Girl Before a Mirror

by Liza Palmer

  “Sure,” he says.

  “You know it?”

  “Yes, of course,” he says, not elaborating as much as I’d like. I take another sip of tea.

  “So, we thought, how can we tap into that audience for the Lumineux campaign? There was something about that book—is something about that book—that women are really connecting with and we came up with—”

  “If I may?” Lincoln asks, standing. “It’s quite urgent.”

  “Sure,” I say, pausing.

  “You’ve brushed your teeth, you’ve had pie . . . ,” he says, stepping closer.

  “Yes,” I say, staying put.

  “No longer the—how did you put it—the stinky—”

  “Little stinky engine that could,” I finish.

  “The stinky engine that could,” he repeats. I smile just as Lincoln leans in and kisses me. The smile on my face is at once both spontaneous and inconvenient, as it precludes me from really diving into him. And yet I can’t stop smiling. He pulls away from me with a smile of his own, tucking one of surely a thousand rogue hairs gently behind my ear. “Please. Continue.” Lincoln picks up his tea and sits back down on the side of the bed.

  “The book is empowering women to be the heroines of their own stories.” I take his gray T-shirt off, find my shirt flung over the back of a chair, and begin to button it up.

  “But it’s to find a hero, though, right? So is empowering the right word?”

  “I know, I thought the same thing.”

  “Seems like bollocks to me.”

  “I know. That part of it is bollocks.”

  “Do you even know what bollocks means?”

  “It’s not good, right?”

  “No, it’s not good.”

  “But Helen—”

  “We’re calling her ‘Helen’ now?” Lincoln asks.

  “Ha, no . . . I mean, I would never to her face. Mrs. Brubaker said that she didn’t even want the hero part in the title. That the publisher made her do that,” I say, becoming newly defensive. “I think the book could have just as easily been a self-help book rather than a dating guide.” I pick my cup of tea back up and settle in next to him on the bed.

  “Still based on romance novels, though?”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say, uncomfortable with being anything but clinical about the books—and their content—even now.

  “I don’t have a problem with romance novels.”

  “This coming from the man who went to . . .”

  “Oh, every posh school you’ve ever heard of.”

  “Eton?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Did you, Lincoln Mallory, wear a boater hat?”

  “They’re officially called Harrow Hats, thank you very much. And yes, I did. When forced. Which is how I know that the pompous wankers who look down on romance novels and the women who read them are actually full of shite. You know, having been one myself,” he says.

  “Been. In the past tense,” I say.

  “Ah yes, on top of being in Alcoholics Anonymous, I’m also a proud member of Wankers Anonymous.” I can see him realize what he’s said. It’s slipped out and he can only avert his eyes. “So, to recap: you’ve just shagged a posh, ex–boater-hat-wearing git who was happily off his face for far too many years after being blown up overseas.”

  “Try finding a meeting for that,” I say, and Lincoln throws his head back and laughs. “Although I think you’d find a very different kind of meeting if you actually did attend Wankers Anonymous. Because I do know what that is.” Lincoln laughs again. “Anyway, Helen said she’d meet with us. Which is really great.” I check the clock. It’s 6:15 now. Lincoln also checks the clock and I can see him deflate just a bit.

  “And how does she fit into this whole thing?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Does she have to fit in?”

  “I would hope so.”

  “But it’s the book that’s the inspiration, right?”

  “Right. The Just Be campaign that we’re pitching is so women can connect to that empowerment.”

  “Just be. That’s good. That’s really good.”

  “Thanks. Speaking of . . .” The last thing I want to do is leave this room. There’s this rumbling fear that I won’t be able to have this again or something. That whatever we have is fleeting and of its moment. And when I leave . . . the moment will have passed. But it’s not every day that Helen Brubaker has you over for breakfast. “I should be going. It’s another long day with another ridiculous themed party tonight.” I rest my hand on his thigh and lean in close to him.

  “A few parameters on these last few moments, if I may?”

  “Sure,” I say, flustered.

  “One. I’m going to want to finish anything you start.” He eyes my hand on his thigh. A crooked smile and his eyes are once again fixed on mine. “Two. I would love to see you again after your . . .” He trails off.

  “Mermaid Bash.”

  “Naturally.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “And three. This isn’t farewell.”

  “No,” I say, and I can hear the relief in my voice. Like out in the world and not just inside my own head.

  “No,” he says. I slide my hand to his back and pull him into me. He lets me. I’m beginning to get used to him. His body. His kiss. His smell. Something about this terrifies me. Why wouldn’t it? We’re in this weird alternate universe at some random hotel in Phoenix with none of our usual responsibilities or stresses or any dishes to do or any reality for that matter. And as I get lost in him once more, the time ticking away, I worry about what the real world will do to us. Or more aptly, the version of me in the real world. What will I think of all this come check-out time?

  What will he?

  8

  “Mrs. Brubaker is on a phone interview right now. If you would.” Hector leads us into another room in Helen’s lavish hotel suite. The room is fitted out with urns filled with coffee and hot water, fresh flowers, and an entire breakfast spread. We are obviously one of several meetings Helen has this morning.

  “Thank you,” I say, entering the room and eyeing the Fortnum and Mason loose-leaf teas still in those beautiful Georgian blue tins. Hector closes the door behind us.

  “Are you kidding me with this?” Sasha loudly whispers, pulling her phone out of her purse and taking several pictures of herself with the elaborate spread.

  “Are you taking a picture with a platter of strawberries right now?” I ask, cringing as she snaps the photo. “Why don’t I just take a picture of you?”

  “No, I got it,” Sasha says, now in front of the beautiful spray of fresh peonies in the middle of the table. Pursed lips, raised eyebrows, doe eyes, aaaand snap. Sasha looks at the picture, grimaces, and deletes it.

  “I can’t with the selfies,” I say, making myself a much-needed cup of tea. “Don’t post those anywhere. I know that’s asking the world of you. Not to document one second of your life for your thousands of friends.” I put air quotes around the word friends.

  “For someone who didn’t come back to her room last night, you should be in a much better mood,” Sasha says, sliding her phone back into her purse.

  “How did y—”

  “I’m right across the hall,” Sasha says, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She scans the condiments. “No soy? Come on, Brubaker.”

  I set my tea on the side table, tuck my purse and workbag next to my feet, and finally settle in on the tufted white couch, which is overrun with silk pillows. Sasha settles in next to me, knowing to leave the floral wingback chair for Helen when she arrives. I am trying to ignore Sasha. Because you would think someone who didn’t come back to her hotel room last night would be in a better mood, and yet here I am. Cranky and picking on a poor twentysomething who has the audacity to show how excited she is about something.

  “So you’re really not going to dish?” Sasha asks, now gathering various fruits on a small plate for herself. I sip my tea. Fortnum and
Mason, Royal Blend. A thing of beauty. I inhale its fragrance as I try to gather my thoughts. I am exhausted but amped—my entire body is buzzing. But whereas I thought I’d be scattered and elsewhere—namely in Lincoln Mallory’s bed—I am more focused than I’ve been in months. I feel alive.

  “It’s just a fling,” I say, and the words cut through me, choking in my throat. Another sip of tea.

  “You slept with him?? You naughty little hellcat, you,” Sasha says, pointing a strawberry at me emphatically.

  “Shh!”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Hellcat? Really?”

  “I know, right? I was like . . . did I really just say hellcat right now, but . . .” Sasha dissolves into giggles as she picks through her plate of fruit, finally settling on a piece of pineapple. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’ve worked very hard to get to this point in my career, and something like this?”

  “It’s just a fling. Like you said.”

  “It can give people a reason to call my professionalism into question,” I say.

  “Well, they’d have to find out first, right?”

  “Right.”

  A beat.

  “Wait, you think I’m going to say something?” Sasha can’t help but burst out laughing. “Who would care? That’s . . . I actually can’t breathe—” Sasha begins choking on her piece of pineapple and takes a long sip of her coffee. “You’re the only one who talks to me at that office.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “In order for me to spread any kind of rumors about you, I’d have to have . . . I don’t know, made friends first? And seeing as how you’re my only friend . . .” Sasha sips her coffee again. What was once funny has become a bit melancholy for her. “The women hate me and the men just want to . . . well, you know.” She can’t look at me. We are silent. “P.S.? I would never say anything. I’m not like that.”

  I look up at her. She finally makes eye contact with me. I nod. She smiles. And I start talking.

  “I guess I just . . . I’m not a fling kind of person,” I say.

  “It sounds kind of amazing,” Sasha says with a sigh. “Straitlaced businesswoman lets her passion get the best of her for a night of wild abandon with a hot British stranger.” Sasha gestures broadly as if she’s seeing the romantic comedy poster now. “But is it more than she bargained for as—”

  “We’re not in a romance novel. As much as—”

  “As much as it sounds like you are?”

  “Yeah, but here’s what I know. All of those romance novels—and granted, I’ve only read a handful—all of the trials and tribulations the couple goes through are worth it in the end, because we’re promised that they’re going to live happily ever after. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “But that’s not how real life works. I’ve been married. I walked down the aisle with my dad in his dress blues to a man who wept when he saw me in my wedding gown. What they don’t tell you is that even with that . . . you can still just fall out of love.”

  “But he wasn’t your guy.”

  “What?”

  “That first guy?”

  “Patrick.”

  “Patrick? He’s not The One.”

  “There’s no such thing as The One.”

  “No, I know. I’m not delusional. I think there are several Ones. It’s kind of based on how much you want to better yourself or how much you love yourself. Like stops on a train? If you keep going, your Ones get better. You just got off at the wrong stop with Patrick.”

  “So, this hot British stranger? This is what? The guy that I send to the store for tampons a year from now? I mean, because that? Is true love,” I say.

  “Yes! Exactly. Things have to start somewhere. It might as well be in a hotel in Phoenix,” Sasha says, eating another strawberry.

  “I don’t know. You know, I’m too embarrassed to even tell my friends back home about him?”

  “Why? It’s wonderful,” Sasha says. Her use of the word wonderful makes me kind of love her in that moment.

  “I don’t know. It feels . . . I told my brother about it—”

  “Ferdie?”

  “Yeah. He said that I had to . . . wait, let me get this right. That everyone falls for the Bruce Wayne version of us, but what we want are the people who love the Batman side.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. And I knew I was doing that—you know, playing a part—with the men I was dating. Even with Patrick to a point. But I never knew how much I did that with my friends. I don’t think even they see the Batman side of me,” I say, unable to look at Sasha.

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  Hector pokes his head in and tells us it’ll be another ten minutes and to get comfortable.

  “It just got me thinking.” I pause. A sip of tea. Sasha waits. “I was over at a friend’s house—a dear friend, I might add—for this nerdy book club that we do. We’re reading Shakespeare in order. I’ve known Michael forever. And his wife, Allison, for going on . . . what is it, six years? She’s lovely. They’re both lovely,” I say. I take another sip of my tea as Sasha offers me a mini-muffin. I take it and thank her. She takes a croissant for herself and proceeds to pick at its buttery layers. “I had to go to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. Like go to the bathroom. I’d started putting flax oil into my morning smoothies . . . it was a whole thing.” Sasha’s eyes get wide. “I ask to use the bathroom, they say yes—of course—and I am all over the place. A wreck. I do my business and it flushes—because I’d convinced myself it wouldn’t, even though there was never a problem with the plumbing before. I wash my hands, trying to waft the smell of the soap around the bathroom. There’s this tiny window, and I try to open it—but never noticed before that the window was levered. So, all of Allison’s perfumes—which were lined up neatly on the sill—go tumbling onto the marble counter. And I get the ‘Are you okay?’ from just outside the bathroom. I yelp out ‘Yes!’ And now I’m panicking. I use some of Allison’s lotion to try to, you know, offer another option in the scent column. I finally leave the bathroom and join them in the living room. I sit down. And Allison asks Michael if he could change that lightbulb she was talking about earlier.”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the lightbulb, he asks.”

  “No.”

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Noooo.”

  “And they both stream back into the bathroom and are back there for what feels like hours as I just sit all alone on their couch with my little glass of bubble water and . . . my hands are shaking, my face is all hot, and my heart rate is through the roof. They come out and never say a word.” I take a sip of my tea and Sasha finishes the croissant that she nervously ate during the telling of my story.

  “I would have died.”

  “I know, but it’s things like that that let me know I’m not only guarded around the men I’m dating, it’s everyone,” I say.

  “No, I’m the same,” Sasha says. We are quiet. Haunted.

  “And this is after a year on Time-Out.”

  “Time-Out?”

  “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know about that.” I fill Sasha in on the ‘Thunder Road’ story, the yearlong Time-Out. She plows through another croissant during the telling of it.

  “So before Hot British Stranger, you hadn’t had sex in a year?” Sasha asks.

  “It’d been longer than that,” I confess.

  “What . . . wait . . . wh—” The door to the room pulls open just as Sasha begins to speak. Helen Brubaker strides in with a cup of coffee from Starbucks and Team Brubaker at her heels.

  “So, let’s talk turkey, girls,” Helen says, settling into the large, floral wingback chair.

  “You have thirty minutes until your prizewinners,” Hector says, tablets and phones and headsets abounding.

  “Is this for the photo op or . . .”

  “No, you’re assisting two aspiring romance novelists with their pitches,” he says.

 
“Ah, sure. Okay. Give me a five-minute warning,” Helen says, taking a sip of her coffee. A coffee which, I notice, has the word soy written on the side of it. Sasha’s eyes narrow. Hector closes the door behind him and we are alone with Helen.

  “Thank you for making time for us this morning,” I say, setting my tea on the large coffee table.

  “You’re welcome,” Helen says. A beat. And then . . .

  “Your book is exactly what women need right now. What I need right now. The audacious idea that we should all be the heroes of our own stories? And the boldness to suggest we should put ourselves first,” I say, coming forward on the couch just enough.

  “Thank you,” Helen says. This is a different version of Helen Brubaker. And it’s terrifying. This is the businesswoman.

  “It’s inspired us. Professionally. Personally—”

  “But don’t you think all this is below you, Ms. Wyatt?” Helen asks.

  “I absolutely did—”

  “Like yesterday,” Helen interrupts. “Do you know how many times I’ve defended the books I write to people like you? Explained that it’s actually a fallacy that anyone could write a romance novel if they just lowered themselves for the weekend it’d take them to spit one out? That the relationships and people you read about in the books that are deemed ‘important’ are actually the same ones that I write about? The same ones my readers have and find within the pages of my books?”

  “I know.” Helen is legitimately pissed. As she should be. I all but insinuated her entire life’s work was garbage. She winds through example after example and I realize that we’ll be lucky if we get our allotted thirty minutes. This entire meeting is slipping through my fingers, and if I don’t do something our time here at RomanceCon could be cut short, because if Helen Brubaker doesn’t like you, no one does. I want people to remember my name, but not for this reason. I look up at Helen with the realization of what I have to do. Of course, she misinterprets it.

  “It’s the look of surprise when there’s something truly meaningful found in the pages of a romance novel that gets me every time. That we’re actually intelligent women and not drooling, wanton cat ladies.”