Original Love. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ is all so strange. You’re now a divorced writer of romance. We can’t let P. Rudolph Underhill go on the cover now. That would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it?”

      Oh, no, we wouldn’t want hypocrisy in the publishing industry. So Desiree Holland, writer of sassy interracial African-American romantic comedies, is now a middle-aged, graying, divorced white man with no way of letting the world know he is a writer and no place to call home.

      “Look,” I say as I feel the lint in my pockets, “I know this will be a lot to ask, Henry, but after the lawyers and all…”

      Henry blinks at me. “A little tight on money?”

      A boa constrictor couldn’t squeeze a nickel out of me. “Yeah, I’m strapped. I had to sell my Mustang to pay my lawyer and buy the plane ticket here.”

      Henry still blinks. “Ouch.”

      “So, would it be possible, you know, if—”

      Henry stops blinking. “Say no more, Pete. I’ll see what I can do about a pre-advance advance.”

      I’ve never heard of such a thing. “A what?”

      “I’ll get you something to tide you over for a while.”

      Which means that I’ll get some chump change until I produce.

      He stands. This means that the meeting is almost over. “You have any working titles for Desiree’s next book?”

      Desiree’s next book. I have plenty of title ideas for my next book, but I don’t share them with Henry. He’s promised to see about some money—which I might be able to keep one hundred percent of this time—and I don’t want to ruin that chance. I will simply write two books, one for Henry and one for me, and I’ll give them both to Henry. Or…I’ll give Henry his Desiree Holland book and go out on my own into the publishing world with my own name.

      And that scares the living lint out of me.

      “You have thought up some titles, haven’t you?”

      “I don’t usually start with a title, Henry.” Besides, the marketing department or an editor usually titles everything anyway. “Uh, how about…A Whiter Shade of Pale?”

      Henry smiles. “Funny, and very sixties. With a song tie-in to boot. Any others?”

      “What about…Devil’s Dance?”

      He nods. “Plays off The Devil to Pay. But your first novel didn’t have the word ‘devil’ in the title. Hard to market that unless we change Ashy to Ashy Devil. That can be arranged, you know. Might give that novel another boost, too, maybe get it a movie of the week or something. I hear BET’s doing its own movies these days. Give me a third title possibility.”

      Henry’s rule of three is still in effect. Almost all the romance novels he edits have three parts whether the author intends to have them or not: beginning (back story), middle (rising action with lots of sex), and end (climax with lots of nasty sex). Once I begin writing my novel, I’ll have to send him chapters in batches of three, the first three loaded with back story, triple-spaced.

      “Um, how about…Holding My Breath?”

      He closes his eyes. “Kind of has a Waiting to Exhale feel about it.” His eyes pop open. “And we both know what happened to that novel. Great soundtrack and a wonderful movie.”

      Having a book turned into a movie is Olympus Publishing’s dream. That way the movie will sell the book, and the marketing department can rest its weary minds and concentrate more on the margaritas or whatever it actually concentrates on.

      “I’ll run these titles by marketing, see what they think.” He opens the door. “Where are you staying?”

      “On the Argo.”

      “The Argo?”

      “It’s my sailboat.”

      It is the only thing that my father, “the Captain,” left me that Edie let me keep. Dad had left me the house in Huntington in his will, but I had sold it to help pay for “Edie’s Dollhouse,” a 5,000-square-foot contemporary glass and metal monstrosity nestled in the woods back in Sewickley where it stuck out like a sore landfill. So now the money from my father’s death gives Edie a house I have no right to live in. I almost wish I had burned the Captain’s body on a funeral pyre on his boat—the old Viking way—to keep him from rolling over in his cremation box.

      “It’s moored in Huntington Harbor.”

      “I didn’t know you had a sailboat.”

      The Argo is one of the few things I own outright besides my laptop and a carry-on full of clothes. “It was my father’s.”

      “Was?”

      “Yeah. He died a while ago.” In 1990. Where has the time gone?

      Henry tugs on his ponytail. “And he named his boat after the ship from Jason and the Argonauts?”

      I nod, though I know the Captain didn’t name the Argo. That was simply the name of the boat when he bought the thirty-two-foot Thistle back in the early 1960s. He didn’t change the name because “it’s bad luck to change the name of a boat that’s still afloat.” That made the Captain “Jason,” I was his only Argonaut, and we had a few adventures together. We never found the Golden Fleece, though we did fight a few squalls and bluefish together on the Long Island Sound.

      “And you’re going to write a hot, steamy, romantic comedy on a sailboat in Huntington Harbor…in October.”

      I shrug. “Why not? I’ll have few distractions.” Even if I will be writing in a ghost ship, at least it will be a rent-free ghost ship. I think. The Captain was always good about paying his yacht club dues.

      Henry fishes in his pocket and pulls out a key ring. “You can stay inside where it’s warm at my summer place on Fire Island.” He slips off two keys.

      “It won’t be that cold on the boat.” Except for the memories. Those will be cold.

      “I won’t have it, Pete. You know where Cherry Grove is?”

      I blink. Of all the places…“Yeah, I do, but I’d rather—”

      “I’ve had a place there on Green Walk for years. It’s a one-bedroom, and you’ll just love it. We’ve even nicknamed the apartment complex ‘Elysium,’ you know, the resting place for the gods.” He hands me the keys. “It’s fully stocked with food, spotless, and it’s very secluded. And you’ll just love your neighbors, especially Coleman Muse. He’s quite a gifted poet. You have enough money for the ferry?”

      This is going way too fast. “Uh, yeah.” I stuff the keys into my pocket. “Um, does all this mean that I have a chance for a contract?”

      “Uh, no, not yet. You’re on spec until I see the first three chapters.”

      On spec. Wonderful. Two fairly successful novels, and I’m writing on speculation. I’m almost back to the dark days when I was sending out unsolicited manuscripts to agents and praying for a СКАЧАТЬ