17 March 1995
I have lost the agent. There is no elegant way to write that sentence. It sits there like a dropped glass.
The facts are plain enough. While she was sending the manuscript out, I answered a note from someone attached to the online platform that first noticed the stories. One introduction became another. A small publisher asked to see more. I sent it. I told myself this was initiative, not betrayal. I told myself the new routes were too uncertain to count.
They counted. Of course they counted. My agent found out, rang me in a voice made entirely of ice, and said she could not work for someone who was also working around her. I protested badly. Hunger is not an argument. Panic is not a contract.
Now the manuscript is back with me, bright with fingerprints and no nearer to a shelf. The online people have gone quiet as well, perhaps sensing smoke. I wanted two doors open and have managed to set fire to the corridor.
Let the record show that I was not faithless out of vanity. I was faithless out of fear. This distinction has not saved me.