How To Judge A Book By Its Lover

  HOW TO JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS LOVER

  Jessica Jiji

  Stone Tiger Books

  Copyright © 2020 Jessica Jiji

  First published by Stone Tiger Books in 2020.

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN:9781735667607

  eISBN: 9781735667614

  Stone Tiger Books

  225 E. 35th Street, Ground Fl.

  New York, NY 10016

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior written consent of the Publisher.

  Cover and Jacket design by Rob Carter

  For Jeffrey, dreaming my dreams with you...

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  - 1 -

  - 2 -

  - 3 -

  - 4 -

  - 5 -

  - 6 -

  - 7 -

  - 8 -

  - 9 -

  - 10 -

  - 11 -

  - 12 -

  - 13 -

  - 14 -

  - 15 -

  - 16 -

  - 17 -

  - 18 -

  - 19 -

  - 20 -

  - 21 -

  - 22 -

  - 23 -

  - 24 -

  - 25 -

  About The Author

  - 1 -

  A sweet voice taunted me from over my shoulder. “Still writing about sex but not getting any?”

  Mortified, I snapped my laptop closed. What a horrible thing to say! And how depressingly true.

  To make matters worse, that barbed observation was made by Portia Thorn, a long-legged, long-haired beauty who was a natural on the downtown scene. She didn’t need a tattoo or a scar to convey that she was both glamorous and edgy, half-Hollywood and half-felon. Me, I could put a bone through my nose and still look like the girl next door.

  We were at one of the most shabby chic venues in Manhattan—Performance Space 122—where I’d dragged myself to catch the latest lecture in a series on the dialectics of jazz.

  Maybe I was single and unpublished, but I kept trying, even just then editing my novel in my seat while waiting to sample another eclectic offering from the culture capital of the world. Until Portia showed up.

  “Still getting lots of sex but not writing well?” I countered.

  Actually, Portia’s prose wasn’t all that bad. She was one of the more talented members of our writers group, although that wasn’t saying much. I liked a few of them as friends; maybe their lack of success made me feel more at home.

  “Don’t take offense,” Portia said offensively. “I’m sure somewhere out there in suburbia there’s a nice, regular guy looking for a sweet, hometown girl like you. Well,” she turned on her heel, “see ya Tuesday.”

  I didn’t know which was worse, her smug tone or her stinging insight. There probably was a nice, suburban guy out there but I was looking for a cool, urban intellectual. But when you flee the suburbs like I did, you can’t help feeling a little too plain for the sophisticated city crowd. Still, I was going to catch up, one history of jazz lecture at a time.

  Portia had taken her seat on the other side of the room, but I didn’t bother reopening my laptop. The absence of romance in my life had left me struggling to bring any depth or true emotion to the characters I was trying to depict. The Viennese soldier making love to my main character, Marguerite, was much too stiff—and not in the right places. I needed to get to the essence of his motivation in order to add passion to the scene. But who was he? Lacking any crush of my own, I felt completely blocked.

  Just then, the lights in the auditorium dimmed and a lanky, dark-haired man in a tailored suit with his shirt untucked approached the podium. After polite applause, he looked up, and his brilliant blue eyes met mine.

  Ooh, yes: inspiration at last!

  Still lost in that gaze the following day, I headed over to the stately San Remo overlooking Central Park to meet a potential client. The elevator doors opened directly into Suite 15. Stepping into Anderson Gallant’s apartment, I took in the breathtaking view and thought of the brick wall that my studio faces. My whole apartment was the size of his front hall. Just another reminder of how far I was from making it big in the big city.

  If I had that much space, I might have decorated differently—or at least decorated. Except for a few expensive-looking antiques, the place was bare, with nothing on the walls or floors.

  My new client, Cadbury, was maniacally chewing on a couch leg. Anderson should have stopped him, but then again, Anderson was himself maniacally skiing to nowhere on his NordicTrack.

  The maid caught his attention by pulling the plug. As he took his headphones off, he caught sight of the pile of toothpicks his muscular boxer was producing.

  “Cadbury!” he shouted. “There’s only seventeen Biedermeier empire-style loveseats in the world, and you’ve already eaten four of them.” He turned to me and smiled. At more than six feet tall with reddish-brown hair and glasses, Anderson had the smug ease of someone born with a lifetime country club membership who could walk into a boardroom wearing that beat-up SpongeBob T-shirt he had on and still take the chairman’s seat.

  “Well, they say you’re the best. Think you can handle my Caddy?”

  “You know that sheepdog named Slobodan who loves Cadbury? She used to eat Coach handbags like they were pastrami sandwiches until I took over.”

  To prove my point, I put on my best stern look and commanded, “Cadbury, no! Couches are not for eating.” Cadbury looked at me defiantly, but his teeth disengaged.

  “Cadbury, come!” Shocked, the dog did as he was told. “Cadbury, sit!” I continued in my drill sergeant voice. Secretly delighted, as all dogs are when they perform, he sat.

  My tone jumped up three octaves. “Good boy, you good boy!” The pup wagged his tail with delight.

  “How’d you do that?” Anderson asked.

  “Am I hired?” I asked with false modesty. After all, I had no doubts about my ability to control canines. It was the rest of my life I was worried about.

  “Cadbury’s worth it,” he said, “even though you charge more than my proctologist.”

  Yeah, but he doesn’t scoop your poop, I thought. “So, you want to show me how to work the keys?”

  “Sure,” Anderson said, letting Cadbury sink a set of incisors into the new Air Jordans on his feet. The difficult part of the job is never the dogs; it’s always the people. I wondered whether to correct Anderson but decided not to push my luck. “I only use the top lock.”

  Suddenly, my eye was drawn to a black-and-white photograph on the piano. I could never mistake that thick, gray beard and macho stance. Ernest Hemingway! If I could only write like him I wouldn’t be here interviewing for the privilege of cleaning up after Cadbury, who by the looks of what he was putting down his throat would require a thirty-gallon kitchen bag.

  “Is that…” I began.

  “You guessed it,” Anderson said, beaming. “Dear old Dad.”

  For a split second I tried to recall whether Hemingway ever had a son named Anderson Gallant when it hit me that he was referring to the b
espectacled fellow with a walrus mustache standing next to the literary great. “Your father knew Hemingway?”

  “Ah, yes. Great writers were as common around our house as I guess suburban ladies were in yours.” Looking down at last year’s red capri pants, which I knew positively screamed Walt Whitman Mall, I wished I’d worn my usual Manhattan-artist black torn jeans instead.

  As much as his comparison hurt, a sudden explosion of hope suppressed my indignation. He was that Gallant?! As in the Gallant publishing empire?

  It had to be fate. Here I was, a struggling writer looking for a break, and suddenly one of the biggest publishers in New York gives me the keys to his apartment.

  As I walked past the San Remo’s smartly uniformed doorman and out into the warm spring afternoon, everything looked dazzling. The bumblebee-colored taxis buzzed with the promise of sweet journeys, the streetlights flashed like glimmers of hope, and the handsome guy on the corner just ahead of me looked exactly like my soldier inspiration from the night before.

  As I crossed Seventy-Fourth Street, the stranger looked up from his copy of The World as Will and Representation and our eyes met. It was him! Lucien Brosseau, head critic of The New York Arts and Entertainment Review and featured speaker at the Columbus Avenue Arts Center.

  Normally I’d have been too self-conscious to say anything to such a brilliant thinker, but it seemed like fate was embracing me. Even my unruly hair somehow felt soft and wavy. Plus, I had just sealed my first deal with a publisher—sure it was only to walk his pooch, but still, good sign! And here was my chance to pitch for romance.

  “Schopenhauer!” I said, reading from the jacket. “He’s one of my faves!” Probably not the most insightful take, but it made Lucien smile, and I felt my heart swell at seeing the soft side of this hardened critic.

  “Really? You must be his cutest fan,” he said. I blushed as a fire truck careened around the corner behind us.

  When the noise of the siren receded, he handed me a flyer. “Maybe you’d like to come,” he offered. It was an invitation to a lecture he was giving in a week’s time on the influence of nineteenth-century philosophers on contemporary jazz.

  “Totally! I’ll totally be there!” I replied, as though it were possible to half be there.

  “Great,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.

  Great? I thought. It was almost too much to hope for, but I decided that no matter the risk to my scared heart, I would dare to admit to myself how happy I felt thinking about seeing Lucien again.

  The Hell’s Kitchen writers group I’d been in for the past six years met in a basement community room in an anonymous apartment building on Ninth Avenue. As I entered the florescent-lit lobby, the smells of wontons, curry, and arroz con pollo, combining like some United Nations of cuisine, engulfed my senses.

  There was a bounce in my step on the dirty linoleum floor. After all, I had News. It was the unspoken dream of every member of the group to leave someday, and Anderson Gallant might very well be my ticket out. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Portia Thorn’s face when she heard. She may have been stunning, but long, sleek hair would only get her so far in life.

  My own mousy mop can never decide if it wants to be straight or curly, and with an average bod and no startling eyes or stunning derriere to set me apart, I was a sucker for every product on the market that promised to make me shine.

  But I wasn’t down on my looks that night, instead relishing the thought that after the session I could dish with my favorite group member, Danny Z., about Lucien. Maybe he’d even know who the hell Schopenhauer was. It all seemed so funny and fun and filled with lucky vibes.

  The eight of us scooched our chairs into a circle and started shuffling our marked copies of everyone’s work. Margo’s Love Between Consenting Parrots was at the top of the pile, since we’d left off there last week, and the author herself was perched at the edge of her chair, pen in hand, ready to absorb our insightful comments on her third unpublished novel.

  “The improvement in your work since revision nine is really promising,” said Seth, a tweed-jacket chemistry professor by day and aspiring science fiction writer by night. “Squeaky’s journey from a neurotically self-absorbed boy—I mean bird—to social consciousness when he flies over the slums of São Paulo is evidence of—”

  “I’m sorry, Seth, but could I just work in here a moment?” Portia asked.

  “Work in” is the expression we use when someone wants to interrupt with a more important observation. Margo braced herself for the usual Portia critique, but none came.

  “I’m going to burst if I don’t share this with you guys,” she continued. I knew how she felt because I was bursting with the news about Anderson Gallant like a girl in the bathroom line at Bloomies during Christmas week. But I didn’t mind letting Portia go first, since my news would blow hers away.

  “Helen Ellenbogen loved Wild Asparagus!” she bubbled. Everyone burst into applause, including me. I think I clapped the loudest because I was pretending Portia’s face was between my hands each time they slapped together. Every one of us would have given our hard drives to be represented by Ellenbogen Associates, which last year sold more six-figure titles than any other agent in New York. My news of meeting Anderson Gallant was like a lottery scratch card compared to her paycheck.

  We managed to get through the rest of the night, even though I’m sure I wasn’t the only one choking on envy. Only Sunny Hellerstein, aspiring author of Daily Vows for a Happy Future, really believed that the success of one brings us all one step closer.

  I didn’t even have the heart to tell Danny Z. about Lucien. After all, it was only a flyer.

  Trudging up to my fifth-floor apartment, the coffin-like elevator broken as usual, I was furious that Portia’s dumb romance novel had been picked by Helen Ellenbogen Associates when my labor of love, Napoleon’s Hairdresser, had not, despite possessing all the elements of a great epic: war, lust, and shattered illusions.

  There was no justice.

  As I turned the key and rammed my shoulder into the door—it only worked with a good push—it was hard not to remember the waves of hope and excitement that had overwhelmed me the first day I’d moved in. Someday my living room-slash-bedroom-slash-study-slash-kitchen would make a touching anecdote on talk shows about humble beginnings and the struggles all great writers endure. Only it wasn’t supposed to take eight years.

  I slammed the door closed and a chunk of plaster fell and hit my head. Flipping on the lights, I stared at the cracked walls and shabby cabinets. They looked as pathetic as I felt.

  There were only two choices: Reach out to a sweet friend, or dive into an even sweeter pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. I dialed Trish.

  Her husband answered. I could just picture Tom in their colonial-style home on Long Island—that suburban sprawl I’d fled so many years before to make it as a writer in the city. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Tom. It’s me, Laurel.”

  “What’s up?” he said, lowering the volume on their eighty-inch plasma TV.

  “You know me, always hopeful,” I replied, knowing that he’d want to get back to the Islanders game that was blasting in the background. Just as well. I really needed my friend.

  “Cool. Hang on a second; I’ll get Trish.”

  Trish and Tom met at SUNY Stony Brook, shopped at the Walt Whitman Mall, and set up house not five miles away from where each of them grew up. They seemed happy enough, but I wanted to think my future destiny would hold more than manicured lawns and Sunday barbecues.

  “Connor, stop hitting the baby!” Trish shouted before getting on the phone.

  “Laurel!” she said.

  “Trishalicious, how are you?”

  “Between smelly diapers and Dora videos, I’ve never been better. How about you?”

  I told her about Portia. Naturally, Trish rushed to my defense. “I’m sure her writing couldn’t possibly be as good as yours. I mean, I bet she never won four hundred dollars when her story was
published in Seventeen Magazine.”

  She was only trying to help, but the thought that my first short story, “Total Eclipse of the Canoe Trip,” might be the highlight of my career made me want to cry. I was twelve when that happened, with no success since. None. I wanted to throw a tantrum about how unfair life was, but I couldn’t even dramatically threaten to stick my head in the oven, since it was broken like everything else in this place.

  Trish must have sensed my disappointment, because she changed the subject. “Never mind,” she said. “I have great news. Remember that cute dentist I told you about?” She paused for effect, and I could imagine the drumroll. “He’s single.”

  I groaned inside. As well as she knew me, Trish never understood that I wanted so much more out of life than another jock turned healthcare professional. “That’s so sweet of you, Trish, but I may have a chance at a really amazing guy.”

  We spent the next half hour analyzing every nuance of the two lines Lucien and I had exchanged on the street corner. By the time we were testing the sound of my first name with his last name, Connor interrupted. “Mom! You promised I could have another Double Stuf Oreo!”

  “I did not, Connor Steven! Now brush your teeth and I’ll tuck you in.”

  “You better go,” I said, feeling restored to my senses and ready to face the miserable little drip my landlord claims is a shower—until Trish added one final thought.

  “Hey,” she said, “I saw Jenna at the gas station the other day. She was giving me the third degree about why you never call her.”

  Jenna. My older sister. She always seems to show up just when I get up from being knocked down.

  That pint of Chubby Hubby wasn’t going to make it through the night.

  - 2 -

  Luckily, my job offered the perfect chance to walk off the calories. Between the schnoodle on Riverside Drive, the sheepdog at Lincoln Plaza, the Chihuahua on West Seventy-Eighth Street, the Great Dane I collected at an Amsterdam Avenue hair salon, and now Cadbury at what I hoped was my future publisher’s home, I was clocking two and a half miles just in the morning run.