he said, rolling his eyes. He always complained that I was too sensitive. “I’m amazed you applied there, though.”
“I didn’t even know I had. The ad didn’t give the name of the company.”
“They were probably afraid that people wouldn’t answer the ad if they knew it was for Candlelight Books.”
“Probably.” No doubt there were some people who would turn up their noses at working around romance novels. I was not one of those people. Correction: Since having to auction my belongings on eBay, I had ceased to be one of those people.
“I think you’d make a great editor.”
“I think it’s just secretarial. Or something.”
He raised his brows. Fleishman had very distinctive, Dracula-like brows, so it always seemed very dramatic when they arched at you. “You don’t know?”
“I’m sure it’s an editorial assistant job.” I was fairly certain I had applied for a few of those. Not that I had any idea what an editorial assistant actually did. “Or assistant something-or-other. I answered so many ads…”
I once read in a book about job hunting that you should keep a tidy folder documenting all the places you’ve applied, and listing all the relevant dates for callbacks and interviews. But if I had been that organized in the first place, I probably wouldn’t be the kind of putz who was scrabbling for a job, any job.
Now Wendy, she would have made a folder. Wendy was that way. She kept a chart on our refrigerator to keep track of whose week it was to take out the garbage.
Fleishman was more like me. (Which made it extra fortunate that we had Wendy.) “Well, whatever,” he said. “Once you have a bundle saved from your lucrative new career, you can produce Yule Be Sorry.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” I quickly added, “The position’s not that lucrative.”
But what I really meant was, fat chance I would ever help Yule Be Sorry see the light of day.
Yule Be Sorry was Fleishman’s latest unfinished theatrical masterpiece, dreamed up after he had spent Christmas with my family in Cleveland. Fleishman’s plays, which had made him the Noel Coward of our little college, were airy, funny pieces with just enough message to justify their being written at all. Yule Be Sorry continued in this tradition. But even in the one act he had written, the thinly disguised picture of my family was not pretty—the Alberts came off as a collection of airheads and rubes. And the girl protagonist of the play, the one who brings her ex-boyfriend home for the holiday—in other words, me—was especially grating. She had a few good lines, but for the most part she was a scold, a former fat girl who secretly scarfed down spritz cookies when no one was looking.
Okay, maybe that last part was me spot-on, but come on. Was I a scold? I didn’t think so. Yes, I was just more practical than Fleishman, but that was setting the bar so low the midgets of the Lollypop Guild couldn’t have limboed under it. Anna Nicole Smith was probably more practical than Fleishman.
This play would have weighed more heavily on my mind if I had thought that Fleishman would ever finish his masterpiece. But he had been completely unproductive since graduation. What really went over big in a small school in Ohio was not exactly what the Great White Way was clamoring for. I could sense Fleishman getting discouraged. He hadn’t written much of anything in the past year, and he had lost that glow of the big-fish-in-a-small-pond celebrity he had when we first met. Lately it seemed that he mostly misspent his nights drinking too much cheap wine and watching Green Acres.
Nobody tells you this growing up, but the reason you’re supposed to develop good work habits is so when the academic world spits you out at the age of twenty-two, your personal ambitions won’t be sidelined by the seductive lure of TV Land.
Fleishman squinted in despair at my gray interview suit, which had been a college graduation present from my mom. I had never had to use it until that month. “You think that’s the right outfit for this job interview?”
I furrowed my brow. During the last interview, I had splooped coffee on the jacket and I hadn’t been able to get it out with a Shout wipe. “Why not?”
“Because that suit is not the right suit for any job interview.”
I couldn’t argue. The suit was pretty much ugly all day: a slate gray color that would wash out even the most Coppertoned skin, a Mao collared jacket that made my bust look like one vast gray rolling plain, and a skirt with a hem that hit at mid kneecap, which was a flattering length on no one.
“Plus I imagine people at Candlelight Books all run around the offices in pink sequins and feather boas,” Fleishman said.
“It’s a business,” I replied. “The woman on the phone sounded very businesslike.”
“Right. It’s probably just the authors who run around all day in lounging pajamas.” He flopped onto the couch. “I hope you get this job! It’ll be so entertaining to hear you talk about. You’ll get to talk to people like what’s her name.”
“Who?”
He snapped his fingers. “You know—that one who’s on the bestseller lists all the time.”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
Neither did he.
“It’s probably just some flunky job. I might just answer phones or something.”
“You’re always downpeddling,” he said. “What if this is actually the beginning of something big?”
He flashed those gray eyes of his in a way that, I admit it, could still make my insides go fluttery. Which was amazing, considering all we’d been through. I mean, we’d been friends, and—briefly—lovers, and endured a breakup, and then become roommates. One New Year’s after we’d just moved to New York, we had re-succumbed to each other, but now our romance was officially in full remission. I’d watched him date other women. Worse, I’d watched him floss his teeth in front of the eleven o’clock news. That alone should have squelched any residual fluttering, but no such luck.
I shook my head. “Big, as in…?”
“Think of it. We’ve both been knocking around this city for almost three years now. It’s time one of us got a break, isn’t it?”
“In other words, you think I’m going to go to that interview a youngster, but I have to come back a star?”
“Don’t be so cynical. This could be a really great career turn for you.”
Could it? I tried to stay guarded. Sometimes Fleishman exuded this crazy enthusiasm that could carry me aloft. He could go nuts over an idea, or some wacky plan, or even a new Web site he’d found. It’s part of why I found him so appealing. He could pull enthusiasm out of thin air and toss it over me like fairy dust. A little of it was twinkling over me now.
Chapter 2
Candlelight Books was located on two floors of a mammoth New York office building in Midtown. I huddled in a coffee shop in the lobby until it was just time for my appointment, then I hurried up. The only other person on the elevator was
