I looked at the box, nearly full except for the pieces I had piled in front—and to the side, and to the back—of me on the same spot on the floor I’d sat yesterday.
These were all notes he’d done ononecharacter in a few months? Good lord, the man must have done nothing for the past five years but write plot and character notes.
And yet, no novel to show for all of the labor that sat around the room, surrounding me.
“So, you’re going with Esme? Rachel and Esme, same person?”
“Yes,” he said.
I hesitated too long, and he was starting to know me. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I quickly said. What I was thinking was not my place to say.
“What?” he said with exasperation in his voice.
“Well, it’s not really important.”
“Is it about my stuff? My work?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Then spill.”
“No, really—”
“Come on, Syd. I hired you, I want any feedback you want to give.”
“I would never presume to give you…feedback.” Even the idea seemed preposterous to me.
“At least I’ve read your stuff, your papers—and liked them. Most of the feedback I get is from hack critics who couldn’t write a grocery list and so they have to bring others down.”
Huh. That sounded out of character for the person I’d gotten to know—albeit only in the last couple of days, three months of one-sided lectures, and oneSeinfeld-bonding phone call.
He snorted, and added, “Or at least that’s what my agent and editor say to me.”
Yeah, that sounded about right. “And what do you say?”
Another snort. “Nothing. I just let them blow smoke up my ass until I am properly soothed.”
“Well let’s face it, there wasn’t a lot of negative feedback onGangster’s Follyanyway, was there?” I mean, it had won a bunch of awards and still lingered at the bottom of several best-seller lists five years later.
“Oh, there were a few. But yeah, it was well received. My ruffled feathers were more recent as it seems more and more people in the New York literary scene are getting in some shots about the wait on my next book.”
He traveled in New York literary circles.
A vision of Dorothy Parker and her gang at the Algonquin popped into my head and I saw Montrose sitting amongst them in a smoke-filled room, throwing out bon mots and looking debonair. His tousled, tired, world-weary look fitting right in.
It was hard to imagine that he and I lived in the same country let alone the same city.
“But enough of that, I don’t want to get pissed, it’s the holidays.” He let out a little laugh. “Though the holidays seem to bring out the pissed-off-edness in a lot of people.”
A vision of my stepfather drunkenly knocking over our pathetic excuse for a Christmas tree flashed in my mind, but before I could agree with Montrose’s summation, he added, “Seriously. What thought did you have about the Esme/Rachel thing?”
“Well, it seems likeFollywas compared a lot to Salinger, particularlyCatcher in the Rye.”
“Yes?”
“How did you feel about that?” I’d wondered about that for a few years, but of course I didn’t mention that part.
