The Other Black Girl(45)

Nella was about as ready to give up publishing as she was to give up health insurance and paid vacations and Summer Fridays. She wasn’t going out that easily. Plus, how would she explain to Eight Bar why she suddenly wanted to quarter limes and dry pint glasses again?

Her mind was set. She started toward Richard’s corner office, even though she’d never done so unannounced. Ever. In fact, it had been two years since she’d had any kind of one-on-one time with Richard, and that time could hardly be called spontaneous. Once a new hire signed all of the paperwork, suffered through orientation, and shadowed another assistant, each was “required” to sit down and have tea with Richard Wagner before their first official day.

Hardly anything at Wagner was seriously required. Technically, you could wear a shirt with the words “I’m Rooting for Everybody Black” on it if you wanted to, because there was nothing about a dress code in the contract. Wagner held itself to a silently agreed upon “professional” standard, and when the occasional foolish intern broke this rule, employees showed them what time it was with the raise of an eyebrow or a chilly, withering stare.

Attending Richard’s tea wasn’t in your contract, either. But, as Nella had been fortunate enough to learn from her predecessor, Katie, you weren’t doing your career any favors if you declined the invitation.

Richard Wagner was something of an enigma to anyone who knew him. He had so much money that it didn’t show. He was the most “publishing” where it counted; he was on top of all the hot trends, or at least the ones that “mattered.” He threw parties so exclusive that assistants would find reasons to snoop through their bosses’ offices in the hopes of finding an invitation that had been carelessly left on a desk.

But what set Richard most apart from many other editors was that he was almost always in the office. He very rarely observed Summer Fridays, and the last week of August was as important to him as the first week of fall.

Some supposed this was because he was the first of the Wagners to venture into books rather than politics. Legend had it that when he decided in college that he didn’t want to be a senator, his parents pretended he didn’t exist for five years. A few years later, when he decided he wanted to open his own publishing house, a few notable literary heads agreed to help him—and by the time Wagner first opened its doors in 1972, the entire industry was scrambling to welcome him. His parents were, too.

More than four decades later, Richard was the Publishing Man to Please. A conversation with him forever marked you in his eyes, and one-on-one conversations with him were few and far between. So, it didn’t just make sense to have tea with him—it was absolutely imperative.

“If you really want to be an editor,” Katie had told Nella, “you have to be strategic about it.”

Being strategic was what had led Nella to Wagner in the first place. It was no coincidence that she’d applied to the publishing house that had published her favorite book. She wanted to traipse the halls the two women she’d studied diligently in college had traipsed. She wanted to sit at the desk where Kendra Rae Phillips and Diana Gordon had sat when they talked over edits.

The morbid side of her, though, was particularly curious about what had happened to Kendra Rae. She’d disappeared from the spotlight the year after Burning Heart set the country on fire, following some kind of media spectacle, and hadn’t been heard from since. Nella had had a hard time verifying the details of her disappearance, although Black Twitter had concocted some pretty believable theories. Except none of them held water. And that left Nella wondering: As Diana Gordon released book after book, year after year, what had happened to the Black woman who had been her editor? The Black woman who, according to Diana’s acknowledgments, had had “an invaluable hand in crafting Evie into who she is?”

Naturally, this question nagged at her brain again as she and Owen rode a Midtown-bound R train together on her way to meet Richard for her new-hire tea two years ago. Owen had offered to take the ride up to the Wagner office with her, bless his sweet heart, since he’d figured he could run errands in the city while she sipped and supped with one of the most influential men in the publishing industry (according to GQ).

“So, I know we went over this, but… why don’t you want to ask Richard if he knows what Kendra Rae is up to these days?” Owen asked Nella, their knees bumping one another as their train stopped at Prince, then 8th Street. “He might even still be in touch with her, and then he could put you guys in touch.”

Nella shook her head. “That would just be poor manners. I can’t go in there, guns blazing, asking him if he knows what happened to Kendra Rae Phillips. Then he’d think that I’m some kind of amateur stalker.”

“But aren’t you?” he asked. “I thought you wanted to be the next Kendra Rae. That’s why you only wanted Wagner.”

She bristled; he saw it. They rode without saying anything for a moment, until he spoke up again. “Can I ask another question now?”

“Do I have a choice?” Nella asked, trying to sound like she was kidding.

“No. Why are you meeting some old white publishing dude to drink tea in his empty office on a Sunday?”

Nella shrugged. “It’s just… what you do.”

Owen gave her a look.

“Baby, you just have to understand… it’s tradition.”