13.

 

Morning comes with the same inextricable routine that has become my life: snooze the alarm twice, get out of bed, do my morning stretches, have breakfast, have my Words shot and brush my teeth (I swap A, A, U, in one game, and typically get back a Q, and H and M, and in the other game I swap four Es and get back W, V, V, M – honestly, this is a fucking farce), shower, and once I’m dressed, drive to work.

Gainsboro Publishing occupies a refurbished loft just on the fringe of the industrial sector in the southern suburbs – not the most glamorous or affluent, but it’s a big workspace with two floors, the main offices (on the second) floor neatly partitioned, although not-so-high that people can’t be social.

Which is a shame, because I hate being social – I hate Mondays, and all the talk of, “What did you get up on the weekend?” If I was skydiving, visiting the pyramids, or swimming in the Great Barrier Reef, it might be comment-worthy, but nothing I did is, and commenting is an affectation, like it connects us in some meaningful way, or it appreciates our life with some value that it doesn’t seem so mundane.

For the most part, I like my workmates, but they are workmates, rather than people I’d be bouncing around with outside of work, although that’s likelier a fault of mine – or maybe even Lana’s, since she likes (liked?) commanding so much of my time, and apparently couples (in her illogic) have to do every single thing together.

Here’s a brief breakdown of the workmates I share the floor with, although you don’t really need to remember them – they won’t factor into this story much:

• • Florence: our forty-something publicist, Florence regales us with tales of online dating woes, and trying to get back into the “world of love” after her husband of ten years cheated on her and left her for another man. Florence’s speciality while working is chuckling – she’ll just chuckle spontaneously, because what she’s trying to elicit is the question, “What’s funny?”, which’ll lead to some inane story that amuses her and nobody else. But there it is again: connection. People need it.
  • Charlene: she’s our lead designer, and shit hot at what she does. She’s taciturn, and will listen patiently to anybody, then offer some precocious wisdom. There’s a minor discussion about her sexuality (obviously behind her back). There shouldn’t be. But there is.
  • Shia: fresh out of tertiary education (I keep forgetting which university), she’s a junior editor, although her copyediting is competent at best and I wouldn’t have hired her if it was up to me (which it should’ve been, since she’s my underling). I don’t blame her. We have interns who we test, and often their understanding of copy is patchy, which makes me worry what they’re being taught. She has a good grasp on content, though. Good. Not
  • Victor: another one of our designers, he’s constantly lagging and needing to be hurried up. He’s good at what he does, but procrastinates. His real strength is his understanding of the social scene – for Christmas dinners and birthdays, he’s always dragging us to some God-forsaken café or restaurant that’s too noisy, too expensive, and too trendy; and he’s always the one circulating cards for people’s birthdays around the office (even for his own), and then bringing in the cake (and not billing Gainsboro).
  • Bell: she oversees our nonfiction editing – I used to edit most of it, but as we grew, they brought an editor onboard to handle that specifically. Bell’s lovely – bright and attentive, but she’s also a tea fiend. She’ll make a couple every hour, so she has about ten during the day. I suspect she drinks so much tea so she doesn’t have to do as much work. It’s a sound strategy – genius, really, given she looks selfless offering to make tea for everybody.

“How was your weekend?” Florence says.

I shrug. “Usual.”

“Nothing exciting happen?” Shia says.

Just once, I’d like to tell them that I woke to discover that aliens were about to abduct me, or I went on a drunken, drug-fueled bender (although I’ve never touched illicit drugs), or I struck somebody with my car, and fled the scene – that’s the stuff that’s noteworthy, and which I’d happily talk about. Well, maybe not the last one. That’s something I should keep secret.

“Nope,” I say.

They don’t push it because I’m a pain this way, so they go on about their weekends: Victor went to a club where some punk band was playing, only to find the patronage was all twenty-something, and he felt like a predator; Florence had her first date with a guy she met online, although he’d lied about his height (he was short) and weight (he was fat), and his job (he said he was in IT, but was actually installing IT for homes), but he was nice and funny; Shia went to a writer’s festival … and at this point, I exclude my attention as I begin to sort through a weekend’s worth of emails.

One author’s sent me a voice-recorded message. I hate voice-recorded message. Send me an email, a text, or whatever, and I can read it immediately. Send me a voice-recorded message, and I have to put everything else on hold so I can listen to it. It’s the very height of impropriety.

“Can I see you?”

That’s not the voice-recorded message, but Autumn – the one genuine friend I have in this place, an earth sprite modelled into suburbia’s understanding of what it means to be human. She stands at the door to her office – one of the few offices we have here, her silver hair drawn back regally, her violet coat like something that should be a bathrobe or a robe in some Harry Potter movie.

I start for her office, expecting this’ll be some weekly debrief – Autumn’s the publisher, which mean she’s in charge of the fiction and nonfiction list. But now I see the glass panelling that constitutes her office, there’s a pink-haired woman sitting in there, waiting, tapping a foot in a shoe with a glittery toecap.

Melody.

Melody fucking Merlo.

I don’t know what to describe first – Autumn’s office or Melody: Autumn’s office is a ramble of her travels to Spain, Holland, and most of Europe really, a collection of knickknacks littering shelves crammed with books, most of them well-thumbed with crinkled covers and yellowing pages. Some sort of incense fills the air, while a lighted salt lamp (is that the correct terminology? I have no idea) sits on her cluttered desk. I keep waiting for a fire to spontaneously ignite. Melody’s also a jumble, but there’s an artistry to her oversized sweater, her pinstripe slacks, the line of earrings running down her left lobe, and the nose ring that makes me want to thread through a leash and take her for a walk – if she was a house, I would’ve brought in an interior decorator specialising in feng shui to orchestrate this conceit.

The thing that really gets me about Melody is she smells of damp towels sitting in a hamper, waiting to be washed. She doesn’t – not really. She actually wears this cheap, cloying perfume that’s an assault on my sinuses, so all they can do is close in protest. It reminds me of those little urinal cakes you see in men’s toilet urinals. But I think of that damp towel smell whenever I see Melody, or somebody brings her up.

“Melody has some concerns about the editing,” Autumn says, taking her seat in a tatty recliner behind her desk. This is something Autumn should’ve replaced years ago, and even billed to Gainsboro, but she says she likes this chair because it’s well-worn. She gestures me to sit adjacent to Melody in a trendy plastic chair – trendy, but plastic nonetheless. Minions are consigned to plastic chairs, because in offices, the quality of chairs determines the hierarchy.

Melody nods so much I swear her head might pop loose from her long, thin neck. She’s only in her twenties – twenty-five or something I think, but she’s considered precocious by many in the industry, although I think precocious and pretentious are often confused. She’s already had one critical and commercial success behind her, The Night We Never Should’ve Known, a story about a dysfunctional family whose grievances, along with all sorts of delicious secrets (they’re not delicious, not really; more tawdry and contrived) that emerge over the course of one Christmas dinner. The book was shortlisted for all the prizes. You might’ve read it – well, if you’re unfortunate.

“I don’t think you really understand my voice,” she says.

At first I think she’s talking about her actual voice, which has the lyricism of a hinge that’s about to work its way clear from the door jamb. But then it clicks that she’s not talking about her voice voice, but her voice as a writer – the way her prose speaks to the reader.

That prompts other responses that I could use to describe her writer’s voice: Clunky. Pompous. Dumb?

I don’t say any of these things, because you’re never that straightforward with an author. I expected this – I knew she’d pushback – and the real tragedy is that she has talent, she has the makings of a good voice, but so far she’s been surrounded by people who keep telling her she’s fucking brilliant, she’s brave and needs to be heard, and while there’s some merit in that, it’s inflated her opinion of her ability so she doesn’t consider or incorporate feedback that could be genuinely invaluable to her.

“Voice is paramount to me,” I tell her. “The best voice in the world can sell the worst story. The worst voice in the world can’t sell the best story. Your voice brims with potential,” that’s pure wankery, “and while your first book is exciting, it’s raw, and that’ll only carry you so far.”

“I just don’t think you get me,” Melody says. “Because you’re a man.”

Well, an idiot, also, apparently, who can only edit things filtered through his own experiences, which would mean I only like dark, hopeless, suicidal tomes full of pain and misery … oh wait, that’s pretty much what she writes. It’s bullshit, anyway. A good story is universal, whatever it’s about. Anybody else who tells you different is moronic and has no understanding of how the written word, and storytelling, functions, and what it should accomplish in its narrative.

“Look,” Autumn says, “editing isn’t a tyranny. You don’t have to accept any of the suggestions. But consider them. Return the manuscript, and we’ll go from there.”

Melody surveys us both. First it’s me. Then Autumn. Then Melody leans back in her plastic chair – the backrest creaking – so the front legs lift from the floor. Then I get it: she’s now taking us in together, like she’s trying to catch us in a conspiracy, like we might be nodding or winking messages in Morse Code about how we’re handling her.

“We want this to be the best book it can be,” Autumn says.

“Oh, it will be,” Melody says. She springs up with the abruptness of a rake that’s been stepped on. “I’ll be emailing the manuscript back this week.”

She storms out, if storms were the equivalent of apologetic flatulence.

“It’s not a good book,” I tell Autumn. “Like her prose is juvenile. It’s what I’d expect a thirteen-year-old to write if I told them to be literary. And so much of it is unmotivated. Things happen because they need to happen, rather than because they’re evolving organically.”

“She got rave reviews for her first book,” Autumn says.

“You know the way the industry works.”

Autumn does, but doesn’t want to acknowledge it – at least not in here, in the office, where it’s not about our friendship, but our professional relationship. The reality is some writers are media darlings, even if their writing is unimaginably bad (although to be fair, Melody’s writing isn’t unimaginably bad – just imaginably bad and, again, it could get better if she considered feedback).

“Find a happy compromise if you can,” Autumn says. “And that’s not coming from me, but …”

She points sideways, which indicates her superiors, like the taciturn CEO, Victoria Ellis. While Autumn’s meant to be in charge of publishing, she still has to navigate mandates from higher-ups about books we’re meant to pursue. Melody’s one of those – she was poached from her previous publisher, Out of the Fox Press, because they were struggling financially.

“I’ll do my best,” I say, because that’s what I do, even when it’s a political minefield.

“Walk later?” Autumn asks.

“Sure,” I say, as I head out of her office and back to the desk.

By the time I’ve sat down, fired up my computer, and opened my mailbox, I find Melody’s already emailed her manuscript. The email’s only dated one minute ago, so she must’ve sent it the moment she left the office.

I open her manuscript and begin to read.