He leered and replaced his hand on my knee. “How will you know unless you give it a go?”
I plastered a thoughtful look on my face. “Well, that’s true. I suppose I could ask Alex what he thinks. That’s my sweetie. Alex Black. Detective Inspector Alex Black of Scotland Yard.”
My pink-haired Romeo snatched his hand off my knee and moved a few seats down the wall. A warm glow grew within me as I thought about Alex, thought about being with Alex, spending my days and nights with Alex. He was unlike any man I’d ever known—he was loving and thoughtful and the tiniest bit jealous, which did wonderful things for my ego. He was supportive, too. True, he had made some comments at Daniel’s that were awfully critical, but I knew that was because he expected a lot from me. No one had ever expected the best from me before. It was a heady feeling, knowing he believed I wouldn’t fail. Best of all, as the last seven blissful nights together had shown, he was constant. His attention to me never wavered, his desire never faded, not once. Each evening I fell asleep lying in his arms, each day he called me during a break just to talk. If this wasn’t love, it was a convincing approximation. I basked in the warmth of his affection, feeling secure and truly wanted for the first time in my life.
The timer went off on my dryer, interrupting my happy musing. I collected my towels, and smiled at the young man with pink hair as I was leaving. He avoided my eye. I made a mental note to tell Alex later about the newfound perk of dating a detective, but alas, the opportunity never arrived.
“What do you mean, it lacks coherence? The characters are exactly the same all the way through the story. That’s coherence, isn’t it?”
Daniel bent upon me a gaze so filled with anguish that I squirmed uncomfortably in the chair he had waved me into. It was late morning, an hour after his assistant had called to tell me he wanted to talk over my story with me, but my discomfort had nothing to do with the fact that I was sitting in a pool of sunlight streaming in through an open window. It was that look of pained pity in his deep brown eyes that left me twitchy and restless.
“In this case, no, that’s not what is meant by coherence. Your story is…it’s…”
My heart stopped, solidified into something resembling lead, and dropped into my stomach. Whatever it was, the verdict wasn’t going to be good. I fought back the urge to run and steeled myself. As long as the problem was something easily fixed, I’d be OK.
“Go ahead,” I rasped. “I can take the truth. I want the truth. I know it needs work, so if you tell me what’s wrong with it, I’ll fix it.”
A grimace flickered across his face. “It’s not as easy as pointing out the flaws and telling you to fix them.”
My stomach dropped to my shoes. “It’s awful, isn’t it? You’re saying it’s terrible?”
“No, not that, I wouldn’t say it was terrible—”
“Then what’s wrong? Daniel, I’m not stupid, and I don’t have a fragile little ego that’s going to crack if you point out the areas that need a bit of polishing, so go ahead—be honest. Tell me what you think and what I can do to make it better.”
His shoulders slumped. I waited silently, gnawing on my lower lip while he gathered his thoughts.
“It’s not a matter of simply polishing a few rough spots, Alix. You need to reexamine the storyline as a whole. You have no explanation for the characters’ underlying motivations, you haven’t explored the causality of their actions, there’s no balance in the ebb and flow between plot and story, your pacing…well, your pacing never gives the reader a chance to catch their breath. I’m sorry, but you wanted me to be honest, and my honest opinion is that your story needs significant rethinking, replotting, and rewriting.”
Oh, God, it was worse than I had imagined! I couldn’t decide whether to be angry or hurt at his comments. I decided anger was the safer route. “Well, I’m sorry you think that, Daniel, but I do have an agent, and she thinks the story has great potential. Maybe you’ve just missed the point of it.”
He frowned and rubbed his knuckles. “You didn’t tell me you had an agent. That’s wonderful news. Has she…erm…read the whole story?”
A wave of nausea bit deep in my stomach as the anger faded under the pity clearly visible in his eyes. Daniel was being polite, but no politeness in the world could disguise what he thought: I didn’t cut it as a writer. He was too nice to come right out and say I wasn’t good enough, but I was very adept at reading between the lines. Failure was no stranger to me.
“Well, not all of it. Just the first three chapters. But she has the whole manuscript now. I dropped it off when I left you your copy.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. The pain grew within me as I struggled to think of something to say, something that wasn’t pleading or begging with him to take back his words.
“Do you think…” I swallowed back the lump of tears aching in my throat. “Do you think it’s so bad that when she sees the whole thing she’ll want me to rewrite it?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at me with those big brown eyes swimming with pain.
“I see,” I said after a few moments of profound silence. I licked my lips, surprised to find them numb. I looked down at the bag in my hand. My hand was numb, too. Nerveless. It was odd how the bone-deep bite of pain sometimes had that effect of deadening everything in its path—skin, muscles, a soul. The mixture of concern, regret, and pity on Daniel’s handsome face forced me into speaking when my bloodless lips wished to remain drawn into a tightened grimace. I had to say something. It wasn’t his fault that I sucked as a writer. Swamped with anger, pain, and guilt that I had put him in this position, I did my best to pretend nothing was wrong. “Hey, Daniel, don’t worry about it! I’ll be OK. You haven’t said anything that hasn’t been said to me before.”
“Alix, your story has a great deal of potential…”
“But it fails in execution. I get the idea, and honestly, I’m OK with it.” His words, the truth, had cut my insides to ribbons, but I wasn’t about to tell him how I was bleeding to death. I have always found that when there’s nothing else left, dignity means everything. I lifted the strange, heavy hand that I recognized as mine and told the fingers to squeeze his shoulder gently. “I told you I wanted your honest opinion. It means a lot to me, so stop beating yourself up because you had to be brutal with me.”
“Oh, God, Alix, I didn’t mean to come across as brutal.”
I bent down and pressed my cold lips against his cheek. “It’s OK,” I repeated, the words spinning in my mind. My brain must have been numb as well. I couldn’t seem to hold on to my thoughts, but I knew I had to get out of there, get away from Daniel’s sympathetic misery before the feeling came back into my body and I snapped. I slipped away, heedless to his entreaties to stay and talk the book over.
I walked away from the noise and bustle of Leicester Square, aware of nothing but the simple pleasure of the rhythm of my feet beating against the ground as I walked the streets of London. I wanted to cry, but despite the heat of the mid-summer day, my body was too cold to manufacture tears. I wanted to scream, but the words were voiceless howls caught deep inside me. I suddenly stopped, shivering despite the sweat soaking my back. More than anything else, I wanted to be wrapped in the comfort of Alex’s warm arms, but he was at work. Rubbing my arms to eliminate some of my inner chill, I spotted a phone box and hurried to it. Alex was the answer to my problem. I knew he wasn’t expecting to be at his office that morning, but he had given me his cell phone number to be used in emergencies. I looked down at my bloodless, trembling hand. This was an emergency.
“Alix! Are you all right? Daniel called an hour ago to say you left his house very upset. I called your flat, but you weren’t home. Where are you?”
I looked around. Did I know this area? It didn’t look familiar, but a glance behind me gave me some information. “Apparently I’m at the Tower of London. You aren’t at your office?”
“No, we’re on the road. What do you mean apparently? Don’t you k
now where you are? I know you’re upset about Daniel’s comments, but that’s no reason to run off half-cocked.”
Alex’s voice dropped and took on the slightly muffled sound that results when a hand lightly covers the mouthpiece. Even diluted as it was, even though he was speaking to someone else, the rich, warm timbre of his voice rolled over me and left me filled with yearning. Need built up inside me, deep inside me, welling out from the shredded bits of my soul that lay bleeding and inert in the cage of my heart. I needed Alex. I needed him so much I could feel the dark, yawning void of need within me, I needed his comfort and warmth and tenderness. I needed him as I’d never needed anything before.
“Alex, when are you coming home? I—” My voice cracked with the strain of keeping from shrieking out all of the pain and hopelessness that consumed my soul. “I really need to be with you. Could you maybe meet me for lunch or something?”
A staccato burst of radio noise was audible even through his cell phone. “Alix, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk now. We’re conducting a raid and I must turn off my mobile phone.”
A sob escaped, burning its way up my throat. I clutched the black plastic housing of the phone with a grip that left my nerveless fingers tingling.
“Please, Alex, I really do need to talk to you. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, but—”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ring off now. I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.”
“Alex…” The word was a whisper, a plea torn from my heart.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he repeated in a low voice. “I can’t get away. We’ve been planning this raid for six weeks.”
“But I need you!” I’d never said those words to any person before. I clutched them now as if they were a lifeline to salvation. “I need you.”
“There’s nothing I can do now, Alix.” His voice was thick with frustration, but it was nothing compared to the pain he was heaping upon me. “This raid is important.”
The realization that Alex was no different from any of the other men in my past settled like a lead weight on my shoulders. My body bowed under the agony. I leaned my head into the phone, ignoring the curious looks of people walking by. “More important than me?” I asked softly, so softly I was sure he hadn’t heard.
But he did. His voice, that lovely voice that was all rounded vowels and richness that never failed to send shivers of delight down my spine, that voice that evoked a sense of intimacy ripe with promise, now scraped against me as if it were etching into stone. “Sweetheart, you know I…oh, Christ, what now? Terry, are you monitoring the radio? Isn’t that our suspect in the blue mini leaving the premises? Alix, I really must—”
Someone tapped on the door to the phone box. I turned around to stare, uncaring that the stranger would see the tears rolling down my cheeks. A harassed-looking woman with two kids hanging off her shopping bags made an impatient gesture. I nodded, but when I turned back to the phone, it was dead. Alex had hung up on me. Without even saying goodbye, he’d just hung up on me. On the worst day of my life. I meant that little to him.
My forehead fell forward to rest on top of the phone again as I hung up the receiver. Standing up straight seemed like too much effort. “Goodbye,” I whispered, sure that this time I would die of my broken heart.
I didn’t die, of course—people don’t really die of such a thing. Although I know from experience that the pain of rejection is often so great it does seem possible. But I wasn’t pathetic enough to simply crumple up at a phone box outside the Tower of London. Instead, I fell back on a trusted standby, a tried and true safety net. I made a mental list as I plodded home.
Topping the list in the position of supreme importance was having a good long cry, at least a two-tissue-box sobfest. Following that, I was going to have a nice wallow in self-pity, and then a lengthy sulk. Only after I had worked the sulk out of my system would I turn my attention to making voodoo dolls of Alex and inflicting horrible tortures upon them. After that, of course, I would eat three pounds of chocolate, be sick for a week, and slowly return to the land of the living with yet another layer of scars on my poor embittered heart.
Only this time I wasn’t sure I was going to recover from the wounds.
“Bawling, pity party, sulking, horrible tortures, chocolate,” I ran over the list as I made my way home. Lists are important things to have in your life. Lists are good. They keep you organized even when you don’t want to be organized. Focusing on the list kept my mind busy, occupied in a nice, orderly fashion without allowing it to dwell on the horrible, gut-wrenching pain Alex’s betrayal had caused…no! I wouldn’t think of that. The list! The list was important! I must remember the list! “Crying for hours and hours, huge wallow in self-pity, major sulking session, cruel, inhuman tortures that would render a mere mortal into a twisted, pain-riddled ball of flesh with absolutely no future but that involving endless torment, to be followed by a lifetime membership in Godiva’s Chockie of the Day club.”
Someone had propped the front door open to catch a draft in the house. I stumbled up the stairs, a fervent thanks trembling on my lips. I wasn’t up to struggling with the stroppy lock.
Ray thumped down the stairs toward me with a bag of garbage in her arms as I slowly made my way up to my floor.
“You look like hell,” she said, pausing as I lumbered upwards. “Freemar?”
“Crying jag, pity-a-thon, sulk city, tortures that would make the Spanish Inquisition look like a love-fest, enough chocolate to drop a horse,” I told her.
“A few of your favorite things?” she called up after me as I continued onward. I shook my head at the concern rife in her voice. I appreciated it, but couldn’t face it at that moment. Even one remotely nice word and I would break down, dissolve into a big old puddle of misery. While I knew that was inevitable, I wanted to do it in private, not on the stairs where everyone would witness the pitiful remains of my life.
“Freemar?”
I ignored her and kept walking.
“Alix, are you all right? Something the matter?” Ray stomped back up the stairs after me and grabbed my arm. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
I frowned. “No, that comes after I eat enough chocolate to fill a bathtub. I can’t be sick now. I have a list and I have to stick to it.”
“A list?” Her forehead wrinkled in concern.
I nodded. The list took on all-encompassing importance in my poor heated brain. I had a list of tasks, therefore I must accomplish them. It was as simple as that.
“The order is of extreme importance,” I told her. “First things first, Ray. First I cry for eighteen hours straight, then I fall into self-pity and don’t emerge for a year or two, then I wreak vengeance upon Alex’s hideous mortal form via voodoo dolls, then I consume such quantities of chocolate as to cause diabetes in anyone who comes within a five-mile radius of me, then I get sick. You see the importance of the order of the list, don’t you?”
“Erm…”
I nodded at her again and started up the next flight of stairs. “First I cry…”
“Bert!” Ray bellowed.
“…then I descend into pity hell…”
“Bert, come out here!”
I rounded the landing nodding to myself as Ray stood with her hands on her hips, yelling through the open door of her flat. “Aren’t you out of the bath yet?”
I was sorry she was worried about me, but concern for others wasn’t on the list, so I couldn’t devote any energy to that now.
“It’s an emergency! Freemar is having man troubles!”
Later, after I had worked through everything on the list, then I would reassure her that I was OK.
“You’re better at this than I am. She’s blathering something about torturing Black!”
I ignored the voice drifting up from the floor below and let myself into my flat, then started rounding up items I would need for my first task. I plumped up the pillows on the daybed, looked in vain for tissue, and ended up cor
ralling all the available rolls of toilet paper instead, lining them up on the table next to the bed. I looked around the room.
“Pillows for sobbing into, bed to fling myself upon, toilet paper for nose-blowing and eye-mopping…I think it’s all there. Excellent. The weeping and wailing can commence. Oh, hell, now what?” The phone rang just as someone pounded on the door. I put my hands on my hips and glared at both before grabbing the phone with one hand and opening the door with the other. Ray stood in the doorway, a box of tissues in hand. She held them out to me.
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. I have a list, and it’s important I stay on schedule,” I told whoever was on the phone. “If I slack off on the crying time, I’ll have to shortshift the self-pity and sulking.”
“I thought you might want to talk,” Ray said hesitantly, still offering the box of tissues.
“Alix Freemar? This is Maureen Tully. I’d like to talk to you about Ravening Raptures.”
“My book?” A dim ray of hope shot through the black storm clouds of misery. She wanted to talk about my manuscript? That was good, wasn’t it? That meant Daniel’s assessment of my writing talent was wrong! I put my mental list on hold, waved Ray into the flat, closed the door, and used my foot to snag the ladderback chair next to the table. “Oh, hello, Ms. Tully. Sure, I’d be happy to talk to you about my story. I take it you’ve had a chance to read—”
“I’m sending you a check for half of my editing fee.”
I blinked at Ray perched uncomfortably on the edge of the chaise. Was the story so good she didn’t do any editing on it? No, even I didn’t believe that! “You’re sending me a check? I don’t understand, why are you—”
“I’m invoking the refusal clause in the contract. I don’t feel the entire manuscript has held up to the promise of the initial chapters. As I’ve done some work on it, I’m only refunding you half of my editing fee.”
My knees weakened and gave way under me. I plopped down onto the ground with a hollow, “What?”