unbelievable. I couldn’t help saying the number aloud.
Mercedes’s eyes narrowed. “Did you have a specific salary requirement?”
“No!” Then, realizing that I probably sounded very uncool, I added, “That is, not really…”
“Because, naturally, with your experience…”
My lips twisted. Right. With my experience I was lucky not to be asking people if they would like to supersize that.
“I’ll be pulling for you to do well on the test,” she said quickly.
That word, test, stopped me cold. I stopped balancing my checkbook in my head. I’d been hoping to bluff about my typing speed. “When do I take that?”
“I’ll give it to you to take home now,” she said.
Take home? This was obviously not a typing test.
She turned and pillaged the top of a file cabinet stacked with papers, then came back at me with a large manila envelope. “That’s a book proposal. Read it, write an acceptance and revision letter and edit the first chapter, and then drop it off at the front desk.”
I gulped. Edit? They wanted me to be an editor and not just some kind of secretary?
“Oh! And let me get you some books.” She grabbed handfuls from her shelves and shoved them across the desk at me.
I stumbled out of the building with my bundle of stuff, feeling conflicted. A job like this would be great, but what were the chances I would get it?
Nil.
I really needed to be more careful about these jobs I was applying for.
Fleishman and Wendy were thrilled with my freebies. Wendy found a baggy family saga in the pile that piqued her interest. “I love stuff like this.”
“I thought you didn’t read romance novels,” I said.
“I don’t,” she said. “I just like these.”
Fleishman went straight for the category romance novels; he seemed more interested in the camp factor of it all. “Look at this! The Fireman’s Baby Surprise!” He sniggered as he leafed through the front pages. “Is that what women fantasize about now? Having babies with firemen?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “I just fantasize about having a paycheck.”
Fleishman stole away with a little hoard of books.
Wendy shot the manila envelope a look of concern. “What’s that? Homework?”
“It’s an editing test. I have to edit a chapter of a manuscript and bring it back to them.”
Wendy tilted her head. “Do you know how to do that?”
“Oh, how hard can it be?” Fleishman piped up from the futon sofa. Then he turned back to his book. “The fireman’s name is Chance. Are there actually people in the world named Chance?”
“Coming from a man named Herbert Dowling Fleishman the Third, I don’t think you have room to sneer.”
He glared at me and sank down on the couch. He always hated it when I reminded him of his name. There was a good reason he went by Fleishman.
“What are you going to do?” Wendy asked me.
“I guess I’m going to treat myself to a crash course in editing.”
For the next two days, I was a slave to the Chicago Manual of Style. I went through two red pencils marking up that manuscript. And in the meantime, I read several of the books. I read The Fireman’s Baby Surprise, Beauty and the Bounty Hunter, and I skimmed a long book that was a retelling of Cinderella set in Scotland in the 1700s called Highland Midnight Magic. I steeped myself in romance.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Hilariously purple prose, I guess. And it had been a long time, maybe forever, since I had heard a man’s sexual organ referred to as his manroot. But for the most part, the thing that surprised me was that the books were so not focused on sex. At least the little modern ones weren’t. (The Scottish book was half sex, half clan war.) The fireman had firehouse politics and an arsonist to deal with, along with his paternity dilemma. The bounty hunter was chasing an heiress wrongly accused of jewel smuggling—so that was a big mess to have to work out. Every step of the way, these poor people had problems, and they were falling in love.
By the end of the week I was beginning to see the appeal. If some schmuck has time to find an arsonist, expose his boss for corruption, find good daycare, and fall in love with a sassy local news reporter, the authors seemed to be saying, there was hope for us all.
I must have done something right, because the day after I turned in my test Kathy Leo called me to tell me to come in again, this time to talk to someone named Rita Davies.
When I was led back to Rita’s office, I was struck at once by the mess. If Mercedes’s office was disorganized, Rita’s could have qualified as a Superfund site. Manuscripts piled up precariously in teetering Seussian columns. I counted six different in-boxes, and all of them were full. Rita was a blousy, heavy-lidded woman with frizzy red hair. She looked up at me when I walked in and took a sip from one of the three coffee mugs on her desk.
“Do you smoke?” she asked by way of greeting.
I was a little taken aback. Was this a trick question? I took a deep breath and sensed a definite smell of tobacco. “Uh…not really. I mean, occasionally I’ll bum one at a bar or something…”
She cut off my answer with a wave. “Because if you want, we can go outside.”
It was drizzling outside. And cold. It wasn’t yet March. “No, I’m fine here.”
“Okay, great. Just a second.” She opened a drawer, tossed out several old pens, what looked like an ancient bagel wrapped in wax paper, and a box of nicotine patches. She took a moment to slap on a patch, waited a moment for the burn to begin, then turned back to me with an easy smile. “Great job on the test, by the way.”
“Thanks. I really liked that story.”
“Yeah, she’s a good author for us. I’ll give you more of her books, if you want.”
“Terrific!” I could give them to Fleishman. Ever since my first interview, he’d been on a romance reading jag.
“Mercedes told me all about you. She said you’re just what we need around here.”
“Oh, well…” What she really needed was a Mighty Maid service.
“She said you had worked with Sylvie Whatsawhosit and really were invaluable to her.”
I just shrugged modestly.
She squinted at me. “Sure you don’t feel like a cigarette?”
I was pretty certain there was a hard and fast rule about not smoking on your job interview. It was probably up there with not showing up shit-faced drunk or wearing flip-flops. I shook my head.
“Nicorette?” she asked, offering me a box.
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
“Wish I could say the same!” She sighed and popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “I guess I should tell you how we work around here. This little area here is referred to as the Pulse Pod.”
“Pulse?” I asked.
“I’m senior editor of the Pulse line.” She pointed to a shelf of books with identical red and white spines that were for the most part obscured by random piles of other books, souvenir ashtrays, and, inexplicably, a pair of beige suede boots. “It’s Candlelight’s line of medical romances. You know—doctors, nurses, paramedics. Even a phlebotomist or two.” I was going to laugh, but she didn’t give me a chance. “As far as staff goes, I’m the senior editor of the pod, and I’ve got an ed assist. Then there’s an assistant editor and an