Page 11 of The Last Book Party

By the time I’d read the first two pages, though, I knew how wrong I had been. It was not just the writing, which was simple and clear and without any of the pretentious literary pyrotechnics I had expected. It was the voice. The book was not narrated by a young man like Jeremy, but by a teenage girl with a distinctive, lilting tone. In the first chapter, she was perched in a tree, gazing at the thick vines that wrapped tightly around the branches in a way that she feared no one would ever embrace her.

I stopped reading for a moment and exhaled. Jeremy could write, and he appeared to have a heart. It was hard to reconcile his snide manner with the tone of his novel, but more puzzling, and intimidating, was the tender specificity of his story. His protagonist, Sarita, was infatuated with the son of the colony’s doctor and would watch as the boy walked through the rhododendrons. When he left, she would follow his path, placing her own bare feet into his footprints, balancing one foot in oneprint for a few seconds before stepping her other foot into the next one.

I read all afternoon and into the early evening, until I finished Jeremy’s astounding novel.

8

One of the first things I discovered when starting my job at Hodder, Strike was that the assistants on the third floor are of two distinct tribes: editorial and publicity. The editorial staff—lowly editorial secretaries, like me, and the higher-ranking editorial assistants, like Ron—are more serious and pretentious, as well versed in postmodern writers like Angela Carter and Robert Coover as in John Steinbeck and Jane Austen. We favor studiously casual clothes, usually in black, that are as likely to be thrift-shop discoveries as expensive indulgences from the parents who often subsidize this low-paying profession.

Then there are the young publicists, all female and all pretty, the kind of girls who wear velvet headbands to pull back their shiny blond hair and show off their bright faces. They start and end the day perky, apparently without a dependency on coffee, and relish their role as cheerleaders for books. Unlike the more introverted editorial assistants, many of whom are angst-ridden about working in publishing rather thanbeingpublished, the publicity girls love their jobs and think nothing of mixing work and pleasure. So it wasn’t surprising that it was a trio of youngassistant publicists who decided to host the first party of the summer.

“It’s a progressive party,” said Mary Noonan, who had walked over to the editorial department to extend invitations.

“Politically progressive?” I said. “That’s interesting. I think.”

“Very funny, but no,” Mary said. “Progressive, as in we progress from one apartment to another. We start at my place, then move on to Callie’s, and finish up at Mindy’s.”

Not one for office parties, with the exception of Malcolm’s monthly happy hour, I was reluctant to attend one such gathering only to have to move on and endure the awkward start to another. But I was tired of spending evenings trying not to think about Franny while watching Bette Davis movies alone at the Regency.

“And you have to bring a writer,” Mary said. “From our list.”

“Bring Your Own Writer. That’s new,” I said. Mary waited for it to dawn on me that she meant I should invite Jeremy, the sole Hodder, Strike writer who was under the age of thirty.

“You really think Jeremy Grand will go to a progressive party?” I said.

Mary looked at me in a knowing way that reminded me she was no fool, that in addition to having been the captain of the women’s field hockey team at Hamilton, she had double majored in American literature and psychology. “He will once you tell him the party is hosted by the people responsible for promoting his book,” she said.

“You think he’s that pragmatic?”

“I have no idea!” Mary said, with a shrug. “I just think he’s cute.”

Half hoping Jeremy would have other plans and be unable to come, I waited until the end of the week to call. But he acceptedthe invitation readily, without questioning the “progressive” nature of the party. He suggested we meet on the corner of Eighty-Sixth Street and York to walk up to the first installment together.

He was there before me, leaning against aNO PARKINGsign, hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans.

“Ready for some preordained spontaneity?” I asked.

“Are we committed to all stops on this party train?”

His frown suggested that he’d accepted the invitation only for professional reasons, as Mary had suggested he might.

“You’re free to do as you please,” I said. “I’m not your minder.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” he said, his voice softening.

He asked about the girls who were hosting, and I told him about the publicity clan, and which of the editorial assistants were likely to show up. I warned him about Ron, who had yet to admit to liking a single book on Malcolm’s list. “He’s skeptical of any novel with a traditional chronology. Or even a clear narrative arc. He claims that his own novel-in-progress is written ‘inside out and backward.’”

“I have no idea what that means,” Jeremy said.

“I’m not sure Ron does either.”

I was tempted to compliment Jeremy on his own novel but decided I didn’t yet want him to know that I’d read it.

When we got off the narrow elevator in Mary’s building, we followed the sounds of the Eurythmics down the hall to apartment 6J. The door opened into a corridor that led to a living room with a single window, a couch covered with an Indian-print bedspread, and a round table filled with bowls of potato chips and onion dip and a platter of brie and crackers. Mary was standing by the table talking to some preppy guys in penny loafers. The room was too bright for a party, which gave it the slight unease of a gathering that had not yet found its flow.

Mary, wearing a thin-strapped yellow sundress, held a glass of white wine. “You came!” she said, punching me and then Jeremy lightly on the arm. I expected him to scowl at her but he smiled and thanked her for the invitation. I walked over to a small table near the windowsill, where Mary had arranged the drinks, and took a bottle of beer. Ron, looking professorial as ever with his round glasses and trimmed beard, was standing by the kitchen alcove, his arm around a girl slightly taller than he was, with short, spiky hair and a row of silver earrings in her left ear. He indicated I should join them and clinked his beer against mine.

“This is Kayla,” he said. Spotting Jeremy talking to Mary by the drinks table, Ron asked, “Your date?”

---