Read Online Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 by A Likely Story (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: A Likely Story (v1.1)
Ads: Link
relationship between herself and her mother, who lives in Fort
Lauderdale. I feel I know both mother and daughter very well by now; far too
well.
Vickie Douglas is a hotshot younger
editor, or at least she was until a year or so ago when she crossed the Rubicon
of thirty. About five years back, she was the one who plucked out of the slush
pile the ex-hookers diet-and-pornography book which became known in the trade
as Fuck Yourself Thin, but which Ms. Douglas herself (it is rumored, or
claimed) titled How a Better Sex Life Can
Lead to a Slimmer You. With the ex-hooker’s national tour, plus the rather
sensational nude exercise photos in the book, it became a monstrous bestseller
(I choose my words carefully) and Vickie Douglas immediately left that
publisher (and the other not-yet-published books she’d bought there) for a
different publisher and a better salary. She’s been at a number of houses the
last several years, and came to Craig, Harry & Bourke after leaving
Metronome House last fall during a flap that even got reported gingerly in Publishers
Weekly (the Junior Scholastic of this tiny world); it was a dispute
over the title Qf a famous lesbian golfer’s autobiography Ms. Douglas had
insisted it be called Different Strokes , while the publisher even more
strongly demanded it be called The Carol Murphy Story. (Around the
business, it was generally known as “I Can Lick Any Woman on the Tour.”)
A tall, skinny, dark-blonde woman
with a very large head provided with prominent facial features, Vickie Douglas
is attractive in an acrylic sort of way, until she starts talking, and smoking,
and knocking her bulging leather bag over, and dropping ashes in the water
glass, and putting her elbow in the salad, and jangling her bangles, and
staring wide-eyed like someone who’s just received a dirk in the back in a
Hitchcock movie. Her voice is loud and breathy at the same time, and she talks
very fast like a mother lying to the truant officer, and her self-involvement
is so total I don’t understand how she can bear to release herself after she
puts a sweater on.
This is the creature who came to bury The Christmas Book , not to praise it.
“You’re doing a fine job,” she told me, her wide eyes glazed as she thought
about her mother. “It’s a very interesting concept,” she mumbled, looking
around for her roll (it was in her bag). “I don’t want to second-guess you,
just keep going on as before,” she suggested, grapes from her sole Veronique rolling across the table.
But intermixed with these platitudes
were a few zingers. Frowning at a nearby waiter as though measuring him as a
potential stepfather, she brooded, “It’s hard to know what the thrust of
the book is, what its argument is.” Wiping coffee from her blouse, she
mumbled into her chest, “I’m afraid Mr. Wilson isn’t very impressed by the kind of contributor you’ve come up with so far. Capote, Galbraith; these are all
rather yesterday , aren’t they?” Staring at the American Express credit
card slip, trying to do gratuity mathematics in her head, she mused, “Perhaps
the problem is Christmas itself. Perhaps it’s just too ordinary .”
What am I going to do about this
woman? I have to do something about this woman, but what? If I kill her,
they’ll only assign another editor, and I know what they’d give me next
(assuming I didn’t get arrested for murder, which I surely would). What they
would give me next would be some hundred-year-old, pipe-smoking fart with a
wonderful shock of white hair and a brain that died in the late nineteenth
century, during his second year at Exeter . He
would be named something like Raymond Atherton Swifft or Hamble- ton Cudlipp
the Third, he would not have actually done anything at the firm within
living memory, and once we had become fast friends he would tell me his one
anecdote; the
Lauderdale. I feel I know both mother and daughter very well by now; far too
well.
Vickie Douglas is a hotshot younger
editor, or at least she was until a year or so ago when she crossed the Rubicon
of thirty. About five years back, she was the one who plucked out of the slush
pile the ex-hookers diet-and-pornography book which became known in the trade
as Fuck Yourself Thin, but which Ms. Douglas herself (it is rumored, or
claimed) titled How a Better Sex Life Can
Lead to a Slimmer You. With the ex-hooker’s national tour, plus the rather
sensational nude exercise photos in the book, it became a monstrous bestseller
(I choose my words carefully) and Vickie Douglas immediately left that
publisher (and the other not-yet-published books she’d bought there) for a
different publisher and a better salary. She’s been at a number of houses the
last several years, and came to Craig, Harry & Bourke after leaving
Metronome House last fall during a flap that even got reported gingerly in Publishers
Weekly (the Junior Scholastic of this tiny world); it was a dispute
over the title Qf a famous lesbian golfer’s autobiography Ms. Douglas had
insisted it be called Different Strokes , while the publisher even more
strongly demanded it be called The Carol Murphy Story. (Around the
business, it was generally known as “I Can Lick Any Woman on the Tour.”)
A tall, skinny, dark-blonde woman
with a very large head provided with prominent facial features, Vickie Douglas
is attractive in an acrylic sort of way, until she starts talking, and smoking,
and knocking her bulging leather bag over, and dropping ashes in the water
glass, and putting her elbow in the salad, and jangling her bangles, and
staring wide-eyed like someone who’s just received a dirk in the back in a
Hitchcock movie. Her voice is loud and breathy at the same time, and she talks
very fast like a mother lying to the truant officer, and her self-involvement
is so total I don’t understand how she can bear to release herself after she
puts a sweater on.
This is the creature who came to bury The Christmas Book , not to praise it.
“You’re doing a fine job,” she told me, her wide eyes glazed as she thought
about her mother. “It’s a very interesting concept,” she mumbled, looking
around for her roll (it was in her bag). “I don’t want to second-guess you,
just keep going on as before,” she suggested, grapes from her sole Veronique rolling across the table.
But intermixed with these platitudes
were a few zingers. Frowning at a nearby waiter as though measuring him as a
potential stepfather, she brooded, “It’s hard to know what the thrust of
the book is, what its argument is.” Wiping coffee from her blouse, she
mumbled into her chest, “I’m afraid Mr. Wilson isn’t very impressed by the kind of contributor you’ve come up with so far. Capote, Galbraith; these are all
rather yesterday , aren’t they?” Staring at the American Express credit
card slip, trying to do gratuity mathematics in her head, she mused, “Perhaps
the problem is Christmas itself. Perhaps it’s just too ordinary .”
What am I going to do about this
woman? I have to do something about this woman, but what? If I kill her,
they’ll only assign another editor, and I know what they’d give me next
(assuming I didn’t get arrested for murder, which I surely would). What they
would give me next would be some hundred-year-old, pipe-smoking fart with a
wonderful shock of white hair and a brain that died in the late nineteenth
century, during his second year at Exeter . He
would be named something like Raymond Atherton Swifft or Hamble- ton Cudlipp
the Third, he would not have actually done anything at the firm within
living memory, and once we had become fast friends he would tell me his one
anecdote; the
Similar Books
