if it weren’t for you, I’d never see them, so I guess I should thank you. But I won’t. I’m going back to bed.”
“You’ve had a pot of coffee. Aren’t you wired?”
“No. Good night, Michael.”
“Good morning, Cassie. You are the bloody best. Thank you.”
“May the next time I hear your voice be after lunch.”
I hung up and ran a hand through my bedhead of messy black curls. I padded back to my room, drew the blinds tighter and dropped my robe, crawling sensuously beneath my sheets. I loved the decadence of going back to bed. I picked up the phone and dialed the office, pressing extension 303.
“Lou…it’s me. Michael Pearton had another pre-dawn meltdown. We were on the phone discussing his main character’s menu choices ’til just now. It’s 6:30. I’m exhausted. I won’t be in until at least noon if you’re lucky.”
I shut my eyes and thought I’d skip the whole day at the office. My boss let me work three days at home, thanks to voice mail and e-mail, and his sheer adoration of me. I was supposed to go in on Fridays, but the hell with it. I turned the ringer off on my phone. Sleep returned quickly. I dreamed of swimming in pools of hollandaise.
At 11:00, the phone rang, muffled, out in the kitchen. I could hear the caller ignoring the fact that I wasn’t answering. I heard four rings, a voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings. Voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings…
“Oh for God’s sake, what do you want, Lou?” I finally snatched the receiver next to my bed.
“How’d you know…”
“You’re the only person stubborn enough to do that, Lou.”
“I need you in here today.”
“Sorry. I put in my hours with the ever-neurotic Englishman last night. Or actually, this morning, but you know what I mean. I’ll be in on Monday.”
“This is big.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bigger than Stephen King, big. This could make me millions. Your bonus could send you into early retirement.”
“So who is it?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Lou…this isn’t high school. Not that I think you ever went to high school. You were born eating your young.”
“Cassie, my dear, you come and go out of here as the diva you are. But this one time, I’m telling you to get up, get dressed, and meet me at the office. I will mainline you a pot of coffee.”
“This better be worth it.”
“It is. In spades.”
I climbed out of bed, still far too early for my taste. In the kitchen, I dumped out the grinds in Mr. Coffee, the only man in my condo in the last year and a half, and put on my second pot of the day. After a hot shower, a dab of crimson lipstick, and a sort of shaggy-dog shaking of my hair, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, threw a linen blazer on, and headed down Florida’s A1A ocean highway to West Side’s offices.
I’m not sure how it is I came to live in a land of pink palaces and perpetual sunshine. It doesn’t suit my personality. But when Lou moved down here from New York, he took me with him. He came for the fishing and the sunshine. He came to get away from New York after Helen died. And I came because he did.
I climbed out of my mint-condition Cadillac that I bought for a song from the estate of an elderly man who had died. His kids wanted cash. Bargains abound in Florida if you don’t mind owning stuff that belonged to dead people. When Lou first saw it, he thought I was nuts. “A banana-yellow Caddy? You like driving fruit?” But I have claustrophobia. I drive luxury land tanks.
Pressing the elevator button for the seventh floor, I rode up in glass to West Side’s offices.
“Morning, Cassie,” Troy, the receptionist/junior editor, greeted me.
“Mornin’,” I mumbled.
“You look a fright.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Coffee?”
“Intravenous.”
“You got it.” He held out a mug. “Start with this cup, and I’ll bring a fresh one in as soon as it’s brewed.”
I opened the door to Lou’s office without knocking.
“This better be worth it. I’m feeling very bitchy today,” I said, putting the mug down on a mahogany coffee table covered with books West Side had published, and flopping onto a long, buttercream leather couch.
“And how is this different from any other day?”
“If I wanted insults, I would call my mother.”
“Guess who called me in the middle of the night?”
“What is it with authors and the middle of the night, Lou?”
“Indulge me.”
“John Updike?”
“Bigger.”
“I have no clue,” I leaned up on one elbow and took a swig of coffee.
He took the unlit cigar he had in his mouth and set it in his Waterford ashtray.
“Roland Riggs.”
“Holy shit!” I said, as hot coffee sprayed out of my mouth.
2
L ou smiled at me. “I thought that would grab ya!”
The shock hit me as I mopped at coffee dribbling down my chin. I managed to sputter, “What’d he want?”
“You do know my famous Roland Riggs story, right?”
“Do I know it? I’ve been subjected to your Roland Riggs story at every cocktail party you and I have ever attended together. Worse, I’ve been subjected to it secondhand from people who have heard the story and feel the need to tell me. They usually embellish it.”
Troy came in with my second cup of coffee.
“Thanks.” I sucked down a long swig, burning my tongue.
After Troy shut the door, Lou feigned hurt feelings, “All right. So you’ve heard the story. Well…Roland Riggs calls me up in the middle of the night and says—get this— ‘Lou, I guess I was wrong about the computer.’”
Lou’s Roland Riggs story was this: In 1968,
