Secret Agents . . . Continued

(continued . . . )

After the waiter leaves, my new friend David leans back in his chair and says, "Why don't you show me what you've got."

I'm somewhat shaken by this initially, but then I realize he's talking about my writing. He nods toward the thick Manila envelope I have placed on the table, a collection of work that I have brought along that I hope will impress and astound him, perhaps even shame him, into become my agent.

As I open up the envelope, David notices that I've got more than one proposal. "Why don't you do this," he tells me. "Just show me your top three book ideas."

I riffle through my pages and pull out three of the paper-clipped proposals, a couple of them probably twenty or so pages in length. I hand them over to David and sit idly by while he scans my work, his eyes sometimes brightening with the proposition of easy money.

And me, I'm trying not to look too hickish. Oh, maybe I'm cleaning my ears with a car key, or biting my fingernails, but other than that, I'm just an average writer sitting in a darkened restaurant with an agent who looks like a GQ model.

David eventually settles into to reading the longest of the proposals I've brought along, a fifty-pager that I have entitled, All the Presidents' Deaths: The Fascinating Stories of Their Final Hours. It's a proposal that took me a year to create. A book that I would love to research and write about how each of the (dead) U.S. Presidents met their demise. I had already written the chapters from Washington to Madison, and then tossed Gerald Ford into the mix, too.

David glances at me from time to time and smiles. "This has a lot of promise," he tells me at one point.

I'm about to ask him a few questions when the waiter arrives with our food.

(continued . . . )