Clio Rising Read online

  Bea moistened her lips, and I waited for a curt “Thank you, we’ll let you know” that didn’t come. As it turned out, I was just what she needed, in ways she didn’t divulge at the time.

  “Well, I can see why you’d want to move,” she said. “So, Livvie.” I’d never heard my name sound so smooth or rich, like top-shelf bourbon. Livvie on the rocks, please. “I need you to start tomorrow. The place is in chaos. The kind you get when your last two assistants have been incompetent. So, if you can start tomorrow and handle enormous stress, the job is yours.” She said it paid twelve thousand a year, a princely sum when many advertised publishing jobs started at ten-five.

  From a public phone on the corner I called my mother collect and told her I’d landed a good job with benefits in a nice clean office near Washington Square. Clean was very important to my mother; Washington Square meant nothing to her, but I threw it in because it sounded ritzy. I didn’t expect the audible whoosh from the other end of the line, as if she’d been holding her breath since I’d moved away, waiting for the call about her youngest daughter being mugged, or homeless, or anything else bad that could happen to a girl in New York City.

  • • •

  Bea appointed Ramona Costa, a junior agent who had started out as her assistant five years earlier, to orient me to the compact suite of offices. As we shook hands, Ramona gave my chinos and button-down shirt a quick and wordless once-over. The girls at the Parkside would have envied Ramona’s pinstripe suit with padded shoulders, but she was as thin as a strand of spaghetti and the outfit engulfed her.

  With her knowledge of how everything ran, I sensed that Ramona was someone to win over. “You and Miss Winston must get teased a lot about Beezus and Ramona,” I said jovially, but Ramona’s face drew a blank. “You know, the Beverly Cleary novel? About the two sisters, Beatrice and Ramona? I read it about a million times when I was little.”

  She tugged at her jacket in what appeared to be a kind of personal tic. “No one’s ever brought it up,” she replied.

  On our tour, her voice fell to a hush, as if we were in a hospital or church instead of a literary agency where the jangling of phones provided the soundtrack. “Your predecessor was unhappy,” she said. “She didn’t listen to me. There are tricks to getting along with Bea.”

  “What are they?” I whispered back.

  “First, Bea hates clutter,” Ramona said, pointing to mounds of manila folders toppling over each other on a long library table in the corner of Bea’s expansive office. It appeared that no one had filed anything since Reagan’s inauguration. Names of clients were printed in neat block letters on the tabs, a who’s who of literati.

  “All these files?” Ramona said, as if the contracts of luminaries were just detritus. “Get rid of them.”

  “Aren’t these legal documents?”

  “I don’t mean literally get rid of them. I mean just hide the mess until you can do all the filing while she’s out at lunch or something. Bea will think you’re a genius. But get on top of the filing pronto, because you’ll want to know where Terrence Crawley or R.J. Rose’s file is when she asks. Believe me.”

  “Where do I stash them in the meantime?”

  “There’s a supply closet nobody uses except you. Right around the corner here.”

  “Nobody uses supplies but me?”

  “Of course not. The agents request supplies from you,” she corrected, as if speaking to a silly child or a very old person.

  From the hallway, Ramona pointed into the individual offices of the agents. The senior-most after Bea, Therese was the only one whose space showed any personal embellishments. A vase of fresh yellow roses sat on her filing cabinet, and a poster from a Picasso retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art covered the one free wall. Framed studio portraits of two boys at different ages and casual shots of a man who reminded me of Sheriff Andy Taylor crowded the bookshelves and her desk. “Please don’t order me anything but red pencils,” Therese said upon our introduction. “Bea says red is a rude color, so just call me rude, I guess!”

  Therese’s laugh was a series of startling little booms that made Nan poke her head out of her office door. Her haircut was a perfect imitation of Princess Di’s, but she had a good twenty years on the princess. “Green or purple for me, please,” she said. “Since you’re taking orders.”

  “Bea and I will only use blue. And that is Trick Number Two,” Ramona said as we continued our tour. “Keep everything straight, especially, especially what Bea likes. And Trick Number Three is don’t run out of anything.”

  Being someone’s “assistant,” I knew, entailed years of doing what people higher up the ladder didn’t want to. But I couldn’t help thinking about the money I’d laid out for college, the hours I’d sweated as a waitress, the money my Aunt Sass had lent me— all so I could find hiding places for files?

  “Now you might think a college degree would put you above this.” Was Ramona reading my mind? “But someone has to be on top of this shit and Bea doesn’t see the need for an office manager with only four agents to keep track of. So you’re it by default.”

  Tucked between Bea’s spacious office and the front lobby was my cubbyhole, which itself resembled a supply closet. Thankfully, it wasn’t right out in the open, like a receptionist’s desk, but the trade-off was it had no windows. Gun-metal gray shelves lent it a particularly claustrophobic feel. Trick Number Four was greeting clients promptly and never letting anyone stand in the reception area for more than a minute.

  “What if I’m on the phone?”

  “Put the person on hold. A client in the hand is worth two in the bush . . . or something like that. Oh, and that brings me to the phone.”

  With ten different lines, it was a more complicated-looking instrument than required by an office with only five people.

  “Everyone answers her own phone within four rings.” That trick spelled relief for me; I was not going to be the telephone operator for phones that had barely stopped ringing since I’d arrived. “Never, ever answer Bea’s phone unless she’s on the other line. Hard as it is to believe, she picks up her own phone. And sometimes yours. So keep personal calls to the barest minimum.”

  I attempted to memorize all the “tricks” because I thought there would be maybe seven at most, but soon we’d worked our way up to double digits and I resorted to taking notes. One of our last stops was a small kitchen area whose upkeep was also my responsibility. “Keep the coffeepot full and fresh at all times. Real milk, none of that powdered shit. No dishes in the sink— never ever ever! When you greet a client, ask them if they’d like coffee or tea, and how they drink it. They should have it in hand by the time they meet with Bea or else you’ll have to interrupt her and you don’t want to do that.” Just when I thought we’d reached the end of my orientation, Ramona took in a deep breath and said, “Okay, just a couple more tricks, and you’re all set.”

  • • •

  While I was getting my bearings those first few days, I saw little of Bea. She kept her own appointment book, an oversized leather tome suitable for a doctor’s office, and I managed to glance at it while attending to her filing. The crammed schedule, a confirmation of her importance, made me envy the hubbub of her life. Her hours were packed with breakfasts, lunches, drinks, and dinners— all noted in pencil for easy cancellation— most likely with editors, clients, and potential clients. A couple of times, though, she dropped names like “Ed” (“As in the mayor,” Ramona explained with impatience) or “Gloria” (“Come on, you know this one. Famous feminist?”) on her way out the door.

  Between appointments, Bea apparently took notice of my diligent work making sense of her files. When I arrived on Thursday morning, she had already come and gone. I found a yellow sticky note tacked to my phone with the praise LOVE what you’ve done! in Bea’s hand. But because her writing was more of a scrawl, I thought it read, “LOOK what you’ve done!” until I ran it past Ramona.

  “Nice job for your first week, kiddo,” Ramon
a said, although she was no more than twenty-seven, tops. “She ‘loves’ you.” There was more than a tinge of sarcasm in her tone, so I decided I should do something special for Ramona and order her own carton of blue pencils.

  Friday morning, Bea was at her desk when I arrived and she waved me into her office. The smell of brewing coffee filled the air, and I could hear the Mr. Coffee drip-drip-dripping in the kitchen. I anticipated a dressing-down for coming in later than she did, forcing her to brew the first pot on her own.

  But she was smiling when she pointed me into the leather chair across from her where many a famous rump had likely sat.

  I missed a lot of what Bea said at the beginning of that meeting. The words “impressed” and “diligence” stood out, but I was easily distracted by my own thoughts. I was concentrating on her lack of an accent and thinking about how I might try mimicking the mirror technique to erase— or at least soften— my own.

  The words “pressing problem” snapped me out of it. Despite all her “LOVE” for me, I had still managed to make some huge mistake.

  “Do you know who Clio Hartt is?”

  “Of course,” I said. “The Dismantled. One of the Paris lesbians.”

  Bea frowned. “Do not ever call her a lesbian,” she admonished, and I nodded in agreement, although I wondered just how I would come into contact with someone who was dead.

  “Clio Hartt is one of the great Modernist writers, perhaps the greatest,” Bea said. I noted her use of the present tense again and realized I must be mistaken about Clio’s demise. “She is one of our clients, and she is in dire need of our help.” Bea scribbled something onto a sticky note for me— a local telephone number and an address on a street I’d never heard of.

  “I want you to call her and make an appointment to stop by,” Bea continued. “Do you know where Milligan Place is? Charming little enclave. Head up Sixth and you can’t miss it.”

  “You want me to call the Clio Hartt? You want me to go to her apartment?”

  Bea’s brow crinkled, as if she was rethinking her decision to task me with something so huge my first week on the job. “That is exactly what I want you to do. Now, Clio’s a challenge,” she said, which sounded odd coming from someone who was her own sort of challenge. “She doesn’t like people anymore. Maybe never did. She tolerates me because I sold a new edition of The Dismantled that’s been adopted at colleges and makes handsome royalties, but I haven’t seen her in person in probably eight years. She does call me several times a week, though.”

  Wow was all I could think to respond to the idea of never seeing a client who lived in the same neighborhood.

  “You probably don’t know this, but she is from your neck of the woods. Hendersonville, North Carolina. Her name was Birdie Threatt back then. No wonder she changed it, right?”

  In my youthful brashness, I corrected her. I said I knew some Threatts, and the e was long, not short.

  “However you say it, she’s waxing nostalgic about her ‘homeplace.’” She made air quotes, even though a native Southerner was surely familiar with that term. “I’ve never heard her go on quite like this. I thought she might let you help her with things like groceries and errands. Be her gal Friday.”

  “Oh.” I pictured myself spending all my free time babysitting a closeted old lesbian— not how I envisioned my new life in New York’s literary world.

  “You’ll do this on my dime, of course,” Bea said, as if she read disappointment on my face. “I don’t expect you to volunteer. It will require some juggling, though, so your work in the office doesn’t suffer. If it’s too much . . . well, we’ll talk about extra compensation.” The words “extra compensation” echoed in my ears like the promise of a cold beer at the end of a hard day. I could already see myself ditching the white crew sock where I squirreled away my cash and opening a proper bank account.

  “It would be an honor to help Miss Hartt!”

  “Let’s just hope it works.” As I stood to go, Bea assessed me in a way she hadn’t before, looking me up and down like a man judging whether a woman was worth his time. “You are most definitely her type.”

  That stopped me again. Was Clio Hartt going to pinch my behind when I brought her milk and eggs? “Sorry?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, she hasn’t had sex in years. She’s heading for ninety, poor thing. I just mean . . . well, you look a little like Flora, that’s all. Flora Haynes, the playwright? Tall, boyish, dark, that pixie haircut—”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “Pixie” cuts were what my sisters and I got every summer when I was growing up, and I was horrified to think I still had one.

  “I’m counting on you, Livvie,” Bea said. “This is maybe the most important thing you’ll do as my assistant. Being an agent is so much more than just negotiating contracts, you know. If you can get through to Clio, hold her hand, befriend her—”

  I thought Bea intended to hold out a carrot like “— you’ll be a junior agent before you know it.” But then her phone rang and she didn’t finish the thought.

  I returned to my little office to stare at the sticky note, trying to pick up the phone and pimp myself out to the illustrious Clio Hartt.

  Chapter 3

  To my surprise, Clio Hartt had an answering machine. She also had a honeyed voice with the Carolina mountains still audible in it. Her outgoing message held no trace of the crotchety crone I’d imagined. “Caller, I cannot get to the phone. Please leave me a message, which I will treasure.” Sweet as a Hendersonville apple with not even a hint of tartness.

  I left the friendliest, most down-home message I could, then tackled a backlog of photocopying. Anticipating the return call, I kept poking my head out of the copy cubicle every time a phone line squawked. If I couldn’t manage the first big task Bea had entrusted to me, I might get pigeonholed as the girl who didn’t get things done, my career in the publishing industry derailed. I imagined Bea shaking her head as she related the tale: “The girl couldn’t make a simple phone call!”

  So I dialed Clio Hartt’s number again, and then again, within the space of about an hour. The first time I hung up; the second time I left another message, much briefer. More anxiety set in. Bea had suggested Clio never left her apartment. Was she on the floor, in the grip of a fit or a stroke? Had she tripped getting out of the tub and bashed her skull? (Did people that old even take baths? My Meemaw was eightyish, with a distinctly unwashed smell that made me wriggle out of her hugs.)

  Near lunchtime I was thinking I could either call the police or check on her in person. After a brief back-and-forth of the pros and cons, I chose option number two because, even though it might not be the New York way, that’s what I’d do in Weaverville if a friend or neighbor was possibly in trouble. Maybe I could locate the super to let me in.

  “Do you know where Milligan Place is?” I asked Ramona at the coffeemaker. “Bea said I should just walk up Sixth, but she didn’t say how far.”

  Ramona gave me a thorny sideways look, as if I had inquired about something personal, maybe her bra size. “Why?”

  “I’m supposed to check on Clio Hartt, and she’s not picking up the phone. I thought I’d, you know, drop in.”

  “You do not ‘you know, drop in’ on Clio Hartt,” Ramona said, with a thick slice of mockery. “If Bea told you to do that, she’s testing your judgment. Which seems to be pretty bad.” Then she grabbed her coffee and closed her office door behind her with a decisive click.

  And then, just as I was reconsidering option number one, my phone line blinked and squealed, and I dove to get it before my message kicked in. A screech pierced my eardrum.

  “I am about to be raped and killed!” were Clio Hartt’s first words to me.

  • • •

  The cops were already on the scene by the time I figured out where Clio lived, on a tucked-away enclave I passed twice before a woman walking a yappy shih tzu gave me directions. Milligan Place sat behind a locked gate topped with its name in ironwork script.

 
; Someone buzzed me through the gate without a word, but two beefy men in blue stopped me at the front door of Clio’s building. “Can’t go up there, son,” said the older, heftier cop, raising a hand in case I tried to get through.

  My haircut, along with my uniform of chinos, polo shirt, and penny loafers, had scrambled their gender signals, so I fell back on my small stash of feminine charm. “Thank you for getting here so quickly, officer! I’m Olive Bliss, the one who phoned y’all about Miss Hartt? She’s a client of my boss, Bea Winston. The literary agent?” The cops stared at me blankly, likely baffled to hear a woman’s voice coming out of a teenage boy. “She just buzzed me in. I might be able to calm her down.”

  They waved me by, and I ascended to Clio’s floor two steps at a time. What had seemed like a genteel building from the enclosed courtyard had jagged cracks in the hallway paint and some missing floor tiles. The air on the third floor smelled like rotting fruit.

  A waif-like young man in a T-shirt and plaid shorts was looking through an open doorway I guessed must be Clio’s. The unintelligible scratch of a radio dispatcher’s voice traveled out into the hall. “Is she okay?” I asked the young man. He was a head shorter than I and at least twenty pounds lighter, with gray circles smudging the skin under his eyes.

  “I heard her yelling at the cops from across the hall, so she’s alive,” he said. He nodded toward another open door, which I assumed was his apartment. “I thought she’d been murdered or something, the way she screamed. Scared the shit out of me.” He held out a hand in introduction. “Eli. I buzzed you in.”

  “Livvie. You’ll be seeing me around. I’m helping Miss Hartt.”

  “I would not want that job. I try to keep an eye out for her, but she just kind of snorts at me, and I’m positive she doesn’t remember my name.” His grin showed a mouthful of straight, white teeth, as if his father was an orthodontist. With my crooked bottom row, dental perfection made a big impression on me.