Page 136 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

and dysfunction. The trips weren’t a total waste of time; I’d never been down there before, and at least I got a sense of the place.
My meeting with John Barry was even less productive than the trips to Atlantic City.
“What can you tell me?” I asked him.
He rolled his eyes.
Finally Donald told me his editor wanted to meet with me. A lunch was
set up, and I arrived at the restaurant thinking he and I were going to be discussing next steps. It was an expensive “in” place in Midtown, and we were seated at a small, cramped table near the kitchen.
With very little preliminary conversation, the editor told me that Random House wanted Donald to hire someone with more experience.
“I’ve been working on this for a while,” I said, “and I think I’ve made some progress. The problem is, I can’t get Donald to sit down with me for an interview.”
“You can’t expect to play a Mozart concerto the first time you sit down at a piano,” the editor said, as if I’d just learned the alphabet the day before.
“Donald told me he likes what I’ve done so far,” I said.
The editor looked at me as if I’d just proved his point for him. “Donald hasn’t read any of it,” he said.
I stopped at the office the next day to clear out my desk and hand over anything that might be useful to my eventual replacement. I wasn’t upset. I didn’t even mind that Donald had had somebody else fire me. The project had hit a wall. Besides, after all of the time I had spent in his office, I still had no idea what he actually did.