‘Two hundred and fifty in today’s climate is a great offer, Vanessa. You know how difficult young adult books are to call. For every J. K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer there’s a thousand others in the remainder bin.’
‘I have my client to think about.’
What would Tess Garrett do? thought Brooke, picturing her steely, slightly frightening new publicist.
Brooke cleared her throat. ‘Your client sent her manuscript to Yellow Door and we’d already made contact, in fact we were going to make an offer directly to Eileen today. Unless you have actually signed a contract with Eileen, I think our lawyers can argue that we have precedent. You don’t want to lose your commission, do you? Fifteen per cent of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money, Vanessa.’
There was a long pause, so long that Brooke was beginning to think Vanessa had already hung up.
‘I can’t consider anything below four hundred thousand dollars,’ she said finally. Brooke could imagine her sitting in her midtown office in her Armani trouser suit, her mouth pursed into nothingness.
‘Three hundred thousand,’ said Brooke. ‘We’ll allocate a six–figure marketing spend to make sure it hits retail with a splash.’
‘And three hundred thousand would just be US rights?’
Brooke wondered how far she could push it. ‘Three hundred thousand. Three–book deal. US rights only,’ she said firmly.
‘I’ll need to talk to my client.’
‘I have our legal department calling me in an hour. My superiors want me to go direct to Eileen.’
‘I don’t want to sour our relationship Brooke,’ said Vanessa, her voice cold.
‘Neither do I.’
She put down the phone and exhaled. Every nerve–ending in her body seemed to be tingling. What have I done, what have I done? she thought to herself. It was far, far beyond anything she had ever dared do before. But she had a sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, she had outgunned the mighty Vanessa Greenbaum.
‘Who’d have thought it?’ she thought, feeling a little giddy. She sat there watching the phone, fearing to take her eyes from it. When it rang after five long, painful minutes, Brooke jumped an inch off her chair.
‘It’s Vanessa. You have a deal.’
Brooke sank back into her chair, whizzed it round and suddenly shouted, Yippee! She’d just joined the big boys. And it felt fantastic.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tess slipped the chunky wooden ring onto her middle finger and held her hand up to admire it. The polished walnut nub was the size of a pingpong ball and shone in the sunshine, its size and shape making her hand look dainty and elegant. The Broadway street vendor was busy putting silver earrings into tiny plastic bags, so she tapped him on the shoulder.
‘How much?’ she asked, her hand already rummaging for her purse.
‘Forty dollars,’ he said, shaking a long brown ponytail over his shoulder.
She knew he would take thirty dollars, but what the hell? She had a sudden romantic notion that he was a struggling artisan jewellery–maker by day, but a gifted modernist artist by night, and she felt almost altruistic handing over her four crisp ten–dollar bills. Supporting the arts, she thought with a smile. True or not, the ring went beautifully with her Seven jeans. Very downtown. Crossing Broadway onto Spring Street she spotted a lovely old yellow ice–cream van parked on one of SoHo’s cobbled side streets. She bought a red current waffle cone and took a big satisfied lick. Overnight the weather seemed to have turned and today was Manhattan’s first warm spring day. How could you be down on a day like this?
Not even her disappointment over Dom could ruin her mood today.
This weekend was supposed to be Dom’s first visit to New York to see her, as part of their transatlantic pact to each spend one weekend a month in their respective cities, but the arrangement had fallen at the first hurdle when Dom had called to say he had to be in the office all day Monday – the editor had called a conference about redesigning the travel pages. At first Tess had felt upset and let down, jilted even. She had spent her first two weekends in New York rushing around trying to get everything organized for his visit. Finally her new apartment in the West Village was now straight and ordered, her clothes all out of suitcases, her possessions removed from the FedEx cardboard boxes. It didn’t quite feel like home yet, but at least it was a solid, familiar base from which to properly explore the city.
But maybe, she thought with a pang of guilt, maybe it was for the best. As a travel editor, Dom was extremely familiar with most major cities, plus he had a tendency to show off about his knowledge. It might actually be more fun to discover New York herself, finding her own hidden little corners, uncovering her own secrets, which she could share at a later date. And she had to admit she had loved the selfish indulgence of her day so far, with no one to please but herself. She had woken up late and taken a solitary brunch in Pastis in the Meatpacking District, a short walk away from her apartment. She had sat there nursing a latte, watching with fascination the glamorous women dressed in skinny jeans and Chanel sitting in huddles, laughing, drinking coffee, and picking at food.
r /> She had then wandered back into the Village, meandering up and down as if on a snakes and ladders board: up busy Seventh Avenue, back down quiet residential streets lined with smart townhouses with brown stoops and shiny front doors. There had been a long leisurely window–shopping session down Bleeker Streeet, past the long lines outside the Magnolia bakery, queuing for cup cakes and delicious slabs of red velvet cake, the warm, syrupy scent drifting out onto the street. Then past shops selling antiques or guitars, second–hand books, designer clothes or fifty different types of bread, then up into SoHo, which had a different vibe entirely, with its narrow cobbled back streets and multi–million–dollar lofts, street stalls selling finger puppets – five dollars for three – right outside galleries displaying African art without a price tag.
It was a different New York to the one she had first sampled almost a decade ago when she and Dom, in their first summer as a couple, had got two cheap bucket flights to Newark, New Jersey and caught the Amtrak into Penn Station, right next to Madison Square Garden. It had been July, which she now knew was the worst time to visit New York, but back then the stifling heat made it even more exotic. They had stayed in a hostel on One Hundred and Fourth Street, bought hot dogs in Central Park and pizza slices at Sbarro. ‘One day, we will work in Manhattan,’ they had decided as they stared out at the view from the top of the Empire State Building. Ten years later, Tess had made it: she was finally living the dream.
Glancing at her watch, she was shocked to see it was already 4 p.m. The day was going too quickly; it was always the way when she was alone, she thought. She was enjoying being outdoors, feeling the sun and lazy spring breeze on her face, but passing the Angelika Film Center on West Houston Street she was tempted to go inside. After walking for so many hours her feet were aching – and anyway, how long had it been since she had been to the cinema? She read the screening timetable behind the ticket booths. There was a Woody Allen film she’d read about – terrible reviews; then there were a couple of films that were part of the Macedonian Film Festival and a Brazilian foreign–language film that she was sure was excellent … but not today. But then her eyes stopped on The Pact, a low–budget horror film that had picked up buzz at the Sundance Film Festival. Looks like fun, she grinned.
She joined the long line snaking up the steps, which seemed to comprise mainly of intelligent–looking twenty–somethings, killing time by scrolling through her BlackBerry, hoping for a message from Dom. At the pay–booth, she put down a twenty–dollar bill distractedly, her eyes still on the BlackBerry.
‘Excuse me, ma’am. Are you the parent or guardian of this boy?’