Anne Turner is in her office going over the copy for the spring catalog. She’s having trouble concentrating. Outside, the rain is coming down in sheets. She’s a California girl; rain this fierce scares her; it brings mud slides-houses, dreams, lives that once seemed solid and secure, all swept away in an instant.
She signs off on a rhapsodic description of wrought-iron furniture made at a small foundry outside Florence, gets up and paces for a moment, then pours herself another cup of coffee-her fourth so far today. Damn Trent for being on vacation. She can always count on her assistant to cheer her up with some juicy bit of celebrity gossip. That mousy little temp the agency sent over looks like she wouldn’t know gossip from wheatgrass.
Everything is so infuriatingly unsettled right now. She’s never told Charles how precarious her position is. How could she, after insisting that they buy the apartment? Yes, in three brief years, Home had become one of the most popular catalogs in the country, but costs are astronomical. Her insistence on scouring the globe for sensational offerings, on using the most expensive paper, on hiring the best photographers, on leasing these lavish thirty-fourth-floor offices, have all stretched resources to the breaking point. There’s a little breathing room now, thank God, but only because she took drastic action-action that makes her shudder every time she thinks of it.
Anne hates the way Charles has been sulking over every minor setback and disguising his envy of her growing fame. So much is at stake with his new book, and she’s afraid his expectations are unrealistically high. It’s a good book, but not his best, not as good as it could be, should be, with his gift. Damn, she hates it when she pities him. What she should do right this second is kick off her shoes and do ten minutes of yoga. But the truth is, yoga bores the hell out of her. Work is the only thing that releases her endorphins.
Anne adores the gargoyle planters made by some mad old hippie deep in the Joshua Tree desert-they’re terrifying, fabulous, and unique. Just the sort of find that has made Home such a sensation. The coffee is starting to make her dizzy. Her phone lights up.
“Your husband is on line one, Ms. Turner,” the temp says in her tentative voice.
Anne punches on the speaker.
“Are you warm and dry, darling?” Silence from the other end of the line. What now? “Charles?”
“It’s the Times Book Review.”
“Not good?”
“Not even so-so.”
For a split second Anne fears she’ll faint. She looks out the window at the furious storm-is the whole city coming apart? Pity won’t do; she knows that.
“Who wrote it?” she asks.
“Does it matter?”
“We can discredit him. Call in all our chits. Make sure someone sympathetic writes the daily Times review.”
There’s a pause and she can tell Charles is considering her idea. Anything to keep him from spiraling down into that morbid depression of his, the one that shrouds the apartment like cobwebs. The one that eventually winds itself around her throat, too.
“It’s one review, Charles,” she says. “It’s a goddamn good book and we both know it. And you’re a great writer.” She realizes that in some perverse way she welcomes his crisis. At least now she has something to latch on to, a challenge. And if she can help him through this, an atonement.
“I just wanted to let you know.”
“Let’s go out to dinner tonight-get drunk and feel each other up under the table.”
“Great idea. How about the Four Seasons? To complete the humiliation, why don’t I walk in naked?”
Anne curses herself. There is simply no way to minimize the blow-the Times Book Review is Big Daddy.
“I love you,” she says. “I can’t wait to get home.”
Anne goes to the window. Down below, the city is a wet gray blur.
The intercom sounds. “Ms. Turner, may I speak to you a moment, please?”
The mouse squeaks, Anne thinks.
“What is it?”
The temp enters. She’s small and young and quite pretty, actually, when she lets her face peek out from the unruly brown hair that keeps falling down from behind her ears. Large green eyes, lovely skin, a mouth that could be sensual if she’d let it.
“In these catalog pages that you okayed?”
“Yes?”
“I found two errors.”
“You’re kidding me.” Anne takes fierce pride in her attention to detail.
“See the extra space between the period and the start of the next sentence here? And ‘pate’ needs an acute accent over the e.”
The last thing most temps will do is take it upon themselves to review the boss’s work.
“You’ve got a good eye, Edna.”
The phone rings.
“I’ll get it myself… Anne Turner.”
“Anne, it’s Judith Arnold.”
Her gynecologist. Anne stiffens.
“The test is in. Hope you and Charles have some champagne on ice.”
“You’re positive?”
“No doubt. You’re going to have a baby.”
Anne can feel the blood rush from her head and then, just as quickly, her face flushes hot red. She sits in a gray chair she’s never sat in before. Christ, she wishes the rain would let up; she can’t think through its splattery tattoo. And she needs to think.
“It’s Emma.”
She’s forgotten that the young woman is still in the room. “What?”
“My name. It’s not Edna, it’s Emma.”
“Thank you, Emma. Hold all calls.”
When the girl is gone, Anne looks out the window again. But now all she can see is her own reflection, staring back at her with fear and contempt.