Surfside Sisters(43)

“Sit.” Sally pointed to a sofa.

Keely sat.

A tall, thin, frighteningly sophisticated woman with black lipstick entered the room.

    “Keely, this is Fiona, my assistant. She’ll be doing a lot of the work with you.”

“Hi, Fiona,” Keely said.

“Hi, Keely,” Fiona replied, and smiled, and all at once she was enchantingly friendly.

Fiona asked, “Would you like water? Coffee? Scotch?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

Fiona sank into a chair.

“Great,” Sally said. “So, you lucky thing, I checked your Facebook page and you’re more gorgeous than your posts. Great hair. You’re not married, no kids, right?” While Keely nodded, Sally continued, “You’re young, your book is good. We all want to see the spoiled rich girl get her comeuppance. We’re going to meet Juan Polenski, he’s your editor, for lunch, but first I want to go over some things with you. Standard boilerplate contractual blah blah blah. Here we go.” She handed Keely a sheaf of documents.

For the next half hour, Sally walked Keely through the legalese, explaining terms like sub-rights and stressing the paragraph where Keely agreed the Hazlitt and Hopkins Literary Agency would receive fifteen percent of all money due the author.

“It’s worth it to you, honey, believe me. You do the creative stuff, we work on these contracts and argue with the publishers. But you don’t have much to argue about. You have landed in a big fat garden of roses. So. Tell me about your next book.”

Keely stalled. “My next book?”

“Read the words. This is a two-book contract. They’re investing a lot in Rich Girl. They want to ride on that, and so do I, and so do you.”

Keely chewed her lip. “Does the next book have to have the same characters?”

“No. Not at all. But it should be set on Nantucket. That name is a powerful draw.”

“Okay…”

“It should feel the same, though. Young people. Sex. Complications.”

    “I was thinking, something about rich summer people and the son falls in love with the maid…I’ll title it Poor Girl.”

“Love it! Oops, we’ve got to meet Juan. Let’s go.”

Sally led Keely between canyons of brick and steel to Cipriani, an Italian restaurant on Wall Street. They were seated, and a moment later a stunningly handsome man appeared at the table.

“Juan Polenski,” the man said, kissing Keely’s hand. “Keely Green. I am so happy to meet you. You and I are going to have a lot of fun together.”

“Stop it, Juan,” Sally said. “Keely, don’t get your hopes up. He bats for the other side. Juan, don’t I get a kiss?”

While Sally and Juan were bantering, a pretty young woman with gorgeous blue eyes leaned forward. “Keely, I’m Melissa Anderson, Juan’s assistant. Anything you need, let me know. And congratulations on Rich Girl. I love this book!”

And they were off, talking more than eating, laughing at in-jokes, drinking red wine and eating amazingly delicious pasta. Keely could only swallow a few bites. She was in such a state of excitement she could barely sip her water, although the wine did help. Here it was, a dream come true, lunch with her agent and her editor because of a book she’d written! She had stepped into paradise.

“See that big fat guy over there?” Sally whispered, leaning close to Keely. “He’s a literary giant, he’s won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. He’s a famous womanizer, he tries to seduce every female he comes across.”

“Yeah,” Melissa added, “and if the woman refuses him, he’ll say, ‘Come on, honey, I won the Pulitzer.’?”

Keely had scarcely finished laughing when Juan signaled for the check. Almost before she could believe she was talking to her editor, Keely was left standing on the sidewalk with Sally, Melissa, and Juan.

They took a cab to Ransome & Hawkmore Publishing. The offices were in a massive stone building shouldering up to a massive steel and chrome building. The foyer was impressive, and the reception area on the thirty-second floor was elegant, and then, behind the scenes, a warren of cubicles and offices and mysterious hallways spread in all directions.

    They settled in a conference room, where they were quickly joined by people from marketing, publicity, digital sales, and social media. Plans were unrolled, folders handed out, and Keely tried not to smile too much.

“What’s the title of your next book?” Juan asked.

Buoyed with red wine and happiness, Keely said, “Poor Girl.”

“I like it,” Juan said. “So we’ll publish Rich Girl next June.”

“Next June?” Keely asked.

Sally leaned forward. “Publication of a novel calls for lots of production, Keely. They’ve got to create the cover, plan publicity and distribution, send advanced readers’ copies out for quotes.”

“While you’re waiting for next June,” Juan said, “you can write Poor Girl. We’ll want to publish that the following summer.”

“We need to have an author photo taken of you,” Melissa said. “Sally, I’ll talk with you about that.” Turning to Keely, she said, “You can come back into the city in a month or so, right?”