The Editor. Стивен Роули
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are at capacity with manuscripts and galleys. There’s a painting of a dancer on the wall that looks like it could be worth a good deal of money, but I don’t know enough about art to be sure. I half expect her desk to look like her husband’s from the Oval Office, but instead it’s a Formica-topped eyesore that looks more like it might belong to a junior-high science teacher. The desk itself is covered in more manuscripts, weighed down with decorative glass paperweights.
Jackie holds the book up with both hands before circling behind her desk to take a seat. “I thought this would be just what we need for our working together tonight. Have you read the poet Constantine Cavafy?”
I glance at the book—his collected works. “No, I haven’t.” I wait for her to sit behind her desk before taking a seat in one of her guest chairs. I want to appear well read (and if there was homework for this meeting, I want to have done it), but this particular poet might be a little too obscure to fake a passing knowledge of.
“He’s not widely read in the States. My second husband introduced me to his works and he fast became a favorite. He has a poem, ‘Ithaka.’”
“The location of my book,” I say, although these must be very different Ithacas. I’m doubting that any poet named Constantine wrote about central New York.
“I’m wondering if it might be a good title for your novel.”
“Ithaca?” I’m momentarily disheartened. Not that I’m overly invested in my own title, but that the time has arrived to get down to work. I already miss the part where we fawn over me and the book. Can’t we have several more meetings like that?
“Though we generally try to avoid publishing titles with negative onomatopoeic sounds …”
I chew on that for a second. Ithaca. “Ick?”
“It makes the marketing department frown.”
Is she pulling my leg? There’s an uncomfortable pause and then I laugh politely, but not too much, in case I’ve misread her. I look around the office for clues that will put me at ease. Something that I recognize could belong to anyone, to normalize our interaction. The truth of the matter—it’s all rather conventional. It’s an office, like any other.
“So why Ithaca?” Jackie resumes. “Why set the book there?”
“Oh,” I say, the question snapping me back. “I grew up there. Well, a microscopic town just outside. So when people ask me where I’m from, that’s what I say.” Daniel’s voice fills my head. “You don’t want to change it to Cape Cod, do you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
I shake my head slightly. “Someone told me that you would … never mind. Nothing. It’s small, Ithaca. Exotic-sounding, perhaps. I like the Greek name. I think it evokes the book’s underlying tragedy. But otherwise, there’s nothing special about it. Like the characters themselves, at first glance. They’re unremarkable. On the surface they could be any mother and son. But I find simple can be … quite complicated.”
“Oh, so do I. You only passingly refer to the name of the town in the manuscript. It got me thinking that you might mean it as more of a state of mind. Or a state of being. Does that make sense?” Of course she must know that it makes perfect sense, but phrasing it as a question sets me up to agree. Perhaps a skill she’s used in the past, asserting her own ideas by involving others.
“It certainly does.”
Jackie looks like she’s about to say something and then stops. She thinks again before picking up the book. “I’ve marked the page. I don’t have my glasses. Would you do the honors?” She opens the book and hands it to me. It takes a moment for it to sink in that she’s asking me to read.
“Happy to.”
“Just the last few lines.”
I fumble with the book, almost losing her place, until I manage to get a good grip. I scan down the text of the poem, looking for just the right place to jump in. “Ithaka has given you the beautiful journey.” Already I feel a lump forming in my throat so I read quietly until I get to the very end. “And if you find her threadbare, Ithaka has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must have always understood what Ithakas mean.” I glance up at Jackie and she’s looking just past me, as if considering the meaning again for the very first time. “That’s … wow,” I say. I left my apartment early to walk here, gathering courage along the way in the invigorating March air, desperately dreaming up intelligent phrases and casual topics of conversation to use as filler, should our dialogue sputter. And yet, all I can come up with is “wow.”
But it is remarkable, especially if Ithaca is not a town or a place or a state of being, but a person, a mother, a soul. Indeed, she has not deceived me; somehow, I must have always understood that.
Once again Jackie opens her mouth to speak, then stops. But this time she plows forward without any further hesitation. “I have a thought.”
“Oh?”
A grin spreads across her face, hinting at the woman one always suspected lay just beneath the decorum. She opens her desk drawer, pulls out an expensive-looking bottle of rum, and plunks it on her desk. The alcohol sloshes, creating a rippling meniscus.
“This was a recent gift from one of my authors after a trip he took to Barbados.”
I’m not sure I’m following. “Rum was your thought?”
“Close,” Jackie says. She stands, lifting the rum to inspect it. She pulls her shoulders back as if not to let the heavy bottle topple her forward. Allen was right—she is indeed tall. “Daiquiris.”
David Letterman recently aired a Top Ten List of Least Popular New York City Street Vendors and the number-one entry served “Stunned Mouse in a Dixie Cup.” I don’t know why that comes to mind now, except that it became a punchline between Daniel and me (What would you like for dinner tonight? How about stunned mouse in a Dixie cup!) and—talk about stunned—even I wish I could see the look on my face right now. “Daiquiris.” I scramble out of my chair; when a woman like Jacqueline Onassis stands, a gentleman does too.
She reaches back in her drawer and pulls out what miraculously appears to be simple syrup. I’m beginning to think this particular drawer is a magician’s hat. “Don’t tell me you’re a teetotaler,” she says.
I struggle to remember if teetotaler means someone who is on, or off, the wagon. “No. Far from it. I just don’t usually drink daiquiris.”
“That’s because you don’t usually drink with me.” She notices me standing. “Sit, sit. I’m going to collect some ice.”
Jackie places her hand on my shoulder as she squeezes past me and out the door. Alone in her office, I lean forward and grab the rum. It’s hard not to think she’s putting me on. I hold it up to my nose, and not only does it contain alcohol, it may be one hundred and fifty proof. Do I know her to drink? Are there photos of her drinking? Magazine profiles that mention the habit? If I were her, there’s no way I could not drink. Should I put a stop to this? Is this a bad idea? I have just enough time to place the bottle back on her desk before she returns carrying a little silver platter with several limes, a knife, club soda, and two glasses with ice.
“What else do you have in that desk? A coconut tree?”
“Don’t ever underestimate me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, and that’s the God’s-honest truth.
“I think you will like this. It’s distilled from molasses instead of sugarcane.” She adds a healthy pour of rum to each glass and a more conservative amount of simple syrup. Whatever it is that she’s doing, she’s quite adept at doing it. Then she slices several limes and squeezes as much juice as she can into each glass; I can see the tendons in her sinewy arms. “I had to borrow these earlier from the cafeteria ladies.”
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