Off Message

by A. C. Fuller

  "Yeah, but it wasn't planned."

  "Still."

  Steph grabs a cup of coffee from the kitchen, then returns to the couch. "Still what?"

  "I don't know. I'm just…irritable."

  "Did you drink enough water?"

  "Two glasses, mom."

  "I know you're not mad at Justine Hall for creating a couple moments for herself. Take it easy. This shooting will take days, maybe months to get over."

  "If we ever get over it." I planned to tell her about Peter last night. I told myself I'd tell her after one glass of wine, then after two. But after two I was having fun, dancing around her apartment to Prince while watching cable news on mute. After three glasses I decided I was too drunk to talk about it without falling apart. Now I realize I was just avoiding the conversation. "I saw Peter in Des Moines."

  "I saw him, too," Steph says. She takes a sip of coffee. "He's hard to miss."

  I turn to face her. "No, I saw him in the shower with a man. With a man."

  "By with you mean..."

  "Yes."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah."

  After a long pause, she says, "Did you see who it was?"

  "I don't know. Some guy."

  "What did you say?"

  "Nothing."

  "What did Peter say?"

  "I just turned and left, then the shooting happened and Peter came back to California and—"

  "You haven't talked to him?"

  "No."

  Steph puts her coffee on the floor, then leans in and hugs me. "Did you have any idea he was—"

  "Cheating on me?"

  "I was gonna say bisexual, but yeah, that too."

  "I didn't have any idea about either."

  "From the look on your face, I assume you're gonna break up with him."

  "I have to, right?"

  "That's not up to me." She pauses, thinking. 'Do you think you'd feel the same if he'd been with a woman?"

  "That's so…Steph, you know I could care less if he's bisexual. The issue is the lying, the issue is the betrayal. I mean, he did it in our hotel room during the debate. I just feel so hurt and angry."

  "It sounds like you've already made up your mind. You're gonna need a refill on that coffee."

  She stops halfway to the kitchen. "What about Benjamin?"

  "What about him?"

  "He and Peter are close, you know that. Peter took him from high school, gave him a shot. It's gonna be weird if you break up with Peter and Benjamin's still our tech guy."

  "Plus, you're sleeping with him." I pause. "That's still going on, right?"

  "It is."

  "I don't think it'll be an issue. Peter and I are breaking up. You and Benjamin aren't. There's no need for Benjamin to take sides. I'll make sure with Peter that we can keep Benjamin until the end of the competition."

  "You don't think he'd try to pull Benjamin back to Colton Industries, do you?"

  "No way," I say, but I'm not as convinced as I try to sound. The truth is, I don't know how he'll respond when I confront him.

  After three cups of coffee, a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and two Excedrin, I leave Steph's and head to Peter's. The drizzly morning turned into a sunny but cool afternoon, and I sit with the top still down, enjoying the air. The calm before the storm.

  Peter appears at the door, then rushes to the car door as I get out. "So good to see you," he says, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. "I can't believe I haven't seen you since the shooting."

  During the ride from Steph's, I made a plan. I'd ease into the conversation by asking Peter to donate money to a fund we'd set up for the families of the shooting victims. I'd show some maturity and perspective by focusing on what's really important before the inevitable confrontation. But his kiss burns hot on my cheek, and my plan disappears in an instant. "I know you've been cheating on me."

  Peter eyes me suspiciously, then walks a little circle, hands shoved in the pockets of his custom slacks.

  "You saw me in Iowa?"

  "Yes."

  "In the bathroom?" He says it like a question, but it's not a question. I can see him working it out in his mind. I doubt the bathroom incident was the first time, but he knows that I would have said something before the debate if I'd known before then. My hunch is that it was the riskiest of his transgressions, and he's smart enough to figure out what happened.

  I'm ready for him to beg me to stay with him. I'm prepared for his assurances that it was a one-time mistake. My refutations are locked and loaded.

  "I understand," he says.

  "Understand what?"

  "That it's over."

  I haven't had a chance to officially break up with him, and he's not even putting up a fight. "It is," I say with an edge, pissed I wasn't the first one to say it.

  "I can understand that. I know that integrity and honesty are important to you. I'm saddened by the fact that I betrayed you, and I know that I can't be forgiven."

  He's talking like a press release, and it bugs me. In a matter of seconds, he morphed from Peter Colton, charming billionaire, to press release factory.

  "You're saddened?" I ask sarcastically. "Saddened? You sound like a damn politician. Mistakes were made. I have deep regrets about the pain this has caused my family, and the American people. Hell, that's probably what my father sounded like when his affair with my mother got out."

  "I truly am sorry," he says, but he doesn't sound sorry. "I also know that your integrity is unshakable and that I can count on that."

  "Count on…wait, what?"

  He meets my fierce glare with a confident smirk that, somehow, seems to beg me for something at the same time. What does he mean that my integrity is unshakable?

  Then I get it. He's asking me not to out him.

  I want to scream at him, but I'm acutely aware that I just dumped America's most eligible bachelor. Peter helped launch Ameritocracy into the American zeitgeist. Without him, I'd be shuffling papers at The Barker right now, rage-tweeting about the Democratic and Republican primaries, still on track to run Destiny O'Neill for president. So even though I know Ameritocracy has grown much bigger than Peter Colton, I have a nagging suspicion that he can do something to take away all my success. I don't want to antagonize him.

  Since he's speaking in press releases, I answer with one of my own. "I feel sad about what has transpired between us, but you can count on my integrity, and my discretion." It feels vile coming out of my mouth, but it's all I can muster.

  "Thank you," he replies.

  A cool wind blows through the eucalyptus trees around his house, just like it blew into his bedroom through the retractable roof over his king-sized bed. Like it or not, I'll always associate that scent with Peter. "There's one other thing. I'd like your assurance that we can count on the continued services of Benjamin Singh. That you won't try to take him back. No matter what happened between you and me, Ameritocracy needs him."

  "I wouldn't do that. He loves working with you and he's yours until the end of the competition. If you want, I'll put that in writing."

  "I would hope that wouldn't be necessary."

  "It isn't."

  I climb back in Bluebird and look up as I shut the door. Peter's look has changed to one I can't read, one I've never seen. Like he's put up a wall that's been lurking just under the surface every second we've been together.

  As I pull away from his mansion, probably for the last time, I wonder about that look. I can imagine why he might want to conceal the fact that he's bisexual. Dating movie stars is part of his public image, part of the Colton Industries brand. Who am I to tell someone what they should or shouldn't say about their sex life in public? What bothers me, though, is how quickly he transformed from the Peter I knew and liked into a plastic version of himself. If the press-release version of Peter was always a few seconds away, was there ever a real Peter at all?

  19

  I met Aaron when we were freshmen at the University of Washington. We never dated in college, but
I reconnected with him five years after graduation. At the time, I was already working at The Barker, putting my BA in politics to excellent use. Aaron was, and still is, an accountant for a software company in Seattle. He used to eat lunch while reading the Wall Street Journal in a little park near Pioneer Square. I saw him there two or three days a week for a month and must have walked past him twenty times before finding the courage to ask him out.

  On our first date we rode the Ferris wheel that sits along the Seattle waterfront. We ate at the famous pierogi shop at Pike Place Market. I talked about the 2014 midterms, which I was secretly obsessed with. He joked about a recent study that proved that accountants were the most boring people on earth. It was a nice date. Not thrilling, but nice, and that sums up our three-year relationship perfectly.

  We didn't fall for each other madly. But I expected that. I wasn't quick to trust men and, though I'd proven to be a head-first pool jumper in many areas of my life, dating wasn't one of them. I thought I'd test my toes in the water at different points, then dive in all at once, but that's not what happened. Aaron and I fell for each other gradually, without a single dramatic moment. Six months into it we realized we'd been spending every night together, so we must be in love. He said it first, then I said it. It was easy, comfortable, and, like I said, nice.

  We stayed together for three years and fell out of love the same way we'd fallen into it: gradually. Little by little, piece by piece, our love unraveled, followed by our affection, until one day after work I came back to his apartment and realized, "Oh, I won't ever stand in this apartment again. It's over." When he got home from work, he agreed, and I never went back.

  I never cheated on him, and he never cheated on me, unless you count a lunch he had with his ex while we were still together. Steph told me about seeing them together. But even though she would have loved a scandal, she admitted that it looked like a boring, sexless meal. Aaron admitted it and that was that.

  So why'd we split up? I'm still not sure.

  Maybe it was because he sometimes made me feel like I was a disappointment, like I didn't live up to some standard his mother forced into his brain when he was a kid. But I called him on that and, to be fair, he owned up to it on more than one occasion. I think the real reason was that he was mind-numbingly boring. His religion was lowering the corporate tax rate, his idea of an exciting weekend was reading the Wall Street Journal on the deck of the 24-foot daysailer his dad gave him when he graduated from accounting school. I'm no bag of party favors, but we both knew I was destined for a life with a little more action.

  The breakup didn't hit me too hard at first because I saw it coming in slow motion for months, maybe even a year. Later, there were moments when Aaron's absence hurt. Hurt like part of me was missing. The breakup with Peter feels different.

  Peter and I never told each other "I love you," but, if I wasn't in love with him, I was certainly enamored. And the end came suddenly, as a shock. I still don't know what to make of it, and since the strange conversation outside his house, I've chosen between two options every day: being sad and working like crazy. I haven't yet mastered the art of doing both at once.

  With so much swirling around Ameritocracy, this morning I choose the latter. I head down from my "apartment" and sit behind my desk, where Post-it takes a spot on my laptop like a dragon guarding a treasure chest. On my phone, I ask Siri why cats like to sit on laptops, learn that of course it's because they're warm, then dial The Barker.

  Gregory, my replacement, picks up after half a ring. "Thanks for calling The Barker, America's leading independent online investigative magazine, this is Gregory. How can I help you?"

  "Kinda long intro."

  "Is that you, Mia?"

  "It's me. Who's making you say that spiel?"

  "Alex wants to rebrand us as more investigative. Hit middle age and got bummed about selling out, I guess."

  "Is he there? I'm calling to chat with him."

  "Lemme see if he's free."

  A moment passes, then Alex picks up. "Mia?"

  "Hey there, boss. Former boss, I mean."

  "How are things? I was so sorry to hear about the shooting. Did you get my text?"

  Alex sent a text the day after the shooting, offering his condolences and saying he was happy I was okay. "I guess I forgot to reply."

  "So, what's up?" he asks.

  "Since you were down in California, I haven't had a chance to look into the Robert Mast stuff you dropped in my lap, and now…well, I need to."

  "I'm really sorry we couldn't keep digging on that."

  "Wait, but according to Gregory, you're America's leading independent online investigative magazine, so why not?"

  "You know I support Ameritocracy. I've literally put my money where my mouth is on that one, but we can't be your investigative arm."

  "Couldn't this be a potentially big story for you?" I feel weird pushing him on this, but I'm confused about why he'd choose not to pursue the story.

  Alex sighs. "I'll level with you, Mia. I have a sense for news, an instinct. Is Mast dirty? Almost certainly. Will we be able to prove it in a way that creates a huge splash journalistically? Probably not. Even if we could, it would take hundreds of hours of work. We fight the fights we can win."

  I'm tempted to land a witty comeback, something like, What about fighting the fights that need fighting? But I stop myself. This is my fight, not his.

  "Have you followed the money?" he asks.

  "Not yet. That's what I'm calling about. The publishing blogger you mentioned, can you connect me with him?"

  "Her, and yeah. She's in the office. Hold on."

  I kick my feet on the desk and scratch Post-it's head as he uses my legs as a bridge to my lap.

  "Sylvia Wang."

  "Um, hi Sylvia, this is Mia Rhodes."

  "Alex told me. What is it?" She speaks quickly, even curtly.

  I feel bad for imposing on her. "Sorry to bother you. Alex told me about some research you did for him. Author Bestseller Solutions?"

  "So?"

  "I was hoping to follow up on that."

  "Fine. I told Alex I'd speak with you." Maybe she's a no-nonsense kind of person, but she sounds pissed.

  "Um, okay, I…When I spoke with Alex, he mentioned a theory that Robert Mast's book, A Flag of Promise, was pumped to the top of the bestseller list by Author Bestseller Solutions. They secretly buy copies of books to inflate their bestseller status."

  "That's not a theory. That's their business model. It's not a secret."

  "Okay. Alex also said he saw records of payments from Family Media Holdings made to Author Bestseller Solutions on Mast's behalf, but that he didn't have them. Did you see those records?"

  "No, but when I told him I suspected Mast's book had been vaulted to the top with phony sales, he somehow got the proof and it was easy to put two and two together. This isn't rocket science, Mia."

  "So authors do this frequently?"

  "The status that comes with adding 'New York Times Bestselling Author' to your CV can mean the difference between a five-hundred-dollar speaking fee and a ten-thousand-dollar speaking fee. It's usually non-fiction authors who buy their way onto bestseller lists. The publishing game is a total joke."

  "Robert Mast already speaks wherever and whenever he wants."

  "Yeah, but, as I literally just said, he can raise his appearance fee by having a bestseller."

  "And he gets paid for sales of the book right?"

  "Hold on, let me research the finer points of his publishing contract. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I don't have that in front of me at the moment."

  "Alright, but I mean usually. The more books Mast sells, the more money he gets, right?"

  "Most likely he received an advance from the publisher—fifty grand, maybe as much as a couple hundred grand—and once the book makes that amount back, he gets a buck or two per book sold."

  I think for a moment. "Alex couldn't get me the records showing that FMH made the payments to Author
Bestseller Solutions. Is there any other data to prove the sales aren't real?"

  "Prove? No. Strongly indicate? Yes."

  "How?"

  She sighs, as though I should already know the answer. I'm beginning to feel like I'm disappointing her. Kinda like I did with Aaron.

  "Amazon reviews," she says.

  "How do you mean?"

  "You know those little gold stars on Amazon products?"

  "Sure."

  "Go see how many reviews A Flag of Promise has. I'll wait."

  As I open my laptop and pull up Mast's book on Amazon, I hear her typing, then chatting with someone nearby. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I'm pretty sure I hear her whisper, "It's that terrible Ameritocracy lady."

  I clear my throat loudly. "Mast's book has fifty-one reviews, averaging four stars."

  "Now, pull up a different book, Mount Thunder: Pagan Storm God."

  I find the book, the cover of which shows a half-man, half-mountain figure, nude from the waist up, embracing a woman about a tenth his size, who's holding a glowing blue katana. "Okay."

  "It's got, what? Six thousand reviews?"

  "Six thousand, three hundred and nineteen."

  "Right. And it never hit a bestseller list, never approached the bestseller ranking Mast's book did."

  "What's the book about?" I'm mesmerized by the vaguely Celtic, bright green title font.

  "It's about an ancient prince who became so powerful he turned into a mountain, then became man again to make love to a princess who was destined to save the world with a magical sword."

  "Okay."

  "You see my point, Mia?"

  "You're saying that Masts's lack of reviews means that people aren't actually reading his book."

  "Bingo, Sherlock."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "Normally, one out of a hundred readers will review a book on Amazon. Speaking loosely. Like, on average. For Mast's book to sell tens of thousands of copies and have fiftyish reviews is highly improbable, statistically speaking."

  "Maybe it's just a really dry book."

  "I'm sure it is, but still." She pauses, letting out an exasperated sigh. "Are we done?"