Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir by Clark Mary Higgins

Author:Clark, Mary Higgins [Clark, Mary Higgins]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Adult, History, Suspense
ISBN: 9780743206334
Amazon: 0743206339
Goodreads: 7058073
Publisher: Simon Schuster
Published: 2002-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Dear Editor Smith-Jones,

I am enclosing a short story entitled “Stowaway,” circa 3,500 words, which I thought might be appropriate for your fine magazine to which I have a subscription. It concerns the attempts of a flight hostess to stow a young member of the underground aboard her flight and bring him safely to freedom….

I look forward to hearing from you.

I did hear from Smith-Jones and all the other editors, usually by return mail. The arrival of my self-addressed and stamped eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelopes, each containing a scorned literary effort and the editor’s printed rejection slip, was a regular event in my life. I could picture all of the editors, laughing maniacally as they dropped my offerings into their out boxes. Wait and see, I vowed. Wait and see.

Meanwhile, on the floor beneath our tiny slot of a mailbox in the lobby of the apartment building, a pile of weekly and monthly magazines was steadily growing. After all, in good conscience I couldn’t claim to have a subscription to a magazine if I didn’t actually have a subscription, could I? Tell the truth and shame the devil.

For the first eight or ten stories, I continued to use the flight-hostess background. Oddly enough, the first two, “Stowaway” and “Milk Run,” were suspense stories. “Milk Run” came about because for two weeks during my Pan Am days I flew the so-called “honeymoon express” to Bermuda. That involved taking off from LaGuardia at eight in the morning, arriving in Bermuda at noon, hanging around the airport there, then returning in the late afternoon.

We all considered that assignment a pain in the neck. In the morning, we had to serve breakfast to rapturous newlyweds who were linking arms, holding hands, or smooching so much that it was impossible to find a spot between or around them to place a tray. In the afternoon, we brought back the returning lovey-dovies, who toasted each other with champagne by entwining their arms and sipping from each other’s glasses.

Bob Considine, a famous journalist, was on assignment in Bermuda and had an agreement with Pan Am that the flight hostess would carry his nationally syndicated column on the return flight to New York and give it to a courier who would be waiting at the airport. One day it was my turn to make the delivery. When my plane landed, Warren picked me up at LaGuardia, and we drove to a diner in the Bronx for a snack. Over our second cup of coffee, I chatted about the day and then realized to my horror that I had totally forgotten about meeting the courier and still had the column in my flight bag.

Fortunately the address of the Daily Mirror, 405 West Forty-second Street, was on the envelope. We raced down to Manhattan and stopped in front of the tired-looking building that housed the newspaper. A sleepy guard opened his eyes long enough to tell me where to go, and I took a rickety elevator to the editorial floor.

It was empty except for a man hunched over a desk and wearing a green eyeshade.

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