In the Drink Read Online Free PDF Page A

opened the door and we looked each other over. Her face was impenetrable, her hair a bronze lacquered shell. She wore a tailored Chanel suit, the same navy blue as mine, but the resemblance ended there. The phrase “hired sight unseen” hovered unspoken in the air between us; I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t combed my hair after my windy walk through Central Park. She sniffed deeply and lifted her nose a notch higher, apparently resolving to make the best of things. “Well, hello, Claudia, come in,” she said in a hard, deep voice that didn’t match the rest of her. I shook the hand she offered; it was cool and bony and smooth as a lizard. She ushered me into her foyer (gilt, mirrors, marble) and opened the door to the coat closet. As I hung my wool coat between two glistening furs, she said, “I’m so sorry, you’ll think I’m very rude, but I’m absolutely crazy today, I have an interview in twenty minutes and a lunch meeting with the man who’s translating my book into French. I’ve left a list of things for you to do, but I don’t have time to go through it all. I’m sure you can figure it out. We’ll have time to chat later. Margot spoke so highly of you. Right in there. I’ve got to run.”
    She disappeared down the hall. I examined my reflection inthe enormous mirror over the marble stand, finger-combed my hair and smoothed my blouse, then skulked through the arched doorway into the dining room. Dark green velvet curtains covered the window; daylight filtered in around the edges, giving the room an undersea murk. When I pressed the wall switch, the chandelier above the large oval table leapt into light, illuminating the place in which (although I couldn’t know it yet) I would spend a good part of my waking hours for the next several years. The room was high-ceilinged, formerly elegant, now a little worn around the edges, as if its decline had been too gradual to be noticed by someone who saw it every day. The wallpaper, a repeating Mediterranean landscape of meandering river, olive and cypress groves, church spire in the hazy distance, was peeling behind the radiator and near the baseboard in one corner. The Persian rug was frayed and faded in several places. The table, covered by a dark green tasseled cloth, was spotted with fallen petals from a vase of browning yellow roses; ten or twelve straight-backed chairs with worn green cushions were lined up against the far wall, as if to make room for a junior-high dance.
    By the window stood a folding table and plain wooden folding chair, and a small computer table on which were a laptop computer and miniature printer: my new office. I sat at the folding table and stared at Jackie’s scrawled list for a while, then shuffled through the papers next to it, which I guessed were related in some way to what she wanted me to do, if I could only read her handwriting. I got up and opened the curtains and squinted at the list again. One of the items appeared to be, “Order three books from editor, Gid Row,” and a phone number. I dialed it. “Hello,” came a curt male voice after half a ring.
    “This is Genevieve del Castellano’s secretary,” I said hesitantly.Her name was hard to say all at once; I had to take a break halfway through. “May I speak to Gid Row, please?”
    He asked in astonishment, “Is this Margot?”
    “No,” I said, “my name is Claudia Steiner. Margot left. I’m new.”
    He chuckled; I pictured a fat clean pink man with a highly intelligent face. “With a name like that, you should be the castrating bitch on a soap opera, but you sound more like the ingenue. It’s Gil Reeve, by the way, unless she’s calling me names.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. I double-checked the instructions. “I think she wants me to order three copies of her book.”
    “Jackie will tell you to call me for every little thing, but you’ll learn who does what before too long. I’ll switch you over to Janine. Hold on.”
    Janine said without