This performance was obviously supposed to generate a feeling of contrition in Florence, or at the very least a small quiver of anxiety. But she felt neither. Instead, she felt oppressed by Agatha’s utterly commonplace expectations—email X, call Y—as if Florence were any low-level flack. She wanted to take those expectations and twist them like a pinkie finger until they snapped.
This was not the job, or the life, she wanted—which was precisely what Vera had been telling her for years.
Florence had thought Vera would be appeased after she landed the position at Forrester. Instead, she’d asked, with extra-sibilant force: “An assistant? Like a secretary?” Florence had tried to explain that this was the way things worked, that everyone in the literary world started out as an editorial assistant, but it was useless once her mother also found out that she would be making less money than Vera herself did.
And so the tension between mother and daughter had continued to escalate with every conversation. Florence felt like she was running a Ponzi scheme: Vera demanding an immediate return on her investment, and Florence paying her down as best she could in tiny installments of affection and apologies, biding her time until she could scrounge up the capital she owed.
But perhaps she had absorbed more of her mother’s impatience than she thought.
9.
A few weeks later, Florence was on the elevator heading to work when Simon stuck his hand in the door just as it was about to close. He hesitated a moment when he saw her, like he wished he hadn’t caught it after all, and then Florence saw why. Ingrid was with him. He recovered and said, “Hello, Florence. All’s well?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said. Ingrid stood with the expectant smile of a woman waiting to be introduced.
“Right,” said Simon. “Have you met my wife? Florence, Ingrid Thorne. Ingrid, this is Florence Darrow, one of our most promising editorial assistants.”
“Pleasure,” Ingrid said, with a very firm handshake. She didn’t seem to recognize her from the orthodontist’s office. “I have a shirt just like that.”
“Oh, really?” Florence blushed. She’d bought it after seeing Ingrid’s.
Simon cleared his throat and said in response to a question that no one had asked, “Yes, well, Ingrid is actually here to meet a friend of yours. Amanda Lincoln.”
“Amanda?”
“I slipped her a copy of Amanda’s manuscript, and she thought she might be interested in turning it into a film. Trying her hand at producing.”
“Amanda’s manuscript?”
“Haven’t you heard? Forrester just acquired Amanda’s first novel.”
“Amanda sold a novel?” Florence felt herself slipping in the dark, unable to find traction.
“It’s an absolutely brilliant satire of Upper East Side mores,” Ingrid said. She pronounced it morays, like the eel. Florence made a mental note to stop pronouncing it like s’mores. “It’s wickedly funny.”
Simon wrapped an arm affectionately around his wife’s waist then abruptly removed it. The elevator pinged for Florence’s floor. She moved toward the door and waited impatiently for it to release her. “Good luck,” she said dully on her way out.
“Thank you!” said Ingrid brightly at the same time that Simon called out, “Keep up the good work!”
Florence walked directly into the handicapped bathroom and locked the door. She turned on the hot water, waited until it was scalding and held her hands underneath it until her skin glowed red. Amanda’s novel? What fucking novel? She looked in the mirror. Tears were gathering in her eyes.
“Don’t,” she snapped at her reflection. She shoved the hot heels of her hands into her eyes. When she removed them, the tears had cleared, and she managed to put a smile on her face.
“Better,” she said.
On her way to her desk, she detoured to talk to Lucy, who was hunched in front of her computer screen, clicking through pictures of dogs available for adoption on petfinder.com.
“You should just do it,” Florence said behind her.
Lucy jumped in her seat and put a hand to her heart. “God, you scared me,” she said.
“Seriously, why don’t you just get one?”
Lucy looked at Florence like she’d suggested drop-kicking an orphan. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I work too much. It wouldn’t be fair.” Florence shook her head. She never understood people who denied themselves the things they wanted. Her problem was that the things she wanted constantly seemed out of reach.
“Have you heard about Amanda’s novel?”
Lucy nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it might upset you.” Lucy had no interest in being a writer, but she knew Florence did.
“Upset me!” Florence exclaimed more loudly than she’d meant to. “Why should it upset me? Believe me, that is not the type of book I have any interest in writing.” She still knew next to nothing about it.
“No, of course not. It sounds super cheesy.”
“It does?” Florence asked eagerly. “Have you read it?”
“No, but Sam has it.”
“Douchebag Sam or ginger Sam?”
“Ginger.”
Florence hurried off to find Sam, who promised to email her the manuscript. “It’s actually not terrible,” he said.
“That’s what I hear,” she replied grimly.
*
Florence spent the day reading the manuscript on her computer. It was ten at night by the time she finished. Agatha had left hours earlier, as had everyone else on her floor. Florence turned off her computer but made no move to pack up.
Sam was right. It wasn’t terrible. Even worse—it was good.
Florence shoved the heels of her palms into her eyes until she saw sparks. It simply wasn’t fair. Amanda already had everything. Now she got to be a published novelist too? The one thing Florence wanted more than anything else? And to work with Ingrid Thorne? She imagined Ingrid and Amanda having cozy working dinners. Talking about art and inspiration. Talking about fucking Brecht.
What did Florence get? A tiny room in a shitty Astoria apartment? A mentor who would rather talk about her doula than German playwrights? A one-night stand with Simon Reed, who probably wished it had never happened in the first place?
Something about that last thought snagged in Florence’s brain. Who probably wished it had never happened.
A smile spread across Florence’s face. She looked around the empty office and laughed out loud. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
Of course Simon wished it hadn’t happened. But it had. He knew it had, and she knew it had. Why hadn’t she recognized the power in that? Why had she let him think that she was disposable? Why had she thought she was disposable? Poor Simon had lost the upper hand the moment he put it on her leg in that grimy bar.
If he could publish Amanda’s novel, he could publish her book too. She could make him publish her. She would gather all the stories she’d already written into a collection, and there was her manuscript. It wasn’t ideal, getting published through blackmail, but nothing in life is pure. You don’t throw away a winning lottery ticket just because it gets a little dirty in your wallet.