Missing Marlene Read Free

positioned.
    “Subtle,” Jane said dryly.
    “I thought you’d appreciate it.”
    “Wait till Bertha sees it,” Jane said, referring to the author by her real name—Bertha Stumpf.
    “She has. She called this morning. She loves it.” With a chuckle Daniel dropped the cover back into the drawer.
    “I don’t think I can take any more mail,” Jane said. “Any calls?”
    Abruptly Daniel’s face turned serious, uneasy. From the same drawer he removed a pink message slip.
    “Let me guess,” Jane said. “Roger called.”
    “He’s still furious. He wants to know what Arliss said.”
    Jane stared bleakly into the middle distance.
    The continuing problem of Roger Haines, her biggest client....
    She and Roger had met, of all places, at Kenneth’s funeral. Jane, standing on the steps of Shady Hills’s St. John’s Episcopal Church after the service, greeting mourners, had found herself face-to-face with this distinguished-looking man in his late forties who explained that when Kenneth had been an editor, he had bought Roger’s first novel. Roger had always admired Kenneth tremendously, he told Jane, offered his sympathy, and left.
    Six months later he called Jane and asked if she would meet with him. He had left his agent, he said, and was looking for new representation. He wondered if Jane would be interested. Jane felt insecure at the prospect of handling books without cleavers or cleavage on their covers, but she met with him nonetheless. They agreed to work together. She found him charming—self-effacing yet stinging when he chose to be.
    She also found him extremely attractive—a feeling she suppressed as long as she could. After a year she could suppress it no longer. It was a feeling she knew Roger shared. One afternoon he invited her to his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to discuss a new manuscript. By page six they were locked in a devouring kiss. They made love, and if Roger wasn’t Kenneth, he was special in his own way, tender and kind.
    But then Jane pulled back. It wasn’t right, it was too soon, he wasn’t Kenneth. She needed more time, she told Roger, and he said he understood, he would wait.
    In the meantime, they remained close, working to build his career.
    Then the quality of his work started to fall. A Better Place, his tenth novel, was not his best work, and both Jane and Millennium House, his publisher, told him so. But Millennium accepted the book, hoping it was an anomaly.
    It wasn’t. Roger then gave Jane the manuscript of a new novel, something he’d kept a secret until he was finished. He had called it In the Name of the Mother . It was, he said, his finest work yet.
    After Jane read it, she was sure that either Roger had lost his mind or she had. So she gave the manuscript to Daniel, whose judgment she trusted even more than her own. Daniel was unequivocal. “This,” he pronounced, “is garbage.”
    How to tell Roger? Jane stalled as long as she could, until Roger demanded to know what she thought. So she made an appointment to meet with him and, at this time yesterday, arrived at her office resolved to tell him the truth.
    The trouble was, she’d left the manuscript, on which she’d written her many comments, at home. Freudian, no doubt. Roger was due in the office within the hour. Daniel, always eager to help, drove to Jane’s house to retrieve it, while Jane waited for Roger.
    By the time Roger arrived, Daniel had returned from Jane’s house with the manuscript, and Jane had it ready on her desk. But when she began to talk about it, Roger cut her off. He was clearly agitated; she could tell he’d been drinking. They could discuss the manuscript later, he said. He had more urgent business.
    There had been no advertisement in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section for A Better Place. He was incensed. He reminded Jane that Millennium had promised them a “big push” for this book. So far they hadn’t given it even a gentle shove. Roger demanded that