I leaned against the wall, the cord of the phone stretching across the kitchen. Diane was making elaborate gestures about giving me privacy, pointing at her bedroom, raising her eyebrows suggestively. I waved her off.
“How are you feeling about it?” I asked.
“Terrified. Excited. Both at once.” A pause. “What if they don’t like me?”
“They’ll like you. You’re likable.”
“You have to say that.”
“I don’t, actually. I’m very comfortable being honest about your flaws.” I smiled despite myself, despite the lingering weight of the dream. “You’re going to be great. You’re the best journalist I know.”
“You don’t know that many journalists.”
“I know enough.”
“Name three.”
“You. That guy Ed at the Globe who’s always yelling. And…” I paused. “Barbara Walters.”
“Barbara Walters isn’t a journalist, she’s a force of nature. That’s a different category.”
“Fine. You, Ed, and Dan Rather.”
“You don’tknowDan Rather.”
“I’ve seen him on TV. That counts.”
“That absolutely does not count.”
“It counts if I say it counts. I’m the one giving the compliment, I get to set the parameters.”
He laughed, really laughed, the kind that I could hear through the phone line, warm and unguarded, and the sound of it loosened something in my chest that had been tight since the dream.
We talked for another twenty minutes, about nothing, about everything. The way his hotel room smelled like industrial carpet cleaner. The small, stupid intimacies that made long distance feel shorter.
By the time I hung up, the sun was fully up and Diane was dressed for work, watching me from the kitchen doorway with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“You’re really serious about him this time,” she said.
“Is that a question?”
“An observation.” She handed me a cup of coffee. “You look different when you talk to him. Less… armored.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Jury’s still out.” But she was smiling. “Go get ready. You’ll be late.”
I was workingthrough the slush pile when I found it.
Most days, the slush pile was an exercise in endurance. A hundred variations on the same tired stories, written by people who thought they had something to say but hadn’t yet figured out how to say it. Thrillers with predictable twists. Romances where the love interest had no personality beyond “handsome.” Literary novels that mistook obscurity for depth. You developed a sixth sense for it after a while, a way of reading ten pages and knowing whether the next two hundred would be worth your time.
This one was different.
The manuscript was thick, unbound, held together with a rubber band and a prayer. The cover page was typewritten—no agent, no cover letter, just a title and a name.
The List of Nine (and Louie)by Hazel Winterbrook
I almost set it aside. First novels from unknown authors without agent representation were the longest of long shots, the publishing equivalent of buying a lottery ticket. But something about the title caught me—the parentheticaland Louie, like an afterthought, like whoever Louie was had wandered into the story uninvited and refused to leave.
