The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald Read Free Page B

away, and delivered him to a bigger, richer house willing to pay him a reported advance of a million dollars. Just exactly how Samuels had managed to pull this off — and why Skitsy Held, no cream puff, had let him — had been the subject of much speculation around town. Just as Noyes’s second novel was. Word was it was on the late side. Word was his new publisher was getting edgy. Hard to blame them. A million is a lot of money for a serious novel. Especially one by an author who had only just turned twenty-three.
    It was Boyd Samuels who got me mixed up with Cameron Noyes. He called me one day and invited me up for a chat. I went. I had nothing better to do.
    The Boyd Samuels Agency had a suite of offices on the top floor of the Flatiron Building, the gloriously ornate skyscraper built in 1902 at the elongated triangle where Broadway meets Fifth and Twenty-third. It was about 1957 in Boyd Samuels’s outer office, and it wasn’t so much an outer office as it was a diner — cute and kitschy as hell, too, right down to the shiny chrome counter and swivel stools, the pink and charcoal linoleum on the floor, the neon clock and the vintage jukebox, which was playing Eddie Cochran. It seemed as if everywhere I went that season I bumped into the fifties. I suppose young people are always nostalgic for a decade they didn’t have to live through.
    Phones were ringing, people were bopping in and out of different office doors, snapping their fingers to the juke. None of them looked over twenty-five. Lulu and I waited at the front door until one of them, a tall, gangly, splay-footed kid with a Beaver Cleaver burrhead crew cut, hurried over to us from behind the counter. He wore a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, jeans, and the look of someone who was used to getting whipped. His shoulders were hunched in the anticipation of blows, his eyes set in a permanent wince.
    “Stewart Hoag, isn’t it?” he asked timidly, fastening his eyes to a spot on the wall about a foot over my head.
    I said it was.
    “I’m Todd Lesser, Boyd’s assistant. H-He’s on his way.”
    “From … ?”
    “Home,” he replied, explaining quickly, “he’s running a bit late this morning. He’ll be here in just a few minutes. Really. Care to wait in his office?”
    “Nice decor,” I commented as we crossed to a corridor of offices. “If business is ever slow, you can sell burgers.”
    “Business,” Todd said modestly, “is never slow.”
    Boyd Samuels was into ugly. Ugly, kidney-shaped desk of salmon-colored plastic. Ugly art-moderne love seat of chrome and leopard skin. Ugly specimen cacti growing uninvitingly in pots in front of the window overlooking Madison Square Park. These Lulu ambled right for, sniffing delicately at them so as not to honk her large black nose on a prickle.
    Todd eyed her warily. “Uh … she’s not going to … ”
    “Just getting the lay of the land,” I assured him.
    One wall of the office was floor-to-ceiling shelves displaying the many best-selling books by his many best-selling clients. Framed magazine covers and best-seller lists and rave reviews crowded the walls. Standing in one corner was a life-sized, full-color cardboard display cutout of Delilah Moscowitz, the statuesque, scrumptious, and sizzingly hot young sex therapist who was blowing Dr. Ruth out of the water, so to speak. Delilah’s looks, frisky wit, and bold irreverence toward such touchy subjects as fellatio, bondage, and her own rather uninhibited sex life had made her a sensation. She had a top syndicated newspaper column, a radio call-in show, a regular slot on Good Morning America , and now, thanks to Boyd Samuels, a surefire bestseller, Tell Delilah . “Good sex is all in the head,” read the promo copy on her cardboard cutout. “Take home the lady who gives the best head in the business.”
    “Nice subtle approach,” I observed.
    “Our newest star,” said Todd, beaming. “Her book has already hit the B. Dalton chain list. She’ll be