Secret Santa Page 5

  She finally found the bookstore. A bored-looking high schooler was reading a Batman comic behind the checkout desk. There were no signs posted for the signing. “Am I in the right place for the Fabien Nightingale event?” Lussi asked. “British gent, bushy mustache…”

  The kid didn’t look up. He pointed to the back of the store.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said.

  “Whatever, lady.”

  Usually, bookstores set up signing tables near the front of the store to take advantage of foot traffic. Fabien’s table was sandwiched between a bookshelf and the fire exit—as far from the store entrance as you could get. A pallet stacked with several dozen copies of Fabien’s new book sat next to the table. Lussi had originally had big hopes for The Night Cathedral. Fabien had come a long way from his days writing novelizations for B-movies such as Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave. However, the market had recently taken a sharp turn away from Fabien’s particular brand of quiet horror. Things had gotten bloody. Editors could keep pace with changing trends. Authors, on the other hand…

  Lussi looked at her watch. She was ten minutes early. Fabien wasn’t even here yet, so she hung back, scanning the horror section. She pulled the new Stephen King off the shelves. It was the big book of the moment—literally. She’d read the first couple hundred pages in galleys, thanks to a friend at Viking. She still had three-quarters of the book to go.

  She had just found the page she’d left off on when her senses were overwhelmed with a thick, cloying fragrance she knew all too well.

  “Boo.”

  She jumped—just a little—and turned. It was, of course, Fabien Nightingale, who traveled in a cloud of Obsession for Men.

  “Limey bastard,” she said, swatting him in the upper arm with the doorstop of a book, which landed harder than she’d intended. “Next time, say hi like a normal person.”

  “Didn’t think you’d come,” he said, rubbing his arm. “And I resent that remark. Never call me a normal person again.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come?” she asked.

  “You never returned my RSVP, so I figured you must have other plans,” he said. “Besides, we both know publishing’s a ghost town around the holidays.”

  “Things have been crazy,” she said. “With the job search and all. Good news, though—”

  He pried the book from her hands and examined it, front and back. Fabien was rocking the satanic preacher look tonight: black suit, black button-down shirt, red tie. Black was slimming, but it could only do so much for his beer gut.

  He handed the book back with a derisive snort.

  “What?” Lussi said.

  “I hate clowns.”

  “Join the club,” she said. “There’s almost, like, this primal fear of clowns, buried deep in our subconscious. Pennywise is kind of fun, though.”

  “I meant the other clown…Steve.”

  “Keep your voice down,” she whispered.

  “You’re afraid he’s going to come after me?” Fabien said. “Ha. I could take him in a fight. Only one of us knows karate.”

  The last literary titan who could throw a decent punch had been Hemingway. Nobody wanted to see two writers square off in a ring. Though she would pay good money to see Nora Roberts and Janet Dailey go at it.

  Lussi steered the conversation into safer waters. She gave Fabien the rundown on her new gig at Blackwood-Patterson. He seemed to make a point of not congratulating her. “Be careful,” he warned her. “I’ve heard things about the old git who runs that place. He can be a little frisky with the young ladies, if you catch my drift. There are stories about that building. Rumors, mostly, but where there’s smoke…”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  He shot her a confused look. “About…?”

  “Xavier Blackwood,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  “Huh.” Fabien shrugged. “Bully for you, then. Did he keel over at his desk?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “It’s how all those old literary geezers die. They don’t retire—they expire. They work themselves to death. Literally. It’s never too early to be thinking about an exit strategy.”

  “I just started there Monday.”

  He laughed. “Lussi, dear Lussi…I was talking about an exit strategy from this cruel, cruel world.”

  * * *

  —

  Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. At the half-hour mark, Lussi could tell that Fabien was ready to throw in the towel. The signing was a bust. Only one person had even approached the table, and they’d asked for directions to the restroom. Fabien, without missing a beat, had pointed to the stacked books beside the table. “The loo’s right here,” he said.

  Right as it looked like Fabien’s soul was ready to leave his body and drift away like a shopping bag caught in the breeze, an honest-to-goodness reader finally arrived. The woman was old enough to be Fabien’s mother, and she was hauling behind her a rolling suitcase filled with yellowed copies of what looked like his entire oeuvre. Fabien offered the woman his chair, which she gladly accepted. “Can I interest you in a copy of my new book?” he said, handing it to her. “It’s my best work yet. But don’t take my word for it—ask my editor. She’s right here.”

  The woman examined Lussi’s face, as if searching for some hidden sign as to whether or not she should trust this strange young woman. “I don’t trust anyone under thirty,” the lady said.

  Fabien got to work signing her stack of books. Lussi wandered the store for a few minutes. When she returned, Fabien was squatting beside the old woman, who wasn’t moving. A tuft of her white hair was gently waving back and forth, caught in a cross breeze from the overhead heating vent. The Night Cathedral was splayed open in her lap.

  “Bollocks, it’s happened again,” Fabien said.

  “Everything okay?” Lussi asked, drawing in closer. “I know CPR. At least I used to.”

  Fabien placed a hand to the woman’s neck to check for a pulse. After a tense moment in which no one seemed to inhale or exhale, including, troublingly, the woman, Fabien got to his feet. “Sleeping,” he said. “Third one this tour.”

  Lussi put a supportive hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not the book that’s putting them to sleep,” she said, lying through her teeth. “It’s a little slow, but that’s by design. It’s probably way past her bedtime.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing. He slipped into his oversized gray fur coat. It was quitting time, apparently.

  “How about a drink?” he asked, producing a flask. He offered it to her. “Ladies first.”

  She unscrewed the cap and gagged.

  “Absinthe,” he said.

  “I know what it is,” she said, handing it back without imbibing. “The stuff van Gogh was drinking when he cut off his ear. You told me you were done with this stuff.”

  Fabien took a long swig. When he was finished, he scowled. “When did I say that?”

  “Last year,” she said. “That fantasy convention in Cleveland. I found you hungover, on the bathroom floor of your suite with an empty bottle of absinthe lying next to you. And you said—and I quote—‘I am done with this shit.’ It took six of your little red friends just to get you upright for the panel.”

  “What I meant was that I was done with Cleveland. Not absinthe—Cleveland.”

  All of the best authors had a touch of madness. When it manifested itself on the page, it was hailed as genius. When it caused them to go on drunken benders for days or weeks at a stretch, it could land them in a halfway house. She wasn’t sure which direction Fabien’s madness would take him. Lussi couldn’t leave him to his own devices tonight, though. Not after an event like this.

  “You up for dinner or dessert?” she said. The elderly woman was snoring now; they’d let the bookseller deal with her. “There’s a Baskin-Robbins in the food court—
”

  “There’s a pub around the corner,” Fabien said, a twinkle in his eyes. His thick black mustache curled up at the edges as he grinned, making him look like a magician who’d just sawed somebody in half. One drink, she told herself. One drink for each of them. Get some food in him. Talk him off the cliff, then send him home. Maybe two drinks—she deserved to cut loose after the hours she’d put in this week. If she got on the ferry by nine, she could be in bed at a halfway decent hour.

  As if.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lussi spent a big chunk of her commuting hours on the Staten Island Ferry. Sometimes she read. Other times she just took in the breeze. If she was feeling feisty, she would wave at the Statue of Liberty like a tourist. This morning, she spent the forty-minute ride across choppy water with her head between her knees. It was only by the grace of God that she didn’t get sick on herself.

  This was the hangover from hell.

  She blamed the devil.

  After finally ceding to Fabien’s requests for her to partake of the absinthe, the night had dissolved around her. She only remembered bits and pieces from that point, images that made no sense out of context. Topless, muscled men in leather pants. Lussi and Fabien racing a pair of decorative reindeer down an icy sidewalk, laughing in a drunken blur, and then…that was all. How she’d made it home last night, she had no idea—an expensive cab that she couldn’t afford, no doubt. All she knew was that it was her first and last time drinking absinthe. She hadn’t gotten that tanked since freshman year of high school.

  At least, unlike poor van Gogh, she’d woken up with both of her ears.

  Thank God the Christmas party would take up the whole afternoon.

  * * *

  —

  Lussi’s office door was open a crack. She’d locked it last night, hadn’t she? She gave it a tentative push and was greeted by the sight of a relaxed young man, sitting in her chair, feet propped up on her desk. With his parted blond hair, chunky black glasses, bright yellow polo, and blue loafers, he looked like an illustration from The Official Preppy Handbook. Was this the right office? Of course it was. There were her display copies on the bookshelves.

  “You must be Lussi,” the young man said with unearned confidence. “I’m Cal. The new intern. I was told to report to your office. The door was open, so…”

  Lussi hung her vintage peacoat on the hook she’d screwed into the drywall. “This isn’t a dorm room. Feet off the desk.” Cal immediately swung his long legs off the desk and vacated her chair.

  “Have you been here long?” she asked, shaking his hand. He had a firm handshake that matched his broad shoulders.

  “Only an hour. I’ve just been reading a book I found on your shelves. I hope that’s okay.”

  Lussi arched a brow. “You know, there’s a giant stack of manuscripts right over there,” she said, settling in behind her desk. “And there’s more where that came from in the basement. Let’s get through this pile today and then you can bring more up first thing on Monday. How does—”

  He had taken a seat in the chair across from her, and now, unbelievably, his feet were back on the desk. She did not have the patience to house-train a new intern today. She rolled up a manuscript and swatted his shin, which sent him into a yelping fit. “Oh, hush,” she said. “It’s not like I broke it, though maybe I will if you do it again.”

  Cal rubbed his shin with a wounded look in his eyes. She glanced at the book he’d been reading. The Decapitation Chronicles. Cult movie star Sandy Chainsaw’s final, posthumous release. Sandy—real name: Deborah Leavy Morgan—was one of the first authors Lussi had worked with, back when she’d been a lowly editorial assistant at another defunct small publisher.

  “How is the book?” Lussi asked Cal. She tried not to think about the grim fate that had befallen the actress. As they say, though: live by the chainsaw, die by the chainsaw.

  “It’s kind of scary,” Cal said.

  “That’s the idea,” she said. “I’m trying to find the next horror superstar. Like Stephen King, but different. A new voice.”

  He scratched his clean-shaven chin. “Does he have any children?”

  “Stephen King?” Lussi said absentmindedly. “Two or three, I think. He doesn’t exactly trot them out at conventions.”

  “Talent is a shared genetic trait,” he said. “That’s what I’ve learned at film school, at least. Let’s see, you’ve got Kirk and Michael Douglas. Donald and Kiefer Sutherland. Martin and Charlie Sheen…”

  “Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.”

  Cal’s face went blank.

  Lussi sighed. Kids these days. “What is it that drew you to publishing?”

  “Are you asking if I like books?”

  “That is what we publish here.”

  He shrugged. “I was supposed to go home over winter break, but my dad’s going to the Bahamas with his new wife. This was the only internship posted on the department board at City College.”

  Strange that Digby had plucked him from a film program, but it ultimately didn’t make much difference to her. As long as he was here to help, he could have been a Reaganomics major for all she cared.

  An unpleasant odor drifted past her nose. It was positively vile. “Do you smell something?”

  Cal shook his head. “I’ve got a cold.”

  And now I’m going to have to disinfect my desk, she thought. Today was not the day to come in with a hangover.

  “It smells like…like a dog’s—” Lussi looked down at her feet. The black, polished shoe on her left foot was pressed into a single brown turd the size of a bratwurst. This hadn’t been tracked in from outside; she would have noticed that. Had somebody let a dog into her office?

  Cal leaned over the desk to get a look at what Lussi had stepped in. “It’s not one of mine.”

  She shot him a blank stare.

  “Too small,” he explained.

  * * *

  —

  The Blackwood Building was even more gothic than she’d expected, in ways she never could have anticipated. For instance: there were no mirrors above the sinks in the women’s restroom. The wall was simply painted black. Welcome to Castle Dracula. She had already begun to suspect Mr. Blackwood had been something of a cheapskate, but this bordered on the absurd. How did the women in the office reapply their makeup or fix their hair?

  Today, as she scrubbed her shoe clean, she was grateful for the old man’s miserliness. At least she didn’t have to look at her own hungover reflection. Or her guilty face. She’d really laid into Cal for kicking his feet up on her desk. Oh, well. The sooner he learned that this was a publishing house and not a dorm lounge, the better.

  Lussi was running the heel of her shoe under the faucet when the restroom door banged open. It was The Raven. The editor in chief took one look at Lussi’s shoe and smirked. “Looks like somebody needs to have a talk with Alan again.”

  The maintenance man. Lussi hadn’t seen him all week, even in passing. He was said to work odd hours. If he cleaned up messes like this, that meant they had him doing double duty as a custodian. Xavier really had been cheap.

  The Raven disappeared into the single stall. Lussi imagined the higher-up editors from the big publishers getting together once a month at some swank apartment in Trump Tower overlooking Central Park, trading war stories from the trenches over bacon-wrapped gherkins. You’ll never guess what the new girl stepped in…

  Lussi heard the flint of a lighter, followed by a plume of sweet-smelling smoke. Lussi was no stranger to marijuana, but the brazenness of toking up at work—with a coworker around, no less—shocked her. She continued scrubbing.

  It wasn’t like it was coke. And anyway, who was going to tell The Raven no? She was widely respected and feared in the industry for her intelligence and ruthlessness. She had edited some of the biggest names in literary fiction over the past thirty y
ears. Roth. Plimpton. Cheever. She only worked with male authors—not because she was a misogynist, but because her editing notes were so cutting that they’d reportedly caused a pregnant author to miscarry.

  “I’d tell you to call maintenance to clean it up, but it’s faster to do it yourself.”

  “My intern already took care of the mess on the carpet,” Lussi said.

  There was a long silence. The air was hazy with smoke. “We haven’t had an intern around here in some time. Agnes Bailey was in charge of the program. With her gone…”

  “Mr. Blackwood—the new Mr. Blackwood—hired him, I guess. I’m not even sure if I have him exclusively. Maybe I can lend him out to you, if you need a hand.”

  An even longer silence followed. “We’ve never had a genre editor around here either, you know. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  “Well, Mr. Blackwood—the old Mr. Blackwood—interviewed me, and I—”

  “Then you saw how the Parkinson’s had affected him. It was eating away at his body and his mind. Such a sad, sad ending for such a brilliant man. Painful to watch. That his heart disease took him when it did—well, it was a blessing in disguise. This branch into the supernatural…no offense, but it’s only more evidence of the severity of his mental decline. And his son, the Boy Blunder…well, let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Lussi felt the muscles in her neck tensing. She held her tongue and toweled her shoe dry. “So, whose dog is running around the office? Just in case I step in another you-know-what.”

  The Raven’s reply was drowned by the flushing toilet.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Lussi said.

  The Raven stepped out of the stall. Her eyes were red as Lussi’s line-editing pen. “I said,” The Raven began, “that it’s Alan’s.”

  “What’s the breed? I love dogs, but my lease—”