I LOVE Toad The Wet Sprocket.
Eve: “There I was, stuck on the plane between this enormous guy who needs two seats and the hacking cough of an invalid germ factory on her way home to Seattle to die in the land of her birth. Naturally, every time Monstro shifted his weight in a vain attempt to get the armrest out of his, er, back, I would be thrust over on top of the anthrax lady. I got the worst flu of my life.”
Oh you poor thing, are you feeling okay?
“Well, I’m, okay NOW, but the worst part is that the plane couldn’t take balloon-boy’s squirming, either, and his shifting balance actually caused the plane to dip so fast on the starboard side, we lost lift over the wing and the plane crashed! I was lucky enough to be one of the few who received a parachute, but the karmic scales then had to balance: the plane crashed into my house!”
NO! But where will you live?
“Oh, I’ll just have to find a new place. Fortunately, that should be pretty easy with the new $4.2 MILLION advance on my next book! My publisher liked the last one so much, he’s been begging me to accept this deal, BEGGING! It was getting embarassing, but you know how obsequious publishers are…”
Wow, congrats—we KNEW you could write!
“Well, yes, thanks, but there are still some problems. They want editorial oversight, can you believe it? As if each of my words are not already scrutinized with a pair of tweezers and a microscope. Change one comma, and my work is simply not the same, yet these cretins insist on the right to edit. As if Michaelangelo’s David would be fine if we just knocked a few chips out of it here and there.”
Those bastards! You should bitch-slap them up and down the hallway!
“I have thought about it. I truly have. But my agent has advised me to take the offer. He thinks the editing request is ‘no big deal’. The man has absolutely no artistic sense or respect for the beauty of the written word as an artist’s conception.”
That bastard! Always knew he was a jerk . . .
“Yes, but I knew his family. I promised to help him out with a job, so… At any rate Seattle was wonderful. The fog, the rain, the salmon, the coffee. And look, I had my hair done by one of those world famous Seattle hairdressers!”
You look FAB-ulous, sweetie, all this has agreed with you and you don’t look a day older than when you left.
“Oh thank you, you’re too kind. In all modesty it is true, though, isn’t it?”
Welcome back, Eve! Actually (dignified sniff) many, many people here were concerned and bereft during your protracted absence. Most of us assumed something along the lines of Rodd Hill’s excellent post, but still we were rather worried.
Not that we’d dream of asking for scintillating details. Tsk! The very idea!
But if you would choose to share every glamorous, witty detail to an appreciative audience of devoted friends, well, that’s another matter.
::blinks in polite expecatation; settles back with a Martini::
Veb
The morning drizzle had become the afternoon rain while I looked at what passes for a skyline in Seattle. My office, just off Pioneer Square, mostly had a view of the yellow brick wall of the rundown building across the street, and if I moved my chair just right I could watch the comings and goings down on the docks.
This day I wasn’t that ambitious, and I had my feet on my desk when the dame walked in. And what a dame! Slender, blonde, and with a sophisticated manner that raised the rent everywhere she went. It wouldn’t have mattered in my office if she blew the rent sky high, since I hadn’t paid it in months, but nothing mattered as I looked at her long legs.
My secretary, Zelda, was on the dame’s heels, offering coffee and bringing up a chair. She had her own interests in this new customer, since I hadn’t paid her in a while either, and she wasn’t going to let this one get away.
Zelda stopped short when she saw the dame’s face. Her perfect cheekbones were stained with tear-soaked mascara and her expensive dress looked like it had been slept in. A mouse was growing under her left eye that looked like it was bucking for promotion to rat, and I wanted to get the rat who gave it to her.
“Oh, you poor thing, are you feeling okeh?” Zelda always was more sensitive than me.
“I’ll be okeh.” She paused, looking tired and scared. “Do you have anything stronger than coffee?”
The dame looked like she could use a stiff belt and I poured one for both of us. She took hers with an energy unexpected in anyone who looked so beat up.
“Mr. Fink, I need your help. You see…”
“Wait a sec, sister. First we have to make the arrangements. I get thirty-five bucks a day plus expenses. I don’t spy on wayward husbands and I don’t take a bullet for nobody.”
She looked around the room, at the peeling wallpaper, the eviction notice on my desk, and the garbage can full of dead soldiers. Her eyes took on a steely glint.
“You do not look like you are in a position to be so picky, nor to charge so much. I will pay twenty-five dollars per day and you will pay your own expenses,” her eyes softened, “unless I decide to be nice to you.”
The half-pint of bourbon that had served as my lunch was arguing with the half-pint of scotch I had for breakfast and both were fighting the fresh liquor I had just swallowed. I knew she was right and that I had to close the deal before I queered it by getting sick.
“Deal,” I said, squelching a belch. “So sing, sister. What brings you to the wrong side of town?”
The dame shrank in her chair. Her bravado from earlier left her and she was looking more like a frail little girl than the tough broad she had been. Whoever had done this to her looked like he would be trouble and I was tempted for a second to ask for more money.
“Let’s start with the easy stuff,” I said, “What’s your name?”
She looked confused for a moment, like she was trying to come up with an alias, but finally said, “Golden. Eve Golden.”
She was golden, alright. Golden from her hair to her jewelry to the quiet rustle of cash in her purse. Zelda was right; we couldn’t afford to let this one go.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Golden. Or should I say ‘Miss?’”
“I prefer ‘Miz,’” she said, drawing it out like an Alabama afternoon. She wasn’t the Alabama type, though, and I wondered why she had a Southern accent for just one word. I didn’t have long to wonder as she continued in her upper-crust New York accent.
“I left my editor last night. I think he is looking for another columnist and I confronted him about it.”
“Is he the one who gave you the shiner?”
“This?” she said, touching her cheek. She then laughed with a sound like crystal, all rainbows and sharp edges. It was a good laugh and I was happy she had found it. “Oh, no! I know it sounds unbelievable but I really did walk into a door as I left.”
It was my turn to laugh, but mine was a laugh tinged with dubious irony. She seemed too sophisticated to think I would fall for that old gag. But I let it slide, not wanting to hurt her feelings. I figured the truth would come out eventually.
“That bastard! I always knew he was a jerk.” The words came out like ice, then tumbled out like snow down Mount Rainier.
"I’m a writer, Mr. Fink. I have a column in a magazine about the movies and I recently published a book about the Broadway star, Anna Held. I had always enjoyed it when my friends and family would read something I wrote and say, ‘Wow, congrats—we KNEW you could write!’
“He was different. To him nothing I wrote was good enough. He would pick at my articles until they bled; until I bled. Then he would ball up the paper and tell me I should go back to the fashion section. ‘Movie reviews are no place for a woman,’ he’d say, then tell all his editor friends how witty he was until they all began to laugh. They were laughing at me, Mr. Fink, so I grabbed my purse and left.”
Her weariness returned once more and she said, "I went home and found that my building was being turned into condos. I can’t afford to live there anymore and I started walking. I was going no place in particular, just walking and crying. I know I look just awful, but I feel worse. And the worst part was when I met some friends for lunch. I looked like this, but they said, “You look FAB-ulous, sweetie, all this has agreed with you and you don’t look a day older than when you left.’ Lying bitches.”
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the brick wall that was my view of the world. Finally, I said, “This sounds more like a professional problem than something up my alley. Just what is it you want me to do?”
“Those bastards! You should bitch-slap them up and down the hallway!”
This time my laugh was whole-hearted. It had been a long time since I had a good laugh, and I poured every ounce of the misery I had suffered the past few month into it. When I could talk I said, “Honey, look at me. Do I look like somebody who could bitch-slap anybody? Get out of here before you give me a stroke.”
Zelda had been hanging on Eve’s every word, even forgetting to take notes. But I got her attention when it looked like the dame was going to walk out without even paying the first twenty.
“What about our money,” she called as the dame left the office.
“Forget about it, Zel,” I told her. “She was good for a laugh, but nothing more.”
Zelda quickly turned maternal with the swiftly-receding figure, “But where will you LIVE?”
I silenced Zelda with a look as the Eve disappeared down the stairs. She’d land on her feet. Dames like her always do.
Oh, dear, all your stories are SO much better than the truth . . . Though APB was pretty much spot-on with No. 1.
• Oh, you poor thing, are you feeling OK?
Caught a nasty tummy flu. Was at home doubled up in agony much of the week of the 31st, hoping I was at least losing weight.
• But where will you LIVE?
The house I’m living in is up for sale, which is making me v. nervous (I like my apartment, and just put in a lot of work on it).
• Wow, congrats—we KNEW you could write!
My Anna Held book has just been named the 13th-best-selling University Press book in the nation! Which, admittedly, is akin to being named the 13th-highest-rated show on UPN . . .
• Those bastards! You should bitch-slap them up and down the hallway!
I am now the only person on the staff at my magazine who’s not been promoted or given a raise!
• That bastard! Always knew he was a jerk . . .
Ummm . . . Well, a girl has to have SOME secrets . . .
• You look FAB-ulous, sweetie, all this has agreed with you and you don’t look a day older than when you left.
I lost five pounds with my “stomach virus diet”—and I ALWAYS look fabulous.
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Thank you for ruining my image of you. You’re EVE, fercrissake! You aren’t supposed to get sick!
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Never put any work into an apartment.
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Okay, that IS nice. I’m very happy for you.
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Sounds like it’s time to broadcast that resume. Movieline is hard to find, anyway. You deserve better.
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Secret or not, he’s still a bastard. Send him around here and we’ll give hime a severe tongue lashing. As if bastards care.
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You didn’t need to lose that weight. You ALWAYS look fabulous.
I enjoyed writing my dopey little story, though. Wife has given me an assignment: bring back the Minute Mystery. Of course I won’t be able to steal dialog, plots, and archetypes from genre fiction so it will require some work and thought. “Publishing” ephemera here is a lot easier than finding a publisher etc. And doesn’t seem to pay any worse. So I probably won’t.
Drop—Loved your story. I felt very film noirey. I could FEEL the shadows of the venetian blinds on me!
You’re right, never put any work into an apartment. Though it does look swell now. It’s not Movieline (though they too treat me like crap, and use their patented Humor-B-Gone treatment on all my columns before printing). No, it’s the magazine I work at 9-to-5 as a copy editor where I am being shunted off to one side, like a lonely little petunia in an onion patch.
“Secret or not, he’s still a bastard. Send him around here and we’ll give hime a severe tongue lashing.”
–Aw, he’d just ENJOY that! Come to think of it, so might I . . .
I guess this means you’ll have a cameo in UPN’s new show, When Good Writers Repeatedly Use The Word Bastard!
Congratulations!
:: drop shyly averts his eyes ::
Awful nice of you to say that, Miss Eve. And no, I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Well, yeah, I was. But you’re a REAL editor. Nice words from you mean more than nice words from spouses and friends.
Oh yeah, we’re friends here. Oh well.
:: drop walks away slowly as he bumps the thread again ::
:: BUMP! ::
Gee, I can see why you don’t have your email or day-to-day employer listed. We aspiring writers wouldn’t give you a moment’s peace!
Actually, I’ve always been rather fond of bitch-slapping. I’d go with that one.