Read The Agency for Free Online Page B

looks to die for, she had the makings of a great agent.
    I made my way down the same path by coincidence, and so we found ourselves a few years after we first met in similar jobs on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Still friends. I made trips to New York a couple of times a year, and Saleema made an annual spring pilgrimage to the London Book Fair. We always got together for dinner. I stayed at her place. She stayed at mine. We were both good at our jobs, and we both had a solid roster of clients. She’s been with the Robinson Foote Agency for nine years, and she complains about it as much as I complain about Bardwright. In a different universe, we might have opened our own transatlantic agency in the wake of Lowell’s death, because we were as close as two attractive women can be.
    Which is to say, we were always one little mistake away from watching our friendship dissolve into a bitter feud.
    As it turned out, the mistake was mine. I admit it. I fucked up. I did a terrible thing.
    You’ll recall that I inherited my mother’s tendency of paying way too much attention to a certain part of my body. Look it up in the dictionary, and you’ll see it described as being “homologous” to the penis. I love that word, “homologous.” I’ve never seen it anywhere else. When I think homologous, I think clitoris. It wants what it wants, when it wants it.
    About five years ago, I visited Saleema’s office, which is on the sixth floor of the Flatiron Building, that wonderful triangular landmark in Manhattan. I was in the city doing the rounds of publishers, and from there, I had a West Coast swing planned to LA. Saleema was in the midst of a crisis, because
People
magazine had just released a scathing review of a memoir by one of her clientsthat had her at full boil. Me, I’m just glad that
People
still finds room for book reviews at all, in between their shirtless photos of Matthew McConaughey. Anyway, our dinner plans were shot to hell. Saleema said she could make it up to me, however, and she introduced me to another agent in her office, a blond god from Florida, former basketball player for something called the Gators, eyes so blue they were like a swimming pool in which you wanted to strip off your clothes and skinny-dip.
    Homologous, definitely homologous.
    Saleema called him a friend. That was all. A friend. She gave me no hint of any relationship whatsoever between them. His name was Evan.
    Evan asked where I wanted to have dinner, and I think I surprised him when I said the Carnegie Deli. When I get horny, I get hungry. That night, I wanted a hot corned beef sandwich six inches tall and a slice of cheesecake so thick you could rub it all over your body and still have some left for the next day. We ate like animals. We laughed. We talked about British politics. We went to a club. We danced. Okay, look, we all know where this is going. Evan proved to be as long as he was tall, and I spent most of the night under him, on top of him, and holding on to the porcelain edge of the bathroom sink. OMG.
    The next day, I couldn’t wait to tell Saleema. She couldn’t wait to tell me something, either. Fortunately, I let her go first.
    She and Evan were engaged. Surprise!
    And what did I think of him, anyway?
    Some surprises leave you almost speechless.
    Well, I said, with my stretched-out insides still aching gloriously, I think he’s just as DDG as you, and I’m sure the two of you will be very happy. Congratulations. Smile. Look to God and whisper, “Oh, shit.” You certainly do
not
tell your best friend that her fiancé failed to mention your engagement and spent the night rocking your world in more positions than you had previously tried in your life.
    Evan, Saleema, and I had lunch at Pastis that day, and I shot him daggers across the table whenever Saleema wasn’t looking. Hewas enjoying my discomfort, and I think he knew that I was still turned on by him, regardless of the fact that he was now forbidden fruit. I left