A Bookshop in Paris by Ellen Feldman

Author:Ellen Feldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

She scrawled her initials on the mock-up of a book jacket, put it in her out-box, and stood. The office was silent. On the desks in the large common area beyond her cubicle, the secretaries’ typewriters dozed under their black plastic covers. Around the perimeter, the offices and cubicles were dark. She rarely got to stay late at the office, but tonight she’d taken advantage of the fact that it was Friday and Vivi had a sleepover at Alice’s with two other girls. She liked being the last one in the office, not only the feeling of accomplishment that came with cleaning up her desk but the eerie solitude. She’d had similar sensations some nights in the shop on the rue Toullier. She couldn’t be certain she was alone. Someone might be lurking back in advertising or publicity. A cleaning woman could be working her way toward the editorial offices. Nonetheless, the sensation of being on a desert island surrounded by a sea of books was heady. Everywhere she looked, there were boxes of new books smelling of ink and hope, and shelves of old award winners and bestsellers radiating dignity and success, and stacks of galleys waiting nervously to be sent out to reviewers. It was a world of infinite adventure, experienced at a safe and painless distance.

She put a manuscript in her briefcase, slipped into her coat, and started down the hall toward the elevators. The light was on in Horace’s office. It hadn’t been visible from her cubicle, but she’d been right. She wasn’t alone. She wondered if he’d been waiting for her, then decided that was ridiculous. The man ran a publishing house. He had work to do.

“People who are trying to sneak past the boss shouldn’t wear high heels that click like goddamn castanets.”

She stopped in the door to his office. “I’m not trying to sneak past the boss. I’m showing off for burning the midnight oil.”

“In that case, get yourself in here.”

She stepped into the room, slipped out of her coat, put it on one of the chairs in front of his desk, and sat in the other.

He leaned over, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of scotch and two glasses, and put them on the blotter. “My late mentor and partner, Simon Gibbon, kept a silver tray with cut crystal decanters of bourbon, rye, scotch, and gin on a breakfront in his office.”

“Those must have been the days when publishing was a gentlemen’s profession.”

“I resent that.”

He poured a couple of fingers of scotch into each glass, handed her one, and gave her a smile she’d never seen before. No, that wasn’t true. She’d seen it on that tall, rangy publishing wunderkind in the picture in Publishers Weekly, the one from before the war. It was wickedly boyish.

“I just got the damnedest call.”

She waited.

“Aren’t you going to ask from whom about what?”

“If I ask, you’ll just make me work harder to pull it out of you. I figure silence will do the trick.

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