"Well, count me out, honey."

With difficulty, she restrained herself from seizing him by the lapels and giving him a good shake.

"You're going to help me do this or I'll tell your mother you made a pa.s.s at me last night."

Joe's gasp wasn't entirely unfeigned. "Don't you dare!"

"She'd be mad?" Curtis asked "She'd be thrilled." Marnie said this with a very dry smile, wondering why Curtis had tagged along. She supposed she could put up with him until Joe came to his senses.

"You're so ruthless when you're not getting your way," Joe complained. "And there's nothing wrong with the way you look!"

"That's the whole point. I look too healthy and normal. I need to look cadaverous. Brooding and complex. I need to look like a Serious Writer. And I absolutely cannot be recognizable as Jessica LeFruit."

"Yeah, but...a disguise?" He looked doubtful. "For how long?"

"As long as it takes. And you're going to help me. You know everybody in this industry, and you go to all my promotional stuff. You've got to have a contact for me."

Joe got a funny look on his face, took out his wallet, and extracted a business card. "What are you, a witch? I got this just the other day. Nice enough guy and his mom-of course, you completely blew them off because you're a jerk and a sn.o.b, but-"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the card and read it. "Mutch and Musch. Perfect."

"Perfect if you're a n.o.body. They're teeny and n.o.body's heard of them."

"That's the whole point," she repeated patiently. "If I give them a serious ma.n.u.script and look like a serious writer, a serious n.o.body writer they've never heard of, I'll get a contract. Or at least an open- minded editor to read my book. Heck, I'd settle for that-it's better than what I have now."

"But what about your contract at the other place?" Curtis asked.

"Jessica LeFruitLoop is under contract, not me," she explained. "It's the name, not what I produce.

Besides, they won't mind if I sell something they won't buy, anyway."

Joe was already shaking his head. "This isn't an episode of I Love Lucy, moron. Disguises? Tricking people? Think about what you're proposing."

"'Fortune sides with him who dares!' Virgil."

"Yeah, okay, that's relevant."

"It's from the Aeneid, and it's my new motto."

"What happened to 'I've fallen and I can't get up'?"

"Quit with the jokes already. Now let's get to it!"

"Get to what?"

She managed not to shriek. "Pay attention! I need a new look."

Incomprehension, irritation, and confusion were now being replaced with offense. "What, because we're gay we can help you with a makeover?"

"You dress better than I do and you know it."

"Like that means anything?" he yelped. "In high school you were voted Most Likely to Be Mistaken for a Homeless Person!"

"My point! I need you."

"We're not your gay fashion police, okay? Lose the stereotypes, honey."

"You want me to quit b.i.t.c.hing all the time? You want me to stop pretending I'm a victim? Then help me do this."

That did the trick. And much later, Marnie couldn't believe the transformation. An hour in the hair salon had left her blonde hair slicked back into a bun. Joe had borrowed letter openers from the receptionists' desk; they were now sticking out of her bun with just the right kooky-artistic touch. She was clad head to toe in black, all the way down to her ballet slippers. Another kooky artistic touch- Marnie couldn't plie if someone stuck a gun in her ear.

"Perfect," she said, supremely satisfied. She looked weird, she looked tormented, she looked long- suffering. Nothing like a romance novelist.

"Not quite." Joe handed her a pair of dark sungla.s.ses, which Marnie obediently put on. Getting out of her chair, she tripped and would have brained herself on a table if Joe hadn't steadied her.

"Never take them off," he warned.

"I can't see s.h.i.t!" Despite the grumble, she didn't remove them. "This is going to work."

"Almost." He went back to the hapless receptionist, nipped a cigarette out of her hand, and trotted back, giving it to Marnie.

"A final touch. How can you be brooding and tormented if you don't have a filthy life-destroying habit?"

"This is why I love the man with all my heart," Marnie informed Curtis. He laughed, but she could only manage a small, very dry smile.

CHAPTER NINE .

Tony Freeborg was having trouble believing he wasn't dreaming. While waiting for yet another appointment with a would-be author, in walked the woman of his dreams, the woman he couldn't stop thinking about. Jessica C. LeFleur in the flesh. In his office in the flesh.

He couldn't begin to imagine what she wanted. He got his first clue when she made no mention of her publishing history. She was-he was sure he was misinterpreting, but it seemed as though she was in disguise. She was pretending she'd never been published, that she-big laugh-needed him to succeed.

And why was she smoking a cigarette, when she obviously didn't smoke?

"So what do you think?" she asked him, then bent forward and coughed harshly.

Mystified, he stared at her, wondering if she was going to yark up a lung or what. "You have no idea."

"Pardon?"

"Miss...uh...Hammer, I'm not sure if you're aware, but Mutch and Musch is a very small literary house. We're talking six books a year. Maybe."

"Great!"

"And they never make the best seller list," he continued doggedly, positive she wasn't getting it.

"Windows on the Nile sold eight thousand copies, and we threw a party."

"That's wonderful!"

Sure, he thought, wonderful for a small literary house. But six thousand sales for a best-seller was peanuts. Worse than peanuts. Sub-peanuts.

What was she up to? How did she pick him out of the crowd to try and fool? He had recognized her in an instant, despite the ridiculous disguise, but it was obvious she was unaware they had met-sort of-twice before.

"We don't have much in the way of marketing budgets, we don't do much promoting, and we never print more than two thousand for a first run."

"I know. Windows on the Nile was brilliant. But literary novels about Egyptian dogs don't make the best seller list. Too bad."

She coughed out more smoke, her eyes watering, and looked around in vain for an ashtray. She was holding the cigarette with the ginger care of someone who's been a smoker for all of ninety seconds.

He decided to try once more. "I'm proud of the work we do here. It's excellent quality. But it's not very marketable. I'm not sure we're what you're looking for."

"Trust me. You're exactly what I'm looking for."

"Well...I'm actually leaving this house to open my own agency. I'm hoping to represent more...

commercial pieces to bigger houses. Maybe you'd consider writing something-"

She sat bolt upright, so quickly her dark gla.s.ses fell off her face and into her lap. Weirdly, this aroused him. He could actually feel all the blood start to leave his head and go...er...somewhere else.

"No! And I don't need an agent, thanks very much. Are you going to help me, or do I need to talk to someone else here?"

"Help you how?" he asked, and the vague question actually made him feel like blushing; she was so cute and so p.i.s.sed off, he wanted to call it a day, hustle her over to his apartment, and f.u.c.k her until they were both sweaty and out of breath.

Try to get ahold of yourself, man!

"Uh...help you how?" he asked again.

She was so angry, she didn't notice her cigarette, which had burned down to her fingers. She yelped and dropped it, then jumped up and stomped it out before the carpet could catch fire.

Tony watched this and waited to wake up. He a.s.sumed he was having this bizarre dream because he'd had a hot fudge sundae just before going to bed. Well! No more of that.

His cell phone rang and, without taking his eyes off her, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Not now, doc." He slapped the phone shut and put it away. "You're quite confident for a fledgling writer. Surely you know this is a tough business for newcomers."

Marnie finished putting out the cigarette and sat down, carefully folding her sungla.s.ses and putting them away. His heart broke a little at the helpless, almost desperate look on her face.

"I'm just asking for a chance," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I lost my temper earlier. It's just...I don't have a lot of use for commercialism."

While he stared, she took out another long, black cigarette, looked at it doubtfully, then put it away.

She stuck out her tongue and picked off a piece of tobacco, then longingly eyed the gla.s.s of ice water on his desk. He slid it over to her. She picked up the gla.s.s and gulped gratefully.

"Look, why don't you think about a few ideas to pitch to my boss? I'll try to set up a meeting so she can meet you."

She was so excited, she started to thank him while drinking, and water dribbled down her front.

She set the gla.s.s down with a thud and water sloshed over the side, wetting his blotter.

"Okay! Great! Jeez, that was easy."

Under the desk, where she couldn't see, he pinched his thigh, hard. It stung like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Definitely not dreaming. "Well, it's clear that you're a great-I mean, you seem like you'd be a great writer. Very...uh...deep."

"Thanks!"

She jumped up and for one glorious moment, he thought she was going to hug him. Instead, she settled for vigorously shaking his hand, hard enough to make his fingers ache. Then she gathered up her stuff and practically skipped out of the office.

Maybe, he thought to himself, they're re-making Candid Camera, and I just starred in the pilot episode. Maybe...

His cell phone rang again. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it. "Whaaaaaat?"

Dr. Jorenby's girlish voice filtered through the phone. "Is now a good time?"

"My goodness, is cheerleading practice over already?"

"As if! I can't do a cartwheel to save my life. Want to chat? Any repressed childhood memories surface recently?"

"Yeah, I dreamed I was being tortured by a psychiatrist younger than my socks. You're not going to believe who was just here."

"Jessica C. LeFleur."

He had been leaning back in his chair, and when she guessed correctly he nearly fell on the floor.

He opened his mouth but Dr. Jorenby interrupted him.

"Don't even ask me, dude. Who else would make you sound so surprised and happy? It was a totally logical deduction on my part."

He got out of his chair and went to the window. He was only two stories up, so it was easy to spot the small figure in black skipping down the sidewalk. Marnie Hammer, a.k.a. Jessica C. LeFleur, happier to get a meeting with a small literary editor than she had been at a book signing with a thousand fans.

It was all very strange. And for some reason he was in the middle of it. G.o.d was good.

"Dr. Jorenby, I am in love."

"Well, duh. Like I hadn't figured that out in two nanoseconds."

"Oooh, you're so smart."

"You see LeFleur as the embodiment of all you enjoy about literature, and women. She's pa.s.sionate, articulate, intelligent..."

A little thrown by the surfer-girl voice sounding like a mental health professional, he rallied gamely.

"Rude, sn.o.bbish, ungrateful..."

"And way cute."