Free The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

said.
    He rolled his eyes in mock horror. He had a perfectly deadpan

    face with a light touch of cynicism on it. "That's hell week for the sorority," he said. "We only save it for specially lucky girls."
    How funny! Caroline thought. That's exactly the phrase I used when I was telling Mary Agnes about it.
    "So you're Caroline Bender," said Mr. Shalimar.
    "Yes." Suddenly her mouth was dry.
    "I found a little report of yours on my desk," he said.
    "I know." Why did her voice sound like a croak? She took a sip of her drink.
    "I read the manuscript this afternoon," he said. He paused and looked at her. "You know something, Miss Bender?"
    "What . . . ?"
    "I happen to agree with you."
    "Oh, my goodness," Caroline said, weak with relief.
    "I don't think I'll buy that book," he said.
    "My goodness," she said again.
    His eyes narrowed. "Make no mistake. I am the editor here, and I buy what I like and reject what I don't like, regardless of what any of my editors say. But I like having a bright, young reader who agrees with me, it makes me feel a little better."
    "I hope someday to be a reader," Caroline said.
    "All right. For the next week or two I'll give you a manuscript every night to take home and read. You give me a report on each one. After I see what you can do, maybe I'll let you be a reader."
    "Oh, that would be marvelous!"
    Mr. Rice smiled wryly. Even with the smile his face did not change much. 'The enthusiasm of youth," he said. "If old man Fabian had only known, he wouldn't have bothered to pay these kids for working here. He would have charged 'em."
    Mr. Shalimar was looking piercingly at Caroline across the table. "The most valuable commodity in business today, if people would only recognize it, is enthusiasm, I'm not interested in deadheads. You get the same old trite comments from the deadheads, they don't even care any more. I want editors who think that every book we put out is an important book. I don't care if it's the worst piece of crap in the world; if the author who wrote it believes in it, and the editors who help him revise it believe in it, then the people who buy it will care about it. The thing that was wrong with the manuscript you read last night was that it was phony. The author thought he

    was fooling his readers. Well, they never fool me. And he didn't fool you. Do you want experience?"
    "Yes," she said.
    "I'll give you experience. I'll teach you. I've been forty years an editor, I've taught some of the best writers in the business. I knew Eugene O'Neill years ago, and I gave him advice."
    There was an almost inaudible sigh from April, as if at last she had achieved a moment of delight she had been waiting for for a long time. Mr. Shalimar turned to include her too in his revelations. April was looking at him with her eyes shining. Mr. Rice turned his glass of whisky nearly directly upside down as his throat moved rhythmically, swallowing. His eyes were closed and he did not seem to be listening to Mr. Shalimar at all.
    It was nine o'clock before Caroline realized that none of them had eaten anything but pretzels, and Mr. Rice not even those. April seemed in a trance, leaning toward Mr. Shalimar as a young plant leans toward the sun in a window, listening to every story he told with little gasps and laughs. Caroline was more interested in Mr. Rice—or Mike, as she was now calling him. His attention to Mr. Shalimar was obviously more loyalty than interest, and she began to suspect that Mike Rice, at least, had heard all Mr. Shalimar's stories quite a few times before. He drank quietly, steadily and pleasantly, the way one plays solitaire or knits a sweater, drink after drink after drink, with no sign of getting drunk. Once in a while he would look over at her and give a faint smile and nod his head, a serious drinker giving indication that there still is communication between himself and his table partner, but without breaking his rhythm. It was Mr. Shalimar who was finding the liquor hard to