Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple Page B

around his neck.
    “Jimmy?” I said.
    “Yes, ma’am!”
    “Your life is escorting Alonzo back to his steak fish station.”
    “Can do.”
    “I’m a poet,” Alonzo said. “I’m writing a novel. It’s called Marigold, My Marigold . When I came to work, I passed a rack of marigolds. As I did, one broke off. This one. It was a sign. Today is the day my novel comes first.”
    “Alonzo,” I said. “Quit tomorrow. I don’t care. Just talk it over with your wife.”
    I aimed him in the direction of Costco.
    “Go back to your darkling plain,” I said, giving him a helpful shove. “Everything will be fine.”
    “My what?” Alonzo asked, turning back.
    “Your little standing mat. Your darkling plain… pretend I never said it.”

I’d love to tell you I jogged the half mile back to the museum at a measured and steady pace. Really, I sprinted with boobs flapping, R. Crumb calves wobbling, throat burning, blister on the inside of my right heel forming. And stopped after a hundred feet.
    My phone vibrated in my pocket. Spencer must have waterboarded my number out of the recesses of Timby’s mind.
    “Yes, hello?”
    “Am I speaking with Eleanor Flood?”
    I took my phone away from my ear.
    JOYCE PRIMM .
    “Joyce, hi! I’ve been meaning to call!”
    “This is Camryn Karis-Sconyers,” the voice said. “I’m an editor at Burton Hill.”
    Whatever was about to happen, I had the strongest premonition I shouldn’t hear it standing up.
    I’d arrived at a small fishing pier. A Native American in a jean jacket sat on a bench with a portable radio. At his feet was a bucket filled with bloody gunk. BAIT 4 SALE. He nodded at the empty spot beside him. I sat down.
    “Nice to meet you,” I said to Ms. Karis-Sconyers.
    “I’m calling because we’re moving our offices downtown. I’ve been going through our files and found one for The Flood Girls. I’m wondering what you’d like us to do with it.”
    “Oh. Joyce will know.”
    “Joyce?”
    “Joyce Primm,” I said. “My editor. Let me speak with her.”
    “Um, Joyce Primm isn’t with Burton Hill anymore.”
    So that’s why Joyce had been calling, to tell me she was going to another publisher.
    “Where did she land?” I asked.
    “At a cheese shop in Nyack.”
    “Oh.”
    “I heard it’s a really good cheese shop,” Camryn offered.
    So it hadn’t been Joyce Primm calling. My phone just thought so because I’d entered Burton Hill’s main number in my address book.
    What a singular sensation, to have the facts of my career unraveling and raveling back up all at the same time.
    “And, so, my book?” I asked.
    “ The Flood Girls ?” she said. “It was kind of due eight years ago?” *
    “Are you my new editor?”
    “I edit YA.”
    “YA graphic novels? I’m sorry. I’m confused.”
    “We’re not doing a lot of graphic novels anymore,” Camryn said. “They were big ten years ago but we got burned by a few. You know, Joyce and her cheese shop.”
    “So you’re saying my book is canceled?” I said. “You’re just going to eat my advance?”
    “I suppose we could sue you?” she said helpfully.
    “That’s okay.”
    “I feel bad,” Camryn said. “Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with your agent. Who’s your agent?”
    “Sheridan Smith,” I said.
    “Right.”
    “What?”
    “Someone said she’s a homeopath in Colorado.”
    “She is?”
    “Publishing,” Camryn said. “You might have heard. We’ve been going through a rough patch.”
    “Gee.”
    “You can still write your book,” she said sweetly. “It probably just won’t be for us. Oh!” She’d almost forgotten. “This file. I’m not sure if you want us to send it to you. Looks like contracts, correspondence, a Christmas card you drew for Joyce where instead of reindeer it’s the Looper Wash ponies and instead of Santa it’s that guy with the thing whose name I can’t remember—”
    I hung up and dropped my phone into the bait bucket.
    I sensed a