Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams | eBook

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Pressure Drop

By Peter Abrahams, Spencer Quinn

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

CHAPTER 1

He knew the ceiling so well. Its soft white smoothness, a perfect screen for the unreeling of his aquatic daydreams, was marred only by a single hair pulled from a painter's brush and caught in the matte finish. The hair didn't bother him. It gave him something to focus on in all that vast bleakness. What did bother him was the spider web in the corner, directly above his head, and the fat brown spider, leaning over the curve of the gilded molding. Sometimes the spider rubbed the tips of its two front legs together, as if knowing something delightful and a little nasty was about to happen.

He was an expert on the ceiling. The problem was he didn't know what room he lay in.

A muffled footfall. His hearing, like his vision, had become acute. It picked up the tiny metallic squeak of the doorknob turning. The spider ducked back behind the molding. Then a draft touched his face, cooling it; the door had opened. Somewhere music played. He longed for music. This was Wayne Newton, singing "Viva Las Vegas." He longed for music, and when it came he got Wayne Newton. He wanted to laugh. He laughed on the inside. The door closed, cuting off the singer in mid-tremolo.

Footsteps approached. He believed he knew whose they were, but when no face came into view, he began to doubt. On the lower edge of his vision, where everything grew blurry, he thought he saw a liver-spotted hand. Then it was gone. He couldn't be sure.

Cool air curled around his body; the cover had been pulled back. Dry fingertips brushed over his stomach. They manipulated something, fingertips dry as cracked old paper. Then a long hard foreign body was drawn slowly out of him. The relief was immense, breathtaking. It was almost too much to bear.

But the manipulation hadn't ceased. The dry hand gripped him, not gently, not roughly: purposefully. It began to move in purposeful ways. The liver-spotted hand: God, God, he wanted to cry out at the top of his lungs. But he was silent, and his autonomous flesh responded in a fleshly manner. The pleasure came in a spasm of despair; for an instant he felt something cold and smooth, like glass. Then it was over.

Footsteps withdrew. The doorknob squeaked. The opening door sucked fresh air into the room. No music played. The door closed. He heard a single footfall. Then silence.

The spider crept out over the curve of the molding. It rubbed its two front legs together for a while. Could no one see it? Could no one see the web, and with a flick of a broom sweep it away?

The spider rounded the curve of the molding and started walking down the wall. It came closer. Then it passed out of his range of vision. He waited to feel its legs in his hair, on his face.

While he waited, he looked at the ceiling. It turned blue, deep-sea blue. He hated the sea and always had, how it rose and fell like a breathing thing. He dropped into it, down, down. Green eels stretched toward him, watching him with their little eyes, watching him sink. He sank. A leather suitcase tumbled slowly by until all he could see were its brass corners reflecting the occasional gleam of watery sunlight from far below, like lost coins.

CHAPTER 2

"All happy families suck. Unhappy families suck too."

At 6:47 on the morning of her thirty-ninth birthday, Nina Kitchener stared at those eight words. They made up the entire first paragraph of the manuscript on her breakfast table: Living Without Men and Children ... and Loving It, by Lois Filer, Ph.D. A glob of no-sugar, no-fat, no-taste marmalade slid off Nina's pumpernickel bagel and onto the page. She tried to brush it off, but instead smeared an orange crescent through the second paragraph, like the mark of some far-gone editor.

Taking the manuscript, Nina went into the little room she used for an office and climbed on the Lifecycle. She turned the pages as she pedaled. Page 7: "The time has come for new modalities. If you can't have it all, what do you really want?" Page 160: "Ask yourself: are you living for others, or are you living for you? If you're living for others, then think about this: Who is living for you? Do you still want to be thinking about that when you finally realize the answer is no one and it's too late?"

In ten minutes, Nina had absorbed the gist of the manuscript; in twenty she'd cycled 7.3 miles. With a red pin, she marked her progress on a large wall map of the world. She was cycling from Paris to Rangoon. The red pin put her into the heart of the Hindu Kush. Next week she would be in Pakistan, in a month, Kashmir. Nina went into the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth with a secret formula anti-plaque paste probably not for sale in the Khyber Pass. She had the best of both worlds.

The teeth in the mirror were good teeth, not as white as the capped teeth that Dr. Pearl, her dentist with three alimonies to pay, kept touting, but white enough for real ones. The hair was good hair — dark brown, thick, healthy — and subtly cut by Sherman of Sherman's at a hundred dollars a pop, not counting tip. The face? Safe to say that it was not: aristocratic or peasant; hawk-nosed or snub-nosed; sexpot or cutesy; arrogant or submissive. And that it was: intelligent; well-proportioned; middle-class; the kind of face that might turn up in an early Manet. Would it be too much to suppose that the big dark eyes would have given him a chance to show off a little?

Nina, looking in the mirror, wasn't dwelling on all that. She was searching for signs of being thirty-nine. There were plenty of those, but none that could be called lines, except by an unfriendly viewer. Still, she could see where the lines were going to be. Enough. She splashed her face with cold water, rubbed hard with a towel, dressed, stuffed Living Without in her briefcase, and rode the elevator down thirty-five floors to the streets of Manhattan.

"Morning, Ms. Kitchener," said Jules, holding the door for her. He was dressed like a Swiss Guard, only a little more gaudy. "Lovely morning," he added, almost as though he meant it, which wasn't like him at all, and Nina, walking out into eighteen degrees and driving snow, remembered that it was the Monday after Thanksgiving: the start of tipping season.

Nina walked to work, sharing the sidewalks with stiff-legged masses hunched miserably into the wind, everyone's vapor breath rising in the air like cartoonists' balloons empty of dialogue. She made eye contact with nobody except a motionless man in rags at the corner of Third and Forty-ninth who suddenly swayed toward her and whispered, "Merry fucking Christmas." No one else took any note of him.

Thirty-nine. Three nine. As she walked, Nina imagined the digits tolling like village bells in a Frankenstein movie. In fact, she was still clinging to the last few hours of thirty-eight. She hadn't been born until noon. Then had come twenty happy years, a period closed by the death of her mother from breast cancer, made remote by the death of her father a few years later from colon cancer. That was Act One, The Nuclear Family. Then, with some overlap, came Act Two, The Boyfriends. This wasn't the right word to describe them — one of The Boyfriends had been fifty-two, at least he had said he was, although he had sometimes looked older, especially on the fatal day when he and Nina encountered his daughters on the nude beach at the Club Med in Tahiti — but there was no right word. "Lover" was too specific, "friend" too general, "paramour" too operatic, "mate" not operatic enough, "significant other" too much like something John Cleese might have sneered at on "Fawlty Towers."

The Boyfriends: David, who left her for an ashram in Marin County; Richard, whom she left for Lenny; Lenny, who went back to his wife; Alvie, who took drugs; Marc, who took her money; Zane, who came too soon; another Richard, who never came; Ken, who talked about a ménage à trois whenever he had too much to drink, which turned out to be most of the time.

Those were the ones she had been serious about. The others were better forgotten. The Boyfriends themselves were probably better forgotten too, but that would mean forgetting large parts of her own history. David, Richard, Lenny, Alvie, Marc, Zane, Richard the Second, Ken. They defined her past in seemingly comprehensible periods, like a genealogy of the kings of some troubled state.

Now they were overthrown. Nina was out of the boyfriend game for good. The business had given her the strength to do that. Once in a while there was a setback — a Boyfriend might pop up, at a nearby restaurant table perhaps, or in a bad dream. But she could handle that. She was on her own. Living without men and children. She wanted to find out more about the "and loving it" part.

The office was a four-story brownstone with a little iron railing out front, a little brass plaque that said KITCHENER AND BEST by the door and a mortgage like the rock of Sisyphus. A furious-looking Pekingese was defecating at the base of the first stair. A woman in a mink coat and fluffy pink slippers held the dog's leash. "Hurry up, you little prick," she said, snapping the animal into line behind her the moment it had finished.

"Jesus Christ," Nina said, stepping over a turd that seemed grossly out of proportion to the size of its maker, and entering the building.

Jason Best was at the front desk, on the phone. Behind him, a computer was blinking a screenful of multicolored nonsense. "Please hold," Jason said, punching a button. "Please hold." Punch. "Please hold." He glanced up at Nina, giving her the kind of bemused look Cary Grant used to deliver so well. Jason resembled Cary Grant in other ways too — a little taller, perhaps, a little darker, a little more handsome. "There's a fuck-up on the L.I.R.R.," he said to Nina, covering the mouthpiece. "Amalia won't be in till noon."

"There's dog shit by the door."

"Ick," Jason said, and punched another button. "Kitchener and Best. Please hold."

The morning papers were on the desk. The Post said: "SEX MANIAC WOUNDS 3, SHOOTS SELF, PIT BULL." Nina took it outside and cleaned up the mess. Then she went up to her office on the top floor.

Jason hadn't mentioned that it was already occupied. That wasn't the way he worked. Two women sat on the couch by the window. They might have been about her own age, perhaps slightly older. One had long salt-and-pepper hair; the other had blond hair, cut very short, and wore glasses with oversize frames.

"Hello," the salt-and-pepper one said. "I think we're a little early."

"The snow and all," the other added. "We weren't sure how long it would take."

"womynpress?" Nina asked, wondering how to vocalize the lowercase w used in their cover letter.

"That's us," said salt-and-pepper. "I'm Brenda Singer-Atwell, publisher."

"M. Eliot," said the other. "Editor-in-chief. And you're Nina Kitchener, right?"

"Right."

"We've heard good things about you, Nina," said Brenda.

"From who?"

"Everybody," replied M. "Gloria, for one."

"Gloria Steinem?"

M. nodded.

"That's funny. I don't really know her."

"Well, the word is out — you're the medium to the media," said Brenda.

"Did you have time to go over our manuscript?"

"Yes," Nina said, sitting at her desk. "Like some coffee?"

"Great," said Brenda. M. nodded.

Nina picked up the phone and buzzed downstairs. "Rosie called in sick," Jason said. "The NBC guy wants to make it at four instead of five, and Amalia won't be in till two." The pressure was on; Jason's voice was rising into a register Cary Grant never used, not even when helicopters were chasing him.

"Any coffee?" Nina said.

"Coffee?" asked Jason.

"In the machine."

Brenda and M. were watching her closely; at least, Brenda was — M.'s enormous glasses were reflecting the light, masking her eyes.

"I'll check."

"Thanks." Nina put down the phone.

M. turned her head slightly, revealing her eyes. Sharp ones, and they were indeed looking closely at Nina. "New coffee boy?" she asked.

"That was Jason Best," Nina said. "My partner." The sharp eyes shifted away and Nina realized her voice had gotten hard.

A few seconds passed in silence before Brenda said: "So what did you think?"

Nina took the manuscript from her briefcase, placed a yellow legal pad beside it.

"Before we start, I have to explain that this initial consultation costs one hundred dollars. After, if you decide to proceed with us, it's two-fifty an hour, plus expenses. Expenses vary, but we don't do anything big — like travel, entertainment — without checking with you first."

Brenda and M. looked at each other.

"We were told," M. said, "that you had a less ... exacting fee structure for feminist organizations."

"Who told you that?"

"Several people."

"Gloria Steinem?"

M. opened her mouth to say yes, but Brenda said, "No," before she could.

"Well, it's not true," Nina said. "Our fee structure is set." She tried to stop herself from adding, "Exacting or not," and almost did. Maybe after a few more birthdays she'd be able to.

Brenda and M. were looking at each other again. Silently and quickly they came to a decision. Nina saw how they worked: like a good lion tamer act. M. made trouble and Brenda ran the show.

"It's a deal," Brenda said.

"The clock is ticking," M. added.

Nina turned to her. "One. The manuscript is badly written. It doesn't have to be art, but it has to be better than this. That's your territory. Two. There's not enough anecdotal material, especially in the first two chapters. They're too theoretical, too boring. That's where you need the personal stuff, up front. Three. You've got to have an introduction, written by somebody who's well known and as mainstream as possible. Preferably a man."

"A man?" said M.

"Four. Tell the author to lose that Tolstoy parody or whatever the hell it is at the beginning. It's unnecessarily off-putting and it begs comparison with the big boys, comparison that reviewers won't find in her favor."

Brenda glanced at M. Faint pink patches appeared on M.'s face.

"Having said that," Nina went on, "there may be a market for this book. Demographically. There are lots of women in the boat she describes and they read books. You've got to sell them on the 'and loving it' part. That aspect of the book has to be completely rethought. Then, supposing you can make these changes, it will come down to two things — the personality of the author, that's the main one, and the package, important but secondary."

Brenda was writing rapidly in a notebook. M. was sitting very still, her jaw jutting out a little.

"Is Dr."— Nina glanced down at the manuscript —"Dr. Filer married, by any chance?"

"Of course not," M. said.

"Good. Any children?"

"No."

"What's her Ph.D. in?"

M. looked at Brenda. Brenda looked at M. M. said: "I'm not sure. Sociology, maybe. Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters," Nina said. "If it's in metallurgy you might as well bag it now."

Silence. M. looked at Brenda. Brenda said: "I understand you know people on the Donahue show."

"That's right. But they don't do me any favors, and I don't try to sell them anything that'll make Phil look like a jerk."

"Do you know him?" Brenda asked.

"I've met him. I don't know him."

M. stuck her jaw out a little farther. "But you called him Phil."

"Jesus. It would be a bit silly to call him Mister Donahue, wouldn't it?"

Jason came in, balancing three cups on a tray. "Coffee, tea, or me?" he said. Brenda looked at him blankly; M. with a stone face; Nina laughed.

They drank coffee. It was excellent, with a slight taste of walnut. Jason wasn't capable of making coffee like that; Nina knew he had sent out for it. Brenda and M. seemed to relax a little on the couch.

"I'd like to meet the author," Nina said.

Brenda smiled; a nice smile, not as dazzling as Jason's, but warm, and Nina sensed they could be friends. "We thought you might. She should be here any minute. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all."

The phone buzzed. Nina picked it up. "Hello," she said.

"Mummy?" said a little boy. He was crying.

"Mummy?" said Nina.

The little boy's voice broke. "The man said my mummy was there."

"Just a minute." Nina looked up. "There's a child on the phone. Do either of you —" But Brenda was already up. She took the phone.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams, Spencer Quinn. Copyright © 1989 Peter Abrahams. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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