“I cannot WAIT until we’re in California next week, can you?” Priya said.
Izzy closed her eyes and let herself smile. “California. It’s going to be warm, and we’re going to take books out to the pool, and relax on lounge chairs in the sun, and let our skin get browner. Aren’t we?”
Priya nodded. “Oh yeah, definitely we are.”
They both knew this was mostly just a fantasy. They were going for a conference, so they’d be running around carrying boxes full of books or stacks of name tags or escorting authors from place to place nonstop. But it was nice to dream. Plus, editorial assistants almost never got to go to conferences like this. Izzy and Priya only got to go because their bosses’ most demanding authors were going to be there, the ones who basically needed a door-to-door escort in every situation. Sure, she’d be dealing with huge egos all week—even more than usual—but she was grateful for the short break from the office.
She also needed a few days away from her parents, whom she was so very sick of living with. She loved them, she did! But they always talked to her first thing in the morning and asked so many questions at all times of day, and she felt like she had to text them when she was going to be out late. It all made her feel stifled, frustrated.
Izzy got to her desk and sighed. Another stack of books had appeared there overnight. Great, more books for her to deal with. She pushed them aside.
She spent her first hour doing all the work she always started her week with—checking her own email, skimming through her boss’s email for any manuscripts that had come in overnight or fires she needed to put out, checking sales numbers for their releases from the previous week, reassuring authors and agents that yes, Marta would get back to them eventually （that was…mostly true）， the usual.
Oh, she also had to send a slightly different version of the email she sent every two weeks to Beau Towers. Beau Towers: former child star, son of two celebrities, famous first for being a teenage heartthrob, then for his general rich-kid dirtbag-type behavior—fights in nightclubs, crashing sports cars, smashing paparazzi cameras, etc. And then there had been the multiple screaming matches he’d gotten into during and after his father’s funeral; they’d been all over the tabloids.
Almost immediately after the funeral, Marta had given him a splashy book deal for his memoir. But well over a year ago, Beau Towers had basically disappeared. He was definitely still alive; his agent periodically sent emails swearing Beau was working on the book, though his deadline had long since passed. But Marta had told her to email him regularly to check in, so she sent him an email every other Monday at 9:45, like clockwork. He never emailed her back, but she’d stopped expecting a response long ago.
She reread the email that she’d sent two weeks ago. When she’d first started sending these emails, they’d been polite, professional, earnest queries asking him to check in with her, or with Marta, or to reach out if he had questions, or offering to set up conference calls with potential ghostwriters—all basically ways of saying, “Please, please, please email me back!!!” without actually saying those words. But after many months of sending the messages with no response, and as everything in her job got more and more stressful, she’d cracked.
Now she had fun with these, since she was certain no one but her read them—not Beau Towers, not his agent, and not Marta, whom she always cc’d.
To: Beau Towers
CC: Marta Wallace, John Moore
From: Isabelle Marlowe
Mr. Towers,
Happy February! February is the shortest month of the year, along with being Black History Month, American Heart Month, National Bird Feeding Month, and National Snack Food Month! （I knew about the first two, but not the second two—we learn something new every day!） I hope the transition to a new month is treating you well! I just wanted to reach out again to check in and say I hope the writing is going well, and that if you need any assistance as you work on your memoir, you shouldn’t hesitate to email or call me. Please let me know if Marta or I can help you with anything at all.
Kind regards,
Isabelle Marlowe
Editorial Assistant to Marta Wallace
She let herself grin at that. Look, she had to find her fun where she could in this thankless, stressful, overwhelming job, okay?
She put her fake cheery email persona back on and typed Beau Towers’s email address into the TO box.
To: Beau Towers
CC: Marta Wallace, John Moore
From: Isabelle Marlowe
Mr. Towers,
Have you read any good books lately? I’ve read a number of excellent celebrity memoirs in the past few months—Michael J. Fox, Jessica Simpson, and Gabrielle Union all have fantastic memoirs out! People insist on giving me books for Christmas, even though I work in a place where books literally fall out of the sky, but I didn’t have any of those books before and was both surprised and delighted to find that I was absorbed by them. Just in case you’re struggling with anything in your memoir, I thought maybe you could read one of those for inspiration! I’m happy to recommend more books to you at any time, or offer you any other assistance that you need. （FYI, Barack Obama’s is far too long, though Michelle’s is great! But really, would you want to edit a former president?） Looking forward to talking to you soon!