“And I don’t think I can represent you moving forward.”
“Wait,” I say, panic and bile combining to travel backwards up my esophagus. “What?”
“I don’t think it is in your best interest or mine for us to continue our working relationship moving forward,” she says.
“What aboutReckless Outlaw?”
“I’ve got a call in to Danielle at Cabaret Books. I’ll try to sell it as a single title. Hopefully, she still wants it.”
I purse my lips, willing the contents of my stomach to stay exactly where they are. “And then what?”
“And then I think it’s best if we part ways,” she says. “I can’t work with my ex-husband’s new girlfriend. Especially if he’s ghostwriting his misinterpretations of what happened in our relationship into your work. Fifteen percent is not enough of a commission to put myself through a nightmare like that.”
“I swear, Lindsay. I swear, I had no idea thatyouwere the subject of his stories,” I say, her words—best if we part ways—digging into my intestines. I picture myself agentless, having to start from scratch to try and find new representation. The sleepless nights, the query letters going unanswered, the constant checking of email and praying for full manuscript requests. I imagine going through all of that again. It was torture the first time around. How would I explain myself? My agent dropped me because I slept with her ex-husband? Shit, I would drop me too.
My career is over.Reckless Outlawwill be the last book I ever sell in my life, I think.
“It’s fine, Grace. What’s done is done. Do I have your permission to try and sell it as a single title?” she asks.
“Yes,” I mumble, stunned. “Yes.”
“Good. I’ll have Evan be in touch. In fact, from now on, it’s probably best that you reach out to me through him.”
“Okay,” I say.
She hangs up, and just like that, it’s over. Afraid I won’t be able to crawl back into my hole on the couch easily, I go to the bathroom, take two Benadryl, and practice playing possum for the rest of the afternoon.
Colin
I stay late at the office, writing an email to Gracie. I do my bestwith it. Lord knows I amnota writer.
I compose entire paragraphs—only to delete them moments later.
I am not sure what to tell her. I start with a lengthy story about how I gave Lindsay the name Elle—about how when she was a kid her father called herLinzer Tartbut he went to jail for some white collar crime when she was seven years old and, ever since then, shedespisedthe name Lindsay, because it always inevitably ended in the nicknameLinz.So, I intentionally called her Elle starting very early on in our relationship; it began right after she told me that story, in fact. She loved it. It was chic, she said. She wished she could start fresh in life so that everyone could call her Elle.
Delete, delete, delete. Irrelevant.
I try again, this time with humor. I mean, Gracie made me feel better just by making me laugh, so I figure maybe I can return the favor. The only problem is, I’m not that funny. I resort to looking up jokes online that have some variation of the wordEllein them and start typing them out. That looks a little something like this:
What’s gray but turns red?
An embarrassed “elle”phant!
What is an energy provider’s favorite dance?
The “Elle”ctric Slide!
What do you call a shrimp who only cares about himself?
Sh“elle”fish!
So, yeah. More d“elle”ting. (By this point, I feel like I’m fresh out of good judgement, almost to the point where I fear I may never finish this email and leave my office.)
I close my eyes and lean back in my chair. The message screen is blank, taunting me.
Being a writer is hard work, I decide. This feels like one of Gracie’s page count exercises.
Thinking about her working makes me sad. I realize I may have just flushed months, even years, of her creativity down the toilet with this mistake.
