Envy(12)

“You do look awfully tired,” Nadia returned, her smile just as sweet.

Noah intervened. “I’m sorry, Nadia. We must decline tonight. I’m going to take my wife home and tuck her in.”

“No, darling,” Maris said. She wouldn’t play the wounded wife in front of Nadia Schuller. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from this obligation.”

“It’s hardly that,” Nadia snapped. “More like a rare opportunity to talk shop with one of publishing’s most exciting novelists.”

The exciting novelist had yet to utter a peep. He was bleary-eyed and seemed oblivious to their conversation. Maris gave Nadia a knowing look. “Of course it is. That’s what I meant.” Back to Noah, she said, “You stay. I’ll see myself home.”

He regarded her doubtfully. “You’re sure?”

“I insist.”

“Then it’s settled.” Nadia gave the writer’s arm a sharp tug. Like a sleepwalker, he fell into step beside her. “You two say your good-byes while we go claim the table. Shall I order your usual, Noah?”

“Please.”

Then to Maris she called back airily, “Get some rest, dear.”


* * *


Parker Evans stared out the window into nothingness.

He couldn’t see the shoreline from this vantage point, but if he concentrated, he could hear the surf. Rain clouds obscured the moon. There was no other source of light, natural or man-made, to relieve the darkness.

From this first-floor window overlooking the rear of his property, Parker could see across a breast of lawn to the point where it sharply dropped off several degrees before sloping more gradually toward the beach. That edge of the lawn appeared to be the threshold of a black void that melded with the ocean farther out. No wonder ancient sailors had feared the unknown terrors that lay beyond the brink.

The room behind him was also dark, which wasn’t an oversight. He had deliberately left the lights off. Had they been on, his reflection would have appeared in the window glass. He preferred looking at nothing to looking at himself.

Anyway, he didn’t need a light in order to read the list of telephone numbers he held in his hand. In fact, he no longer needed to read them at all. He had committed them to memory.

His six months of waiting had finally paid off. Maris Matherly-Reed was trying to contact him.

As recently as yesterday, Parker had come close to scratching his plan and devising another. After months of not hearing from her, he figured that she had read the prologue of Envy, hated it, tossed it, and hadn’t even had the courtesy of sending him a rejection notice.

It had also occurred to him that the partial manuscript had never reached her desk, that mailroom staff had misdirected it or hurled it into a Dumpster within minutes of its delivery. Few of the major publishing houses even had slush piles anymore. Manuscripts either got in through literary agents or they didn’t get in at all.

If his pages had survived that first selection process, a junior editor who was paid to cull material from slush piles could have deep-sixed the Envy prologue before it ever got to her office. In any case, he’d almost convinced himself that this plan was a bust and that it would be necessary to plot another.

That was yesterday. Just went to show what a difference a day could make. Apparently the pages had made it to her desk, and she had read them, because today she had tried to contact him.

Marris Madderly Reade. The deputy had misspelled all three of her names. Parker hoped he was more adept at taking down telephone numbers.

Business, she had told Deputy Dwight Harris when he had asked why she was looking for P.M.E. She had business to discuss. Which could mean good news for Parker. Or bad. Or something in between.

She could be calling to say that his writing stunk and how dare he presume to send her prestigious publishing house such unsolicited shit. Or maybe she would take a softer approach and say that he had talent but that his material didn’t fit their present publishing needs, and wish him luck at placing his book with another house.

But those responses usually came in the form of rejection letters, written in language firm enough to discourage another submission but with enough encouragement to keep the rejected writer from jumping off the nearest bridge.

Ms. Matherly-Reed didn’t know where to address such a letter to him, however. He’d made certain that she couldn’t reach him by mail. So if her intention had been to reject Envy, he probably would never have heard from her at all. Instead, she had tried to track him down. From that, he deduced her response must be favorable.

But it wasn’t yet time to ice down the champagne. It was a little early to award himself a gold star for being such a clever boy. Before he got too carried away, he forced himself to keep his heartbeat regular, his breathing normal, and his head clear. Success or failure hinged not on what he’d done up to this point but on what he did next.

So instead of celebrating this milestone, he had stared for hours out this window into the rainy, moonless night. While the calm surf swept the shoreline, he weighed his options. While his distant neighbors on St. Anne slept, or watched late-night TV, or made love under their summer-weight bedcovers, Parker Evans plotted.

It helped that he already knew the ending to this story. Not once did he consider changing the outcome from his original plot. He never considered letting Maris Matherly-Reed’s attempt to reach him go unacknowledged, never thought about dropping this thing here and now.