Spanish Disco

“Yes. It’s the morning after he’s been denied tenure. He feels completely emasculated. And now, as an act of defiance, I see him having eggs.”

“Okay, then. Let him eat eggs.”

“What kind?”

“Michael, who the fuck cares what kind?”

“What kind? Would he eat poached eggs or scrambled?”

“I thought I mentioned sunny-side up with a side of bacon.”

“But that was an offhanded comment. I don’t think you really gave it much thought.”

“Poached.”

“You think so, really? What about eggs Benedict? Because then he would be eating all that wicked hollandaise sauce.”

“I don’t care, Michael. Give him hollandaise if it makes you happy. It’s four-thirty.”

“Is your coffee ready yet? You certainly are particularly crabby this morning.”

“Michael, I don’t know a single other editor who would put up with this kind of shit.”

“Precisely. Which is why you have authors eating out of the palm of your hand, and Louis O’Connor has the most successful small publishing house in the States.”

Eyeing the coffeemaker with lust, I smiled. “Coffee’s almost ready. I’ll be human soon.”

A minute or two later, I sat down at my kitchen table an ocean away from West Side Publishing’s most valuable author. Michael clicked away on his keyboard, and I drank coffee and held his hand long distance as we worked through the scene. He’d been blocked. I knew he couldn’t get past the fourteenth chapter. Every book was the same. Somewhere in the middle he lost hope. He gave up. He got sick of his book, its plot, of his own characters. And then he didn’t work for a while until he had an epiphany—usually in the middle of my night—and called me and we talked for hours waiting for the sun to rise and, with it, the resolution of his crisis. Although I think it was an excuse to hear me talk about my nipples.

“Michael,” I yawned two hours later, “the sun is rising.”

“Tell me about it,” he whispered.

I stepped out onto my balcony, facing the view a Boca Raton condo can buy. “Well, the Atlantic’s really calm this morning—a beautiful azure blue. I see a seagull gliding lazily and a pelican swooping down. The sun is just peeking—the horizon is pink and purple and still midnight a little. The crescent moon is sharing the sky with the beginning of the sun. And here it comes…. God, it’s beautiful, Michael.”

The salty breeze kissed my face.

“You give good sunrise, Cassie.”

“Well, if it weren’t for you, I’d never see them, so I guess I should thank you. But I won’t. I’m going back to bed.”

“You’ve had a pot of coffee. Aren’t you wired?”

“No. Good night, Michael.”

“Good morning, Cassie. You are the bloody best. Thank you.”

“May the next time I hear your voice be after lunch.”

I hung up and ran a hand through my bedhead of messy black curls. I padded back to my room, drew the blinds tighter and dropped my robe, crawling sensuously beneath my sheets. I loved the decadence of going back to bed. I picked up the phone and dialed the office, pressing extension 303.

“Lou…it’s me. Michael Pearton had another pre-dawn meltdown. We were on the phone discussing his main character’s menu choices ’til just now. It’s 6:30. I’m exhausted. I won’t be in until at least noon if you’re lucky.”

I shut my eyes and thought I’d skip the whole day at the office. My boss let me work three days at home, thanks to voice mail and e-mail, and his sheer adoration of me. I was supposed to go in on Fridays, but the hell with it. I turned the ringer off on my phone. Sleep returned quickly. I dreamed of swimming in pools of hollandaise.

At 11:00, the phone rang, muffled, out in the kitchen. I could hear the caller ignoring the fact that I wasn’t answering. I heard four rings, a voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings. Voice speaking. Hang up. Four rings…

“Oh for God’s sake, what do you want, Lou?” I finally snatched the receiver next to my bed.

“How’d you know…”

“You’re the only person stubborn enough to do that, Lou.”

“I need you in here today.”

“Sorry. I put in my hours with the ever-neurotic Englishman last night. Or actually, this morning, but you know what I mean. I’ll be in on Monday.”

“This is big.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bigger than Stephen King, big. This could make me millions. Your bonus could send you into early retirement.”

“So who is it?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Lou…this isn’t high school. Not that I think you ever went to high school. You were born eating your young.”

“Cassie, my dear, you come and go out of here as the diva you are. But this one time, I’m telling you to get up, get dressed, and meet me at the office. I will mainline you a pot of coffee.”

“This better be worth it.”

“It is. In spades.”

I climbed out of bed, still far too early for my taste. In the kitchen, I dumped out the grinds in Mr. Coffee, the only man in my condo in the last year and a half, and put on my second pot of the day. After a hot shower, a dab of crimson lipstick, and a sort of shaggy-dog shaking of my hair, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, threw a linen blazer on, and headed down Florida’s A1A ocean highway to West Side’s offices.

I’m not sure how it is I came to live in a land of pink palaces and perpetual sunshine. It doesn’t suit my personality. But when Lou moved down here from New York, he took me with him. He came for the fishing and the sunshine. He came to get away from New York after Helen died. And I came because he did.

I climbed out of my mint-condition Cadillac that I bought for a song from the estate of an elderly man who had died. His kids wanted cash. Bargains abound in Florida if you don’t mind owning stuff that belonged to dead people. When Lou first saw it, he thought I was nuts. “A banana-yellow Caddy? You like driving fruit?” But I have claustrophobia. I drive luxury land tanks.

Pressing the elevator button for the seventh floor, I rode up in glass to West Side’s offices.

“Morning, Cassie,” Troy, the receptionist/junior editor, greeted me.

“Mornin’,” I mumbled.

“You look a fright.”