Vanity Affair

By Joseph Gordon Gordon

Kathy Conrad is one mad woman. She is on her way from Brooklyn to London to kill a vanity publisher. Allen Avery is traveling from Sydney to see the man that Kathy wants to kill. They meet and strange things begin to happen to Robin Wright, managing editor of Nineveh Publishing. Not so strange things begin to happen with Kathy and Allen.

Vanity Affair is a light, humorous look at the vanity press, with a very satisfactory conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 15, 1999
• ISBN: 9781469773001

Joseph Gordon Gordon

By the same author: North Terrace, a mainstream novel set in Adelaide, was published in 1995.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Kathy Conrad

I’m a writer, not a professional killer. But sitting in my Brooklyn room and a half, I decided that I was getting no place writing, that it was time to change my trade. So I put a few things into an overnight bag and bought a standby ticket to London. I wasn’t going to that fine city to see the Changing of the Guard; I was sitting in the transit lounge with murder on my mind. Kathy Conrad—that’s what I call myself—was on her way to Mayfair to snuff out a publisher, Robin Wright, managing editor of Nineveh Publishing, a London slaughterhouse of literature.

I met Allen Avery in Barnes & Noble. Allen Avery isn’t his real name, just his nom de plume. Our real names are not relevant to this tale.

The first thing I noticed about Allen was his hat—Crocodile Dundee without the plastic crocodile teeth. Allen was an Australian and proud of it. But this son of The Lucky Country was a writer. And I was a writer. We were family.

You can always spot writers in a bookstore. They usually have a notepad. They look at the spine of the books, looking for specific publishers. Instead of reading the back of the book to see what it is all about, they look for the address of the publisher. They are looking for people who publish the kind of book that they write. Genre delvin’ I call it; It’s a give-away. Like lawyers taking out their business cards at the sight of blood.

Allen and I were sizing up the Nineveh Press section. Nineveh Press is an international mainstream publisher. They are small, but their writers have won a few awards of late and they have had several best sellers. You’ve probably read Kitty Litter, Lives of the Leaders by Anonymous the second. It’s about that Kitty Katt dame who churns out salacious stories about presidents and other celebrities—a nice way to make a living if you got the chutzpah. Notepad in hand, I selected a copy to take to the checkout when I noticed the Aussie for the second time. I watched him making notes and was about to go when he spoke to me,

G’day lady. And just what do you write?

He spoke to me! Please let him be a doctor and not a god-damn writer!

Mainstream. Love, history, fact and fiction mixed up and squeezed out into 300 pages. What about you?

About the same. Not much history. Lot’s of emotion. I’m on my way to London to see my publisher.

I frowned. Not because the man wasn’t a doctor but because he’d mentioned that hated word, publisher. The man from Down Under didn’t notice. I was glad. Frowning doesn’t make a good first impression. I was off to London too, to see my publisher and kill the sonofabitch. I didn’t tell this to Allen. It isn’t the kind of thing one tells a stranger.

We both pulled out our boarding passes. It was rather funny, like two gunfighters squaring off. We were on Virgin Airlines to London. I felt a warm glow inside. I always get that feeling when something serendipitous happens. I like coincidences. Then it happened again.

We should try and sit together, we both said and burst out laughing. Writers like to meet fellow authors and chew the fat. Instead of a boring flight to London I now had company—a good looking man about my own age. I had come to the airport in a hell of a mood. It isn’t every day that I take a plane across the Atlantic to kill a leading London gonnif. It would be good to have company, someone to take my mind off my mission and how the hell I was going to carry it out.

I’m a creative writer, not a hit-woman. The only thing I knew about killing a man was from books and movies and the tabloids. We mustn’t forget the great job Ted Turner and Dicky Murdoch are doing giving us the inside information on sex and slaughter. But living in New York you only see the squad-cars after the event. If I had to rely on the media to make me a murderer, I might as well look for my doctor in the pages of Reader’s Digest. And with Mayor Giuliani putting on the heat, how’s a good girl gonna learn the ins and outs of bumping off a book publisher?

I supposed that I’d just have to go up Charing Cross Road to Foyles, where they have every book in the world and ask for the section on How to Murder a Publisher and I could make my selection. I’m sure that there must be several

best-sellers on the subject. Telling Allen that I’d see him on the plane, I went to the information desk. "Could you look in the microfiche and tell me if there is a book on how to

murder a publisher? The girl pressed a few buttons and asked, Do you know the writer’s name

or the publishing house? No. I’m afraid I can’t help you." Allen came up and bought his copy of Kitty Litter. I showed him my copy.

We went off to look at the duty-free shops and wait for the boarding call.

Chapter 2

Kathy Conrad

Allen asked the flight attendant if he could have a seat next to me, but the lady was busy counting heads, to make sure that the guy with a bomb in his luggage went up with the rest of us—as if we cared. She said that she’d try to arrange it after takeoff. I buckled my seat-belt and watched the demonstration of what to do if the pilot managed to land the plane on the Atlantic Ocean.

We raced down the runway heading for Jamaica Bay. I put my hand under the seat, to get ready for my swimming lesson. Where the hell was that life-jacket? That lady in uniform distinctly told us there were lifejackets under every seat. There was a lot of water at the end of the runway and I had that sinking feeling.

Before I could find what I was seeking, the 747 put its nose up and I fell back against my seat, as an unseen hand lifted us up and Jamaica Bay suddenly shrank all around the aircraft. I forgot my fear of flying, my fear of being another Flight 800. I stopped trying to wrench off the armrests and looked down the wing as we hung in the air and—pivoting on nothing—headed back up the coast. I forgot my fear of feeding the fishes; I forgot the reason I was on the flight; I forgot my hatred of the man in London who’d blighted my life, as I took in the beauty of the islands and the beaches of Long Island.

The skyscrapers of New York City came into view. I could see Allen two rows back, his face to the window. Everybody in the plane was trying to take one last look at the Big Apple, to see if the neighbor’s kids were already trashing their Toyota. Only those on the left side of the jumbo jet were successful. They ought to put it on the TV monitor, I thought. I’m a bit of a socialist. Window seats for everybody, or go round the other way and give the second side a glimpse. I took a good look at my new acquaintance, the good looking, successful Australian writer who was traveling to London to meet his publisher.

Should I take off my wedding ring? I wondered. Some men are put off by a wedding ring. The kind that aren’t put off—may dogs dine on their kishkes!

What! Am I meshhugge? I’m on a mission. I mightn’t return. The last thing I need is an affair. On the other hand, why not go out with a bang? But would that be fair to this guy? I’d have to tell him. But I couldn’t just tell a stranger that I was going to London, not to see Queen Liz, but to eliminate one of her loyal subjects. Nothing is going to happen with this guy. Now if this was a ship, taking a week to reach London, we could have a ship-board romance, say goodbye at Southhampton Dock and that would be that. But how can you get to know a guy on a 747? You can’t even hold hands; the cabin staff is always shoving stuff into your paws—earphones, cans of drink, snacks and the occasional hot meal. Then there’s always a brat in the seat in front of you looking back over it, down your dress at your hooters. And when you least expect it, there’s that bell that rings to tell you that the john is empty.

As these thoughts went through my mind, off went the bell, the bell to inform blind passengers that the seat-belt sign has gone off. The race for the john was on. Have you ever seen two king-size Brooklyn babes trying to fight for possession of one toilet, barely big enough for one king-size Brooklyn broad?

I looked in the pocket in front of me. There was a little waterproof bag in it. I was considering offering it to the loser, when a cabin attendant sneaked up and tapped me on the shoulder. Dropping the water-proof bag, which I’m glad to say was empty, I put up both hands.

I confess! I said. Then I remembered that I hadn’t murdered anybody, not yet.

I take that back!

I listened as the young lady told me that I could now move to the empty seat next to Allen. I gathered my junk, made a futile attempt to remove my wedding ring, and plunked my tush down next to Allen’s. Had I been unfaithful during my married life and slipped the ring off regularly, like my ex-husband, the golden band would have let go of my finger, but if I wanted to get rid of my wedding ring now, I’d need a blow-torch, and I haven’t got a license for a blow-torch. They should give you a ring-removal kit with a marriage license. They give you PC-tools with a computer; why not Ms-tools for women, when they finally get that decree nisi? I was trying to