What happens when an author has to submit her prized novel to the whims of a moronic focus group? Keep reading for the answer… (3500 words)
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Observation A14
~I~
As the elevator slowed before reaching the twenty-eighth floor, Julia closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded herself not to freak out.
Ding. You have arrived at your destination.
The doors swooshed open, and on the other side of the elevator stood Kevin, her editor. He beamed, dapper in a slim brown pinstripe suit with an orange satin pocket square poking out of the pocket. Clipboard in his hand.
“Hello, Kevin, you’re looking well-constructed today.”
He waved a hand. “You kidding? I woke up like this.”
She smiled politely, and he laughed because Kevin always laughed at his own jokes. Behind him, the office of Platt & Sterling buzzed with activity, as it always did. Interns pushing carts overflowing with manuscripts navigated between desks overflowing with manuscripts. Editors hunched over laptops at those desks sipped cappuccinos and pounded on keyboards.
“Come in out of the rain, darling,” Kevin said, beckoning her forward. “I have notes for you. All good stuff this time, I promise.”
She left the elevator and followed him down a long hallway graced with blown-up book covers, all of them New York Times number one bestsellers. Not that many of them had been published by P&S, but they couldn’t exactly have a hallway full of nothing, could they?
She reminded herself to stay optimistic. This was her dream, after all. No more short stories in second-rate literary journals for five cents a word. No more chasing Pushcart nominations. P&S held the key for her to reach the big time.
Kevin led her into a small conference room, just a table and two chairs, with a massive television bolted to the wall. He motioned for her to sit, so she did.
“The new chapters are great,” Kevin said as soon as he’d joined her at the table.
“But?” she said.
Kevin smiled at her, sighing. “We do have a couple of sticking points, mostly around chapter thirteen.”
Under the table, Julia clenched her fists. “Go ahead.”
He flicked through pages on the clipboard. “On page ninety-two, Antoinette gives the letter to Fredrick.”
“Yes?”
“Well, we received a lot of feedback regarding this particular scene. A few of them were wondering why she can’t just take the letter to her dad herself. It seems like it would save a lot of time.”
Julia unclenched her hands and wiped them on her dress. “Because it wouldn’t make any sense for her to take the letter to her dad. He abused her for a decade, and she’s terrified of him. Why would she take the letter to him?”
He flipped another page in the clipboard. “Ah. We actually did get some good feedback regarding that very question. Reader #4 said that it would make her seem more confident if she was able to put the past behind her and face her father right away. Then it opens up the rest of the novel to go in another direction.”
“In another direction? It’s a novel about her coming to terms with the abuse she went through as a child, Kevin! How is there a story if she reconciles with her dad in chapter thirteen? How does that work?”
“Reader #11 noted that she thinks the story should focus on the sexual tension between Antoinette and her brother.”
Julia barked a laugh. “Sexual tension? There’s no sexual tension between Antoinette and Fredrick.”
Kevin flipped another page, and then raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure about that?”
Kevin’s phone beeped, and he slipped it out of his pocket as the glow of the screen lit up his face. “Oh, Mr. Platt is here.”
He walked to the television and wrestled with a remote control attached to the side with Velcro. He squinted down at it. “Let’s see… I can never find the right button.”
After fumbling a bit, he turned the TV on. Artemis Platt’s leathery and wrinkled face towered above them on the TV screen.
“Can you see me?” Platt said.
“Yes, Arty, we can see you,” Kevin said as he waved to the webcam perched above the TV.
“Julia, so glad you could be here with us today,” Platt said. “I just wanted to say that we’ve been thrilled about the possibilities since Kevin here brought you on board. I think we’re going to do big things together.”
Butterflies raged in her stomach. “Thank you, Mr. Platt. That means a lot.”
Platt flicked his eyes at Kevin, who pursed his lips and said nothing.
“Julia,” Platt said. “I’d like you to come down to the group tomorrow and meet with everyone.”
She pushed air in and out of her nose, in a controlled manner. “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
Platt smiled. “I understand your hesitancy, but it’s part of the standard operating procedure. All our debut authors meet the group at some point in the editing process.”
“Isn’t there some concern about… objectivity barriers or something? Won’t I be interfering with that?”
“Oh, no, my dear young lady, not at all. We want you to feel like you are collaborating with the group, not performing for them. I think this will open up new avenues of creativity.”
Julia’s hands found themselves clenched again, a little moist, a little clammy. She closed her eyes. “If that’s what you want, Mr. Platt.”
~II~
Kevin stepped off the elevator outside Platt’s office on the top floor of the P&S building the following morning. Smooth jazz and air freshener that smelled of spring rain drifted down from the ceiling, coating the hallway in a kind of barbiturate glaze. Kevin hated jazz, but found the rain fragrance quite refreshing.
Through the glass doors of Platt’s office, Kevin observed the old man leaning back in his recliner, hands behind his head, as he gazed at an art print on the wall. A girl, holding flowers, in New Orleans. Platt stared at it often.
Platt noticed Kevin standing outside, then waved him in.
“Good morning, Arty.”
“Morning, Kevin. Oh, wait, that reminds me. Can I ask you to call me Mr. Platt, at least in front of the authors? I don’t care about internally, you know, with Marketing or Sales or Design. Just not in front of the authors.”
“Sure, I can do that. No problem.”
Platt sat up straight and straightened some papers on his desk. “How do you think it went?”
“With Julia?”
Platt nodded.
“She’s not the easiest writer I’ve worked with before, that’s for sure. But, she’s also not the first to protect her work like it’s her baby. She thinks we’re dragging it away from her like it’s some Angelina Jolie movie, trying to replace it with a different baby so she can overact and cry for the last two-thirds of the film.”
Kevin laughed, but Platt sat stone-faced. Maybe Platt hadn’t seen that movie.
“Will she come around?”
Kevin sighed. “She agreed to come to the group, so that’s a step in the right direction.”
Platt leveled a finger at Kevin, then wagged it while he spoke. “We need this to be a hit. The first quarter numbers just came in on the new Conner McDevlin thriller, and they’re less than spectacular. Everybody’s walking on pins and needles because of the rumblings with the board. We need literary prizes. We need book clubs, Kevin. Need them like oxygen.”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Book clubs. I said we should buy that Holocaust manuscript, but nobody listens to me anymore.”
Platt grunted. “Just make it work, okay? See that she’s receptive to the group. Do this well, and I’ll let you take on that Holocaust project.”
Kevin sat up straight. “Really?”
“Yes. But only if you can make us a hit of this silly bullshit childhood trauma novel.”
~III~
The elevator dinged at the fourteenth floor, and Julia waited for the doors to open. Her pulse thumped against her neck.
On the other side, antiseptic cream-colored walls blared starkness at her. A woman in a white lab coat stood with hands clasped in front of her waist. Big smile on her face.
“Julie? Julia Brauman?”
Julia’s heels clacked along the shiny painted concrete floor. “Yes, that’s me.”
The woman met her halfway across the room and extended a hand. “Welcome to fourteen. I’ll escort you into the lab.”
The woman pointed at a set of double doors that whisked open with a hum as they approached. She led Julia down a hall, just as blindingly white as the waiting room out front.
“I love your book,” the woman said.
“Oh? You’ve read it?”
“Of course I have. It’s part of my job. I mean, it’s not my job to like everything I read, but I enjoyed your book. I’ve always loved historical novels set in the deep south, like Gone With the Wind.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“You have a fresh voice, and I think it’s an important story. Antoinette’s courage… I think it’s going to be inspiring to women everywhere.”
Julia felt herself blushing. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
They stopped in front of a door marked Observation A14, and the woman swiped a keycard against a panel. The panel beeped as the door unlocked.
Julia stepped inside a darkened room with a half dozen people overlooking laptops and banks of electronics. A few chairs sat on a raised platform behind these people. Kevin was sitting in one of the chairs, chewing on the end of a pencil.
He smiled at her, then pointed at the window on the other side of the room. Through it, Julia saw a brightly-lit room, this one lined with rows of desks and a diverse array of men and women sitting at them.
She approached the window. “Is this a two-way mirror?”
“They can’t see us, no,” the woman in the lab coat said. She then nodded at Kevin and left the room.
Julia counted a dozen people in the room next door, and their desks reminded her of grade school, those little chairs with small curved platforms attached. Each of the inhabitants of the desks was flipping through stapled pages. At one end of the room, a man dressed like a schoolteacher with a bright blue tie, sat on the edge of a large desk. Behind him, on a white board, were scrawled the words Fredrick on one side, and Antoinette on the other.
“Please, sit,” Kevin said.
Julia took a seat next to him. “Why am I here? I thought I was supposed to actually meet the focus group.”
“This was my idea. Since it’s your debut novel, I thought you might like to get a feel for the process as an observer before we jump straight in. It can be a little jarring at first if you’re not familiar with it.”
A portly guy seated in the back row, dressed in flannel and wearing a mesh trucker hat, raised his hand. The man at the front of the classroom pointed at him. The flannel man started talking, but Julia couldn’t hear anything.
“Can we get audio in here, please?” Kevin said.
One of the workers at the electronics bank hit a switch, and sound came through a set of speakers anchored to the walls.
“…And I don’t understand why she’s always touching his arm like that when she talks to him. When my wife touches my arm, I know that means she’s feeling randy. So, it’s like Antoinette is giving Fredrick these mixed signals, and he’s too dumb to pick up on it. Am I the only one who’s noticed this?”
A few of the other readers nodded their heads.
“Yeah, she’s a total tease,” one woman said. “And with her own brother? What a slut.”
Julia groaned. “She touches his arm because she’s craving safe physical contact with someone she trusts. Who the hell are these people? Have they never read literary fiction before?”
Kevin leaned forward, pointing at the redneck in the flannel. “That man there has helped shape the last two Pulitzer Prize winners. I wouldn’t dismiss him so quickly.”
“But,” Julia said, and stopped short because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The teacher at the front uncapped a marker and wrote tease underneath Antoinette’s name.
“What do you suggest?” the teacher asked.
“We’re halfway through the book and haven’t seen any kind of payoff yet,” said a man in a black turtleneck. “She could at least give him a handjob or something.”
The teacher drew a line under tease and wrote handjob.
Julia stood. “This is unbelievable. I’ve heard enough.”
She turned to leave, and Kevin reached out to grab her arm, but she slipped away from him. She strode out of the room, ignoring Kevin’s pleas for her to stay.
~IV~
Kevin stepped off the elevator at the top floor, and his breath caught as he walked across the luxurious carpet to Platt’s office. The hallway scent of the day was fresh flowers… lilac, or orchids.
He waited outside Platt’s office while the old man tapped on a tablet computer. Platt waved him inside.
“How did it go at group yesterday?” Platt said.
“Well, I could say it wasn’t great, but that wouldn’t tell the whole story.”
Platt stared. “What does that mean?”
Even though Kevin had rehearsed his speech a dozen times this morning, his thoughts were now jumbled like coins rattling in a tin can. Little bits of TV commercial jingles floated through, but none of the words he’d memorized.
“Julia isn’t very… cooperative. She’s stubborn.”
“Trying to take her baby away?”
Kevin smiled, thrilled that Platt had remembered the reference from the other day. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”
But Platt didn’t smile back. “That’s not what I want to hear, Kevin. I want to hear you’ve got it under control, and she’s excited to make the changes. Do you wish to take on that Holocaust project for your next book, or not?”
Kevin slumped in his chair. “I’m working on it.”
“I’ve had Design mock up a new cover proof, based on some of the group’s suggestions.” He spun the tablet to face Kevin.
On the screen was an image of a woman in a long white dress, her head tilted, and a woeful hand clutching her cheek. A pained expression on her face. Behind and a little to the right stood a shirtless man with well-defined abs and shoulder-length blond hair. His bronzed skin glistened with sweat. He was reaching out to her with one hand, and in the other, he held a riding crop.
“Why the riding crop?” Kevin said.
“We’re looking to release the same week of the Kentucky Derby.”
Kevin pointed at the text hovering in the air above the characters’ heads. “Is that seriously the title?”
“That’s a direct suggestion from Reader #9. He has an eye for these things.”
Kevin shook his head. Felt his chances of getting the Holocaust novel slipping from his fingers. “Arty, she’s never going to go for that title. Or this cover, either. I’m not sure how much she values the collaborative process.”
Platt gritted his teeth, then dropped the tablet onto his desk. “That’s why I have you, Kevin. It’s your job to make her understand.”
~V~
Julia shuffled off the elevator into the blinding brightness of the fourteenth floor. The points of her argument blazed in her brain like fireworks coloring a dark sky.
The lab coat woman didn’t await her today. Instead, Kevin stood with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t wearing any of his usual sharp suits, rather, he’d donned khaki pants and a sweater.
“Is it casual Friday or something?” she said.
Kevin met her at the elevator. Right away, she noticed the color had been drained from his face. “Look, Julia, we need to talk.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I want to talk to the focus group. I’m ready to meet them.”
His head jerked. “You are?”
“I’m going to explain the theme of the book. It’s become clear to me that they’ve got the wrong genre expectations. That’s all. So I’ll go in there, explain a few things, and set them straight.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Kevin said, but Julia walked right past him.
She strutted down the hall and stopped in front of Observation A14. “How do I get into the focus group classroom?”
“We have to go through here,” Kevin said.
“Open it, please.”
“Julia, if you’d just wait a minute so I could prepare you for a couple things…”
“Open it.”
Kevin sighed and pressed his keycard against the door.
Julia walked into the room of beeping electronic banks and shadowy workers tapping at keyboards.
Through the window, she saw the entire focus group clapping as the teacher stood at an easel. He ripped a fabric covering from the top of the easel, revealing a poster underneath it.
Kevin jumped in front of her, blocking her view. “Wait, please. Just hang on a minute while I give you a heads-up about what you’re going to see.”
She sidestepped him, and it took her a second or two to understand what she was looking at. Some cheesy romance novel cover, with the forlorn woman and the outrageously hot guy longing for her.
But this wasn’t her cover. It couldn’t be.
Then she saw her name typed across the bottom of the poster board in bold, perfectly-spaced letters.
And then her eyes flicked to the top of the poster, at the title of the book.
“Brotherly Love?” she said, whirling on Kevin. “They want to call my book Brotherly Love? Tell me this is some kind of prank.”
He shook his head. “If you’d just let me explain.”
She stomped across the observation room toward the door on the other end. Threw it open. As Kevin ran after her, she pivoted and yanked on the doorknob to the room next door.
Julia made her fists into claws and resisted the urge to topple an empty desk as she barged into the focus group room. They stopped clapping, hushed their conversations.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” Julia shouted.
A few of them cocked their heads.
“Wait a second,” said the man in the turtleneck, “is this her? Is this Julia Brauman?”
“It is,” said a wide-eyed chubby woman with big hair. “It’s her. Oh my God, Ms. Brauman, I love your book. It’s the best thing I’ve read in years.”
Several of them nodded, a couple in the back started clapping. The man with the mesh trucker hat rose to his feet, cheering and whooping. In a few seconds, the rest of them stood as well. Standing ovation.
“I’m going to recommend Brotherly Love to my book club when it comes out,” said the chubby woman over the noise of everyone clapping. “I can’t wait for them to read it too!”
~VI~
Kevin ran his hands across the varnished oak of Platt’s desk while he waited. A toilet flushed, then a few seconds later, Platt came out of his private bathroom, wiping his hands on a towel. He tossed the towel into a basket next to the door.
“How is the group going?” Platt said.
“Excellent. We’ve decided to move the setting from summer to winter. The group felt the bleakness of snow and ice would make the camp seem that much more harsh.”
“I like it,” Platt said. “I have some suggestions of my own, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh,” Kevin said.
“Is that okay?”
“Certainly, Arty. I’d love your suggestions. It’s just not like you to get involved this early.”
Platt sucked his teeth. “Yeah, I know, but this one is turning out to be something of a pet project of mine.”
“Okay, go ahead,” Kevin said, flipping his notebook open to a fresh page.
“In chapter eight, right after they get to the camp, when Yusef is getting assigned his bunk… you know the scene I’m talking about?”
“Definitely.”
“I was thinking,” Platt said, “we could stick in a little bit of foreshadowing there in the conversation with the Nazi guard. A bit of dialog about how maybe lots of Jews are going to die there, but Hitler’s going to get it in the end.”
“Ooh, that’s good,” Kevin said, furiously scribbling notes. “Something about how you can kill a man, but not his spirit?”
Platt sat back and his eyes drifted to the art print on the wall. “Yes. Wow, that’s brilliant.”
“I’ve always loved your ideas, Arty. I smell Pulitzer.”
Platt grinned, rubbing his hands together.
* * *
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Is it truly possible to kill a man, but not his spirit?
2. Should Julia include the handjob scene in the novel, or should she stick up for her beliefs?
3. Is Brotherly Love a great title for a book, or what?