“Elliot Lash,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m an agent for Amanda Boyle Literary. You’ve heard of us?”
He was being cute. Anyone halfway paying attention in the literary world knew that agency. They handled some of the biggest names in fiction, most of whom were currently riding bestseller lists or being nominated for Bookers and Pulitzers.
I smiled sweetly. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Elliot glanced down with a small chuckle. “I’ll get straight to the point. I’d like to represent you.”
“In court? I have no pending lawsuits. That I’m aware of.”
“Mr. Parish—”
I waved a hand. “No, I’ll get straight to your point. You read my stories that I—a no-name nothing—sent unsolicited and yet managed to have published in the biggest literary magazines in the world, and now you want to take fifteen percent of my piddling profits. Sound about right?”
Elliot leaned over his thighs, a glass of beer in his hand. “Speaking of nothing names, why Gordon Charles?”
I frowned at his sudden change of topic. “Ever read Flowers for Algernon? My pen name is a play on the main character, Charlie Gordon.”
Elliot’s eyes went a little vacant as he sought to remember and then lit up with recognition. “Oh yes. The story about a man with extremely low intelligence who undergoes an experiment of some sort. It turns him into a genius, but the experiment fails, doesn’t it? He slips back, losing everything he’d gained. Very sad.”
“He falls in love,” I muttered.
“Sorry?”
“When he’s smart, Charlie falls in love with a teacher but has to leave her when he becomes stupid again.” My finger ran along the lip of the glass. “I gave that book to someone once. He thought I was inferring that he was Charlie, the stupid one. Turns out, it was me all along.”
My eyes fell shut under a barrage of memories. River at his shop, pinning me to the wall with his body, his eyes dark and hooded, his lips parted…
I brushed the memory away and nodded at the Swiss man.
“Do you know who that is? The Basquiat-looking gent with the perfect…everything?”
“That’s Jean-Baptiste Moreau,” Elliot said. “He does remind one of Basquiat, doesn’t he? Fitting. He’s an artist too.”
“You know him well?”
“We run in a few of the same circles.”
“I’d like to get to know him too. In the biblical sense, if you catch my drift.”
Elliot’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Are you asking me to be your pimp?”
I frowned. “Isn’t that what an agent is?”
“Mr. Parish—”
“Forget it. I haven’t needed assistance in that department. Yet.”
Elliot Lash pressed his lips in a thin line and pulled his card from his alligator skin wallet. “I’ll be frank with you, Holden. I think your w
riting is astonishing. And I know every editor at every major publishing house agrees. If you could produce a full-length novel—a memoir, perhaps—”
“I’m not writing a memoir. I write fiction.”
“Autobiographical fiction?” Elliot suggested and pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “Truthfully, you could write a grocery list and I’d have ten houses lined up to buy it. You’re a hot commodity right now.”
“Gordon Charles is a hot commodity. I’m nobody.”
As far as most of the world knew, Holden Parish didn’t exist. And I wanted to keep it that way. But that Elliot was a persistent little fucker.