Page 10 of The Last Book Party

Jeremy pointed to a framed poster of Joni Mitchell on the wall.

“You know me enough to know thatthiscouldn’t possibly be mine.”

“I like Joni Mitchell,” I said.

“Of course you do. As does my little sister, Debbie, which is why she hung it in her apartment.”

I was surprised to hear that he was someone’s older brother. From the small fridge, Jeremy pulled out two bottles of Bass Ale and handed one to me. He sat on the futon with his long legs stretched onto the trunk, leaving me the rocking chair. He told me his sister was at a dance festival in North Carolina for the month and he was staying at her place until he figured out where to go next.

“Next?” I asked.

“I’d been thinking of heading up to the Cape to hang with Franny for a while, but I think he’s staying up in Maine with Lil.”

I rocked a few times in the chair, then asked, “So where in Maine are they?”

Jeremy smiled slightly.

“At Lil’s mother’s house in Vinalhaven. Lil’s working at some lobster place where Franny’s hoping to get work too. It’s absurdly remote. You have to drive forever and then take a ferry to get there.”

I shook my head.

“What?”

“I had imagined them on an island,” I said.

“They are kind of an island to themselves,” he said.

When he didn’t continue, I asked, “Is Lil an artist too?”

“She would say so,” Jeremy said.

“Would you?”

He said nothing, which was enough for me to understand he didn’t think much of Lil. Perhaps he found their relationship as illogical as I found his friendship with Franny. We sat in silence for a moment, Jeremy watching me rock in the chair. I stood up and stepped to the kitchen to put my beer in the sink.

“I’m just going to pour the rest out; I should get back to work,” I said, my back to Jeremy, as the amber liquid flowed into the drain.

I was about to turn to go when I felt my hair slip out of its bun and tumble down to my shoulders. I turned around and Jeremy was standing right behind me, holding the pencil that I’d used to keep my hair in place. He looked as surprised as I was.

“Sorry—I couldn’t resist,” he said.

For a second, his face appeared tentative, even open. Had Jeremy been making a pass at me, at Franny’s “easy mark”?Then, tapping the pencil against his palm, he seemed to regain his composure.

“Can I take this?”

“I think you just did,” I said.

I told him I’d see him around, and without looking at him again, I let myself out.

7

Other than May Castanada, the new receptionist, who was listening to her Walkman with her eyes closed when the elevator opened onto the third floor, Hodder, Strike had cleared out by the time I got back. I felt guilty going into Malcolm’s office without permission. Malcolm guarded his authors’ manuscripts carefully, often keeping them even from the assistants, until he’d gotten through a few rounds of edits. Before he’d left for the country, he’d mentioned that Jeremy’s novel was in the “percolation” stage, which meant that he was going to let it sit for a while before he tackled it again.

Malcolm’s vast mahogany desk gleamed as if it had just been polished and was nearly bare, except for a black leather blotter, a row of six perfectly sharpened pencils, a thick pad of white paper, and a single silver pen, which I knew contained a cartridge of green ink, as it was my responsibility to keep the supply closet well stocked with them.

I found Jeremy’s manuscript in a cardboard box on the credenza behind Malcolm’s desk. Not daring to stay in his office,I took the box and returned to my desk just outside his door. I don’t know why I felt so nervous. If Malcolm found out I’d read the manuscript, he’d probably do little more than show his displeasure by waiting a week or two before asking what I’d thought of it. But my heart raced as I lifted the top off the cardboard box and saw the first page, which read “An Untitled Novel by J. Grand.”

When Malcolm described Jeremy’s novel, the idea of a young American writer setting his first novel in a leprosy colony in Nepal seemed ridiculous to me. I figured the protagonist would be a barely veiled version of Jeremy who found “unlikely adventures and life lessons in the heart of the Himalayas,” as the jacket copy would inevitably put it. The novel would be slick, darkly funny, and a little empty.

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