Page 9

I can almost feel the silver company card in the large pocket of my pea coat throbbing like a heartbeat. Ready for action. Chanting, Free. Free. Free.

I haven’t eaten all day in anticipation.

I feel like a kid at Christmas.

“Delilah! Over here!” One shrill voice overshadows the others, and I feel an elbow jutting into my side. I stumble forward as Giselle, completely ignoring me, wiggles her outstretched fingers toward Delilah Ray until she’s hugging her like a beloved sailor returned after a decade.

It’s been two days.

Delilah Ray, posh Instagram influencer with about a million followers watching her every move (and, in turn, buying her book describing her every move), lives in Nashville.

Giselle is my boss. Actually, one of my many, many bosses, but specifically the one directly above me. She is five ten. Her hair is a sheet of platinum blond. And after one semester abroad a decade ago, she still likes to tell everyone to be quiet when she’s on her “mobile” and how “knackered” she is after a night on the town. Oh. And she loathes me.

But honestly, how was I supposed to know, my first week in, that Sam in Contracts was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Giselle when he asked me—also reeling from my own on-again, off-again relationship—out? To borrow Giselle’s words, it bloody well wasn’t a picnic for me either. Nobody likes to be used as bait to lure in a jealous ex-girlfriend who just so happens to be your new and extraordinarily spiteful boss. Anyway, two years later, despite the fact that we are all adults, she still hasn’t forgiven me.

Giselle and Delilah Ray are locked in one of those exhausting, ignore-everyone-else-in-the-place-while-talking-at-top-volume sort of greetings, taking up so much space that it’s hard to see the new figure who has just stepped inside behind them. I perk up, however, at the hint of a red knitted sweater in the distance and step on tiptoe for visual confirmation.

Sure enough, Oswald pops out from behind them, looking around in bewilderment. In fact . . . he looks a bit like a flight risk. Oh dear.

At once, I hurry over to greet him.

“Oswald, so glad you could come,” I say, closing the gap between us. I grab his hand and give it a hearty shake, partly in greeting, partly to keep him from retreat. “And look at you.” I take in the thick red turtleneck curling around his neck. “Is that a new sweater from the missus?”

His huge eyes blink behind his round glasses as he struggles to focus on me. Poor Oswald. Brilliant with words. Incredibly knowledgeable of his craft. Terrific in sales. Terrible with people.

“My turtleneck?” he says at last, looking dubiously down at his sweater. “Well . . . yes.”

I smile patiently. “And did you get all settled in at the hotel?”

Another lengthy pause. At last, a nod.

“Wonderful.” I smile wider. “Wonderful.” The next twenty-four hours are going to be a breeze, clearly. I strike for another topic. “I’m sorry your wife wasn’t able to make the trip. What’s she going to be up to this weekend? Something fun, I hope?”

The pause is excruciating, nearly as long as his page-long descriptions of deciduous trees. “Reading.”

“And?” I nod encouragingly, waiting for more.

Oswald blinks, and I realize that’s the end of his story.

Well, enough chitchat. It’s time to get down to the fun part anyway.

And besides, there’s a real plus here, I remind myself. The bright side of having an Oswald—and not, say, a Delilah Ray—is that Oswald is, above all things, compliant. Passive to the point of me begging for his opinions on marketing strategy and cover designs. I’ve always had to be careful when editing his latest books (covering topics like “Is the variegated liriope really the best way to color the border of your woodland garden?”) because he, master of horticulture, with a surprisingly large social media following that tracks his every garden-loving move, would take even the slightest question in my edit to heart and completely flip his world upside down to agree with me (who, for the record, can’t keep a succulent alive).

Being an editor is a dangerous position of power, really. One snap of my fingers and he’d be making “Concrete gardens: the way of the future” the subject of his next release.

But today?

Today I’m going to use my power to its full advantage.

“Now, for our afternoon,” I say, scrabbling in my bag for my keys, “I found this lovely little bistro downtown and took the liberty of snagging us some reservations. I thought we could start things off with a nice cup of coffee and brunch and go from there. Are you a fan of fish? I hear the flounder with shrimp stuffing is something else—”

“I’m allergic,” puts in Oswald, and he looks so startled at his own interruption that his mouth claps shut.

“Allergic,” I say, fumbling momentarily, then see he’s starting to turn red. Not to worry. I pivot with ease. “That’s fine. Completely fine. There are plenty of other specialties there as well. I’m sure—”

“I can’t eat there,” interrupts Oswald again, and just as before he pops his mouth shut.

“Oh.” Given the man is so passive he once tried to tell me “not to worry about that next book advance” (to which his agent swiftly stepped in, negating everything Oswald said on his behalf), I have to admit his response is a bit surprising. I once saw Oswald interviewed on a morning coffee show where the host mistakenly picked up the script meant for the following week and, for thirty minutes straight, asked him about some book called The Murderer’s Dilemma. Did Oswald correct him? No. He just sat there, ears flaming red, answering to the name Skippy G and giving mumbled responses about what he was going to do now that he was released from prison after thirty years behind bars.