Ithaca Page 7

  He has learned that there is an art to running meetings and if he does not intervene decisively at a particular juncture, the discussion can go on and on. Gabrijela is masterful at keeping the tempo of meetings at a perfect pitch but he lets things slip from time to time. He interrupts Maggie’s story about Plasma’s dietary habits, and the argument over Yanara’s book picks up again. It carries on for nearly ten minutes, at the end of which he has no option but to kill the idea, which is beginning to look increasingly ragged. Yanara looks furious, Rachel looks triumphant, and he has to tell Maggie who looks ready to resume her story that they have had quite enough about Plasma. Half an hour later, it is clear that this meeting is not going to produce any stunning surprises. He cuts short a tedious discussion between Gareth and Maggie on whether a new biography of Hitler stands a chance given the definitive tome by Kershaw, and signals to Prudence to talk to her book ideas.

  Despite the gravity of the situation his mind has begun to wander, as often happens when meetings lack the vital spark that brings them alive. What would the collective noun for a gathering of publishers be, he wonders. If you could have a crash of rhinos or a leap of leopards or a murder of crows, why not a persistence of publishers or an optimism of publishers – or, if you were trying to be rude, a folly of publishers … He forces himself to concentrate, reminds them once again about why they are meeting: “Please remember what I said in my e-mail. I would only like to hear about big books or books that have the potential to make a mark on the bestseller lists. Save the rest for later.” (“Later” means never in his book.)

  By the time he winds up the meeting he realizes that there is nothing new he can take to his board meeting next week, except a recipe book of food inspired by angels that Prudence of all people proposes at the last minute; maybe they could tie that into their Seppi franchise. He asks his colleagues for their opinion, Yanara and Rachel start squabbling again, Maggie seems on the point of saying something and fortunately for everyone decides not to, and Gareth says he will come up with a potential sales number after talking to his contact at Waterstone’s.

  He stays on in the boardroom after everyone has gone, looking at the sheet of paper in front of him that he has optimistically titled BIG BOOK IDEAS FOR FALL 2010.

  All he has added is Angels Cookbook? It is not enough, and although he doesn’t know exactly how much revenue he will be expected to bring in next year, he is already beginning to concede defeat.

  The next day begins badly. Ever since he has returned from Thimphu, everything about his empty flat has appeared to shout out Julia’s absence, mock him for losing her. He can’t recall it ever being this bad in all the time she has been gone – it’s perhaps because this is the first time since her departure that he has gone anywhere for any length of time. When they lived together, one of the things he had looked forward to whenever he returned from a trip was the big goofy smile she would give him at the door, the long lingering kiss, and the other big and small rituals of return. During his days as a bachelor, his house was his refuge, no woman was allowed to spend the night; now it seems a strange and alien place without Julia, and this sensation was multiplied a hundredfold the day he returned from his vacation. That first day, he had wandered through the rooms noticing, as if for the first time, everything that underlined the fact that she no linger lived there, such as the absence of the murmur of the radio that she had on all the time. They had often scuffled about this, because he loved silence and would only listen to the radio or his iPod when he was exercising or when they were driving. On the rare occasions when he listened to music at home it was quite a production; he would don the Sennheiser HD 800 headphones that he had bought after much online research, get into a comfortable position on his leather sofa, turn on the music, and close his eyes. He would do all this very deliberately, paying no attention to Julia’s good-natured mocking. He had noted the missing sofa that left the seating arrangement in the living room incomplete; the two paintings that she had taken with her, marked by the deeper shade of paint on the walls and the nails that he hadn’t bothered to extract; the ornamental pot-holder in one corner of the living room (without a pot or indoor plant, the latter having expired less than a week after her departure); and other less obvious details that would have never registered when she was around.

  She had taken very little with her when she walked out – her clothes, her toiletries, her jewellery, some stuff from the kitchen, a piece or two of furniture and art. On good days he would take this as a positive sign, an indication that she intended to return; on bad days he would feel crushed, thinking she had left with almost nothing the better to be able to forget him. In the first hour or so after returning he had felt so desolate that it had taken a tremendous effort of will to keep from bolting out of the house and checking into a hotel or, even worse (because he had known it would upset her greatly), turning up at Julia’s doorstep. Things had got slightly better since then but not by much, and any gains that he made were wiped out on days when he was feeling low for other reasons.

  This morning’s despondency was mainly on account of Fiona. He had spent the night tossing and turning, unable to dislodge from his mind her calm acceptance of the news that she was being laid off. The entire office seemed to think he was solely responsible for her departure, that he had somehow betrayed her and them. There was nothing he could do – he was her boss so of course he was responsible, and he could not whine to them about how difficult it was for him personally and how he and Gabrijela had tried everything possible to stave off the inevitable. In a situation like this people saw only what they wanted to see. They would fear him and mistrust him and any affection or loyalty they had for him would be on hold for a while or might never return. As for Fi – he would probably never see her again, and this had made him very sad.

  He switches on the television. The morning news leads with the death of Michael Jackson and the grief and curiosity it was arousing in a billion people – death as public spectacle. He has never been a fan of the King of Pop, even though he acknowledges the genius of his compositional skills and showmanship, but the star’s passing somehow (for he couldn’t imagine two more dissimilar people) reawakens memories of his mother’s death, deepens the grey mood he is in.

  He gets to the office late. He is tired and moody and wants to be left alone but a few minutes after he has walked in, Yanara rushes into his office and says she has a brilliant idea for a book: they should publish a quickie pictorial biography of Michael Jackson.

  “We’re not Michael O’Mara Books, Yanara, this is not what we publish.”

  “But I thought we were desperate for a big book or two that we could drop into this year.”

  “We are, but for the sort of books we know how to publish well. And even if we were to go with your idea there will probably be half a dozen books published in the States before we even get started.”

  She accepts his decision reluctantly but does not leave. They have a disaster on their hands, she says, the new biography of the Thames they had commissioned from Sir Reginald Zogoiby, the distinguished geographer and writer, is unpublishable. The book, which has been delivered two years late, was to have been their high-priced gift offering for Christmas; Zach has nothing to fill the hole should it drop out.

  Yanara is succinct. “What the fuck do we do?”

  “Any chance of the old boy doing a quick rewrite?”

  “He is eighty-eight and practically senile, everyone knows that. God knows why we ever commissioned the book.”

  “Isn’t it yours?”

  “I inherited it.”

  “Well, his last book on the Tower of London made the bestseller lists.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Let’s get someone in to tidy it up, and pad it out with a lot more pictures.”

  “Christ, Zach, think of the permission fees!”

  “We’ll just have to increase the cover price by a pound or two.”

  “I bet the book will have the shorte
st shelf life of any book in Litmus’s history and will be in remainder bins from Paris to Istanbul before the end of the year.”

  Paris. Istanbul. What the fuck is Yanara talking about? His head hurts. He wishes she would go away. He asks her to do so, but no sooner has she departed than Lea, his assistant, says that Maggie would like a quick word with him. He beckons Maggie to come in. She almost pushes Lea out of the way, shuts the door to his office, and says dramatically, “We’ve got a problem.”

  He looks at her wearily. “What is it?”

  “It’s Ron.”

  Ronald Carruthers has just scored a hit with a multigenerational novel set in the Cotswolds. It will be one of their nominations for the Booker and a host of other awards this year. He is on tour at the moment.

  “What’s he done?”

  “His publicist, Pam, phoned to say he got pissed just before his event yesterday and couldn’t go on. Fortunately the organizers had two other authors reading that night so it wasn’t too bad, but apparently he doesn’t want to continue with the tour.”

  “Damn!”

  “And this is the first time Pam has escorted an author on tour so she is freaking out.”

  “Do you think she can handle him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would it help if I talked to Ron, asked him to get his act together?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Is the tour over?”

  “No, he has two more days on the road.”

  “OK, let me call him, tell him to calm down. I’ll stress how important it is for him to continue with the tour.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple, Zach. Apparently Pam screamed at him and they got into a big fight and now he is really cross with her.”

  He is proud of Litmus’s publicists. Hard-working and conscientious for the most part, they valiantly put up with an enormous workload, a punishing schedule, a largely indifferent media, ungrateful authors, and demanding editors, with grace and good humour. Because they spend a lot of time with authors, they are often at the receiving end of atrocious behaviour.

  “This is crazy. Who do we have who could replace her?”

  “Mark should be good with Ron.”

  “So why didn’t we use him in the first place?”

  “Come on, Zach, you know that he and all the other publicists are run off their feet!”

  “OK, OK, get Pam back to London immediately and send Mark up there to relieve her. I’ll talk to Ron meanwhile, pacify him.”

  “That should do it.”

  “OK, I’ll ask Lea to get Ron on the phone.”

  No sooner has Maggie left than Yanara is back.

  “It has to go!”

  “What?”

  “That creature pretending to be Janice is actually a vile zombie pretending to be a human being.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Yanara, I have a busy day ahead.”

  “You’re not the one being asphyxiated, so obviously you don’t care.”

  “Yanara!”

  “It’s my new temp, she has the most godawful BO and I can’t bear it, I simply can’t.”

  “Why don’t you go to Naomi?”

  “You’re my boss.”

  “Well, OK, why don’t you just talk to her about it without being offensive?”

  “And be fired for personal discrimination or something like that? I think we should have an official policy about it, I hear in some New York offices they have a perfume policy, your perfume can’t offend the person sitting next to you.”

  “Yanara!”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Then Rachel is at the door just as his phone rings. He picks up the phone and holds up his other hand to tell Rachel to wait. Lea tells him that Albert Wallace wants to talk to him urgently. He groans – Albert is quite possibly the worst agent in London, but in accordance with the law that says idiots will every now and again snag first-rate authors he represents Boris Gaponenko, one of the hottest young writers in London, and the other writer on their list they intend to nominate for the Booker. He mouths “Albert Wallace” to Rachel and is about to take the call when his fiction editor waves her arms about, gesturing to him to put the phone down. He tells Lea he will speak to Albert later and turns to face Rachel.

  “He’ll want to talk to you about the talking chicken.”

  “What?”

  “Boris has a talking chicken in his novel and I’ve asked him to take it out.”

  “Kafka did OK with a cockroach.”

  “This is not Metamorphosis. Halfway through the novel a chicken on the protagonist’s farm abruptly starts talking in Latin – it’s supposed to be a narrative device to take the character back into the past, or a metaphor for the dumbness of the twenty-first century, I’m not sure what, but it’s ludicrous, completely implausible. The reviewers will rip the book to shreds, but Boris refuses to listen to reason.”

  Rachel is a thoughtful, skilled editor who doesn’t tamper with manuscripts unnecessarily; if she wants to chicken out it must be with good reason, but Boris is a star and if he wants the chicken in everyone has a problem.

  “Let me take a look at the manuscript,” he says irritably.

  By the time he gets to Orso, where he is meeting Julia for lunch, his spirits have sunk to his toes. He would have taken the rest of the day off except he feels that a meeting with Julia might be the only thing that can salvage his day. In the taxi over he remembers with gratitude how, when he returned to London from his mother’s funeral, she would arrive every evening after work to eat dinner with him, talk, just be around for him. She had done this for a month – essentially putting her life on hold until he could get going again. Why did he ever let her go?

  The low-ceilinged restaurant is full of publishing types doing a last bit of business before they take off for the summer. He spots a top agent from Curtis Brown in a corner with a glamorous South Asian woman. An executive from Faber deep in discussion with an author who is expected to win the Nobel within the next five years. A table of Hachette editors. He greets a couple of people he knows as he makes his way to where Julia is waiting.

  “Hey, have you seen the wall-to-wall coverage of MJ’s death?” she asks as he sits down.

  “Yeah, apparently more people tuned in for news about it than for any other event since Princess Di’s funeral. The massive interest almost single-handedly crashed the Internet, isn’t that something?” he says grumpily.

  “Is everything OK?”

  He could talk about his need to get back with her, but this is not the time to do it; when he gets into one of his moods, he is too aggressive, too selfish about his own needs, it scares people off. With an effort he pushes the darkness aside, musters a smile, tries to interest himself in what she is saying. One of her closest friends, Laura, who works for one of the Big Seven companies is afraid she is going to be laid off in the autumn, there are rumours that all the big companies are planning another round of job cuts. He wants to tell her about Fiona, how awful he felt letting her go, but he doesn’t, because he knows she will see it differently from him. He can hear the exact words: It’s not always about you, Zach! So you think it was tough for you, have you thought about what it might have been like for Fiona?

  Their conversation veers to happier things. She brings him up to date with the latest gossip; she is incredibly well connected with the younger editors in London and nothing escapes them. For some years now a group of about fifty editors under forty (this is not a formal organization like the Society of Young Publishers) from across the publishing spectrum have voted annually on the worst-behaved author to be published that year, and this year the prize has gone to a much loved YA author who has a pristine image in public but is apparently a grade A bitch with her editors, assistants, and publicists. The award does not make the trade papers or the mainstream media – if it did heads would roll – but at Christmas the mystified and enraged author will receive an appropriate gift from an anonymous fan that all the editors have contributed
to (the current thinking is that Miss V—should receive a life-size marzipan capuchin monkey making a rude gesture – the publicist the suggestion came from is an enthusiastic and accomplished baker). She then tells him her UEA star has sold for a healthy sum to a Big Seven imprint and that she is preparing the ground for a big push at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Her enthusiasm for her author is palpable. Being an agent suits her, he thinks. She isn’t yet one of the superstar agents like David Godwin with his stable of prize-winning talent, jetting off to Delhi or Durban to snap up the next big international attraction, and she may never be, but her ability to spot talent, and more importantly nurture it, will ensure she makes her mark on the publishing scene.

  “So why didn’t you sell us the book? I know Rachel was really keen.”

  “You know why, you guys didn’t offer enough. Besides you wouldn’t budge on your ebook royalties, they were willing to offer more than twenty-five per cent of net receipts.”

  “Come on, Julia, it’s the industry standard.”

  “According to whom? Just because five or six of the big publishers get together and decide on something doesn’t make it fair or right. You have a tiny production cost attached, no distribution costs.”

  “But we still have all the other costs, the cost of acquisition, selling, marketing, and editorial costs. And, of course, the cost of making printed books, which still accounts for the majority of an author’s revenue. So you can’t just treat ebooks in isolation.”