2
Strauss & Adder
The first time I walked through the stone archway into the building on Thirty-Fourth Street and rode the chrome elevators up to the seventh floor, I knew there was something special about Strauss & Adder Publishers. The way the doors opened and let out into a small, white-shelved lobby filled with books, both ones they had published and ones they just loved, weathered leather chairs faced you, beckoning you to sink down into their cushions, open a novel, and drown in the words.
Strauss & Adder was a small but powerful publisher in New York City, specializing in adult fiction, memoirs, and lifestyle nonfiction—think self-help books and cookbooks and how-tos—but they were most renowned for their travel guides. When you wanted a guide to a far-off place, you went toward the little mallet-hammer logo of Strauss & Adder to tell you about the best restaurants in the most remote reaches of foreign cities, ones where you would still feel at home.
I could do publicity anywhere—and probably get paid better doing it—but I couldn’t get free travel books at a big tech firm, or in some PR-firm hellscape. There was something just so sure and lovely about walking down the hall every day, lined with books about Rome and Bangkok and Antarctica, the enchanting smell of aged paper like a department store perfume. I didn’t want to write books myself, but I loved the idea of some long-dead or long-forgotten travel guide waxing about cathedrals of old and shrines of forgotten gods. I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.
The office was an open floor plan, surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling shelves of novels, the space clean and white and bright. Everyone had small half-walled cubicles, each desk with pops of color as people displayed their favorite odds and ends—artwork and figurines and book collections. Mine was closest to my boss’s office. The higher-ups all got offices with glass doors, as if that were the same kind of lack of privacy as listening to Juliette in the cubicle in front of me sob over her on-again, off-again boyfriend of ten months, her Romeo, Rob. (Fuck Romeo-Rob.)
At least even in their tidy glass offices you could see them dissociating at 2:00 p.m. on a Monday with the rest of us.
And yet here we all were, because if we all loved one thing, it was books.
I managed to send out a few interview queries by the time Fiona came back to the office.
“The dessert was really fantastic,” she said, walking over to return my credit card. She, like the rest of design, was banished to the glum, cobweb-filled corner of the floor where CEOs were wont to stick their mushroom-growing artsy people. At least three of the designers had to start taking vitamin D supplements, it was so dark back there. “So was the chef.”
“Hate that I missed it,” I replied.
Fiona shrugged and handed me back my card. “You kind of ran right into him, actually.”
I paused. The man with the strong grip. The warm, solid chest. “That . . . was him?”
“Absolutely. He’s a gem. Really sweet—oh, say, did you end up saving your author from airport hell?”
“Of course,” I replied, pulling myself out of my thoughts. “Was there ever any doubt?”
Fiona shook her head. “I envy you.”
That made me pause. “Why?”
“Whenever you need to do something, you just go for it. Straight line. No hesitation. I think that’s why Drew likes you so much,” she added, a bit quieter. “You’re an Excel spreadsheet to my chaos.”
“I just like things the way I like things,” I replied, and Fiona proceeded to tell me about what I’d missed at the restaurant—apparently, someone from Faux had come to the chef about a book (Parker Daniels, Drew guessed), as had Simon & Schuster and two imprints at HarperCollins and one at Macmillan. There would probably be more.
I gave a low whistle. “Drew’s got steep competition.”
“I know. I can’t wait until this is all she starts talking about,” Fiona deadpanned. She checked her smart watch on her wrist and groaned. “I should probably return to the cave. Movie tonight? I think that rom-com with the two assassins who fall in love is out?”
“Can I take a rain check? I’m still unpacking from the move. Receipt?” I asked, and Fiona dug our lunch bill out of her purse. As she left for the dark and dank part of the floor, I slipped into Rhonda’s office to give it to her, though she wasn’t there.
Most of the other higher-ups—including Reginald Strauss—had photos of their families, vacations they took, memories, on their walls and across their desks. Rhonda’s was full of photos with celebrities at book launches and red-carpet events, and achievement awards stacked her shelves where gifts from grandchildren should go. It was very evident what she chose, the life she decided to live, and every time I stepped into her office, I imagined sitting in her orange chair, having lived a life like that, too.
Suddenly, the glass door to her office slid open, and Rhonda Adder, in all her glamour, stepped into the room. “Ah, Clementine! Happy Friday, as always,” she announced happily, looking sharp as a knife in a black pantsuit and floral-print heels, her blunt-cut gray bob pulled back from her face with a clip.
Whenever Rhonda came into a room, she commanded it in a way I wanted to. All heads turned. All conversations stopped.
Rhonda Adder was as brilliant as she was magnetic—the director of marketing and publicity, and copublisher, she had started at a lowly PR firm in SoHo, clipping out tabloid rumors and fielding telemarketer calls, and now she planned and coordinated book campaigns for some of the biggest names in the business. She was an icon among bookish people, the person they all wanted to be. The person I wanted to be. Someone who had her life together. Someone who had a plan, had goals, and knew the exact tools she needed to implement them.
“Happy Friday, Rhonda. I’m sorry I took a long lunch,” I quickly said.
She waved her hand. “It’s perfectly all right. I saw you handled Adair Lynn’s little airport snafu.”
“She’s really having the worst luck on this tour.”
“We’ll have to send her some flowers once she gets home.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a bag of chocolate-covered almonds.
“Will do. I put a lunch expense on the account,” I added, setting the receipt and credit card down on the desk. She took a look at both of them and quirked an eyebrow. “Drew’s after an author for a nonfiction project.”
“Ah. Almond?” She offered me the bag.
“Thank you.” I took one out, sat down in the creaky chair opposite of her, and updated her on the afternoon’s happenings—the booked podcast interviews, the revised itineraries, the newly confirmed bookstore events. Rhonda and I worked like a well-oiled machine. There was a reason everyone said I was her second-in-command—and I hoped to be her successor someday. Everyone figured I would be.