Hot Desk: A Novel - 3

Ben could not be happier. After five years that included online graduate school, bartending gigs, coaching high school basketball, working in that lonely bookstore in Burlington, and a recent stint as an assistant at Champlain Press, a local Vermont publisher that specialized in environmental books, he was finally starting a real job in a real city. Hawk Mills had an efficient desk sharing setup. He’d never thought of himself as a corporate tool, as his younger sister, Ava, had accused him of being, but the emails from the CEO, Frank French, made him feel part of something important. Champlain Press was run by an ex-hippie who made it big investing early in Ben & Jerry’s, but that noble, chaotic passion project was light-years away from the professional vibe at Hawk Mills. He had a few new button-down shirts from J.Crew and some excellent boots from Varvatos that probably cost more than anything he had ever owned. Growing up in Vermont, going to school in Vermont (public high school and UVM, then an MA at Dartmouth that might as well have been in Vermont), Ben was ready to get his new life started.

When he was first offered the editor job, the salary had sounded low but, if he was careful, manageable. Then this morning he had checked his bank balance after a week of orientation and a week of hybrid work and after taxes and rent and health care insurance and paying for insanely good Thai takeout every night, Ben was in shock at the meager amount he had left from his first paycheck. There was a bar, Betty Jack’s, on the same block as his apartment, and Ben had already clocked the “Help Wanted” sign. With his experience (he had basically written his senior thesis during the lull before the college student rush at What Ales You in Burlington), he figured he could pick up some shifts and at least pay to keep the electricity on.

Last week Ben had left his desk spotless, smelling faintly of lemon disinfectant. So when he pulled out his XL Hydro Flask, his only desk accessory, he was surprised to see a cactus. Ben looked around but, yeah, this was definitely his desk. Bizarrely, there was a smear of what, on closer inspection, looked to be olive oil. Ben sat down in the desk chair, pulling his laptop from his bag. There was something small and hard in the seat. Ben retrieved what could have been an actual pellet of rat dropping. What did he know? He was from Vermont, but city rats were a whole other breed, strolling casually down the streets, owning the fucking place.

It was a chocolate-covered almond. What the hell? He was okay with the cactus, though it was a questionable choice in terms of bringing good vibes to the shared workspace. But either Rebecca Blume, his deskmate, hadn’t read the memo (not to be a nerd, but there were rules, right?) or she was kind of inconsiderate. The email had explicitly said: “All desk sharing partners are expected to abide by the Clean Desk Policy, which requires you to leave your desk surface clean, wiped down, and ready for use by your desk sharing partner at the end of each day. If you have concerns about desk hygiene, please discuss them with your desk sharing partner.” Did he have concerns about Rebecca Blume’s desk hygiene? He did a little, but while communication was clearly encouraged by the Clean Desk Policy, Rebecca had not yet emailed him, and she was the one with the seniority, while Ben was brand-new. But he would get over it, because he was just glad to be at Hawk Mills, about to do what he loved: read manuscripts, edit amazing authors, bring new books into the world.

He moved the cactus to the back of his desk and noticed a Post-it attached to its plastic pot. “ WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? ” was written on it in black pen. Had the note come with the cactus? Was the note to do with something else altogether, stuck to the cactus and forgotten? Was the note some kind of existential query? The Post-it couldn’t be for him, could it? Why would she (he assumed that, since it was Rebecca’s cactus, it was Rebecca’s Post-it) leave him a note when she hadn’t bothered to email him?

“Dude! Good morning!” Josh Howard (“Call me Howie!”) came out of nowhere with the same complicated bro shake he had tried to teach Ben unsuccessfully last week. Howie was an intern assigned to help Ben get acclimated. Howie smelled like smoke, had dark circles under his eyes, was wearing the same shapeless red sweater every time Ben had seen him, and, according to his résumé, which Ben found on LinkedIn, had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and spent a few years “kickin’ it” in Nepal. Ben had to admire the balls it took to write “kickin’ it” on your résumé. Howie was “couch surfing,” “dating an actress,” but it was “chill,” and he was “doing the thing until grad school next year.” Howie’s plan involved a PhD in the philosophy of language, and Ben already knew more about Howie’s past, present, and future than he did about most of his oldest, closest friends. Ben was giving him the benefit of the doubt. He and Howie had had a seriously deep conversation about the brilliance of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and the disappointment they both endured when the next two books of the trilogy did not measure up.

“Hashtag Girlboss said to remind you about the meeting at eleven,” Howie announced. Ben didn’t think it was okay to call the middle-aged editorial director of Hawk Mills, Caro Nowak, “Hashtag Girlboss,” but he wasn’t exactly sure how to best convey that to Howie. He made a mental note to put a stop to it as soon as he figured out exactly when and where he was supposed to be giving Howie formal feedback.

“Sure. I have to return a call from an agent about this linked collection of short stories; the writer’s a former Google exec and they’re set in the future where algorithms determine everything. I think it sounds cool—a cross between Jennifer Egan and George Saunders, maybe.”

“Short stories are a hard sell, man.” Howie shook his head.

“But kind of making a comeback,” Ben replied. “And they’re linked. You know, connected?” Were short stories, linked or otherwise, a hard sell? Should he trust his instincts or defer to Howie, who was wearing plastic slides and sweat socks?

“But also kind of a hard sell. Like, you have to already be famous and at least 60 percent of the collection has to have already been published in The New Yorker .”

“I’m not sure that’s completely accurate.”

“It’s pretty accurate.”

“Lorrie Moore. Walter Mosley. Ben Lerner. Emma Cline. All with new collections.”

“You do you, man!” Howie put his palms up and made a great show of backing down. “You’ve been introduced to the phone pods?” Howie was quick to move on, which Ben recognized as a positive trait. He looked at the row of phone pods, someone’s idea of making phone booths futuristic and moving them indoors. They looked like spaceship capsules. “Yeah, beam me up, Scotty,” Ben found himself saying.

“You know, that’s a misquote. It’s never been said in any of the television episodes or films. I mean, Kirk says, ‘Scotty, beam us up,’ and ‘Mr. Scott, beam us up,’ but that’s it.”

Ben’s Star Trek trivia knowledge began and ended with what was, according to Howie, a near miss.

“Also, Darth Vader never said ‘Luke, I am your father.’ ”

“Oh yeah?” Ben was not a Star Trek guy. He was not a Star Wars guy. He just wanted to make a phone call. And maybe work with the next Raymond Carver.

“Think how the relationship between meaning and truth is related to both reality and perceived reality. Like, what’s more real, what everybody thinks Kirk says, or what he actually says?”

“Right.” Ben looked around for something to wipe the olive oil off the desk so he could plug his laptop into the monitor. He opened one of the desk drawers, fished out a packet of neon (?) Post-its, a few napkins, one of which was definitely used (lip gloss?), and a black pen. He wiped off the desk and threw the napkins into the recycle bin. How hard was that?

“Okay, so eleven a.m. Good luck with your call. To boldly go where no man, etc., etc.” Howie headed to the elevator, miming sucking on a vape pen.

On his way to the phone pod, Ben was waved over by Mrs. Singh, the head of Human Resources at Leesen, who had been incredibly nice to him during orientation while trying to explain the difference between in-network and out-of-network medical plans. Ben had selected the absolute cheapest, which probably meant he was covered if he was hit by a bus (honestly, more of a possibility than he had anticipated), but everything else was coming out of his pocket. He thought again about picking up some shifts at the bar in his neighborhood. “Anytime you want a cup of tea,” Mrs. Singh promised him, “I can brew you loose leaf. You don’t have to drink that Lipton.”

Ben was a coffee drinker but didn’t like to say no to Mrs. Singh, who reminded him of his favorite aunt. Last week he had eaten about four free breakfast burritos each morning, but this week there were only some picked-over donuts, and he did much better on protein than pure sugar and carbs. He wondered what that meant for the future of those afternoon platters of cheese and salami and if he should save some money by not eating lunch and making up for it later or if there were to be no platters of cheese and salami and he would starve to death.

After his phone call with the agent, Ben checked his email. He scrolled back through Frank French’s communications about the desk sharing policies and pulled up his moving tribute to Edward David Adams, a.k.a. the Lion, a.k.a. the very reason why Ben was here at Hawk Mills. He clicked the link to the Lion’s obituary and read it for maybe the fourth time. He lingered on the photos, his favorite the one from when the Lion was a young man, patrician and windswept, more like a famous actor than one of the greatest writers who had ever lived. There he was in Sweden with his beautiful third wife, maybe twenty years younger than he was, accepting a Nobel Prize in Literature. There he was with Warhol at the Factory. There he was, posed at his massive desk, the famous book jacket photo where his dark-eyed charisma burned off the page, his elbows resting on a pile of his rivals’ books, a smoking pipe held lightly in his large hand. With a surge of nostalgia, Ben focused on a photo from ten years ago, the Lion before he had retreated to the Hamptons in the final stages of his illness, when he was aged but still powerful. At the time, Ben was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school, playing basketball, reading the books his mother gave him, but restless, not seeing a way out for himself. In this photo, and Ben remembered it well because he had been there watching, the Lion posed with some of the other writers at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the pull of his magnetism tipped everyone toward him.

Every August, when the famous writers and workshop students gathered for two weeks in the mountains of Vermont, there were readings open to the public. Ben’s mom, Jeanie, an English teacher at his local high school, and his dad, Doug, a general contractor at Green Mountains Construction, had dropped him off up the hill. (He didn’t remember where they went, or why his mom hadn’t come too, just that he was thrilled and nervous to be alone with all the writers, who didn’t seem to know that he didn’t belong there.) He wandered among the soft yellow buildings and green Adirondack chairs, making his way with the flow of people toward a big barn that Middlebury College had converted into a space with high ceilings, a snack bar, and places to read, write, and hang out. He had been on the Bread Loaf campus once before, in the winter, when it was deserted, with a group of older kids, and they had broken into the barn to drink beer, but it was freezing and felt haunted, so they’d left pretty quickly.

It was a different place in the summer, filled with people talking animatedly, laughing, carrying around books. Ben didn’t even remember who else was reading their work that night, just that everyone was confident and straightforward when there were stories and poems about sex or violence or just beautiful, vivid ways of seeing the most normal things. It was almost fully dark when the Lion got up to read, and there were strings of white lights twinkling in the barn rafters, and bright stars in the sky Ben could see through the windows. The way the Lion lowered his massive head before he started and the room fell absolutely silent; even the clinking of glasses ceased. The way his voice hypnotized, seduced, held the big space, owned it. Ben couldn’t remember exactly what the Lion had read; he had searched for it in every collection afterward. Maybe it had never been published? But he remembered distinctly how the experience had cracked him open, how the story—something about a man, a girl, a horse, a misunderstanding that led to tragedy—made him cry, and all around him in the dark he could hear people sniffling too, and when the last word of the story was uttered, there was a long, heavy pause that seemed to contain everything in the world to Ben, and then there was thunderous applause, people standing, the Lion raising his hand in acknowledgment before stepping into the throngs of admirers and camera flashes.

Ben still didn’t know how he got the nerve, but he made his way up to the great man and shook his hand. There was a brief moment when the Lion had really seen him, maybe noticed how young he was—though he was already tall for his age—how enraptured, and he had clasped Ben’s shoulder before being pulled away. After that, Ben read everything the Lion wrote, and then every interview, profile piece, every book by adjacent writers, and then branched out even more, read younger writers, all genres. He got a job working summers at the Bread Loaf School of English, hauling kegs to the parties, setting up chairs for the performances, working among the young English teachers and the professors, and then attending the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at the end of the summer, working as a waiter but encouraged to sit in on workshops and lectures.

It was the summer before his senior year in college, where he was majoring in English and warming the bench for the Division 1 Catamounts basketball team, that he first heard agents and editors and publishers talk about how they worked with writers and thought that was something he could do. But he wasn’t done with school yet—he got his master’s degree in English lit (hardly setting foot on campus since they had moved all classes online during the pandemic), and his thesis was on the Lion himself, focusing on how his work filtered the autobiographical tradition through the lens of postmodern fiction, with a close look at his most famous novel, The Coldest War , a biting satire of marriage. Ben couldn’t believe the Lion had died. Sure, he was old; he was sick. It’s not that it was unexpected; it was just that the world felt smaller without him in it, as if something Ben would never be a part of had ended for good.

Ben closed out his emails, feeling melancholy. At least he was here, at Hawk Mills (he had tried to get a job at the Lion’s longtime publisher, PK—he had heard Maury Kantor speak at Bread Loaf about his relationship with the Lion—but they seemed to be downsizing instead of hiring), and Hawk Mills was committed to publishing the kind of fiction Ben liked best. He was rereading the agent’s cover letter for the Google exec’s short story collection (cleverly described as a “novel in stories”) when Howie pinged him on Blabber.

HOWIE:

hashtag girlboss invited you to stop by kick the tires you know

BEN:

you kick the tires before you buy the car

HOWIE:

never got my license

BEN:

Caro asked you to ask me if I would stop by her office?

HOWIE:

affirmative

BEN:

before or after the meeting?

HOWIE:

… … … …

Ben looked up and caught Howie’s eye across the room. He gave Ben two enthusiastic thumbs-up, then disappeared from view. Howie was not making things much easier for Ben. He had met Caro only twice before: once when he was interviewing for the job online, and once during orientation last week when she stopped by the conference room where he and two other “newbies,” as the leader kept calling them, were role-playing scenarios to determine conflicts of interest. (It turns out accepting tickets to a Yankees game in exchange for hiring a particular paper vendor was, surprise, a conflict of interest. No issue for Ben, obviously a Red Sox fan.) He had seen Caro briefly last week but hadn’t been to her office yet. Ben thought it would be strange to have an office—politically controversial maybe, since there was a clear dividing line in the hierarchy (his sister, Ava, would say the private office dwellers reinforced an oppressive class system), and also it would be a little lonely in an office; the open floor was buzzing and much more interactive. He walked to Caro’s half-closed door and knocked. “Hey, good morning, it’s Ben. You wanted to see me?”

“Ben—come on in. I wanted to hear how your second week was going. How are you settling in? Is Josh helping you to get squared away?” It took Ben a minute before he remembered that Josh was Howie. He gave Howie a positive review because it seemed like the decent thing to do. Caro didn’t ask him to sit down, but he didn’t want to loom awkwardly over her, so he took a seat. She was probably about his mom’s age, but while his mom was open-faced and affectionate, always wearing a fleece vest and either Birkenstocks or Sorels, Caro was draped in layers of matching beige silks—a top, a top over that top, a scarf, a jacket, flowing pants—and very pointy brown boots. Her face was unreadable, her hair a sleek gray helmet, and her tone clipped. On the wall behind her was a photo of Caro with Toni Morrison and one of her arm in arm with Elizabeth Warren. Ben was startled to see a large coffee mug on her desk emblazoned with the phrase #GIRLBOSS. “I’m glad to have you here at Hawk Mills. I hope you’re finding the desk sharing initiative tenable. Did you find orientation helpful?”

“It’s all been good,” Ben said. “Everyone has been great. I’m already getting submissions, and I’m interested in a linked short story collection.”

“I look forward to hearing about it. Short story collections are having a bit of a moment.”

“That’s what I thought.” Suck it, Howie , was what Ben actually thought.

“Wonderful. I’ll see you at the meeting.” Caro had clearly dismissed him, so Ben hauled himself up and headed back to his desk, accepting a freshly brewed cup of tea from Mrs. Singh on the way. He was a tea drinker now.

Ben got to the 11 a.m. meeting early. Caro’s assistant was efficiently moving equipment and setting up the huge screen that dominated the entire back wall. Did he have time to scour the kitchen for leftover donuts? Before he could decide, Howie ambled in, offering a bagel slathered with cream cheese. “Dude, I took a guess that you were a sesame man with a schmear. Am I right?”

Ben was a sesame man with peanut butter on the side, but who was he to complain? “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Aww, you looked hungry.”

“I did?” Ben took the bagel gratefully, but also, did he look hungry?

“You have a hungry look about you. Hungry like the wolf.” Howie, Ben noticed, always said at least one thing too many.

“Anyway, thank you,” Ben said hastily, before Howie could howl like the wolf. He took big bites to finish it before Caro showed up. Someone who wore that much silk probably did not want cream cheese oozing anywhere near her. Caro’s assistant came back in and pushed a button on the pad. It was sweet to be on this side of the big screen after calling in from his apartment for meetings on Monday and Tuesday. People’s squares started blinking on, and Caro and a few others he hadn’t met or met in passing came in and sat down.

Caro sat at the head of the table, working on her computer until exactly 11 a.m. Then she looked up and got right to it with a brisk welcome. Ben admired her control of the room and her efficient point guard energy. She continued: “I’m sure you’ve all heard about Edward David Adams’s estate. I’d like to talk about the incredible opportunity it presents for Hawk Mills.”

Ben had not heard about the Lion’s estate except for a mention at the end of the New York Times obituary that the Lion didn’t have an agent, having conducted all his business “in a gentlemanly agreement” with Maury Kantor.

“We want to go all out to get the whole shebang,” Caro continued. “I’m sure Ami Ito at Avenue will have her best people on it, not to mention competition from every other publishing house, but I’m confident Hawk Mills can get there first and bring it in. I’m counting on it.”

“We’re going to need a robust plan to demonstrate how we can preserve the Lion’s legacy while also introducing him to new generations of readers in an appropriate way,” said Ty, a senior editor. “Any ideas on that are welcome.”

Ben listened intently. If they needed an editor to get in there, he was the obvious choice. Well, okay, not the obvious choice, being that he was brand-new to the job and twenty-six years old, but did anyone else here write a thesis on the Lion? Did anyone else here have a life-changing encounter with the man? And, Ben thought triumphantly, did anyone else have the trump card that was Atticus Adams?

“Unmute, Susan, unmute!” Caro snapped with such vehemence that Ben felt badly for poor Susan, who was fumbling at her computer, mouth still moving. It was a mistake anyone could make. On the days he worked from home, Ben called in from the kitchen/dining room area of his apartment, separated from the living/foyer area of his apartment by a few feet and one old couch he had driven down from Vermont in a rented truck with his dog, Butch, and sister, Ava, a junior at NYU. He would continue to keep his camera off, even though he thought it was kind of suspect when other people did it, until he painted the place and hung something on the walls. This weekend he would buy some paint.

After a half-heard point from poor Susan in Sales, and Caro’s intriguing comment that there were rumored to be unpublished short stories and definitely some journals and letters involved, Ben interjected quickly. “I’d be really interested in helping. Especially if it’s true that he was working on something. Or if there was older work. I know that he was writing every day, even toward the end.”

Caro gave him a cool but interested look. “Go on,” she said.

“I wrote my thesis on the Lion, and when I was working on it, I reached out to him. He was sick at that point, but I kept writing to him, and I communicated pretty regularly with his son, Atticus, who was really helpful.” Ben did not add that the one time he had come to New York City to meet up with Atticus, they stayed out until 4 a.m., having been booted from a bar when Atticus did lines of coke on a framed photo of Muhammad Ali he had knocked down from the wall, and that Ben half carried Atticus to the famous East End town house before walking four miles on mostly deserted streets back to Ava’s dorm at NYU.

“Do you think we could leverage your relationship with the Lion’s son to give us an advantage? Your connection to Atticus Adams could be the emotional dimension we need to bring in the business. He could be a direct line to Rose Adams, and we should pursue every angle.”

“I’m sure that he’ll meet with me.” Ben was mostly sure. Atticus was a prolific drunk texter and had more than once woken Ben from a deep sleep and engaged him in a late-night back and forth, but he’d texted Atticus after the Lion died and hadn’t heard back yet. Ben hastened to add, “Meet with Hawk Mills,” because he was a team player. “And I’d really like a chance to look at any new work. It would mean a lot to me.” He didn’t dare add that he wanted to edit it. But he did. He knew he could edit the fuck out of whatever the Lion had left behind even without the man himself there. He could almost feel that heavy hand on his sixteen-year-old shoulder. It was all coming full circle. And it was only his second week on the job.

Caro and Carlotta from Marketing exchanged a glance but Ben didn’t know anyone well enough yet to decode it. “I like your confidence, Ben,” Caro said. “Ty and I will contact Rose Adams, and you let me know what you hear from Atticus. Let’s keep talking.”

After the meeting, Howie followed Ben to the kitchen, where there was not a crumb left of the donuts. “Dude, I like your style!” Howie enthused while Ben refilled his water bottle. “High five! Don’t leave me hanging!” Ben slapped Howie’s outstretched palm quickly, hoping no one would come in while he was acting more like an assistant basketball coach than the editor of the Lion’s posthumous work.

“Yeah, he’s the reason I wanted to be an editor.” Ben began to tell Howie the story but thought better of it when Howie took three eggs out of the fridge and started to juggle them.

“Your face, man!” Howie laughed. “They’re hard-boiled!” One of the eggs fell to the floor and cracked. “Shit,” Howie said, not nearly abashed enough. “Two eggs is enough for”—he squinted at the initials that someone had written on the eggs—“P.L. I’m guessing Paul from Production, and that guy should be watching his cholesterol…” He was tossing the cracked egg into the sink when Mrs. Singh came into the kitchen.

“Josh, have you compiled all the evaluations from the other interns?”

“Absolutely. Did it this morning when you first mentioned it,” Howie answered smoothly. Then he left the kitchen, moving quickly toward his desk.

Ben smiled at Mrs. Singh, tempted to tell her the good news about his big chance to edit the Lion.

“I have lasagna that I am just heating up. Maybe you’re hungry?” Mrs. Singh pulled out a half pan of lasagna. There was a lot of it.

“If you’re sure?” Jesus, did he really look hungry like the wolf?

“Sit, sit!” Mrs. Singh bustled around, spooning the lasagna onto plates and into the microwave. “It’s vegan but, shhhhhh, you will not even be able to tell.”

“My sister, Ava, was vegan for a while.” Ben sat at the little table, his knees bumping against the top. “Then she was vegan-ish but with fish. Seagan? Now I guess she eats what she wants but no meat.”

“A very smart young lady,” approved Mrs. Singh. They sat to eat the lasagna. It was delicious, and Ben would never, as promised, guess it was vegan. The secret, apparently, was red lentils. “Ben, I am hoping you would consider serving on the Desk Share Cooperative Community Group Committee. It’s an important, democratic way to hear feedback and make improvements, and you would meet colleagues.”

“I’d be honored,” Ben said, really the only thing he could say as he forked in another bite of lasagna.

“I am so pleased!” Mrs. Singh clapped her hands. “I’ll email you the information, and you will be able to begin assessing comments, pros and cons. Then I’ll schedule a meeting.”

By the end of the day, Ben was almost as tired as after a half-court pickup game. He was packing away his water bottle and wiping the desk down with disinfectant wipes (because, again, he had read the Clean Desk Policy, which recommended sanitizing every night) when he stepped on another chocolate-covered almond that had rolled under his chair. It wedged in the treads of his new boot. “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered. He patted around under the desk and found another one. The mysterious “ WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? ” Post-it stuck on Rebecca Blume’s cactus caught his eye. He pulled it off, crumpled it, and tossed it in the trash, then was immediately filled with remorse. What if it was a reminder about something important? He still wanted to be a good desk partner. Ben opened the drawer and peeled off a neon (?) Post-it. The green wasn’t too bad. “ What is this about? ” he wrote with a Sharpie that he fished out of his bag and stuck the note back on the cactus. Then, because he wasn’t a pushover, he wrote on another Post-it (pink this time) and put it in the corner of his desk under the chocolate-covered almond that was not smashed up in the sole of his boot. Caro liked his confidence. He was going to text Atticus and nail down a meeting to discuss the Lion’s estate. He was kicking ass at Hawk Mills. Errant candy, random Post-its, and an unsanctioned cactus wouldn’t stand in the way of his success. Rebecca Blume would get that message on Monday, he hoped, loud and clear.