By Any Other Name(9)

This morning, I’d sent Noa a link to the cake balloons for her launch, and she’d responded with a GIF of a woman being lifted off into the Manhattan skyline by a vast bouquet of balloons.


Let me know what time you’ll be passing by. I’ll wave you onward from my window. Wonder where you’ll land. . . .



I know Noa lives at 800 Fifth Avenue, and I am guilty of having scoped out the building while jogging once or twice. I can see her there, at her luxury window, a pair of binoculars pressed to her eyes. I like to picture her looking something like a young Anjelica Huston.

Noa’s working title for this next book is Thirty-Eight Obituaries—we’ll have to change that, but the premise is great. It’s going to be about a young journalist who lands her first job at her dream newspaper, only to find it’s in the obituary department. The hook, as Alix pitched it to me, is that the protagonist’s first assignment is to prepare the obituary for a young, hard-living enfant-terrible sculptor. In case he dies doing one of his increasingly dangerous artistic stunts, they’ll have the obit ready to go. Cue the unexpected love story.

It’s so on-brand Noa Callaway that it seems like it should write itself. So what is going on with Noa that she can’t finish it?

I suddenly wonder whether Alix knew something was wrong with this next book. It was due before she went on maternity leave. Was part of her decision not to come back . . . her anticipation of a Noa Callaway catastrophe?

“When Alix left on maternity leave,” Sue says, “she told me she had faith in you, Lanie. I can understand that during her absence, you’ve been in a holding pattern with Noa. But now—”

I meet Sue’s eyes because this feels like the moment she’s going to lower the boom. I think of my favorite Noa Callaway line, from her third novel, Fifty Ways to Break Up Mom and Dad:

Life’s greatest mystery is whether we shall die bravely.

If my career is about to die, I’d like to meet its end bravely. But I don’t feel brave. I feel terrified, like I’m losing my balance at the end of a plank.

“I need you,” Sue says, “to take over.”

“Take over,” I say slowly. “Noa Callaway?”

Am I not fired? Apparently, I’m not fired.

Sue looks at the photos of her sons, at her ferns. Then at me, and she sighs.

“As you know, Noa is . . . difficult.”

I feel her waiting for me to agree. I haven’t met Noa personally, nor spoken to her by phone, but from the interactions we’ve had, I consider her eccentricities to be like those of any genius. She can be cryptic and occasionally short via email, but more frequently, there’s a sparkle to our correspondence that sets it apart.

When we worked together on her sixth book, Twenty-One Games with a Stranger—about two rival gamers who hate each other in their waking lives but slowly fall in love in their dreams—Alix wanted to cut a scene where the characters play chess at a gaming convention. She said it was out of step with the techie aesthetic that was working in the rest of the book.

I learned to play chess from BD the summer my mother died, and I sensed that the chess scene in Noa’s draft was a metaphor for the larger romantic relationship. The interplay of strategy and patience. In my notes to Alix, I spelled out how Noa might drive this point home with a few light edits. It was the first time Alix copied and pasted a paragraph of mine directly into one of her editorial letters. The day after Alix sent the letter off, I got an invitation to play online chess from Noa Callaway. She didn’t have to mention that she’d sensed my influence in the letter. We’ve been playing ever since.

“Given the circumstances,” Sue says, “it makes sense to promote you. Provisionally.”

I blink.

“Tomorrow you’ll become Peony’s youngest editorial director. Provisionally.”

“Sue,” I whisper. That’s a big promotion. “Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sue says. “This is only a trial. Three months. If you can’t get a number-one-New-York-Times-bestseller-worthy manuscript out of Noa by then, I’ll find someone who can.”

“I can do it,” I say without thinking. I have no idea how, but I’ll find a way.

If I can’t get Noa to deliver a great book, it’s not just our fiscal year that will suffer. It’s my whole career. It’s the Casablanca reboot. It’s the paranormal ballet romance written by the sweetest seventy-year-old former dancer with an unparalleled gift for hot sex scenes. It’s the #ownvoices imprint Aude and I dreamed of launching next year. “I won’t let you down, Sue.”

“Good.” Sue slides me the stack of papers. “Sign here.”

“What’s this?” I ask as I realize exactly what it is. A detailed non-disclosure agreement.

“Just a precaution,” Sue says.

“Oh my god,” I say as it hits me. “Wait, I’m not actually going to meet Noa Callaway? Noa never meets anyone in person.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Sue’s smile is stiff and a little too wide. “Focus on the book, Lanie. Get Noa Callaway to deliver. And buckle your seat belt. You may be in for some turbulence.”





Chapter Four


At seven o’clock, at the tail end of the launch’s cocktail hour, I’m waiting in the greenroom at the Hotel Shivani, halfway recovered from my meeting with Sue. My speech is memorized. I had to write it a month ago so it could be vetted by Alix, by Terry, and, ostensibly by Noa—though she never remarked on it to me. All I have to change is the line about me standing in for Noa’s editor to say I am Noa’s editor. That should be easy enough.