Blind Submission Read online

  Why did she have to know everything? “Just got a problem with my shirt,” I stage-whispered.

  “Hmm,” Anna mumbled. “Thought I had one in here…”

  “Never mind,” I said, watching her unwrap an ancient Tootsie Roll she’d found in the detritus of her desk drawer. “I’ll just use a stapler.” I reached for the heavy stapler on my desk and angled it to try to bind my gaping buttonhole.

  “Angel!” Although I’d heard it countless times, Lucy’s voice in my intercom always made me jump, and I just missed stapling my shirt to my exposed flesh.

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “My office, please!”

  She was holding out a pink memo when I walked in. “Give this to Craig, please,” she said. “And Angel?”

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “Have you contacted that author yet?”

  “I sent an e-mail, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you call, Angel? You know we don’t take e-mail submissions here.”

  “There’s no phone number, Lucy. Remember I told you? It’s all anonymous?”

  She sighed in exasperation. “Well, then, I hoped you asked for one. Now deliver that to Craig, please.”

  “Okay.” I glanced at the memo. C—my office.—L.

  “Angel?”

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “How’s the new one doing? Jackson?”

  I could feel the flush spread across my face. Lucy couldn’t have heard my conversation with Craig unless she’d bugged the outer office (not such a far-fetched prospect, really), but it was far likelier that this was just another instance of her psychic melding. Sort of the mental equivalent of the synchronized menstrual cycles that women get when they live or work in close quarters.

  “He’s fine.”

  “You seem unsure of that, Angel.”

  “No, he’s doing fine.”

  “Because if he isn’t doing a good job, it’s on your shoulders. You trained him, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I left her office and handed the memo to Craig, who glared at me, grabbed a folder from his desk, and stalked off to see Lucy. I could feel the throb of a headache starting at the base of my skull. It was going to be a bad one, I could tell. I leaned over to get the one-hundred-count bottle of aspirin I had started carrying in my purse and almost tripped over a large FedEx box sitting on the floor next to my desk.

  “What’s this?” I asked Jackson, who was looking over at me.

  “Just came for you while you were in with her,” he said. He waited a moment before hopping over to my desk like an eager kid on Christmas morning. “Open it!” he said. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  I had to smile in spite of myself. It was almost quaint that he found an unopened box so exciting. Although I hated to admit it, Craig was right—I had been too harsh with Jackson. After all, unlike Nora/Kelly, Jackson was actually trying to work with me instead of against me. “Okay,” I said. “But you realize it could just be some really big hate mail from a disgruntled author we’ve rejected.”

  “No, it can’t be,” he said. “Those people don’t know this address.”

  He was right. I made another mental note: Jackson. Smarter than he looks. Not to be left out, Anna had also made her way over to my desk, and I opened the box with both of them staring at me in anticipation and pulled out its items one by one. Everything was packed with great care, which was a good thing because the first item was a small glass fishbowl. Inside it was a frantic fish swimming in a sealed bag of water. There were two other items in the box, a large package of fresh angel-hair pasta and a bottle of Angelica liqueur. There was a postcard taped to the bottle.

  Angel—

  Something for your desk, something for your appetite, something for your dreams.

  Tuo Damiano

  I turned the postcard over. It was a photo of Angel Island, the park in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

  “Wow,” Jackson said. “What kind of fish is that?”

  “It’s an angelfish,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Jackson asked.

  “There are a lot of angel-themed things out there,” I told him. “When you grow up with a name like Angel, you get to know them pretty quickly.”

  “Huh,” Anna said. “Guess you’ve got a real admirer there.” She looked as if she’d swallowed something extremely bitter. “Nice work, Angel.”

  “You have to hand it to him,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else. “He’s incredibly creative.” It was the most thoughtful gift I’d ever received from anyone, and I was so moved by it that I couldn’t even concern myself with Anna’s venomous glare. “Guess I’ll put my fish in some water.”

  I filled the fishbowl with water from the bathroom sink, flipped the fish into it, and took my seat at my desk. An unsettling silence descended on the room after Jackson left to pick up the mail. There was no sound at all coming from Lucy’s office and the phones were uncharacteristically quiet. Anna shifted in her chair, her cheeks slightly puffed out, as if she was getting ready to expel air. After a second or two, she started pecking halfheartedly at her keyboard and humming. There was something vaguely familiar about the tune, but I didn’t recognize it until she started adding lyrics, one painful off-key word at a time.

  “‘Just call me…angel…of the…mor-ning, ba-by…hmm, mmm…’”

  Trust Anna, I thought, to know a Juice Newton song. “Angel of the Morning” was probably the only angel song Damiano hadn’t included on the CD he’d made for me. The only reason I recognized it at all was because my mother used to sing it to me. I felt an unfamiliar pang of sentimentality as I remembered how my mother used to brush my hair, always long and forever tangled, when I was little. It was always a lengthy procedure since there was always so much of it to get through, and my mother liked to style it, braiding it and curling it as she sang that song, imbuing the corny lyrics with special emphasis. But hearing the song in Anna’s throat was torture, a perversion of a very sweet memory, and I didn’t know how much longer I could take it.

  Mercifully, after one more chorus the phone rang and I lunged to answer it.

  “Lucy Fiamma Agency.”

  “Angel?”

  “Malcolm…” He never called me at the office and I was first surprised, then dismayed (no personal phone calls), and finally, guilty (he couldn’t possibly have known about Damiano’s gift, could he?), all in the space of the two seconds it took to say his name. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Angel, I just wanted to speak to you. I just wanted to talk.”

  Just wanted to talk? Was he crazy? “Malcolm, you know I can’t talk.” I lowered my voice to a whisper, knowing that Anna could probably hear every word, anyway. “I’m not supposed to take personal phone calls here. You know that. I thought something terrible happened.”

  “Something terrible has happened. I haven’t seen you for a couple of days. That’s terrible. Why are you still whispering? Even people in the CIA make personal phone calls from time to time, Angel.”

  “I can’t talk now.”

  “Of course not. All right, just thought I’d try—so kill me for that. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Malcolm, wait.”

  “What?”

  The phone rang and Anna picked up the line. Even so, I lowered my voice until I could barely hear myself.

  “Are you working Saturday night?”

  “I work every Saturday night, Angel. Why?”

  “Lucy’s invited us to dinner.”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “Dinner with Lucy. She wants you to come.”

  “Angel, can you please speak just a little louder? I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  “Lucy has invited us for dinner,” I said, raising my voice more than I meant to, the words coming out just as Anna put down her phone. So much for keeping that a secret.

  “Really?” Malcolm said. “Okay, I’ll get the night off. What tim
e? What do you think I should wear?”

  I sighed into the phone. “I’ll call you later, okay? I really can’t talk now. All right?”

  “Okay, great! Call me. I’ll see you later anyway, right?”

  “Okay.” Malcolm sounded disproportionately happy about this dinner invitation, and I found his happiness depressing. It was all backward and upside down. We were supposed to be on the same page, but it seemed as if Malcolm and I were reading from entirely different books. I wondered when that had happened. My computer trilled with the sound of an instant message from Anna.

  Damiano Vero holding for you on Line 1.

  I glanced over at her as I picked up the phone, but she was keeping her head down, buried once again in the chaos that was her desk drawer.

  “Hi, Dami!” I said too brightly into the phone. “Thank you so much for your package. It’s so…I don’t know what to say. It’s really beautiful.”

  “I’m so glad,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do else.”

  “I have my little fish right here,” I said, watching it flick its tail back and forth in tiny flashes of color.

  “Bene,” he said. “I’m so glad.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Again.” I waited for him to say something else, having run out of words myself, but he didn’t, and after a moment, the pause between us stretched into weighted silence.

  “I was working on my book,” he said finally.

  “Do you have—I mean, is there something I can help you with?”

  “It’s stupid,” he said, and laughed mirthlessly. “I was just—It was a part of my life that was so difficult. I thought to call you. I don’t know why.”

  I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to have an excuse to call me, that I enjoyed talking to him, that although I hadn’t experienced a fraction of what he had in his life, I still felt as if I understood what he’d been through. But it wasn’t exactly true; Damiano was a client of Lucy’s and I was on her clock. The phone was ringing again and Anna was pointedly not answering it.

  “Damiano, I’m so sorry, I have to—”

  “I know, I can hear it, the phone. Go, go. Ci vediamo, Angel,” he said hurriedly, and hung up. I punched Line 2.

  “Lucy Fia—”

  “Angel, hi. Listen, is this dinner formal or what? I want to make sure that—”

  “I don’t know.” My voice came out sounding high and shrill. I brought it down to a stage whisper. “I can’t talk, Malcolm.”

  “Fine,” he said, and hung up. I’d barely had time to draw my next breath before I heard the sound of Anna’s next message on my computer.

  You don’t have to whisper about dinner with Lucy. I know she likes you better than me.

  I felt a nauseating mix of revulsion, pity, and guilt churning in my stomach. I started to type a reply to Anna’s message but stopped myself. This was the height of ridiculousness. We were separated by a few feet and there was nobody else in the office.

  “Anna, I really don’t think it’s about who she likes better. I don’t know why…I mean, I’m sure it—dinner—is work-related.”

  “Well, whatever,” Anna said, her face flooding pink. “I’m just saying you don’t have to feel bad. Or hide it from me. I should probably try to learn from you, in fact.” She gave a small, uncomfortable chuckle. “Dinner with the boss. Good way to get ahead, isn’t it?”

  “Anna, I didn’t ask—”

  “It’s okay. Come on, we’re on the same team here.” The phrase “honor among thieves” danced through my head. I shrugged in a palms-up gesture of surrender, as if to say I couldn’t argue her point. “You know what would be really great, Angel?”

  “What’s that, Anna?”

  “I’d love it if…I mean, if you would…” She stopped, flustered, her color rising dramatically. If the concept hadn’t been so absurd, I’d have sworn she was getting ready to ask me on a date. “It would be great if you’d let me make dinner for you sometime.” So it was a date she was angling for. My headache had come on full force despite the aspirin. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, Angel, that didn’t sound right at all!” I could almost feel the heat of her red face at my desk. “I just mean it would be great to get together outside of work, you know. And I am a pretty good cook, so…Anyway, I feel like we kind of got off to a little bit of a bad start, maybe, and I’d like to sort of change that.” She took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. “What do you think?”

  I thought that I wouldn’t be able to get through a meal with Anna unless I had several alcoholic beverages. What did we have in common aside from the job? I also sensed there was something other than a desire to be buddies that was festering behind Anna’s invitation. Of course, I couldn’t tell her any of that, nor, for the second time in one day, could I refuse. She and I both knew that if I turned her down after that pathetic plea, I’d be the world’s biggest bitch.

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great. Maybe when things quiet down a bit around here.”

  “Well, we can’t wait for that, can we?” Anna said. “Hopefully, that will never happen! But yeah, okay. Thanks, Angel.”

  She was really laying it on thick. I repressed the urge to throw my stapler at her. “No problem. Sounds like fun.”

  “We’re the only girls in the office now,” she said, and gave me an exaggerated wink. “We have to stick together.” Female anatomy, I thought. I stood corrected—she’d found something else we had in common. “And I know some things, Angel. Things you don’t know. I could share them with you.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh!” she said, shutting me up just as Craig exited Lucy’s office. She put her head down and started typing. After a few seconds I got an instant message from her saying, I’ll tell you later.

  “Where’s Jackson?” Craig barked from his desk.

  “It’s okay.” Anna laughed. “He’s only gone to get the mail. He hasn’t quit.”

  Actual humor. Score one for Anna, I thought.

  If he heard, Craig gave no indication. “Angel, can I see you for a moment, please?” His tone was now much more solicitous. I prepared myself for another bait-and-switch. This was turning out to be the day for them. Craig didn’t bother pulling out the filing cabinets as I approached. “You can sit, Angel,” he said, and as I positioned myself across from him, Jackson reappeared at the door, staggering under the weight of a full mail tub.

  Craig looked over at Jackson for a second and then back to face me. “I’ve got some good news for you, Angel.”

  I gave Craig a big, if forced, smile. He seemed strung tight enough to be on the verge of a breakdown. I decided it would be wise to be as careful as possible with him. “Good news is always good,” I said, wondering if Anna was listening.

  As if on cue, the phones began ringing. Jackson and Anna went for separate lines and began talking. The office had come alive again.

  “Your official probation period isn’t up yet,” Craig began, “but Lucy’s decided to jump the gun a bit here and give you a raise.” He looked up at me, waiting for a response. My intuition told me that it had better be an effusive one.

  “Really? That’s great!”

  “Yes, well, you don’t even know how great yet.” Craig cleared his throat. “Lucy’s been very impressed with how quickly you’ve assimilated in the office and with your reading. Guess that bookstore experience really paid off for you. Anyway, as you know, Lucy believes in rewarding good work, so she’s made the decision to substantially increase your salary.” He scribbled a figure on a piece of paper and slid it over to me. I stared at the numbers, utterly confused.

  “But Craig, that’s what I’m making now, isn’t it?”

  “No, Angel, that’s not your new salary. That’s the amount of your raise.”

  I could feel my eyes widen. The room seemed very bright. Craig was looking at me impassively, a slight twist in the corner of his mouth. This clearly hadn’t been his idea, and I was sure that he had even lobbied against it.

  “But…but t
hat’s double what I’m making now. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Craig said. “I take it you’re pleased?” I could only nod. My throat was dry and I didn’t trust myself to speak. I could move into a place with an actual bedroom. Hell, I could probably even move out of Petaluma and closer to the city—maybe Berkeley. I could buy shoes and still have enough left over for dinner. And I could actually start making some inroads on my student-loan debt. That bill had been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles since the day I’d graduated. I’d never allowed myself to get so excited about money. I was like a kid who’d just been told she could eat the cake, the ice cream, and the candy bar. It was a little overwhelming.

  “There’s one condition, though,” Craig said.

  Of course there was. This was Lucy Fiamma country, after all.

  “Oh?”

  “Like any intelligent businesswoman, Lucy would like to protect her investment. And this is a rather large investment, I think you’d agree.” I nodded again. “So, bearing that in mind, the condition is that you commit to your employment here for a period of two years from this date. Should you leave voluntarily at any point before that time, Lucy would expect you to return the difference in salary that she is offering you today.”

  It was as if she were offering me a book contract, I thought. If the book wasn’t written and delivered within two years, she’d expect the advance to be returned. Only, in this case, I was the book. I didn’t know if it was legal, but it was certainly interesting, and all that money was almost irresistible.

  “Wow,” I said after my heart rate slowed. “That’s really amazing.”

  “I’ll have the contract written up by the end of the day,” Craig said. “You can sign and Lucy can countersign. I’m also a notary public—I don’t know if I mentioned that before—so we won’t have to take it out anywhere. You’ll get a copy, of course, for your records. I take it you accept the terms?”

  I stared into Craig’s eyes, searching for a glimmer of the fire I’d seen there earlier, but there was nothing but the bleached effect of driftwood. “Can I sleep on it tonight? Just because, you know, it’s a good idea to think things through.”