Missing Marlene Read Online Free PDF Page A

“How did he take it?”
    “Badly.” She looked down at her hands, spread flat on her desk. “My heart goes out to him—it really does. To find out not only that his publishers have given up on his just-published book but also that they want him to go away. . . . It’s a terrible blow to his ego.”
    “Which is considerable.”
    She glared at him defensively. “When you’re as talented as Roger is, you’re allowed to have a big ego.”
    Daniel, his mouth tactfully shut, glanced at Roger’s new manuscript, sitting at the corner of Jane’s desk.
    “So it needs some reworking,” she conceded.
    “Reworking!”
    “All right, rewriting. I think he’ll come around about that. But he’s right—first we have to deal with the problem at hand. Millennium.” She picked up the phone.
    “Should I leave?” Daniel asked.
    “No, no, stay.” She punched out Arliss Krauss’s direct number.
    The call was answered by Arliss’s officious young assistant, Roberto.
    “Ah, hello, Mrs. Stuart,” he said in his velvet tones. “What can we do for you today?”
    “I want to talk to Arliss. Tell her it’s urgent.”
    “Uh ... Arliss is—”
    “Is she in?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “It’s urgent!”
    “Hold, please.”
    A moment later Arliss came on. “Jane, what’s going on?” she asked impatiently.
    “Arliss, I’ve just come from a meeting with Roger Haines.”
    “Oh.”
    “You have no right to sound so bored, Arliss. Roger is a respected author whose novel you have just published. A novel, I might add, for which you paid a healthy advance. You made Roger and me some promises when we made that deal, and we expect you to keep them.”
    “Jane,” Arliss said on a massive sigh. “Jane, Jane, Jane. We’ve been all through this. The answer is no. I understand that you have to fight for your client—Do you have him sitting there?”
    “No, I most certainly do not.”
    “Oh. Well, I can’t help you. We should never have accepted that manuscript in the first place. We’re going to lose a bundle.”
    “I’m going to have to speak to Bill about this,” Jane said. “I want a meeting.”
    Arliss laughed wearily. “Go ahead. Speak to him. He’s the one who decided all this.” There was a brief silence. “Why don’t you talk to other publishers? Maybe someone will want him—at much smaller money, of course.”
    “Oh, I intend to talk to other publishers, Arliss. We even have a manuscript.”
    “Oh yeah? How is it?”
    “It . . . needs a little work.”
    “Mm. Jane, forgive me for saying this, but why don’t you do yourself a favor and get rid of this guy?”
    Jane felt her face grow hot. “That is highly inappropriate. You’re talking about a man whom the critics have called a genius, the new Norman Mailer.”
    “Yeah, twenty years ago.”
    Jane was losing it. Her eyes flooded with tears. “A man my husband said was the brightest talent he’d ever seen.”
    This time the silence was long. At last Arliss said, “I’m sorry, Jane.” She sounded truly sympathetic. Jane had never heard Arliss like this. “I wish I could help you . . . with everything. You’re a good person and a good agent. You deserve good things. I . . . I’m sorry.”
    Jane wiped at her eyes, sniffed. “All right,” she said quietly. “Good-bye, Arliss.”
    Daniel was staring down at the floor. Jane returned her gaze to her hands and was aware of him silently leaving the room.
    Why was she reacting this way to Roger’s misfortune? She knew why. Because she cared for him. She wanted to spare him from pain. For all his gruff urbaneness, he was a sensitive soul, easily wounded. He deserved so much better than the coldhearted treatment meted out by most publishers today. It was her job, as his agent, to protect him. But in this case she simply couldn’t. The best thing she could do for him was help him pick up the pieces of his career and move on. He’d listen to her once the shock had worn off.
    She slid Roger’s manuscript