The Other Black Girl(60)
Amy swiftly clapped her hands to get everybody’s attention. By the time her palms met a third time, a hush fit for a wake drifted throughout the room of two dozen people.
“Now that everyone’s settled,” Amy said, slipping off her crimson-tinted glasses, “I think we should get started.” She flipped her purplish-gray hair over her shoulders, then grabbed the wire-framed reading glasses that were always not far from the crook of her left elbow.
Legend had it that Amy’s tinted lenses, which she donned everywhere except meetings that required her to sit at the head of the table, had been prescribed by an optician when she was in her twenties. But Nella was almost positive that they were a bit of a power play. Hell, every person who’d been at Wagner for as long as Amy had—thirty-two years, in her case—had some sort of quirk that would have been inexcusable for someone new to the business. Or for any person of color. And when compared with other quirks, Amy’s wasn’t the strangest. Talking to her without seeing her eyes wasn’t as bad as talking to Alexander while he was also talking to someone in his Bluetooth earpiece, or talking to Oliver, a veteran editor who peppered every conversation with quotes from authors he’d worked with.
“Lots of great plans to talk about in today’s marketing meeting,” Amy continued, shuffling her papers in front of her. “We’re going to start with Vera’s two fall titles: one from Kitty Kruegler; the other from Colin Franklin. Any preference on which of your authors we start with, Ver?”
“Yes, actually. I’ve got one,” Nella heard Richard say. “Let’s start with Colin.”
“Might as well start with the cash cow, right?” Josh, ever the seconder, agreed. He’d managed to get to the meeting room early, and was separated from Richard only by Alexander—a notable feat.
Everyone laughed and nodded their heads eagerly. Nella jotted down this small joke—not the cash cow comment, but the level of confidence with which everyone at Wagner still beheld Colin Franklin. She knew it would please him the next time she and Vera sat down to give him a sales update, especially since numbers from his last few books had been fairly mediocre—and had been since 2009, actually, which was when the lead actress in the film adaptation of Not My Priest had sued Colin for harassment in the months following its premiere.
Who would agree to play Shartricia if his new book were adapted into a movie? No one famous, she assumed. More likely an unknown, looking for her big break. And maybe this would be it for her. Maybe the movie would blow up, lead to better roles, and she’d become an achiever of “firsts” that one would have thought another Black actress had already achieved. She’d go from acting to talk-show hosting, become the next Black Ellen—Blellen?—and then, after a few years, she’d go on to start her own Black women–run film company. Billions of dollars; millions of followers; EGOT status; a household name across the world. And once it was all said and done, perhaps nobody would remember the Shartricia role that had made it all possible.
Maybe.
But probably not. Black people wouldn’t forget. Not people like Nella; not anyone else who spent more than a few moments thinking or talking about Black representation in the media.
She shook her head, again considering the apology that Vera had asked her to make, again wondering what the media would think about Colin’s new book when it dropped… and how helpless she felt about all of it. Maybe she should have tried harder to get through to him during that meeting in Vera’s office.
“What’s most impressive of all about this book, though,” Vera was saying, “is that Colin has been particularly proactive in his quest to get deep inside the minds of his characters. And I think what he has here is going to ring so true with readers in these damaged communities, too. Because those are the folks whom these books are truly for. The people out in rural Ohio, and all the other rural areas in the United States.”
“But do they even read?” Sophie whispered into Gina’s ear, a bit too loudly. Gina covered her silent laughter with a hand.
Amy cut into Vera’s spiel. “I think that all sounds fabulous, Vera. I read this book and I have to say that it really is something else. It’s a true departure, if you don’t mind me saying, from what Colin has worked on in the past. The family scenes all really hit me. So hard, so deeply.”
Amy paused, then, which meant the woman had closed her eyes the way she often did in the middle of speaking, to emphasize her point. Nella felt her own eyelids grow heavy, which wasn’t an unusual response to Amy’s yoga voice. “After I finished the manuscript I called my younger son up at Yale, and told him I loved him for making the choices that he made. And for the choices he didn’t make.”
The balding man sitting in front of Nella nodded his head in agreement.
“I do have just one question, though.”
Another pause. Nella wondered if Amy was about to ask everyone to drop into downward-facing dog.
“I do wonder about audience, and how we’re going to get this book into the hands of people in those ravaged communities.”
Sophie reached over and squeezed Gina’s thigh, victorious.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to be that heartless old witch and ask everyone here at this table, as much as it pains me—do these people that Colin is writing about buy books? Or are they more focused on simply buying more opioids?”