by Lisa Ferrari
Our approach into JFK is like being a hamster inside a plastic ball bouncing down a flight of stairs. A thunderstorm is sodomizing the entire tri-state area and we wind up circling, and bouncing around in turbulence, for almost two hours.
Everyone screams each time we hit an air pocket.
Numerous people puke and the plane stinks. Thankfully, I’m not one of them.
But the plane still stinks.
I’m hungry, though, and am wishing I had another meal. But I’m out. Plus, there’s no way I could eat more cold meat and asparagus while smelling someone else’s vomit.
After we land, we’re not even at the gate yet and people begin to unbuckle their seat belts and stand up, yanking their bags out of the overhead bins. Everyone wants off the plane. The flight crew doesn’t say a word; they want off, too.
But it is not to be.
The storm has everything backed up and we have no gate.
So we sit on the ramp, enjoying the aroma of vomit.
The guy in the hoodie is awake and I catch him glancing at me several times. He’s a big muscular black guy with tattoos on his forearms. He has very kind eyes.
I turn on my phone to text Kellan the situation.
Another pic comes in. Carefully, I shield my phone with my hand and scroll down.
WHOA! It’s a pic of Kellan, still in the shower, ejaculating.
He actually caught it on camera.
Wow.
Wow wow wow wow wow.
Being gateless and ensconced in a fog of sour vomit is now unimportant and far away. I see only the pic on my phone.
At the top of the pic, Kellan’s abs are flexed. They look good. His hand is squeezing the base of his erection. His penis is arcing upward, straining as he comes. The big vein on the top is clearly visible.
Wow.
I text back hurriedly, almost in a horny panic. I miss-type repeatedly because I’m going so fast, but finally I get it.
Wow. Gorgeous.
I wish I were there
to swallow
every
drop.
There’s no emoji for a girl chugging her man’s big sexy boner and swallowing his sweet load, otherwise I’d include about a hundred of them.
Kellan replies immediately.
Soon…
My flight left at six a.m. so it’s almost noon there now. He’s probably eating lunch at his desk.
What are you
doing right now?
Getting ready
to take another shower
to send you
another pic.
Seriously?
Seriously? Sadly, no.
I’m actually eating
chicken and broccoli
at my desk,
working on new diets
for training clients.
Betty in Green Bay
has lost 64 pounds!
I’m so proud.
That’s awesome.
You’re the BEST coach
in the world.
And I love you.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve texted that I love him. It’s scary but it also feels good. So I send it.
I love you, too.
How was the flight?
You in your hotel room?
Did you do your cardio?
Heck no.
Major delays.
Thunderstorm.
Bad turbulence.
People puking.
Smells SOOOOO bad in here.
We’re waiting for a gate.
I suddenly recall those horror stories about airplanes that waited eight hours for a gate. The toilets were all full, there was no food or water, and people couldn’t get off. I guess you go to jail pretty much forever if you’re in that situation and you say screw it and you open the emergency exit and deploy the slide and get the hell out of the stinky plane. I’m sure the other passengers would love you, but the FBI or the CIA or the Transportation Safety Administration and Homeland Security people probably wouldn’t. You’d be a savior and a terror suspect. Terror Jesus. All the gossipy news people across the country would go on and on about how you jeopardized an entire jumbo jet and everyone on board by opening the emergency exit. They’d report every bit of dirt they could find, linking the time you got detention in high school for saying the F-word in P.E. when you got hit in the crotch by a softball to the fact that you went batshit crazy and opened the emergency exit. And maybe a few fringe news outlets who hate the current president would bring up the fact that the plane had been sitting on the tarmac for eight hours and the people inside were literally sitting knee-deep in raw human waste. You should be a hero, but instead you’d be blacklisted from flying ever again.
You going to
take matters
into your own hands
and open
the emergency exit?
That is hilarious. It’s like Kellan can read my mind.
An image of me being waterboarded because I opened the emergency exit pops in my head.
No way, Jose.
They’d waterboard me
for sure.
I’m a patriotic
American.
America, fuck yeah!
LOL. ROTFLMAO!
Want to know a secret
I’ve never told anyone?
Boy, do I.
Boy, do I.
Promise not to tell
anyone?
I promise.
Remember in Team America
When the puppets had sex?
Of course I remember it. That scene turned me on. It was funny. But oddly arousing.
Of course.
I jerked off
to that scene.
Really?
Yep.
You really did?
Yep.
You swear?
Cross my heart and
hope to die.
Except I don’t.
Because I love you.
Ohh, how my heart doth melt.
(And my loins doth moisten.)
Wow.
Wow wow wow.
Okay, Claire, stop saying ‘doth’ and ‘wow’ and say it back.
I love you, too.
Imagine how much fun
we’d be having
if you were here
with me.
The middle seat
is open, so
it would be perfect.
Screw that.
My girl always rides
First Class.
We’d be up front,
sipping champagne,
FAR FAR FAR
FAR
away
from the vomit.
That would be nice.
I have a Skype call now.
TTYL?
Sure. :)
I love you.
I love you, too.
Mercifully, the plane starts moving. The pilot comes on and apologizes for the wait and says we’ll be at our gate in a few minutes. Everyone applauds, but it’s the applause of mockery and angry desperation.
I take one last look at the two pics of Kellan climaxing in the shower.
“Excuse me.”
It’s a deep, male voice.
The guy in the hoodie is leaning toward me. “Ain’t choo Claire Valentine?”
Holy cow how does he know my name?
Should I lie and act as though I have no idea who she is?
Hoodie guy studies me more closely. “Yee-uh, it is you. Snap! I thought dat waz you when we leff Cali. Can I get a selfie wit choo?”
Turbulence and delays and vomit and sexy pics included, this is blowing my mind. “How do you know who I am?”
“Shit, girl, everyone know who you are. You Kearns’ girl. I saw dat shit on da beach wit dem SEALs. Dat shit waz fo real, son. Fo real. I ne’er saw nuttin like it. No joke. My hat’s off to you. Mad respect, mad respect.”
He holds up his phone at arm’s reach and smiles. I see both of
us on the front screen. He does a thing with his hand and sticks out two fingers, so I quickly do the same, and he snaps it. We look at it together. Surprisingly, I look good.
“Aight den,” he says. He gets up and grabs his bag. “Keep it real, Iron Born.” He winks and heads down the aisle with the other desperately-deplaning passengers.
What the crap is going on?
Is this really my life?
BY THE TIME I get out of JFK and find a shuttle, I’m super, crazy late. I don’t have time to go to my hotel and then to the offices of Pastiche Boutique to meet Nathan Wentworth.
So I go straight to their office.
Even then, I am ten minutes late.
I see the same smiling girl from their website sitting at the front desk when I enter. I’m dragging my rolling carry-on bag behind me and I bang it against the door and make a bunch of noise.
“May I help you?” the girl asks.
“Hi. I’m, um, Claire. Um, Valentine. I’m here to see Nathan Wentworth.”
“You’re Claire Valentine?” she asks. Her eyes suddenly open far wider than they were a moment ago.
“Yes.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” she says. She thrusts out her hand, so I instinctively shake it.
Does she know me from the beach video, the same way Hoodie Guy did?
“I read all three books in your trilogy,” she goes on. “I just loved them. I’ve always felt I was born a decade too late. I’m a child of the eighties at heart. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Did you guys really have to get under your desks at school, to practice what to do in case of a nuclear war?”
“Yes.” I don’t know why. Cowering under a desk wouldn’t do jack shit. Terminator II: Judgement Day showed us that.
“Wow. And, what was it like before Wham! broke up?”
“Um, good. I used to dance around in my room listening to ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ about a million times on the radio. Until I bought their cassette. And I bought it again when CDs came out.”
“Wow.” The receptionist looks at me all dreamy-eyed. “You’ve really been there and lived it.”
After a moment of adulatory but weird silence, she snaps out of. “I’ll just let Mister Wentworth know you’re here. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, tea, lemonade?”
I hate lemonade. “Coffee would be nice.”
“Cream and sugar?”
Crap. Crap crap crap. I’m not supposed to eat carbs or sugar. I should drink the coffee black. But for some reason I am horribly uncomfortable and I feel guilty making this sweet young girl prepare my coffee. So, in a misguided attempt to ease her task, I say, “Sure”, knowing Kellan will be pissed when he hears I consumed table sugar and milk.
I do my best not to drink my coffee but I’ve consumed most of it by the time Nathan Wentworth appears six or seven minutes later.
He walks through a French door and strides toward me, smiling warmly.
I could eat my chair.
He’s an absolute dream boat. A hunky guy in a sweater and glasses and trousers, like somebody out of the fictional 1950s, like how I always thought Holden Caulfield would look in real life, like somebody John Steinbeck would write about.
“Claire. Welcome to Pastiche Boutique. How are you.”
Somehow his question is not a question. He whips off his glasses and lays some sexy green eyes on me. He has a curious combination of dork, nerd, and lothario. Like he would work on a crab boat on Discovery Channel but also reads King Lear.
“Fine. Fine. I’m fine.”
“Was your flight okay? Can we get you anything? Is Monique taking care of you? I see you have a hot beverage. Thank you, Monique. Right this way, please, Claire. Here, let me help you with your carry-on.”
And like that he’s carrying my little black suitcase down the hall and I’m following him, trying to keep up.
I glance over my shoulder at Monique the idolatrous coffee-fetching receptionist.
She wrinkles her nose at me as she smiles.
I don’t know why, but I do the same, like we’re co-conspirators in the underground secret of Nathan Wentworth’s ivy-league-caliber, male-model-material hotness.
Nathan takes me into his office and beckons me to sit in one of the big wingback chairs in front of the same fireplace I saw on their website. This isn’t a meeting room or a study; it’s actually his office.
I immediately want one exactly like it.
God knows what literary masterpieces I could conjure up if I had a place like this in which to cajole magic from my laptop’s keys into the wee hours of the morning.
Nathan surprises me by sitting not at his desk but in the other wingback beside me.
“So. Claire. Thank you so much for coming. Are you okay? Can I get you anything? More coffee? Or shall we simply dive right into it? I know I’m ready. Here’s the thing. One of our authors is a moron. He has refused to meet the publisher’s demands. So he’s being dropped. Bad news for him. But great news for you. One of our interns pulled The Love Mush Room out of her slush pile and loved it. She wouldn’t shut up about it. Her enthusiasm was positively contagious. When a reader shows that much passion for a book, any book, even one written by a proverbial nobody such as yourself, we take notice. That’s not to say that you’re a nobody. Not at all. Rather, nobody has read your work yet. But we can…change…that.”
I want to tell him about the fourteen Amazon reviews and my four-star average. But sitting by a real fireplace in Lower Manhattan, with no idea what the price-per-square-footage is of an office like this, I’m guessing it’s a lot. So Nathan must know what he’s talking about.
He proceeds to talk for a good 45 minutes about the state of the publishing industry and how self-publishing has ruined it and how Amazon is evil and they’ve undervalued the written word for eternity by setting the price of ebooks at $2.99 and no author in his or her right mind can expect to make a living by selling books at that price because there’s simply no margin. And that discoverability has been reduced to sheer luck due to the oversaturated marketplace of literary cyberspace populated to a large extent by quasi-illiterate wannabe pseudo-writers who’ve never heard of let alone actually sat down and read the likes of Melville or Keats or James or Tolstoy or Faulkner or Shelley or Dickinson.
Nathan asks me how a Stephen King hardcover can go for $35.00 but the same tale in ebook can go for $2.99.
Before I can answer, he phones Monique and asks her to bring in two glasses of lemonade.
And when it comes, I drink it. Nathan toasts to the future of publishing and I drink that whole damn glass of lemonade. It’s delicious, of course. But within ten minutes I can feel the raw sugar going into my blood stream and making me sleepy. It’s the sensation of a massive insulin spike. Insulin is the master storage hormone. Kellan told me all about it. To shed body-fat, insulin must be kept to a minimum. Hence the nutrition plan void of sugar and carbs and rich in non-insulinogenic foods such as lean protein and vegetables.
And I’ve completely screwed it up.
First coffee and now lemonade.
I may as well be pounding Super Big Gulps of Coke from 7-11.
Nathan proceeds to tell me how much he, too, loved The Love Mush Room trilogy. He read all three books. He actually went online and bought them and read them on his iPad Air in bed while his wife was sleeping. He leans close, puts one finger on my knee, and tells me he felt like he was cheating on his wife by reading such a sexy book written by such a sexy young authoress.
He calls me an authoress.
I’ve never heard the term authoress.
Nathan removes his finger as he continues on and on and on about all the inside jokes in my books and how clever the narrative is and how the use of an unreliable narrator was a stroke of genius because when done sloppily it jeopardizes the sacred contract with the reader but when done adroitly, as I did it, it’s a literary joy to read. He knew at once that he wanted to meet me.
I’ve been waiting years for someone to do that.
YEARS.
I tell him that no one seems to have ever understood what I was trying to do.
Nathan says it’s not the job of the author to dumb down to the reader, rather it is the responsibility of the reader to elevate to the level of the author.
Or in this case, the authoress.
Maybe it’s the warmth of the fire behind us, or perhaps it’s the grams of sugar in my blood stream, but I can feel my face heat as I flush under Nathan’s compliment.
After an indeterminate period of time, Nathan slaps both palms on his thighs loudly. “Well! I best get home to the little woman and you best get to your hotel and get some rest. I’m sure this has been quite a day for you, flying to Manhattan all the way from California. Can I get you anything before you go? Monique will get you anything you need. She’ll call you a cab, of course. Unless you’d care to brave the subway at night. I’m kidding, it’s perfectly safe down there. Most of the time. Nine-eleven really changed the people of this city. Here, let me help you with your carry-on.”
And, with that, I’m retracing my hurried steps down the hall from Nathan’s office to Monique’s desk.
Nathan instructs Monique to call a cab for me and he and I stand in the foyer while Monique grins at me with her chin resting on her folded hands.
“Tell me, Claire. Have you ever… written… any… erotica?” Nathan asks. “Not romance, per se. But rather… outright… erotica. It’s very hot right now. No pun intended! Anyway, it was great to see you. Thanks for coming in. And we’ll be in touch.”
Nathan hugs me. I’m aware of his warm body pressed against me. He’s warm; not the same way Kellan is warm, but warm. And Kellan feels… big… meaty somehow. Nathan feels slenderer, if that’s even a word.
He departs through the French doors, leaving me alone with Monique.
“Claire, would you care for some more lemonade before you go?”