Dora was removing the bowls and pouring more wine. Andy was getting louder.

“Do you have children?” Mercer asked.

Both Bruce and Noelle smiled and shook their heads. “We’ve never had the time,” she said. “I travel a lot, buying and selling, mainly to France, and Bruce is at the store seven days a week.”

“You don’t go with her?” Mercer asked Bruce.

“Not very often. We were married there.”

No you weren’t. It was such an easy, casual lie, one they had been living for a long time. Mercer took a sip of wine and reminded herself that she was sitting next to one of the most successful dealers of stolen rare books in the country. As they talked about the South of France and the antiques trade there, Mercer wondered how much Noelle knew about his business. If he had really paid a million bucks for the Fitzgerald manuscripts, surely she would know it. Right? He was not a tycoon with interests around the world and ways to move and hide money. He was a small-town bookseller who practically lived in his store. He couldn’t hide that much money from her, could he? Noelle had to know.

Bruce admired October Rain and was curious about the abrupt end to Mercer’s first book tour. Myra overheard this and called for quiet as she prompted Mercer to tell her story. While Dora served baked pompano, the conversation settled on the topic of book tours and everyone had a story. Leigh, Jay, and Cobb confessed that they, too, had wasted an hour or two in the back of stores selling zero copies. Andy drew small crowds with his first book, and, not surprisingly, was kicked out of a bookstore when he got drunk and insulted customers who wouldn’t buy it. Even Amy, the bestseller, had a few bad days before she discovered vampires.

During dinner, Andy switched to ice water, and the entire table seemed to relax.

Cobb got wound up with a story from prison. It was about an eighteen-year-old kid who was sexually abused by his cellmate, a real predator. Years later, after both had been paroled, the kid tracked down his old cellie, found him living the quiet life in the suburbs, his past forgotten. Time for revenge.

It was a long, interesting story, and when Cobb finished, Andy said, “What a crock. Pure fiction, right? That’s your next novel.”

“No, I swear it’s true.”

“Bullshit. You’ve done this before, regaled us with a tall tale to see how we react to it, then a year later it’s a novel.”

“Well, I have thought about it. What do you think? Commercial enough?”

“I like it,” Bruce said. “But go easy on the prison rape scenes. You’ve overplayed those a bit, I think.”

“You sound like my agent,” Cobb mumbled. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket as if he needed to start taking notes. “Anything else? Mercer, what do you think?”

“I get a vote?”

“Sure, why not? Your vote will mean as much as the rest of these hacks.”