Secret Santa Page 3

  “The company is yours now. Not his,” Lussi said, on a roll. “I understand if you want to redo all the interviews, or just leave the open position unfilled…but if things are really as bad as you say, then you can’t afford to waste time. What you need is somebody who can find you the next Stephen King.”

  She paused to catch her breath. When he didn’t say anything right away, she worried she’d gone too far. His father was dead, and now some strange, excitable girl had him cornered in the hospital hallway, trying to talk her way into a job. She either had to apologize now, or pull the fire alarm and run.

  Digby’s face relaxed. “Fine. Pay is…I don’t know. Whatever you make at your current job plus ten percent?” She could only nod. She felt like she was going to throw up the egg salad she’d eaten for lunch. “Good. Just let my dad’s payroll director know. Whoever that is. I’m sure there’s one at the office. The receptionist will tell you where to go.”

  “So…I’m hired?” Her voice climbed to the top of her vocal range.

  “We’ll make it official Monday—I’ll introduce you at the editorial meeting that morning,” he said. “Or is Monday too soon?”

  She shook her head. It was less than a week from now. That would give him time to settle in. While he was in a giving mood, she decided to push a little further. “Any chance I could talk you into making this a senior position? The ad in Publishers Weekly didn’t really specify, but I’ve been at the same level for four years…”

  “It’s a temp position is what it is, if you don’t find me the next Stephen McQueen.”

  “King. Stephen King.”

  “Find me another him by New Year’s, and you’re my new best friend. But fine. Senior editor. Whatever.”

  “Wait. Did you say the end of this month? It takes eighteen months, minimum, from contract to publication date. If I had a manuscript ready to go right now, we could rush it through for next fall. Maybe. But what you’re suggesting—”

  “I’m not an idiot,” he said. “The end of the calendar year is also the end of Blackwood’s fiscal year. I’m not asking you to publish the book in the next three weeks, or even in the next three years. I don’t care if it’s ever published, frankly. What I need is to finish this year with a surefire best seller under contract. If this company is going to survive long enough for me to turn it around, I need to project value, not just dusty prestige.”

  This was crazy. She was going to walk into the Blackwood Building with a target on her back. Not only would she likely be the youngest senior editor on staff, but she had a mandate at odds with everything the swan logo on the spine of every Blackwood-Patterson book stood for. Why had she opened her big mouth?

  The task itself was also crazy, but not impossible. Almost nobody in publishing worked in December. That gave her an advantage. Manuscripts were piling up on editors’ and agents’ desks all around town. Editors at other houses wouldn’t be making offers on new books until after the holidays. If she found a diamond in the slush pile, there was less chance that it had already been scooped up by another publisher. With her first couple of paychecks, she could begin paying her half of the rent again. There was even an outside chance of flying home to Iowa for Christmas, which she’d all but written off.

  “I’ll do it,” she said, brimming with confidence. “I won’t let you down.”

  She held out her free hand. He still hadn’t accepted the bouquet, but he took her palm in his with an unexpected tenderness. “See you next Monday morning. Nine a.m. sharp. Or whatever time publishing starts. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

  He turned his attention to his mobile phone and began to wander down the hall. Before he could dial, she called out to him. “Wait,” she said. “How will you know I’ve found the next Stephen King?”

  “Easy. All you have to do is find me something so good even I would want to read it.”

  If he’d left it there, her job would have been relatively easy, all things considered. She could guess what would appeal to a man like Digby: Blood and guts, no big words. Frequent chapter breaks. A little sex (nothing weird). Unfortunately, he had one last directive: “Not that I’m actually going to read it. I don’t have that sort of time. We’ll run it past the editor in chief. Get her to sign off on it, and we’re in business.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Knowing some staff might still be in mourning on her first day, Lussi paired her black blouse with a sober gray blazer and black slacks. She combed her bangs down instead of fluffing them. A man was dead—this was not the time nor place for Aqua Net. She took one last look in the mirror behind her door before leaving. To her dismay, she still looked like she hadn’t slept a wink last night. Which was exactly what had happened. But still.

  She’d spent all yesterday pounding yeast in the tiny kitchen of her Staten Island apartment. It had been years since she’d made stollen from her grandmother’s recipe. She’d forgotten how violent the process was. How had Oma managed it every year with her arthritis? The woman had baked a dozen or more of the German fruitcakes every holiday season, and Lussi had never heard her complain once.

  Lussi wanted to make an impression on her first day at Blackwood-Patterson. It was especially important that she start off on the right foot with the editor in chief, Mary Beth Wilkerson. Otherwise known as “The Raven.” The woman had a reputation as one of the hardest-nosed editors in the business…and she held Lussi’s future in the palm of her hand, whether she knew it or not. Oma used to say the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Hopefully, home-baked goods could work on women, too. The idea for a traditional stollen had popped into her head after seeing the Percht in Mr. Blackwood’s office. The doll had brought back warm feelings of Christmases past at Oma’s house. It felt like kismet.

  Or a recipe for disaster. Lussi had forgotten that stollen was a multiday process, and attempted to cram it into a single day. By the time she finally pulled the loaf out of the oven, it was around four in the morning. No sooner had she fallen asleep, it seemed, than her alarm-clock had begun ringing.

  Well, she thought, staring at her tired reflection in the mirror, that’s why Baby Jesus invented coffee.

  * * *

  —

  Lussi arrived at the Blackwood Building at a quarter to nine. Every cell in her body was buzzing. Maybe it was the extra cup of coffee. (It was the extra cup of coffee.) The receptionist—Gail, who actually did have a lovely paisley-print Vera Bradley stashed under her desk—led her up the winding staircase. They stopped on the second floor so Lussi could drop her fruitcake in the fridge. It hadn’t quite cooled yet. She only had a brief moment to take in the break room, but it was pretty standard. Sink filled with unwashed coffee mugs? Check. Round Formica tables surrounded by spindly chairs? Check. Fridge that was too small for a staff of twenty-five? Check.

  “Lunch?” Gail asked, pouring herself a coffee.

  “It’s for the editorial meeting,” Lussi said. She squeezed her fruitcake into the fridge between the Ziploc bags of sandwiches and Tupperware containers. “Would you like me to bring you some after the meeting? It’s homemade.”

  Gail blew on her coffee. “I’m on Nutri/System.”

  On the third floor, Gail led her down a long hall. She paused at a door plastered in comics clipped from newspapers. “This is the art department. If the door is closed, that means Stanley doesn’t want to be disturbed. I’m sure you’ve worked with artists before—you know how easily they startle.”

  Gail stopped at the end of the hall at a bare door with unfinished wood. The key used to unlock it was black and rusted. The door creaked open, letting out a foul, stale odor. The walls were white…at some point. The office was empty except for the basics. It was the “new employee” starter kit: desk, chair, phone, a pair of bookshelves, and a short, gun-metal-gray filing cabinet. The carpet had more stains than the floor of a Times Square peep show.

  Lussi opened the bl
inds. Sunlight poured in, causing her to shield her eyes. When she adjusted the angle of the blinds, though—oh, the view! Her office faced the street, which meant she could see the entirety of the park. It would be gorgeous come spring…if she was still here. And if the city cleared the tents.

  She turned to ask Gail where the bathroom was, but the woman had already gone. Well, fine. Lussi didn’t need to pee. Yet.

  She set her tote bag on her desk. It had everything she needed for Day One at her new job: her Phantom of the Opera coffee mug, which she’d won in a radio contest along with a pair of preview tickets. Plastic vampire fangs (a cheesy gift from an ex-coworker). A box of #2 Ticonderoga pencils—black, because you don’t edit horror novels with “a god-damned buttercup-yellow pencil, Lussi,” as the legendary Sandy Chainsaw once told her. And, of course, a half dozen books she’d worked on. Even though they were from her former publisher, they were still her babies. You didn’t just drown your kids in the river when you left your husband. Although, admittedly, some mothers did.

  Oh, how she wished she had access to the talented roster she’d put together at Broken Angel. That would have made the task Digby assigned her much easier. Unfortunately, Harper & Row had most of her old authors locked up with multibook deals and option clauses. This was a new start. A clean break from the past. A thought both terrifying and thrilling. Luckily, those were her two favorite emotions.

  * * *

  —

  The phone line to Xavier’s secretary kept going to her answering machine. Lussi didn’t want to go upstairs unannounced—protocol seemed super important at Blackwood-Patterson—so she decided to take a few minutes to find out where the company kept their submissions. It wasn’t always the best avenue for finding new authors, but it was a start.

  Things were quieter this morning than last week. Most of the office doors were closed, muffling any typewriter clicking and clacking that might have been going on. Every once in a while, she’d hear a deep cough from somewhere in the building.

  She peeked into the first open door she came across. The room was double the size of her office, but windowless. There were three desks pushed up against the walls, each one occupied by a middle-aged man, all with varying degrees of hair loss. The fluorescent desk lamps did them no favors. They looked like a bunch of zombies with liver disease. She wondered when the last time any of them had gone on a date, or even seen sunlight.

  These were her people. It felt good to be back in publishing.

  She walked over to the closest zombie, a round fellow with a ponytail and what looked like a fleck of salami in his beard. Definitely a meat product. “Excuse me? Hello?” Lussi said, leaning slightly forward to catch his attention.

  He was in deep concentration, marking up a manuscript page. Copy edits, from the look of it. It took him a second to realize she was there…but when he did look up, he kicked his feet in surprise, pushing his chair back three feet and taking him with it.

  “Whoa, it’s okay,” she said, raising her hands in surrender. Neither of the other two guys even turned at the commotion. “I come in peace.”

  He slapped his hand over his chest, panting. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, wheeling himself back to his desk. “I just…whew, don’t scare a guy like that.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled sheepishly. “I edit horror novels. Scaring people is sort of what I do.”

  “Funny,” he said without smiling. “We don’t publish that stuff.”

  “Well, you do now,” she said. Clearly, the company grapevine didn’t reach this office. Copy editors tended to be lone wolves. Probably because whenever you cornered one, you could tell they were silently judging your grammar. “I’m the new senior editor. Lussi Meyer. I interviewed with Mr. Blackwood. Xavier, I mean. Before he passed.”

  “If you say so.” He held out his hand, thick fingers covered in red ink. “I’m Joe, but everyone calls me Sloppy Joe. Copy editor to the stars.”

  “I’m sorry, did you say ‘Sloppy’…”

  “I left a comma out of a Muriel Spark novel in 1963,” he said with the hundred-yard stare of a man who had seen and done terrible things. “Changed the whole meaning of the sentence…”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “But it’s a good place to work. I like it, at least. Always plenty of parking around here, if you have a car.” He frowned. “I don’t have a car.”

  She let go of his hand. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, know where I can find the slush pile? And the ladies’ room.”

  “Why would you want to go there?”

  Because I have to pee so bad I can taste it, she almost said, before realizing he was asking why she wanted to see the slush pile.

  “Digby wants me to find him a best seller, and that’s where I thought I’d start. I would guess nobody reads the horror submissions. You all have a slush pile, right?”

  “We do…but we don’t talk about it.”

  “Because…”

  “We used to have an intern who read for us,” he said, his voice low. “They left a while ago. The manuscripts have been piling up since then. Half a dozen come in over the transom every day. Never mind the fact that we’re not even open to unsolicited submissions—it says right there in Writer’s Market. I can show you the page.”

  “That’s okay,” Lussi said. “So what happens to all these manuscripts?”

  “They’re all in storage. In the basement.” He pulled the salami from his beard, looked at it as if trying to remember the last time he’d had salami, then ate it. “Take a flashlight,” he whispered to her. “It’s spooky down there.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lussi’s finely honed publishing instincts told her the basement was probably going to be downstairs. The winding staircase stopped in the lobby, but she found a service elevator not far from it. Unfortunately, there was a hand-drawn OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the metal door. Somebody had added a crude drawing of a tombstone. Lussi read the grave marker’s inscription out loud: “R.I.P. Frederick.”

  Maybe the elevator’s name was Frederick, she thought.

  She was about to ask Gail for directions when she spied a metal FALLOUT SHELTER sign next to an unmarked door off to the side. The door opened onto a staircase descending into darkness. She pulled an overhead chain, and a single, low-watt bulb blinkered on. She almost wished she hadn’t turned it on. The planks on the stairs were so old that footsteps had worn down the middles to bare wood. The handrail looked like it had been chewed on by…something. The railing was shot through with splinters, making it impossible to use as support.

  Lussi took the stairs one at a time, steadying herself against the brick walls, which seemed to grow closer together the farther down she went. The boards sagged under her weight. What would happen if Sloppy Joe, a man three times her size, attempted to make the trek into the basement? She knew the answer to that: an OUT OF ORDER sign, graffitied with another gravestone.

  She found another light switch at the bottom of the stairs. The overhead fluorescents flickered to life, waking a gang of roaches huddled around a floor drain. They scattered for cover. Lussi was sorry to upset their little powwow, but not upset to see them go. They were twice the size of the ones at her apartment.

  She hadn’t brought a flashlight, but there was more than enough light. Metal shelving extended a hundred feet or so in every direction. Boxes were stacked haphazardly, both on the shelves and on the damp cement floor. Spooky? The spookiest thing about the basement was how much it reminded her of the Staten Island Mini-Storage where she kept the worldly possessions she couldn’t cram into a New York City apartment. (Basically everything she owned.) She wiped dust off the closest cardboard box to read the label. TAXES 1955.

  Along the far wall were a series of ten-by-ten cages with chain-link fencing on all sides, reinforced with wooden beams. Perhaps they’d once kept sticky-fingered staff out of office suppli
es, but they were no longer padlocked. Now they housed unused holiday decorations, shrink-wrapped pallets of overstock books, and—just what she was looking for—stuffed envelopes and loose manuscripts towering all the way to the unfinished ceiling. The slush pile.

  Lussi stepped inside the cage with the stacked manuscripts. As soon as she let go of the door, it swung closed behind her with a snap, like a triggered mouse trap. She jumped half an inch. Good to know her reflexes were still working.

  The shortest stacks topped out around her shoulders, so that’s where she would start her search. It was a gold mine just waiting to be panned. She began flipping through the manuscripts one by one. The unpublished authors addressed their letters to Mr. Blackwood and other editors at the house, begging, pleading for a book contract. Sloppy Joe hadn’t been clear whether anyone sent out rejection letters, or if these poor authors were still waiting on pins and needles to hear back from the prestigious publishing house. Either way, there wasn’t a cent of return postage. Some destitute editorial assistant had been absconding with the stamps authors included for their manuscripts’ safe return.

  The third submission she looked at was a horror novel. In Dog We Trust. Promising title. She read the first line: Last Thursday night was the first time I saw the werewolf pissing on my grandmother’s grave.

  Getting it past Blackwood-Patterson’s formidable editor in chief would be an uphill battle, but it sure beat the hell out of “Call me Ishmael.”

  It wasn’t the only horror novel. In fact, for a literary publisher, there were a surprising number of horror submissions. It made some sense, what with the explosion of the horror market over the past decade. She began setting them aside, but soon realized she was building her own tower of manuscripts—thirteen or fourteen. And that was just from the one stack, so far. She’d about reached the limit of what she could safely carry up those rickety steps in one go. She hoisted what she had up into her arms and was about to head for the stairs when the lights went out.