“Right up your alley!” Tess twinkles. “Ha ha! I know, JK!” She turns, stage-whispering to the rest of the sheep, “These books are not up her alley at all!” Turning back to Laurel, she says, “But maybe this will be the book that changes your mind!”
Fuck my life, thought Laurel. It’s a phrase that a sad young literary man she’d once known taught her, and it feels perfectly applicable to her current situation.
• • •
Laurel has insisted on, and received, a first-class ticket, and a suite in the hotel the paper’s team booked. The Chamberlains, who seem to have cash to burn, settle into the two rows behind her, with Cole (or possibly Jordan) pulling out a paperback copy of the Odyssey and Jordan (unless he’s Cole) bending over an SAT prep workbook. The aisle seat next to Laurel remains miraculously vacant as dozens of passengers plod past her on their way to steerage, where they’ll fight over the armrests and the scant overhead space. Just before the flight attendants close the plane’s doors, Tess Kravitz hustles down the aisle, pink-cheeked and panting.
“Sorry,” she says, although she doesn’t sound sorry at all, and she comes within inches of whacking Laurel in the head with the side of her Vuitton duffel bag as she slings it into the overhead compartment. She plops down in her seat, unwinding her cashmere wrap and beaming. “Oh, I love to travel!” she says. “And I haven’t been to Paris in forever. This is going to be so much fun.”
Laurel makes assenting sounds, tugging her black dress. She hasn’t been to Paris in forever, either—it’s been something like twenty years since her last trip—and her dress must have shrunk in the wash. It feels uncomfortably tight around her bust and under her arms. She’s becoming aware of the other woman’s scent, heavy and cloyingly sweet.
Meanwhile, Tess pops open her tray table and pulls out a copy of The Comfort Diet. She opens the book and sets it facedown so that both sides of the cover are visible. “Product placement!” she beams. Laurel makes herself smile politely. When the flight attendant comes around, offering a pre-takeoff drink, Tess asks for champagne—“When in Rome, right?”
The flight attendant inspects the book’s back cover, which boasts precisely zero words (because who would want to endorse that piece of crap, thinks Laurel). Instead, it features a photograph of Tess in a blue silk blouse cut low enough to show off a Grand Canyon’s worth of cleavage, with ropes of pearls around her neck and thick black eyeliner around her eyes. Her hair, and probably a lot of someone else’s, is arranged on top of her head; her teeth are smooth as dominos. I’ll bet she spent more time on that picture than she did on whatever’s between the covers, Laurel thinks.
“Eees you?” the flight attendant asks.
Tess gives a merry giggle. “I know,” she said. “It’s, like, the best picture in the world, right?” She squeezes Laurel’s forearm. “I have nightmares about people coming to readings on my book tour and not recognizing me! Wouldn’t that be awful? I mean, can you imagine?”
Laurel nods weakly. Tess, meanwhile, reaches into the bag at her feet, which seems to contain an inexhaustible supply of the book-shaped object she’s produced. “What’s your name?” she asks the flight attendant.
“Yvette,” she replies. “Oh, thank you,” she says, as Tess signs the title page with a flourish.
“If you like it, tell your friends!” she says, and winks. “Especially if one of them is Oprah or Jenna Bush!”
“I’d like a cranberry juice,” Laurel calls, raising her voice so that the girl can hear. She’s brought a thirty-two-ounce metal flask from home that she meant to fill at the airport, but she’s forgotten all about it. Which is concerning. In the past few years, she’s become increasingly prone to urinary-tract infections, and planes are terribly dehydrating. But the flight attendant has moved on to the next row. Laurel sits, thirsty and fuming, as Tess sips her champagne and gives a happy sigh. As soon as they’re in the air, Tess readjusts her cashmere wrap and turns toward Laurel.
“So what’s it like, being a book critic?”
“It’s the best job in the world,” Laurel says, giving her stock answer. “I get to read for a living, and discover new talent, and tell the world about great new books.”
“And steer them away from the bad ones,” Tess says, smiling. “You do that, too.”
“I owe my readers honesty,” Laurel says.
Tess’s eyes appear to gleam. “That is so . . . oh, what’s the word?” Her pearly teeth flash as she smiles. “I’m a writer, so it’s my job to know. Le mot juste, am I right?” She speaks the French words just as they are written, not even attempting correct pronunciation: leh mott just. “Oh. Noble. That’s so noble.” She clutches Laurel’s forearm and sighs. “Like, you’re just devoted to the whole idea of literature, and being honest about which books are deserving. So it’s never about advancing any one man.” Tess’s smile becomes knowing and sly. “Or any one person, I should say.”
Laurel holds herself very still. This is the common complaint the so-called feminists make about her—that she’s never praised a female writer the way she’s praised men; that she’s especially dismissive of members of her own gender. She has heard it all before. But when she sees the way Tess is looking at her, that smug, cunning expression, an icy finger of fear presses against her heart. She turns away from the other woman, opens her purse, and makes a show of opening the prescription bottle so that Tess is sure to see. “Nighty night!” Tess calls, wiggling her plump fingers at Laurel. Laurel dry swallows an Ambien and closes her eyes.
• • •
But she doesn’t sleep. Deserving, she thinks. She suspects she knows what Tess is getting at, with her tiny, barbed jabs and winking references, even if the little piggie won’t come out and say it. Years ago, in the incident that earned Laurel her nickname, a bunch of female writers got their panties in a bunch over what they saw as the literary establishment’s failure to review enough books by women. Internalized bias! they cried. Double standards! When a man writes about a marriage or a family, critics swoon over his vulnerability and his skill, went their complaint. When a woman does it, her book gets called women’s fiction, and it doesn’t get reviewed at all.
Laurel had disagreed. The books categorized as women’s fiction do not get reviewed because, in general, they do not rise to the standards a critic has set. Typically, the writing is formulaic, their plots are predictable, and their aim is not innovation or excellence but familiarity and comfort. They are not worthy of serious attention, she’d written . . . and then, to prove her point, she’d reviewed a half dozen of the various lady books, in a piece headlined “Asking for It.” In retrospect, the headline had been, perhaps, unnecessarily provocative. Maybe her evisceration of the books’ prose and plotting had been a little harsh; maybe her inclusion of biographical details and snippets from old blog posts and interviews to buttress her portrait of the ladies as a bunch of thin-skinned whiners had been a little mean. Gregory had tried to talk her into pulling her punches, but Laurel had resisted. She’d been new at the paper, eager to make a name for herself, to draw her personal line in the sand. “Besides, they are asking for it,” she’d said. “They want critics to pay attention. So fine. Here’s attention.” The lady scribblers had squealed and squawked and tweeted, a bunch of noisy hens with ruffled feathers. They’d started calling Laurel “The Lady-Killer.” Laurel had ignored them. The entire thing had been a brief, unpleasant squabble, a minor bump on her road. She’s put it behind her. She’s gone on, and she’s won a Pulitzer, and the Nona Balakian prize for criticism, not once, not twice, but three times. I am fine, she thinks to herself. I’m fine, and I was right. She repeats the words like a mantra until, finally, sleep takes her.
• • •
In her dream, she is walking through a gallery filled with sculptures of writers. There’s James Joyce, rendered in white marble; there’s Henry James, looking lordly and serene. She sees Hemingway and Proust and F. Sc
ott Fitzgerald, all of the greats, with white roses massed at their stone feet. The gallery is deathly still, so quiet that she can hear her footfalls, and the sound of her breath. When she hears laughter, she hurries through the gallery to find it, and sees a crowd around a statue. Her own name is carved on its base.
They are laughing at me, she thinks . . . and, when she gets closer, she can see why. The statue depicts her naked, not in the glory of her youth, but as she is now—her small, sagging potbelly, her dangling breasts, like two tube socks full of ball bearings, nipples pointing straight at her toes. Her carved hair looks sparse, and her chin looks wobbly, even though it is made from stone.
There’s never been a statue erected to a critic, someone says. Now I see why. She turns to see Tess Kravitz. Tess’s blond hair is bright, and her lipstick makes her mouth look like she’s bitten something bloody. Beside Tess are a few of Laurel’s sad young literary men, George and James and Jonathan and Jonathan. Cal Hardinger is last in line, his eyes distant and amused.
Then the dream jumps forward, and they are outside, on the edge of a cliff. It’s chilly, and it smells of the sea at low tide, that stink of corruption and things rotting under the water. A dank wind lifts her hair. On the side of the hill is a freshly turned grave. Beside it, an open coffin rests on a pair of wooden sawhorses.
I’m in there, Laurel thinks. I’m dead. That’s me. She shuts her eyes, but they fly open when she hears a thunking sound. Instead of throwing flowers or shovelfuls of dirt, the funeral-goers are throwing books into the grave. Bad ones. She sees Jean Auel’s sex-among-the-cavemen bestsellers, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a water-bloated paperback by Rona Jaffe that makes her think, briefly, of her mother, who used to love to read in the bathtub. As Laurel watches, someone heaves a copy of The Help into the grave, and Tess Kravitz steps to the edge of the turned dirt, opens her arms, and releases dozens and dozens of copies of The Comfort Diet, sending them thudding onto the coffin.
Laurel startles awake, jerking forward against her seat belt. An embarrassing snoring rattle is coming from her mouth. Tess turns to her, smiling. “Bad dream? Ugh. I always have the worst dreams when I take Ambien.”
Laurel swallows. Her mouth is so dry. And, of course, she has nothing to drink. She tries to get the flight attendant’s attention, but Yvette is sitting at the front of the cabin on the little pull-down seat, bent over the copy of The Comfort Diet in her lap, utterly engrossed.
• • •
By the time they land, Laurel’s boots are strangling her swollen calves, and she’s certain she feels the beginnings of a UTI. She races to the restroom, yanks down her pants, and gets herself on the toilet just in time to keep from wetting herself, but, unfortunately, too late to realize that the stall’s previous occupant has peed all over the seat. Off to a great start, she thinks, and wipes herself off as best she can. She herds the group through customs and into the vans that will drive them to the hotel. Once they arrive, Laurel wants nothing more than to go up to her room for a shower and a nap, but she has to stay in the hotel lobby and answer their questions: Where is the Jewish district? What is the name of the shop that sells the best falafel? Are they going to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore tomorrow or the day after that, and is the cost of the first night’s dinner included or do they have to pay?
Finally, it’s over. Laurel rejects the first room she’s shown and gets herself upgraded to a suite on the sixth floor, with a balcony overlooking the cobblestone street. The furniture’s a little worn, the carpet is threadbare, but there’s a small sitting room, with a desk and a lamp, and a striped satin bench at the foot of the bed. Laurel sets down her suitcase, but, before she unpacks, she gets rid of the book-thing that Tess Kravitz has excreted. She pinches its covers between her fingertips as if she’s carrying an especially odious bug and drops it into the trash. The hardcover makes a satisfying thunk as it hits the metal wastebasket . . . only the sound reminds her of her dream, the bad books thudding onto the coffin. Get it together, Laurel tells herself. It was just a bad dream—a bad book and a bad dream. She washes her face without looking at her reflection and brushes her teeth with a vigor that leaves her gums oozing threads of blood. Before she turns out the lights, she nudges the trash can out into the hallway, where a maid will empty it during the night.
• • •
The next morning is rainy, with a gloomy, oppressive sky. Laurel’s feet are still swollen, and it’s starting to burn when she pees. In the mirror, with pouches and dark circles under her eyes, she looks like her mother, and she makes herself concentrate on just her lips and then just her eyebrows as she grooms them. She collects her sheep in the lobby and marches them through the Latin Quarter, forcing enthusiasm into her voice, knowing the trip will be reviewed on Travelocity and Trip.com and Yelp: Here is the bar where Simone de Beauvoir drank with Picasso. Here is the house where Oscar Wilde died. For lunch, they go to what the itinerary describes as “one of the city’s most iconic literary cafés in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district.” Inside, it’s hot, and crowded with tourists speaking loud, plangent English. The food is shamefully overpriced. The Chamberlain kids complain about the lack of ice in the soda; the cluckers mutter about the prices. An elderly wife shouts the menu items at top volume to her husband across the table. “What do you THINK, Murray?” she yells. “Do you want the CHICKEN?”
“What?” Murray asks helplessly.
“CHICKEN,” the wife yells. Briefly, Laurel shuts her eyes.
The only one in a good mood is Tess Kravitz. She takes the seat next to Laurel, accepts her menu with a smile, then reaches into her handbag for the inevitable copy of her book.
“Product placement!” she giggles, and sets the book in the center of the table. “My publicist told me,” she says, lowering her voice like she’s imparting some great secret, “that in order for people to buy something, they have to see it three times. So if it’s, for example, a book, maybe they’ll see it on Instagram, and then they’ll see a newspaper ad, or, like, maybe a celebrity will be carrying it around, like, one of the Real Housewives, and the paparazzi will take her picture, and then, voilà!”
“What about reviews?” Richard Chamberlain asks. “They matter, too, right?”
“They matter more than anything.” Tess’s voice is solemn.
“Oh, I’m not sure I agree.” Laurel tries to keep her own tone light. “Many factors go into a book’s success.”
“Laurel here is being modest,” Tess says, throwing her arm around Laurel’s shoulders and trying to pull her close, into the cloying cloud of her perfume and the unsettling warmth of her body. “There hasn’t been one National Book Award winner, not one Pulitzer winner that this one didn’t review.”
“But isn’t that a chicken-egg thing?” asks the white gay. “Did the books win prizes because of the reviews, or were reviewers drawn to them because they were so good?”
“The latter, of course,” Laurel says hastily.
“What about gender?” the Chamberlain girl asks. She raises her head, and Laurel can see that she is beautiful, in the way only young girls can be beautiful, with shiny hair and skin so luminously smooth it could have been poured out of a pitcher. Envy closes around her heart like a fist. “Why do so many more men than women win prizes and get reviewed? Is it that their books are better, or is it that we’ve just been trained to believe that they are?”
“Well,” Laurel begins. Both of the senior Chamberlains are staring at Cole/Jordan admiringly, as if she’s saying something truly insightful, instead of parroting a trite feminist talking point. “Personally, I try to look for excellence, whether it’s a book by a man or a woman. And I’ll point out that some of the women who’ve raised the issue of gender equity are bestselling authors.”
“So you’re saying you can’t be both? Can’t be a bestseller and be excellent?”
“Well, popular fiction can be its own kind of excellent,” Laurel says.
“But that doesn’t mean a serious critic is going to devote part of her very limited resources—”
The little bitch interrupts her. “Stephen King sells pretty well. And you guys review him, right? John Grisham, too. So it seems to me like you can be a bestseller and get reviewed. If you’re a man.” Her mother preens, and her dad, whose balls probably have a permanent home in his wife’s handbag, pats her on the shoulder. Improbably, it’s Tess who comes to the rescue. “Hey, Laurel’s entitled to her taste. If she happens to prefer books by men, so be it!” Tess gives Laurel what is likely meant to be a conspiratorial wink.
Laurel swallows. Her tongue feels like a dead thing that’s been left in her mouth to decompose, and her face feels cold. In the wake of her “Asking for It” round-up, there were a number of tweets and some insinuating blog posts about critics who were, quote unquote, in bed with their subjects, along with photographs of Laurel at various book parties, or moderating events with some of the men she’d praised. Laurel ignored it, even after she’d been summoned to wispy little Ebba’s office and asked a number of highly personal questions. “The bloggers are always going to look for something,” Laurel protested. “Jesus, one of them keeps track of every time I use the word shambolic!”
“This is different,” Ebba said. The interview concluded in a standoff, with Ebba and the lead Swede advising Laurel to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and to find more women to review. “Not that we’re giving you quotas,” they’d added. Which, of course, meant we’re giving you quotas.
Some remnant of pique must show on her face, because Tess is looking at her sympathetically.
“You know what I think? I think that our friend Laurel”—Tess wraps her arm around Laurel’s shoulders and, again, Laurel feels the unpleasant heat of her body—“is truly trying to do better. Look, back in the day, no one cared if you only reviewed men. No one thought that was wrong. And change isn’t easy! Not when you’ve been doing things the same way for a long time.”
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