The Seven Year Slip

THE FIRST TIME I walked through the stone archway into the building on Thirty-Fourth Street and rode the chrome elevators up to the seventh floor, I knew there was something special about Strauss & Adder Publishers. The way the doors opened and let out into a small, white-shelved lobby filled with books, both ones they had published and ones they just loved, weathered leather chairs faced you, beckoning you to sink down into their cushions, open a novel, and drown in the words.

Strauss & Adder was a small but powerful publisher in New York City, specializing in adult fiction, memoirs, and lifestyle nonfiction—think self-help books and cookbooks and how-tos—but they were most renowned for their travel guides. When you wanted a guide to a far-off place, you went toward the little mallet-hammer logo of Strauss & Adder to tell you about the best restaurants in the most remote reaches of foreign cities, ones where you would still feel at home.

I could do publicity anywhere—and probably get paid better doing it—but I couldn’t get free travel books at a big tech firm, or in some PR-firm hellscape. There was something just so sure and lovely about walking down the hall every day, lined with books about Rome and Bangkok and Antarctica, the enchanting smell of aged paper like a department store perfume. I didn’t want to write books myself, but I loved the idea of some long-dead or long-forgotten travel guide waxing about cathedrals of old and shrines of forgotten gods. I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.

The office was an open floor plan, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling shelves of novels, the space clean and white and bright. Everyone had small half-walled cubicles, each desk with pops of color as people displayed their favorite odds and ends—artwork and figurines and book collections. Mine was closest to my boss’s office. The higher-ups all got offices with glass doors, as if that were the same kind of lack of privacy as listening to Juliette in the cubicle in front of me sob over her on-again, off-again boyfriend of ten months, her Romeo, Rob. (Fuck Romeo-Rob.)

At least even in their tidy glass offices you could see them dissociating at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday with the rest of us.

And yet here we all were, because if we all loved one thing, it was books.

I managed to send out a few interview queries by the time Fiona came back to the office.

“The dessert was really fantastic,” she said, walking over to return my credit card. She, like the rest of design, was banished to the glum, cobweb-filled corner of the floor where CEOs were wont to stick their mushroom-growing artsy people. At least three of the designers had to start taking vitamin D supplements, it was so dark back there. “So was the chef.”

“Hate that I missed it,” I replied.

Fiona shrugged and handed me back my card. “You kind of ran right into him, actually.”

I paused. The man with the strong grip. The warm, solid chest. “That . . . was him?”

“Absolutely. He’s a gem. Really sweet—oh, say, did you end up saving your author from airport hell?”

“Of course,” I replied, pulling myself out of my thoughts. “Was there ever any doubt?”

Fiona shook her head. “I envy you.”

That made me pause. “Why?”

“Whenever you need to do something, you just go for it. Straight line. No hesitation. I think that’s why Drew likes you so much,” she added, a bit quieter. “You’re an Excel spreadsheet to my chaos.”

“I just like things the way I like things,” I replied, and Fiona proceeded to tell me about what I’d missed at the restaurant—apparently, someone from Faux had come to the chef about a book (Parker Daniels, Drew guessed), as had Simon & Schuster and two imprints at HarperCollins and one at Macmillan. There would probably be more.

I gave a low whistle. “Drew’s got steep competition.”

“I know. I can’t wait until this is all she starts talking about,” Fiona deadpanned. She checked her smart watch on her wrist and groaned. “I should probably return to the cave. Movie tonight? I think that rom-com with the two assassins who fall in love is out?”

“Can I take a rain check? I’m still unpacking from the move. Receipt?” I asked, and Fiona dug our lunch bill out of her purse. As she left for the dark and dank part of the floor, I slipped into Rhonda’s office to give it to her, though she wasn’t there.

Most of the other higher-ups—including Reginald Strauss—had photos of their families, vacations they took, memories, on their walls and across their desks. Rhonda’s was full of photos with celebrities at book launches and red-carpet events, and achievement awards stacked her shelves where gifts from grandchildren should go. It was very evident what she chose, the life she decided to live, and every time I stepped into her office, I imagined sitting in her orange chair, having lived a life like that, too.

Suddenly, the glass door to her office slid open, and Rhonda Adder, in all her glamour, stepped into the room. “Ah, Clementine! Happy Friday, as always,” she announced happily, looking sharp as a knife in a black pantsuit and floral-print heels, her blunt-cut gray bob pulled back from her face with a clip.

Whenever Rhonda came into a room, she commanded it in a way I wanted to. All heads turned. All conversations stopped.

Rhonda Adder was as brilliant as she was magnetic—the director of marketing and publicity, and copublisher, she had started at a lowly PR firm in SoHo, clipping out tabloid rumors and fielding telemarketer calls, and now she planned and coordinated book campaigns for some of the biggest names in the business. She was an icon among bookish people, the person they all wanted to be. The person I wanted to be. Someone who had her life together. Someone who had a plan, had goals, and knew the exact tools she needed to implement them.

“Happy Friday, Rhonda. I’m sorry I took a long lunch,” I quickly said.

She waved her hand. “It’s perfectly all right. I saw you handled Adair Lynn’s little airport snafu.”

“She’s really having the worst luck on this tour.”

“We’ll have to send her some flowers once she gets home.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a bag of chocolate-covered almonds.

“Will do. I put a lunch expense on the account,” I added, setting the receipt and credit card down on the desk. She took a look at both of them and quirked an eyebrow. “Drew’s after an author for a nonfiction project.”

“Ah. Almond?” She offered me the bag.

“Thank you.” I took one out, sat down in the creaky chair opposite of her, and updated her on the afternoon’s happenings—the booked podcast interviews, the revised itineraries, the newly confirmed bookstore events. Rhonda and I worked like a well-oiled machine. There was a reason everyone said I was her second-in-command—and I hoped to be her successor someday. Everyone figured I would be.

Rhonda put her almonds away and turned to her computer as I began to get up, our meeting adjourned, until she said, “I saw you rescinded your request for vacation at the end of the summer. Is there a reason?”

“Oh, that.” I tried to look unruffled as I smoothed down the front of my crumpled blouse. At the end of the summer, my aunt and I always took our yearly trip abroad—Portugal one summer, Spain the next, India, Thailand, Japan, my passport cluttered with all the places we’d been together over the years. I had taken the exact same week off every August since joining Strauss & Adder, so of course Rhonda would notice when I decided not to go. “I decided that maybe my time would be best spent here, so I’m not going.”

Ever again.

She gave me a strange look. “You’re kidding. Clementine, you haven’t taken a day off all year.”

“What can I say? I love my job.” I smiled then because it was true. I did love my job, and it was a good distraction from . . . everything, and if I kept concentrating on the things in front of me, the grief wouldn’t catch up with me at two in the morning like it wanted to.

“I love my job, too, and I still took a vacation this year to the Maldives. Had a great massage there—I can give you the number for my guy if you end up going.”

Oh, yes, because I could afford that. Well, maybe now that I owned my aunt’s apartment, I could. I pushed a strained smile across my face. “I’m fine, really—and besides, Boston in the Fall is coming out that week, and you know that author is so persnickety. I’d rather deal with him than make Juliette handle—”

“Clementine?” she interrupted. “Take your damn accrued vacation. That’s why you have it.”

“But—”

“Your request to rescind your request is denied.”

“I’m not going on vacation anymore, though,” I said, trying not to panic. “I refunded my tickets!”

She gave me a look over her red-frame glasses. “Then you have two months to figure out what else you want to do. Half of our collection is travel guides—borrow one. I’m sure you’ll get inspired. You’ll need a vacation, after all.”

“I really don’t think I will.”

In reply, she swiveled her chair toward me again with a sigh, and took off her glasses. They hung from a beaded strap around her neck. “Fine. Close the door, Clementine.”

Oh, no. Quietly, I did what I was told—albeit a little hesitantly. The last time she asked me to close the door, I found out she fired the marketing designer. I sat down again, a bit gingerly. “Is . . . is there something wrong?”

“No. Well. Yes, but nothing bad.” She steepled her fingers and gave me a long look. She wore dark mascara and darker eyeliner around her eyes, and they always made her looks all the more intense. “You are sworn to secrecy, Clementine, until the time is right.”

I straightened in my chair. This was big, then. Was it a new book? A celebrity memoir? Was Strauss selling the company? Did Michael in HR finally quit?

She said, “I’m planning to retire at the end of the summer, but I only want to go knowing Strauss and Adder is in good hands.”

I didn’t think I heard correctly. “You—what? Retire?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to say.

There weren’t words enough to describe my profound—sadness? Disappointment? Strauss & Adder without Rhonda was like a body without a soul—a bookshelf without any books. She built this company with Strauss—every single one of its bestsellers over the last twenty years came from her.

And she wanted to retire?

“Don’t give me that look,” Rhonda said with a nervous laugh. She was never nervous. So she wasn’t pulling my leg. She was telling the truth. “I’ve done my time! But I’m not going to leave if this ship’ll sink without me. I’ve put too much of my life here,” she added, seemingly as an afterthought to her name on the business. “However, only you and Strauss know at the moment, and I’d like to keep it that way. Who knows what kind of piranhas the news will attract once it’s official.”

My mouth was dry. “O . . . okay?”

“In the meantime, I want you to take the lead on most projects and acquisitions this summer, to see how you fare. I’ll be in the meetings, obviously, but let’s just call it a dry run.”

“To see if I can manage with you gone?”

She gave me a baffled look, and then she laughed. “Oh, no, dear, to take my place!”

If I wasn’t already sitting down, my knees would have given out immediately. Me—take Rhonda’s place? I only half listened as she told me how hard I worked, how exemplary I was, how I was exactly the kind of woman she’d been at my age, and that this was the kind of opportunity she would kill for. What better way to foster the future than to give the future a chance to succeed?

“Well, half of my place. When Strauss and I started the company, I took over for the director of publicity and marketing as well as copublisher because we were so small, but I would not wish that on anyone else. After all, they’re not me,” she added. “Depending on your performance this summer, however, I’m inclined to put your name up for the new director of publicity. You’ve been here the longest of anyone on the team, so I only think it’s fair—not to mention I’d be an idiot not to.”

I . . . didn’t know what to say.

As it turned out, she didn’t expect me to say anything, as she put her glasses back on and returned to her computer. “So, you see, I imagine you’ll need to take a vacation before you start your new job—I’ll get you the name of my masseuse in the Maldives.”

My mouth dropped open. I gave a squeak. My head was spinning from all the information.

“Now, can you send me my meetings for next week? Something tells me Juliette is going to forget. Again.”

That was my cue to leave.

I prayed that my legs would work as I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll get that right to you,” I replied, and left her office.

First, my vacation cancellation request was denied, and then Rhonda dropped that she might retire? And I might take her place as head of the department?

I didn’t want to think about it.

My cubicle was just across the hall from her door—ten feet, give or take. It was neat and pristine—the kind of space that Drew called a one-box walkout. Meaning that if I got fired, I’d need only one box to pack all my keepsakes before I left. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere—I’d been here for seven years—I just didn’t have much I wanted to display. Some photos, a few of my watercolor postcard paintings from around the city—Central Park’s lake, the Brooklyn Bridge from Dumbo, a cemetery in Queens. I had a bobblehead doll of William Shakespeare, and a collector’s box set of the Brontë sisters’ works, and a signed bookplate from an author I couldn’t remember and couldn’t read the name of anymore.

I sank into my chair, feeling numb and a little out of my league—for the first time in years. Retiring—Rhonda was retiring.

And she wanted me to take her place.

My chest constricted in panic.

A few minutes later, Juliette—a petite white woman with braided blond hair, big doe eyes, and cherry-red lipstick—trudged back to her cubicle, red-eyed and sniffling. She sank down at her desk. “W-we broke up again . . .”

Absently, I grabbed my tissue box from under the desk and offered her one. “That’s rough, friend.”