good sale was going on at Bergdorf or Barneys. She told me about an apartment, which my friend Sophie wound up taking.
The first time Mimi asked me to read one of her submissions, she said, "I thought you might be interested in this." But soon she was handing me stacks of manuscripts, every submission she didn't want to read herself, a terrible, endless supply. She did it in the nicest possible manner, as though asking a favor I was free to refuse.
Without realizing it, I became less the associate editor I'd been than an assistant she'd decided to bring up. She was forever interrupting herself to explain some basic aspect of publishing to me. I had to stop myself from saying, Yes, I know, which would've come across as an unwillingness to learn. And I did seem to know less and less.
After a while, she never seemed to look at me without assessing who I was and what I was capable of becoming. I could tell she doubted my devotion, and in this she was perfectly justified.
—•—
That afternoon, she'd held up her bottle of perfume, and I'd brought my wrists forward to be sprayed, as usual. Then she said that an agent had called asking about Deep South, a lyrical novel he'd submitted weeks ago—Did I know anything about it? I told her I'd look for it.
I knew where it was, of course—under my desk, where I hid all the manuscripts I hadn't read for her. Now I put Deep South in my book bag, said good night to Blanca, and headed downtown for the reading.
The bookstore was so crowded that I had to stand along the back shelves. Someone was already up at the microphone welcoming everyone. I was taking off my jacket and folding it over my book bag, when I heard the welcomer say, "... his editor, Archie Knox."
Since we'd broken up, I'd seen Archie a few times at readings and book parties. The first time, I went up to him, but he barely nodded before turning his back on me. My friend Sophie told me that he avoided me because he cared so much, but that wasn't how it felt.
From where I stood, he didn't look older or different. He wore an oatmealy Shetland-wool sweater I knew. He was saying that he'd read the book, Loony, straight through, forgetting dinner and postponing bed; he'd stayed up all night and eaten moo shu pork for breakfast, which he did not recommend. He paused and I saw him see me—his eyebrows pulled together—and he coughed and finished his story.
There was applause and then the author, Mickey Lamm, in a brown suit and sneakers, hugged Archie. Mickey looked exactly like his voice: bangs in his eyes and a bouncy walk; puppy-dog tails were what he was made of, though he was probably forty.
When the applause subsided, he said into the microphone, "Archie Knox, the best editor anywhere," and he clapped, and got the crowd clapping again with him. He had a crooked smile that didn't quite cover his teeth, and at about ninety words a minute he invited all the aspiring writers in the audience to send their manuscripts to Archie Knox at K——, and he gave the full address, including zip. In an announcer's voice he said, "That address again ..." and repeated it.
I couldn't see where Archie was, but I could feel him there. I closed my eyes while Mickey read and pictured Archie holding a pencil above the manuscript.
Loony was a memoir of childhood, and the chapter Mickey read was about