Death By Chick Lit

by Lynn Harris

  Doug paused. “Okay.” He thought for a sec. “Hey, Lo. I got an idea. I know you’re behind on work and stuff. But can you play hooky tomorrow?”

  Shit. No.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Let’s get away from it all,” he said. “And not talk about anything important, or even interesting.”

  “And not eat anything at all healthy?” she asked.

  “Right. MozzArepas and raw clams of death.”

  She knew it. “Coney?” Their favorite island getaway.

  “Coney.” Coney Island, indeed.

  Actually, Lola? Let’s think for a second. On this murder thing, I’m working my own angles, and right now, one of those angles should be working all by itself. So: Coney, quality time with husband, frozen chocolate-covered bananas—

  “Done,” she said. “See you on the Cyclone.”

  “See you sucking at Skee-Ball.”

  Lola threw a pretend punch, which her husband deftly blocked with a few patented moves of Doug-fu. Lola cracked up. But before she could register that Doug was looking at her in that “let’s not get out of bed yet” kind of way, she remembered something exceedingly important.

  “Hey, what time is it?” Lola looked at her watch.

  Ha. If all had gone according to plan, her insanely far-fetched but still worth a try plan, the online version of what she was waiting for should be up now.

  “Oh! C’mere,” she said.

  Lola leapt out of bed, threw on Doug’s sweatshirt, and trotted into her office, then right back out. “No, no, I’m gonna try the schmancy new kitchen computer!”

  Doug padded up behind her wearing only glasses and boxers. It was a good look, Lola noticed in passing. “What are you doing, crazy lady?” There was a glint of weariness in his voice, but Lola ignored it. He’d see.

  She clicked around for a minute, then smacked the countertop. “Yes!”

  Twenty-six

  Pink Slip

  Lola Somerville’s Debut Novel Makes You Glad She

  Lost Her Job

  By Ida Julep

  “Oh, my God,” said Lola.

  “Wait, is that you?” asked Doug, leaning in to see.

  “No, it’s the other Lola Somerville with a debut novel called Pink Slip,” said Lola. “But I’m cuter.”

  “But how—?”

  “Just read.”

  You may remember Lola Somerville as the plucky columnist who exposed—live on an episode of Penelope!—the conspiracy behind the once-cool, now bankrupt Ovum network. That, ladies and gentlemen, was some good television. But if you don’t remember her from that, you should remember her from her new novel: the fanciful, fictionalized account of how that particular dot-com went bust. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is some good reading.

  “Holy Hannah,” said Lola.

  (Those gentlemen, that is, who read chick lit—and we love you, whoever you are.)

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Why is everything written by a woman, about a woman, considered chick lit?” said Doug. “And everything by a man about a man is just lit? Unless it’s lad lit, but that was over before it began.”

  “Hey, that’s my speech,” said Lola.

  “Hey, you’re my wife,” said Doug.

  By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Somerville’s novel perfectly captures the heady days of the online gold rush and fin de siècle search for meaning, gleefully skewering its opportunistic taskmasters and our own earnest credulity. Still, at its heart, Pink Slip is a timeless tale of love, friendship, family, and ultimate faith in oneself. Don’t read it if you don’t want to laugh out loud on the subway—or if you can’t afford to get so absorbed you miss your stop!

  “Of course, it was also a major exposé, but whatever! I’ll take it!” cried Lola.

  Doug whistled. “I guess so! But how—why now? I guess what I mean is, what took them so effing long?”

  Lola shrugged. “It’s the Day, Doug. They’re lame.”

  “Whatever. I’m really proud of you, monkey.” He gave her a massive trademark Doug hug. “You deserve it.”

  Well, yes and no.

  “Wally, thank you for the review,” said Lola.

  “No problem.” He sighed. “I actually—well, way back when the publisher’s galley had arrived in the office, I’d seen it on Ida’s desk, and I—I took it. I—well, if you really want to know, I wanted to see if I was in it.”

  “Oh, I—well, it wasn’t about—I mean, you wouldn’t—”

  “No, I know, it’s cool. I actually wound up thinking it was awesome.”

  “Oh, thanks!”

  “Which is why I, embittered, didn’t give it back to Ida.”

  “Oh,” said Lola. “Gotcha.”

  “Until now.”

  “Right.”

  “So.”

  “Look, I’ll let you go, Wally. But really, thanks. You’ve outdone yourself.”

  “I try.”

  “Who-hoo!” It was Annabel.

  “Right?” said Lola. “It’ll be in the print version tomorrow.”

  “So that’s when the movie agents will call, et cetera, et cetera?”

  “Yes. I shall wait by the phone. Because we all know how well that works. Actually, for you it seems to be effective.” Lola hoped her tone sounded light enough. “Are you all set with the proposal?”

  “Yep. Just in time for me to head out with Ismail the Albanian model.”

  “You amaze me, Bella,” Lola said sincerely. “Are you sure you don’t want to—” She stopped herself. “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?”

  “I do what I can,” said Annabel. “Hey, so what’s happening with the mystery, Brenda Starr? Any suspects yet?” Lola had hinted to Annabel, a little more strongly than she had to Doug—Annabel was far less of a worrier—that she was sort of kind of “working the case.”

  “Not yet,” said Lola. “But assuming someone—or something—cooperates, we’re about to get a big break.”

  “You wanna vague that up for me a little?”

  Lola hemmed. “Well, I—I think for now it’s best if I don’t tell you—”

  “Seriously?” asked Annabel.

  “… Yeah,” said Lola.

  “Not even a little?”

  “I—”

  “Lo, what could possibly be so off-limits? Remember me? Annabel? From the telling each other everything?” Annabel’s tone was light, but she was right; this was a first.

  “I know. Of course. I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s delicate. I … need to do this myself. For me,” said Lola.

  This sucks.

  Annabel sighed. “Okay, Lo. I’ll just take that as the New Age way of saying you could tell me, but you’d have to kill me.”

  Or, you’d have to kill me.

  Twenty-seven

  “I’m thinking we better enjoy this place while it lasts,” said Doug. He and Lola had ridden the F train to its last stop, aboveground, fondly watching the Coney Island skyline come into view—the stubby “space needle,” the rickety roller coaster, the red-girdered parachute jump (“Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower!”)—all set into relief against a blue-gray ocean and matching sky. Coney’s shabbiness, its seediness, was exactly what held wonder for them. So unglamorous it was fabulous, Coney Island was basically Six Flags’ little burnout brother. A bit sinister, too: the bars were scarred by shootouts, the boardwalk haunted by souls lost to the brothels. And yet Coney’s wanly twinkling lights also held glimmers of its faded glory, the days when a carousel was all it took to enchant a child, and before that, when the amusement park’s 250,000 electric bulbs were themselves the attraction, like a star whose beams, eons old, have just landed on earth.

  But all that was about to change. A mustache-twirling developer had purchased massive swaths of land, from the projects to the shore, and had announced plans for a “Vegas-style” “entertainment destination” including an indoor ski slope, a wild game hunting range, a “swim with dolphins” pool, the “world’s tallest mall,” a re-creation
of the entire French Quarter of New Orleans, and transport from Manhattan by blimp.

  “Seriously,” said Lola. “When the digging starts, let’s lash ourselves to a tree. Or,” she added, looking around in vain for a tree, “a funnel cake.”

  Doug agreed. “Freak show?” he asked.

  “Freak show,” said Lola.

  For some couples, romance means a carriage ride in Central Park. For others, Tavern on the Green. Or Venice. For Lola and Doug, romance was the famed Coney Island “freak show,” a rare vestige of Barnum-esque sideshows—only without the pitiful displays of “human oddities.” These human oddities were, shall we say, skillful? Fire eater, sword swallower, escape artist, the guy who hammers the screwdriver into his nose: Lola and Doug loved it all. For them, it wasn’t about being grossed out; it was the simple low-rent honesty—yes, honesty—of the whole enterprise. No smoke, no mirrors, just a guy eating a lightbulb.

  So, hand in hand, past the teeny old candy shop shuddering under the weight of the soon-to-expand subway station, past the screaming neon “Bump Your Ass Off ” invitation to ride the bumper cars, past the guy selling balloons on sticks and piña coladas in plastic cups, past the teeny taqueria with the Magic Marker menu, to the freak show they went. They waved at the barker outside, who was flanked by the Tattooed Man and an alterna-Vanna wearing a live yellow python like a stole. Passing the dented four-seat bar, Lola’s favorite bar in all of New York, which served only Genessee Cream Ale and Zima, they entered the dingy “theater” and, squeezing past a family of alarmed tourists, took their seats. The splintered bleachers climbed to a low ceiling; naked lightbulbs—those not yet eaten—dangled from wires wrapped around exposed pipes. On the scuffed black stage, a dreadlocked woman, tattooed head to toe and her lip pierced clear across like the spine of a spiral notebook, had just slurped up a live worm. A recent addition to the cast, her name was Insectivora. Lola was in heaven.

  Insectivora plucked a wriggling cockroach out of a plastic box and licked her lips. The audience gulped, peeking at her from between split fingers. Suddenly, the roach escaped her grasp and fell to the stage, on its back, legs waving. Insectivora shrugged and scooped it up, bringing it hungrily toward her mouth.

  “I can’t believe she’s going to eat that right off the floor!” Lola exclaimed. Everyone laughed.

  “You put the LOL in Lola.” Doug grinned.

  Then came the redheaded Electra, whom Lola recognized from outside, even without the python. Electra sat gamely on a scary-looking chair wrapped in wires and bulbs like vines on Lola’s trellises. After a giant switch was thrown—sending “thousands of volts surging through her body!”—a fluorescent bulb lit up at the touch of her hand!

  “Yeah!” yelled Doug, clapping furiously, though he’d seen the act a thousand times and knew perfectly well, and in fact would happily inform you if you asked him, that the secret was a hidden transformer that, though high in voltage, was harmlessly low in amperage, and so, when Electra touched a metal plate on the chair, she received the current without feeling it and thus was able to light the bulb, which was not of the common incandescent variety, but rather a special type of bulb designed precisely for such a high-frequency current.

  Lola felt a swell in her heart. She and Doug were just here, just now. Nothing else mattered.

  Except the fact that Reading Guy had just walked in.

  Twenty-eight

  “DougI’mreallysorryI’llberightback,” Lola whispered.

  “Whuh?” he said.

  But she was gone.

  Leaping down to the doorway, Lola looked around. No sign. A guy at the bar with a bull ring in his nose raised a glass. No one else in sight.

  She raced out to the street. Still no Reading Guy. Just families, clots of idle teens, and a woman in a sequined smoking jacket on stilts.

  I was sure that was him, she thought. Positive.

  Really, totally sure.

  Completely.

  Right?

  She leaned against a wall.

  Let’s say it was. Is it fair to say he’s following me now? Is it fair to say I only thought I wasn’t thinking about this today?

  Doug came around the corner.

  “Hey,” Lola said. “You didn’t have to leave! I told you I’d be right back.”

  “I know, but the Human Pincushion just isn’t the same without you,” Doug said. “So what’s going on? I figured you were going to the bathroom, but then I saw you run for the door instead, and anyway, you don’t throw up before you eat the clams.”

  “I just … okay.” Lola took a breath. “Can we get a Genessee?”

  They clinked paper cups. “Okay,” said Lola, popping her hair into a scrunchie and hooking the heels of her clogs on a barstool rung. “Remember that guy from the Mimi night? Reading Guy?”

  “Yeah,” said Doug.

  “I thought I saw him.”

  “Okay,” said Doug. “So?”

  “And I feel like he could be involved somehow with the Mimi thing. Or even the Mimi and Daphne thing.”

  “Uh-huh …”

  “And see, remember how Quentin asked me to help him out?”

  “Yeah, with those files?”

  “Mmhmm, but there’s more. He actually wants me to help find the killer.”

  “Help find the killer? Why—”

  “Because he thought I might be good at it?”

  “No, duh. I mean, why didn’t you tell me? I could help you! That’s what we do best together, besides making tempura.”

  “I … I thought you’d think I was crazy.”

  “I do think you’re crazy, monkey.” He kissed her. “So should we go look for this guy, or what?”

  “Oh, no, I—” Lola took a gulp of ale.

  I can’t tell him why I need to do this myself, she thought. I need the kudos. I need to not be a “husband and wife team,” other than in real life. I haven’t proven myself on my own yet; I need to do that first.

  “I … Nah,” said Lola. “I’m sure that wasn’t him. Anyway, I’m keeping this ‘detective work’ to a desk job, pretty much—you know, Willow-from-Buffy stuff—thanks to all the hacking skills I learned from my husband.”

  Doug smiled, proud of his wife. “Lemme know if you run into a particularly thick firewall.”

  “Totally,” said Lola. “But you know what? Susan Thunder is off today.” The most famous female hacker. Doug kissed Lola in appreciative delight. “Hey, let’s ride the Cyclone!” she said.

  Coney Island’s famed roller coaster was another monument in Doug and Lola history. It was, in fact, where Doug had proposed.

  “Done,” said Doug. “Monkey, I’m so glad you told me what’s been going on with you. I mean besides the obvious insane freak-out over Mimi and Daphne, and also besides maybe the baby thing that we’re totally not talking about so forget I said it. Seriously. I could tell that something else was bugging you—I mean, that’s what happens when we don’t tell each other stuff. Okay? Okay. Oh, and you can finish—”

  Lola had just polished off Doug’s Genessee.

  “—my ale.”

  They boarded the Cyclone. As they buckled in and waited for the other cars to fill up, Lola felt the ale, inhaled on an empty stomach, start to fizz toward her brain. No, wait. It wasn’t going to make it all the way to her brain; it was stopping at her mouth.

  “Doug?”

  “Yeah, monkey? What, I forgot to ‘remove all wigs’?” A little giddy, he pointed to the painted sign that cracked him up every time. Which reminded him: he removed his glasses and stuck them in a case in his pocket.

  “No, I—” Lola started. Just then, the ride did, too. A cheer went up. Clack clack clack, up the first steep hill. Lola had to raise her voice. “I—I think I want to do this by myself.”

  “The roller coaster?”

  “No, the—” Whooosh! They zoomed down the first hill. “—the helping Quentin.”

  “Okay …” said Doug. “Why?”

  “Well, because …” And
suddenly Lola was talking. Talking and talking. Everyone else was screaming and whooping, but she was talking. Out came all her bitterness and frustrations from the past couple of years, her disappointment about her book, her resentment of her more successful peers, all of it. The Cyclone went up, down, around, and up, down, and around again, and, over all the noise, over all the lurching and whooshing, Lola talked.

  As they coasted to the end, Lola wound around to her conclusion. “… So I just really feel, I just really feel like I need to get the credit. Myself. And then write a book.”

  Doug nodded. He helped her out of the seat, and then looked at her.

  “I understand,” he said. “But just so you know? While we were up there, I was going to re-propose.”

  Twenty-nine

  For the first time in fifteen minutes, Lola was silent.

  She slumped back into the roller coaster seat, only to be glared at by forty teenagers waiting their turn. Doug reached out a hand to help her up again, cocking his head toward the exit. They went out to the street and stopped by a cotton candy and chimichanga stand.

  “Look, I get it. I know you. All that stuff was on your mind. Majorly, obviously. It had to come out when it had to come out,” said Doug. “I’m just glad that wasn’t my first attempt at proposing.”

  Oh good, thought Lola, I’m pretty sure he just smiled. Jesus, I suck. “How about a do-over?” she asked, gesturing weakly at the coaster.

  “Hmmm, no,” Doug said. Ow. “I’ll wait for the next ‘the time is right’ time.”

  “Doug,” Lola said, “I’m really sorry. I just—I’m really sorry. I know I’ve been hard to reach. And my self-absorption just reached new heights.”

  “Eighty-five feet, to be exact,” said Doug, looking back at the Cyclone.

  Oh, God.

  He grinned. “I kid!” Serious again. “It’s eighty-nine feet.”

  “Dammit, Doug!” Lola laughed. Oh, thank God. Okay. This feels better already. “Sweetie, please do not ever mistake my self-involvement for lack of love.” Lola wrapped her arms around Doug’s waist. “I adore and appreciate you every minute of every day. And I swear I will not let my self-absorption reach Cedar Point Top Thrill Dragster heights.”