Bestseller. Olivia Goldsmith

stood, finally, and shuffled off the terrace into the house. Susann got up and crossed to the balustrade, leaning against it and looking out toward the water. The autumn sun slipped behind a cloud, and Susann, clad only in a bathing suit and chiffon cover-up, shivered. The problem was that as tacky and annoying as she was, Edith was right. The new book was not only coming slowly, it was coming badly. And there was no room for shoddiness. At this point in her life Susann could not afford to slip out of the golden circle of bestsellers and back into obscurity, back to Cincinnati. The very thought made her shiver again.

      The women’s fiction market was changing. Alf said it was moving forward and might leave her behind. But without her books, without her fame, without the money that she brought in, where would she be? Who would she be? What would Alf do if her business fell off ? Managing her had made him, but as he’d taken on other clients, hadn’t his interest in her waned a bit? Would even Edith stick with her if all of this ended?

      Susann closed her eyes, shutting them tight despite the crow’s feet. Plastic surgery still couldn’t do anything about crow’s feet, though it had erased the bags and tightened the sags under and over her eyes. Still, good as she looked, young as she looked, slim as she looked, Susann clutched the railing with her arthritic hands and knew she was just a fifty-eight-year-old woman, frightened and alone.

4

       What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.

       —Burton Rascoe

      Judith stared out the window, looking up from the typewriter on the card table she was using as a desk. She was alone, except for Flaubert, who snorted and whimpered in his sleep. Judith wondered if the dog was dreaming. She stretched in her chair. From her seat she could see King Street and a tiny corner of the state university campus. A girl was leaning up against the brick wall of the student center, and, as Judith watched, the dark, lanky young man who was standing beside her leaned in, encompassing her with his hands. Then he quickly kissed her on the mouth. The girl laughed and tossed her head. Even through the dirt of the windowpane Judith could see the white flash of her teeth.

      It seemed so long to Judith since she’d been a student, even though it was only two semesters ago. And it seemed even longer since Daniel had kissed her that way. Perhaps he had never kissed her that way. Daniel was not what anyone would call the spontaneous type. Brilliant, yes. Ambitious, definitely. But spontaneous … No, Judith could never remember Daniel kissing her like that.

      Of course, he hadn’t been free to kiss her on the campus, she told herself, trying to be fair. Judith always tried to be fair. She remembered reading somewhere that her name came from the Old Testament, that Judith might have been one of the judges, or perhaps she was just in the Book of Judges. Something like that. Daniel would know. He knew everything. So why was she being so critical? Judith felt confused. When she sat up here, working on the book, she sometimes let her mind wander, and she didn’t always like where it led her.

      Below her, in the sunlight, the young man bent and picked up a backpack, swinging it easily onto his shoulder. He said something, and Judith could see another flash of teeth from the smiling girl. When was the last time I smiled, Judith wondered. Well, she reminded herself, I’ve always been a serious girl.

      And theirs had been a very serious affair. After all, Judith had been a student and Daniel was her teacher. Not only that, he was married. Of course, his marriage had already been troubled for some time. Daniel was an honorable person, so he told her right from the beginning, and he had told her that he was deeply attracted to her. He thought she had talent—real talent—and that someday she could be a successful writer.

      No grown man had ever paid that kind of attention to her. She had blushed with pleasure and confusion. And she had accepted his praise and his offer to go out for a cup of coffee. “You’ll be a successful writer,” he’d repeated, and there, under the table in the coffee shop, he’d taken her hand and squeezed it. Writing was her dream, her secret ambition. She’d never told anyone, much less a college professor, that she wanted to be a writer. They would laugh at her. But Daniel hadn’t laughed. He knew her secret, and he encouraged her.

      She’d believed him, and here she was, actually married to him and working away, 279 pages into the manuscript. It wasn’t exactly the book she had planned to write. Not art. Not even close. It was a book they were sort of doing together. Not exactly for the art of it, and not exactly together, but … well, they needed the money now.

      Her parents had been furious about Daniel, about his religious background, his marital status. They had threatened to sue the school and had cut her off without a penny. Not that Judith really cared. They’d always been well-off, and her father had always used money to control them all. That was probably why she’d gone to a state college in the first place. He’d been livid that she hadn’t applied to one of the Seven Sisters schools. But Judith, in her serious way, had told him she was sick of exclusivity and didn’t care about money.

      Daniel didn’t care about money either. It was one of the reasons she loved him. At first she’d even been afraid to tell him that she was one of the Elmira Hunts. Daniel hated capitalism and inherited wealth. He told her that straight out. Like her, he believed in a meritocracy.

      But now they were short of money. Really short. Daniel had to pay alimony and child support. So they were writing this book for their future, a book that could be commercial, that could make them some money and free Daniel from teaching so he could get to do some serious writing. Then she’d have time to get back to her first novel, the one that Daniel had praised so highly.

      Judith heard the apartment door slam. Flaubert jumped up.

      “I don’t hear you!” Daniel’s accusatory voice floated up the stairs from the kitchen. He often came home between classes for a sandwich and a quickie. Judith sighed. It just all seemed different now, when sex wasn’t forbidden but expected. Somehow the romance was—well, not gone exactly, but lessened.

      “I don’t hear you,” Daniel called again. He loved to hear the sound of her old typewriter. He thought it was quaint that she refused to use a word processor. He called her his little Luddite. Judith wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d never asked.

      Now she gave Flaubert a settling pat and shouted out to her husband, “I’m thinking. Sometimes I’m allowed to think.” She immediately regretted the snappish tone in her voice.

      Daniel hopped the three steps up to the little room in the turret that Judith used as an office. He wasn’t exactly handsome. He was a little too small, a little too tight-featured. But with his steel-rimmed glasses, his curling black hair, and his grin, he had an insouciance that always affected her. He was so different from her cold, controlling father. Even now, she couldn’t believe that she had attracted him. He’d graduated from Yale! And he’d been on scholarship. He’d spent a year at the Sorbonne. Daniel Gross was really educated, and Judith knew that her mediocre grades at the Elmira Academy did not measure up to Daniel’s prep-school education. He’d already read everything, and he’d even met some of the writers who wrote the great books he taught. His two courses on contemporary American literature were always overregistered. In her first semester Judith had actually been shut out of it. She almost smiled. Imagine that! And now she didn’t just get to admire his pepper-and-salt tweed jackets and his hand-knitted sweaters and his perfectly rumpled corduroys, she got to live with him and make love to him. I am happy, she told herself, looking up at him. I am very lucky and very happy.

      Daniel approached her and put a hand on either shoulder. Flaubert growled, as he always did when Daniel touched Judith, but she told him to hush. Daniel’s hands were small, but his fingers were powerful, and he gently gripped the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders. “So, how’s it coming? Daydreaming, or have you got a junior case of writer’s block?”

      She smiled at the little pun. Judith hadn’t graduated. She left last year, her junior year. Somehow, after Daniel, the degree didn’t seem important