Free A Dangerous Fiction by Barbara Rogan

She’d brought in a neighbor who cut herself on a carving knife. I told her about the hospital’s call. “They wouldn’t say what’s wrong with him,” I said.
    â€œI’m sure it’s nothing,” she replied. “You know men.” I must have expected her to turn around and walk back inside with me, because I was surprised when she didn’t. But the incident was so thoroughly eclipsed by the disastrous news to come that I’d forgotten it until this moment.
    â€œThat was nothing,” I said. “You couldn’t have known. I can’t believe you worried over that.”
    Val hugged me with one arm. She smelled of paint and French perfume. “I’m so glad. You know I loved you both. Hell, I owe my career to your husband!”
    â€œYou do?”
    Her eyes brimmed with whiskey tears. “Before I met you two, I was struggling to show my work, let alone sell it. Then you commissioned that portrait, and when it was done, Hugo made a point of showing it to his friend Henri Roux, who has galleries in Paris and New York. Henri loved it and he came to see more. That’s how I got my first solo show.”
    â€œI never knew that,” I said.
    â€œNo one knew. It was just Hugo being kind.”
    How typical of Hugo to do a good deed secretly. Strange, though, that he hadn’t told me, for there were no secrets between us. Maybe he had said something and I’d forgotten.
    Yves returned to us then, and we switched back to French. Val ordered another bottle, but I’d had enough. By the time I got home it was past two. I took a couple of aspirin to stave off a hangover and fell into bed.
    I jerked awake to full daylight. The phone shrilled. I ignored it. Damn thing kept ringing.
    Finally I picked up. Groggily: “Hullo?”
    â€œJo?” It was Lorna. I heard office noises in the background, but her voice was hushed. “Are you OK?”
    I sat up too quickly and winced. Preemptive aspirin doesn’t always work. I rubbed my temples. “What time is it?”
    â€œTen.”
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    â€œDid something happen I don’t know about with Nancy Kurlin’s book?”
    â€œNo, why?”
    â€œDid you sell TV rights to the Gordon Hayes book?”
    â€œWhat the hell are you talking about?”
    â€œJo,” she said, “you’d better get in here.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    The smell smacked me in the face the moment I opened the office door. For a moment I was back in the funeral parlor, sitting in state beside Hugo’s coffin with the suffocating stench of lilies all around me; but this was a different room full of flowers and gaping faces. Jean-Paul and Chloe were huddled around Lorna’s desk. I got the sense of excited speech that had ceased the moment I walked in. There was a crystal vase full of red roses on Lorna’s desk, a spray of irises on Jean-Paul’s, two more bouquets and a bottle of Champagne on the credenza. I plucked the card from the roses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” it exclaimed, and it was signed “N.” I looked at Lorna.
    â€œNancy Kurlin,” she said. “I checked with the florist.”
    The card on the irises was from Jenny Freund, whose first novel I’d been unable to place. “Bless you, Jo. I can’t tell you what this means to me.” The Champagne came from Milo Sanders, whose fascinating biography of Bob Dylan ought to have sold and would have, if another one hadn’t just been made into a PBS series. His note said, “To the world’s greatest agent, with boundless gratitude.”
    I couldn’t speak. Writers often send flowers and little gifts as thank-yous, but there was no reason for any of these particular writers to be thanking me. Something burned in the pit of my stomach, and my limbs felt weightless. I didn’t quite know what was happening yet, but I knew it was