In the summer of 2007 I returned to the writers' conference with an excerpt from my Shakespeare Club book. I read for three minutes in a packed auditorium. The women in the audience laughed and cheered. They interrupted me with applause. I was shocked, particularly since the material was slightly on the sad side.
You just never know, as they say in showbiz.
The night I read there was a particular woman in the audience. In an unusual gesture for this conference, a literary agent from Manhattan had been invited. The next day I attended a talk she was giving on the publishing world. During her address she mentioned she heard exactly one reading the night before of work she would be interested in representing.
I was sitting next to my friend and teacher, Eunice, who kicked me with her foot. She means you, Eunice mouthed.
I kicked back. Shut up.
At the end of the agent's chat I picked up one of her business cards. She was engulfed by writers pitching their projects but looked right at me and said, It's Mel, right?
Right, I mumbled, suddenly short on air. Thanks for talking to us. I'm going to a class now. Bye.
Bye, she smiled.
And I took off. Was Eunice correct? It was entirely too big for me to imagine but imagine I did and as I sat in a classroom down the hall and watched the agent walk past on her way out of the building, I knew I had to do something, and fast.
I bolted from my chair, dashed to end of the hall, pressed my hands against a large window and looked down three stories across a green grassy quad at the agent walking far away. She was probably walking all the way back to New York City, right now.
I ran faster than I ever remember running for anything. I tripped down all those stairs, I sprinted across the grass, through a gauntlet of water sprinklers. I called out.
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