Naked Once More (3 page)

“But, Chris, I told you, if I have to write the words ‘ruggedly handsome’ or ‘throbbing manhood’ one more time—”

Chris didn’t interrupt this time. Jacqueline stopped herself on a long indrawn breath. “I knew there was something else. What? What is it?”

“How would you like to write the sequel to
Naked in the Ice
?”

Jacqueline’s pent breath erupted in a vulgar gust that fluttered the edges of the paper doily under her Deadly Delight. “That’s it? That’s what you… Thank God! I was afraid you were going to tell me you had only a year to live, or…” Her voice soared suddenly into a high-pitched squeal. “What did you say? Did you say… me… sequel…
Naked
…”

“You, sequel,
Naked.
”

He watched it sink in, wondering if he ought to call the waiter and order champagne. The occasion was worthy of commemoration: the first and only time in their acquaintance that he had seen Jacqueline literally speechless. Not to mention the confirmation of something he had only suspected until this moment—that his eccentric, infuriating client’s affection for him was strong enough to outweigh, if only for a few seconds, a proposition that would have deafened many writers to the last words of a dying spouse.

He knew he didn’t have to tell Jacqueline what a dazzling prize the assignment would be. If there was any book of the past decade that was known, not only to the reading public, but to many who had to move their lips when they read the labels on cereal boxes, it was
Naked in the Ice.
Chris had been impressed by its success, but he had not cared for the book; its distinctive blend of fantasy, prehistory and romance were not to his taste. But four million people had thought well enough of it to buy it in hardcover, and the people who couldn’t even read when they moved their lips had fallen in love with the miniseries, which had swept to fame two young stars. The tragic deaths of Morgan Meredith and Jed Devereaux in a plane crash shortly after the airing of the film had assured their immortality. And the disappearance of the author had aroused a storm of publicity that lasted for weeks.

Jacqueline had passed into a catatonic state, eyes glazed. Chris poked her. “Don’t ham it up, Jacqueline. You must have heard rumors of this. It’s been six weeks since the courts declared Kathleen Darcy legally dead. I don’t know why it took so long. All the evidence indicated that she committed suicide seven years ago, but you know how the law works: like the mills of God.”

Jacqueline continued to stare, not at him but at some ineffable vision in the near distance. It was perhaps her look of semi-imbecility that prompted Chris to comment, “She was a weird lady. Anyhow, she’s dead, legally as well as de facto, and her estate has been handed over to her heirs. It’s now definite; a sequel is planned.”

“Me?” Jacqueline breathed. “Sequel?
Naked
?”

“Why not? Omniscient as you are, you must know that Kathleen Darcy planned another book, possibly a trilogy. You’ve only written two books, but they are in the same genre, and they’ve been enormously successful. The competition will be keen, but the only factor that might have worked against you is that Booton Stokes, Kathleen’s agent, will give preference to one of his own authors. He may not admit it, but he will. Now that you’ll be needing a new agent—”

“No.”

“What?” It was Chris’s turn to stare.

“No. No. Chris. I will have to find a new agent, but I will not write the sequel to
Naked in the Ice.
I love that book. I’ve read it twenty times. Let someone else massacre the sequel. It won’t be me.”

“Please-take-a-seat. Mr. Stokes will be with you as soon as his schedule permits.”

The receptionist delivered this speech in a rapid monotone, without looking up from the magazine she was reading. Jacqueline did not reply, or move away. She simply made her presence felt, like a persistent and unpleasant smell. After a few moments the receptionist shifted uneasily and raised her eyes. Jacqueline’s expression of vague benevolence did not alter, but the girl swallowed and raised a nervous hand to her brassy-blond hair.

“Uh—Mr. Stokes is running a little late this morning, ma’am. Like, an emergency, you know.”

Being a woman of moderate expectations, Jacqueline accepted the stumbling courtesy in the spirit in which it had been offered. One did not, after all, expect the manners of a bygone age from a young woman whose nails were painted iridescent mauve. She nodded pleasantly and took the afore-mentioned seat.

Though mildly vexed at being kept waiting for an appointment she had made over a week earlier (what kind of emergencies did agents encounter? terminal writers’ block?) she was not sorry to have a few moments in which to compose her thoughts and study the decor.

It appeared to have been inspired by 1930s films and completed by an enthusiastic absence of taste. In color and shape the chairs resembled overripe eggplants; they were uncomfortably low, and covered with prickly cotton velvet. The desk of the receptionist was a (fake) rococo construction featuring a good deal of inlaid mother-of-pearl and brass. The same might have been said of the receptionist, except for the mother-of-pearl. A good deal of her was faux, including, Jacqueline suspected, the thrusting twin cones that teased the silky fabric of her blouse like… Jacqueline stopped herself. Romance novels had a pervasive and perverse effect on one’s similes. God and Mr. Stokes willing, her next novel would include not a single heaving or thrusting mound. Kathleen Darcy had achieved her erotic effect (and there were plenty of them in her book) without such crude techniques.

A less self-assured women might have squirmed at that point in her deliberations. Jacqueline never squirmed, but the trickle of unease that had accompanied her since she had made the appointment swelled to Rubicon width. It was not too late; she had crossed one tributary of that well-known stream when she made the appointment, but the river itself was still ahead. She could back out, even now.

Chris had tried to talk her out of it. “I must have been crazy to suggest it. Subconsciously, I counted on your refusing. Do you have any idea of what you’d be letting yourself in for?”

He had proceeded to tell her. Jacqueline had brushed his warnings aside. She could handle publicity, no one better. She had enough ego to remain unscorched by the withering winds of abuse that would undoubtedly assail her, however good a book she produced. What readers and critics wanted was another
Naked in the Ice,
and it was impossible for anyone, including Kathleen Darcy, to write that book again.

She had spoken the truth when she assured Chris that the opinions of others didn’t worry her. Her own opinion was another matter. Could she live up to the standards she had set for herself? The answer was a depressing, “Maybe not.” She had no illusions about her talent. It was a good little talent, honest and more than adequate for the purposes toward which it was bent. To write a sequel worthy of its predecessor would take more than the talent she presently possessed. But what the hell, Jacqueline thought; a writer’s reach should exceed her grasp… or what’s an agent for?

Reasons are never single or simple; decisions are reached by weighing a multiplicity of positive and negative factors. One factor that had unquestionably influenced Jacqueline’s turnabout was the number and nature of the rival candidates. The news had been announced barely a week earlier, and already there was a long line of volunteers. Thanks to the unclassifiable nature of
Naked,
they covered a wide spectrum: fantasy writers, historical novelists, romance writers, and authors of blockbuster best-sellers. Among them were Jack Carter, author of
Red Flag, Red Blood
(a Soviet plot to assassinate the President of the United States is foiled by a beautiful Russian agent who falls in love with her handsome CIA counterpart) and Franklin Dubois, who specialized in sleaze and kinky sex on Wall Street and who declared that the political and financial complexities of prehistoric culture demanded a writer versed in such areas. But the name that had raised Jacqueline’s hackles and tipped the scales for good was that of Brunnhilde Karlsdottir.

Until Jacqueline made her debut, Brunnhilde had been the undisputed Queen of the Savage Bodice Ripper—“savage” referring not to the quality and content of her prose (though that interpretation had been expressed more than once), but the historical periods in which she specialized. Dark Age Britain, Iron Age Gaul, Bronze Age Anyplace; all were grist for Brunnhilde’s mill, but her real forte was Vikings; perhaps, as Jacqueline was not the first to point out, because she resembled one of the larger ones.

Brunnhilde had not attended the convention that was Jacqueline’s initial encounter with the queens of romance, whose names were legion, because the promoters of the affair had awarded the prize for The Best Romantic Novel Set in the Sixth Century to someone else. The two had not met face to face until after Jacqueline’s first novel had pushed Brunnhilde off the
Times
list, but it was not entirely professional rivalry that had fired the feud between them. It was hate at first sight, clean, pure and strong as grain alcohol. Rather than see Brunnhilde defile
Naked in the Ice,
Jacqueline vowed, she would give Booton Stokes twenty-five percent, and/or go to bed with him.

She studied the innumerable photographs of Stokes that covered the walls of his outer office. Booton with Liz Taylor, with Mr. T., with last year’s Superbowl quarterback (“author” of
Slaughter at the Superbowl
), with a former White House staffer whose kiss-and-tell book had sold half a million copies. Stokes’s stable of writers was undoubtedly impressive, in monetary if not literary terms. And he owed it all to Kathleen Darcy. She had been his first important client, his first best-seller. Her success had brought other writers to his office.

Jacqueline’s eyes lingered on the fifteen-by-eighteen photo showing Stokes with his most famous client. It was surrounded by a wide mat of black velvet; on a table below it, a bud vase contained a single white (silk) rose. Kathleen seemed to cower in the circle of Stokes’s arm. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, and her eyes were wide and innocent. She looked much younger than her actual age. She had been twenty-eight when
Naked in the Ice
was published.

Jacqueline’s eyes lingered on the pictured face. Kathleen appeared somewhat overwhelmed by the enormity of the acclaim she had won, and yet, despite its reserve, her face held both strength and humor; the lips were firm, the eyes steady. Who could have imagined that in two years she would be dead, possibly by her own hand?

Jacqueline found it difficult to imagine. And that was her ultimate reason for accepting the challenge she had initially rejected.

She would have been the first to admit that curiosity was one of her most prominent characteristics. And what—she was wont to ask—was wrong with that? The question was purely rhetorical, because she never gave anyone a chance to answer it before proceeding. “Curiosity drove Columbus to cross the ocean in those rickety little boats. Curiosity inspired every major scientific discovery. Without curiosity we’d all be sitting in caves scratching ourselves and eating raw meat. If it weren’t for curiosity—”

Someone usually interrupted her at this point in the speech, which she permitted because she considered that she had proved her case.

She had always been curious, to put it mildly, about Kathleen Darcy’s death. Like many of Kathleen’s readers, she had been fascinated not only by the book but by its author. Why would a woman who was young, healthy, and brilliantly gifted, want to end her life? And if she hadn’t done so, what had happened to her? The question had nagged at Jacqueline for years, not to the point of keeping her awake nights—very few concerns had that effect on Jacqueline—but as one unfiled item in the cluttered storehouse of her mind. Being essentially rational as well as curious, she had known that her chances of solving that mystery were slim verging on nonexistent; but then she had had no rational reason to expect she would be offered an opportunity to rummage through Kathleen’s papers and her past. It was an irresistible temptation; she saw no reason why she should try to resist it.

Her gaze moved from Kathleen’s face to that of the man beside her. Stokes had been slimmer and fitter then, and not bad-looking except for his shrewd, close-set eyes. The later photos showed an increase in girth and at least one additional chin. He had kept his thick, wavy dark hair, though. At least Jacqueline hoped he had. Wigs were disgusting things to have in bed with you. There was the time…

Speaking of time… She rose to her fect. “I can’t wait any longer,” she announced. “Tell Mr. Stokes—”

As if on cue, the inner door opened.

Whatever else he might have been doing, Stokes had spent some time primping. No one could look so much like a Hollywood version of a busy literary agent without working at it. His shirt sleeves were rolled above his hairy wrists, his heavy silk tie was slightly awry, and a single lock of hair curled boyishly across his brow. One hand held a pen, the other a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He waved both at Jacqueline and bared a set of blindingly white teeth.

“Mrs. Kirby! Fulsome, abject apologies! I grovel, I abase myself.”

“Not on my account, I beg.” Jacqueline bared her own teeth, which were just as white and just as large. Unlike Stokes’s dental apparatus, hers owed their perfection to nature rather than art.

“Do come in,” Stocks said. “Coffee? Tea? Take this chair, it’s the most comfortable. I was on the phone—London—those Brits are so loquacious…”

She sat down, crossing her ankles demurely and balancing her purse on her knees. Stokes eyed this object with some curiosity; it was, like all Jacqueline’s handbags, outrageously oversized and so full it resembled a very pregnant pig.

Stokes put on his glasses. They gave his rather bland countenance an air of needed intellectuality, and magnified his eyes almost to normal size. “I can’t tell you how flattered I was to hear from you,” he assured her. “I must give Chris a call and thank him for recommending me. How we’ll miss the dear old chap! He is one of the shining stars of our profession. Or perhaps I should say a shining planet, fixed in the firmament, shedding the glow of his integrity upon us all.”