The Bestseller Read online

  “She’s tired,” the man explained to Camilla, although she hadn’t inquired. “She spent the day sitting in churches, and she finds it tedious after the first hour.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Oh, not at all. But then, I’m an architect.”

  There was a silence. To be polite, Camilla smiled and asked, “Then it’s not your first visit to San Gimignano?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I try to come back every year, although I haven’t been able to make it for the last two. We spent the day at Saint Peter’s, and then we climbed all three towers.” He paused. “How did you spend the day?” Somehow, it was irresistible not to tell him.

  “I finished writing my novel,” Camilla said.

  “Good for you! Do you write novels often?” he asked, and she saw the mischief in his grin.

  “This is my first,” she admitted.

  “Well, I am most impressed. How are you going to celebrate?”

  Just then the waiter appeared with her drink and the bottle of wine. “This is my celebration,” Camilla told him.

  His face crumpled in dismay. “But we spoiled it for you! Oh, I’m so sorry. Mother isn’t usually like that, but she was tired. She’s been under some pressure.” He stood up. “Excuse me,” he said again.

  “No.” Camilla put her hand out. “Please don’t go.” Her voice had more feeling in it than she had intended, but it was too late now. Suddenly it seemed as if being alone would become unbearable. The man hesitated for a moment, his reddish brown eyes not quite focusing on hers. He wasn’t at all handsome, not in any way, Camilla thought. But there was an attractiveness about him, a pleasantness that, though it could not make up for his total lack of beauty, still had a certain charm.

  Hesitantly, he sat down again. “Well, what’s the name of the novel?”

  “I’m not certain,” she told him.

  “Then what is the name of the novelist?” he asked, and she had to smile again.

  She extended her hand. He reached out but fumbled for a moment in the air before he took hers in his own cool, long, freckled one. “Camilla,” she said self-consciously. “Camilla Clapfish.”

  “Well, Miss Clapfish, permit me, Frederick Sayles Ashton, to be the first to congratulate you on the completion of your as-yet untitled debut novel.” His formality was very un-American but quite endearing.

  “Thank you,” she told him and took back her hand reluctantly. She picked up her drink, but he quickly stopped her by lifting his own glass. Some of the wine slopped over one side, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Before you sip, permit me.” He tilted his head and looked over the rim of his wineglass at her. “I think my mother thought you had ordered a mixed drink,” he confided. “It may have induced her departure. She doesn’t approve of cocktails.” He put his glass down, dipping his elbow in the puddle of wine on the tabletop. He didn’t seem to realize it.

  Camilla looked at her own innocent apéritif. “Oh. She must have thought I was asking for a gin martini. No. Here it’s a brand name for vermouth.”

  “Yes. Well, I know that, but I don’t think Mother does. Father was a drunk, you see.” Camilla nodded, silent. Having lived in New York, she was familiar with Americans and their candor, but it did often leave her speechless. Luckily, Frederick Sayles Ashton was not. “To the alliterative Camilla Clapfish and the future publication of her first book.”

  And then, for the first time, dismay hit her. My God, she thought, the book had been hard enough to write. It had started so tentatively as an exercise, then became absorbing, a labor of creation and love and also a torture that had filled her empty evenings. But now that it was finished, she’d have to try and get it published. How in the world, Camilla thought, would she ever manage that?

  3

  I am not a snob, but rich people are often a lot of fun to write about.

  —Noël Coward

  Susann Baker Edmonds lay on the chaise longue staring out toward the Mediterranean as if somewhere out there she would find Chapter Twenty-eight. There shouldn’t even be a Chapter Twenty-eight. The book was too damned long. The distant sea glinted, but Susann hadn’t a reflecting glint of an idea. She stood up and paced the north side of the marble-edged pool. She heard Edith, her secretary, recross her heavy legs and sigh.

  “Could you be still for just a moment?” Susann snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” Edith said, but she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded bored and impatient and eager to get away. As if something in Edith Fischer’s boring, middle-aged life was more important than a new novel by Susann Baker Edmonds. Susann knew she had to calm down. God, she hated to feel this way, so edgy, so nasty. She was not a nasty person. She put her hands up to either side of her lovely, lifted face and looked over at the dreary Edith. Physically Edith was everything Susann despised—dowdy, overweight, and drab. She was spunkless, and yet Edith was exactly the audience that devoured Susann’s books. That’s why bland Edith, sitting there knitting in the sun, was not simply an annoyance that could be terminated by the termination of her employment.

  Because to Susann, Edith was a secret touchstone. When they were working together and she saw Edith’s eyes glowing, her mouth slightly open, and her breathing quickened with interest and excitement, Susann knew she had a story that worked. But how long had it been since Edith had been responsive like that? Certainly not while they worked on A Mother and a Daughter. And not while she struggled through A Woman with a Past. Perhaps Edith was merely jaded. Both books had come out on Mother’s Day of the previous two years, and each had climbed to the top of the bestseller list, as all Susann Baker Edmonds’s books did. But even Susann had to admit that the past two had climbed a little more slowly and held the vaulted top slot for a far briefer period.

  Susann knew she was at a nerve-wracking place: Realistically, she knew that being at the top so long simply meant it was sooner that she’d fall. But Susann liked the top. She wanted to stay there. She prided herself on being a number-one bestselling author. From out of nowhere to number one: She’d been one of the very few to make the leap.

  And Edith had watched her climb. Back when both of them worked together as legal secretaries, Susann had brought in her stories, page by page, and Edith had devoured them, always asking the question sublime to any writer—“What happens next?” It was because of that enthusiasm that Susann—just plain Sue Ann then—had kept writing. If not for Edith, Susann would surely have quit. Because it had been hard, so hard, to work all day and spin stories at night.

  It was still hard. Now a bestseller, a number one, was expected of her. Now, at last, she was paid an enormous advance for her stories.

  Susann paced the length of the pool again and turned to look out at the horizon. “Any mail?” she asked.

  Edith shook her head without even looking up from her knitting. “Nothing important.” Edith handled all the bills, forwarding them to Susann’s accountant to be paid, and all of the fan mail, sending customized responses. Actually, the only thing Edith didn’t handle for Susann was Kim and her begging letters. But Susann hadn’t heard from Kim lately. She would like to think that perhaps her adult daughter had finally begun to behave like an adult, but from long experience she doubted it.

  Susann rubbed her hands as she paced. The sun on them felt good but freckled her skin. She looked around. It was still so hard. Her work had bought her this villa, the beautiful furniture in it, the Rolls parked in the garage, the services of Edith and the French couple who cooked and cleaned and drove for her. But it hadn’t bought her daughter’s love or happiness. And wasn’t Susann slipping? She pulled her arthritic fingers through her artfully streaked blond hair and walked back to the chaise. She crossed her legs and her arms and told Edith crossly that she was through for the day.

  Edith gave her a look and shrugged her rounded shoulders. The woman would have a dowager’s hump in no time, Susann thought distastefully. “All right,” Edith said, but Susann knew it wasn’t all right. She had a
deadline, Edith knew she had the deadline, and Susann always delivered on time. Her books came out each Mother’s Day, as regular as jonquils in March. But this one would be different. It would be on the fall list. Her publisher demanded it. And she would not disappoint them.

  Almost two decades ago she and Alf had been the first to spot the hole in the marketplace between the heavily promoted spring list and the most important fall offerings. When her first successful book, The Lady of the House, came out fourteen years ago, Alf had taken advantage of the woman’s market just waiting there at Mother’s Day, and it had made her name.

  It had also made her a rich woman. Well, not the first book. Of course she’d gotten screwed out of that deal. Each year since she had followed up the success of The Lady of the House with another Mother’s Day novel, and with Alf’s help, each one had sold hundreds of thousands of copies in hardcover and millions in paperback. She’d become a tradition among some women—daughters giving mothers a Susann Baker Edmonds, and now their own daughters gave them copies. Three generations reading her uplifting stories. Yes, she felt proud of what she’d accomplished. She’d become famous and wealthy, and Alf had become her full-time agent and taken over her affairs and fired the incompetent lawyer who’d given her first book away. They’d retained a PR firm. Her name popped up regularly in the columns. Four of her books had been made into television miniseries, and another three were optioned. She was the most profitable woman novelist at her publishing house, and they treated her appropriately.

  But there was the rub. Susann put her hands over her eyes to shield her face from the sun. She was the most profitable woman’s writer, but there were all those men out there, turning out their techno-thrillers, their legal-suspense stories, and those other testosterone-driven books, all of which were being made into feature films by those bastards in Hollywood who ignored middle-aged women. It was so unfair. Susann had never had a movie made of any of her books. Women would go to see Crichton movies and Grisham movies and Clancy movies, but men wouldn’t take their wives out to see a woman’s saga. Women’s books were only good enough for the pink ghetto of television. And without the extra heat that films generated, it was getting harder and harder nowadays to keep a bestseller up at the top of the list. So this new one would come out in the autumn. Would it help? There were one hundred and fifty romance titles released each month. As if that wasn’t enough, most tried to interest book buyers, stores, and readers with all kinds of giveaways and undignified trash. Joan Schulhafer of Avon Books had put it succinctly when she said, “We have a higher tchotchke-per-author ratio than any other genre.”

  Edith was gathering up her steno pad, her bag of pencils and yellow Post-it notes and paper clips. She was taking off her reading glasses, putting them in her skirt pocket and putting her sunglasses on her sunburned pink nose. In the last two decades, while she worked with Edith, Susann had married, divorced, become slimmer, younger-looking, better dressed, and blond. While Edith…Edith hadn’t changed at all, except to age. She looked like a drone. It actually frightened Susann, partly because—even though she looked at least a decade younger—Susann knew she was actually four years older than Edith. And Edith knew it, too, being one of the few insiders who knew Susann’s real age.

  Hell, Edith didn’t just know her real age (fifty-eight), she knew her real name (Sue Ann Kowlofsky), the real number of marriages Susann had been through (three), the real number of face-lifts Susann had had (two), and even where she kept most of her money (the Isle of Jersey). Edith knew all the sordid details about Susann’s daughter, Kim—the drug rehabs, the DWI’s, the bad men. Perhaps that was why Edith so exasperated her. Edith had neither improved herself, nor did she seem impressed with Susann’s improvements. There was no softening mystique between them. And Susann didn’t like living without mystique. She had become dependent on her publicist-generated bio, Alf’s respect, the publisher’s kid-glove handling, and the aura that fame and wealth had given her.

  “Alf ought to be back soon,” Susann remarked. “I have to get dressed. We have a dinner party tonight.” Edith didn’t much like Alf, and the feeling was mutual.

  “The chapter’s more important than the party,” Edith said. “It needs work.”

  Susann felt her temper rising, but she bit back the words she wanted to spit and, instead, gave Edith one of her best smiles. “Why don’t you see what you can do with it?” she asked.

  Edith stood, finally, and shuffled off the terrace into the house. Susann got up and crossed to the balustrade, leaning against it and looking out toward the water. The autumn sun slipped behind a cloud, and Susann, clad only in a bathing suit and chiffon cover-up, shivered. The problem was that as tacky and annoying as she was, Edith was right. The new book was not only coming slowly, it was coming badly. And there was no room for shoddiness. At this point in her life Susann could not afford to slip out of the golden circle of bestsellers and back into obscurity, back to Cincinnati. The very thought made her shiver again.

  The women’s fiction market was changing. Alf said it was moving forward and might leave her behind. But without her books, without her fame, without the money that she brought in, where would she be? Who would she be? What would Alf do if her business fell off? Managing her had made him, but as he’d taken on other clients, hadn’t his interest in her waned a bit? Would even Edith stick with her if all of this ended?

  Susann closed her eyes, shutting them tight despite the crow’s feet. Plastic surgery still couldn’t do anything about crow’s feet, though it had erased the bags and tightened the sags under and over her eyes. Still, good as she looked, young as she looked, slim as she looked, Susann clutched the railing with her arthritic hands and knew she was just a fifty-eight-year-old woman, frightened and alone.

  4

  What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.

  —Burton Rascoe

  Judith stared out the window, looking up from the typewriter on the card table she was using as a desk. She was alone, except for Flaubert, who snorted and whimpered in his sleep. Judith wondered if the dog was dreaming. She stretched in her chair. From her seat she could see King Street and a tiny corner of the state university campus. A girl was leaning up against the brick wall of the student center, and as Judith watched, the dark, lanky young man who was standing beside her leaned in, encompassing her with his hands. Then he quickly kissed her on the mouth. The girl laughed and tossed her head. Even through the dirt of the windowpane Judith could see the white flash of her teeth.

  It seemed so long to Judith since she’d been a student, even though it was only two semesters ago. And it seemed even longer since Daniel had kissed her that way. Perhaps he had never kissed her that way. Daniel was not what anyone would call the spontaneous type. Brilliant, yes. Ambitious, definitely. But spontaneous…No, Judith could never remember Daniel kissing her like that.

  Of course, he hadn’t been free to kiss her on the campus, she told herself, trying to be fair. Judith always tried to be fair. She remembered reading somewhere that her name came from the Old Testament, that Judith might have been one of the judges, or perhaps she was just in the Book of Judges. Something like that. Daniel would know. He knew everything. So why was she being so critical? Judith felt confused. When she sat up here, working on the book, she sometimes let her mind wander, and she didn’t always like where it led her.

  Below her, in the sunlight, the young man bent and picked up a backpack, swinging it easily onto his shoulder. He said something, and Judith could see another flash of teeth from the smiling girl. When was the last time I smiled, Judith wondered. Well, she reminded herself, I’ve always been a serious girl.

  And theirs had been a very serious affair. After all, Judith had been a Student and Daniel was her teacher. Not only that, he was married. Of course, his marriage had already been troubled for some time. Daniel was an honorable person, so he told her right from the beginning, and he had told her tha
t he was deeply attracted to her. He thought she had talent—real talent—and that someday she could be a successful writer.

  No grown man had ever paid that kind of attention to her. She had blushed with pleasure and confusion. And she had accepted his praise and his offer to go out for a cup of coffee. “You’ll be a successful writer,” he’d repeated, and there, under the table in the coffee shop, he’d taken her hand and squeezed it. Writing was her dream, her secret ambition. She’d never told anyone, much less a college professor, that she wanted to be a writer. They would laugh at her. But Daniel hadn’t laughed. He knew her secret, and he encouraged her.

  She’d believed him, and here she was, actually married to him and working away, 279 pages into the manuscript. It wasn’t exactly the book she had planned to write. Not art. Not even close. It was a book they were sort of doing together. Not exactly for the art of it, and not exactly together, but…well, they needed the money now.

  Her parents had been furious about Daniel, about his religious background, his marital status. They had threatened to sue the school and had cut her off without a penny. Not that Judith really cared. They’d always been well-off, and her father had always used money to control them all. That was probably why she’d gone to a state college in the first place. He’d been livid that she hadn’t applied to one of the Seven Sisters schools. But Judith, in her serious way, had told him she was sick of exclusivity and didn’t care about money.

  Daniel didn’t care about money either. It was one of the reasons she loved him. At first she’d even been afraid to tell him that she was one of the Elmira Hunts. Daniel hated capitalism and inherited wealth. He told her that straight out. Like her, he believed in a meritocracy.