Miranda had arrived at this first event an hour too early. She texted Scott about the board games, toddler books, and lattes. He and Lynn were watching her nature video. He photographed a baby polar baby and its mom from the screen and sent it to her.
“They reel you in with the baby animals,” he wrote. “Then they switch to the killing. I should never have let her watch this.”
When her phone rang, Miranda stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the store.
“Hello, Miranda,” sang an overly chipper voice. “Kristen here. Just checking to see how things are going. You’re there, right? Everything fine?”
Kristen said so much that Miranda wasn’t sure when or if she was supposed to reply. Instead, she found herself nodding into the phone. When Kristen finally took a breath, all Miranda could manage was, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Kristen said. “So, tonight you are at the Nuclear Books. Tomorrow you do a teen event at the Boys and Girls Club—that is a fundraiser for the local literary project. Then you are on to Richmond. Same deal there. Bookstore then fundraiser. Oh, wait, there’s also the book festival there. Ambrose has documents for your CPA about the tax deductions on your fundraising participation. This should offset some of the revenue from the books. But as I said in the email, we need your CPA to sign off. And soon. I need to start cutting the checks on your payments.”
“CPA?” Miranda said.
“An accountant. You have one, don’t you?”
“I don’t,” Miranda confessed.
“Oh, silly, you should have said so. I will hire one. Do you need anything else?”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, dinner reservations. Information about museums. Show tickets. Whatever you need, you reach out to me, and I make it happen. Ambrose calls me the magician.”
“The magician?”
“Yuppers. I am at your service. Anything you need. Anything. The weirder the better, in fact. Gives me something to blog about. Kristendoes.com.”
“You have a blog?”
“Yes, that’s why Ambrose hired me. It’s like double marketing for the firm.”
“The firm?”
“Oh, geesh, Miranda, you are really not informed. You need to read all the emails I sent.”
“I will.” Miranda said, counting how many steps it took to get from one side of the bookstore’s storefront to the other.
“Do you promise? Pinky swear promise that you’ll read the emails and let me know if you need anything.”
“Pinky swear.” Miranda couldn’t help but smile saying it. It sounded like something Lynn would say.
“Then we are good to go. Signing off,” Kristen said, disconnecting the line.
The bookseller poked her head outside the door. “There you are. We’re ready for you.”
Miranda hadn’t noticed the stream of people enter the store while she was on the phone. All the folding chairs were full, and a few people milled around behind the book row. They all had copies of her book in their hands. The stack next to the latest role-playing game about dragons now only stood two books high. She was almost selling out.
And at the end of the event after such winning poem themes as spring training, Ford trucks, and many requests about Ocean City and vacations, the crowd applauded her loudly and two people scooped up the last two books. The bookseller shook Miranda’s hand and invited her back for her next book.
The whirlwind feeling of it all wore off on the cab ride back to her hotel. It was a mid-level chain, nice enough to have a marble floor in the lobby with a fish tank along one wall, but not nice enough to have room service. As she sat alone in her room contemplating a dinner of macadamia nuts and Milano cookies from the mini bar, the loneliness of this whole adventure really struck her. There were fortyone more days to go.
C H A P T E R
EACH DAY SHE SAID to herself that she would get up early and go see some of the sights to create her own list of local color words, but each night she stayed up for hours talking to Scott on the phone.
“I wonder what our life is going to be like,” Miranda whispered into the phone, her voice hoarse from talking for the last two hours already, recounting the people she met at the bookstore event like the lady with pink hair who wanted a board done with all the names of her cats and the man who just crept around the back of the event taking her picture with his cell phone.
“What do you mean?” Scott asked. “It’s going to be awesome.” He too whispered, not wanting to wake up Lynn, who had already interrupted the call twice to tell Miranda about the new bunny in her classroom and why long division is difficult.
“No, like specifics. Like imagine it’s Sunday morning. What do we do? Do we read the paper? Do we eat waffles?”
“Well, waffles take too long. So it’s pancake city. I’ve got a griddle that takes up two burners on the stove.”
“I love that you cook,” Miranda said.
“I love that you eat. Especially pancakes. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but they are the best thing I make.”
“Surely you can make other things.”
“Mac and cheese. From a box. I microwave a good, organic chicken nugget. And I can roast a ham.”
“A ham?”
“Yup. You just put it in the oven. No fuss, no muss.”
“What do you eat with the ham?”
“Mac and cheese.”
“From a box?”
“Yup. I’m a regular old Julia Child here. We probably don’t read the paper on Sunday morning. Let’s just say that you only get about twenty minutes of sitting still when Lynn’s in the room. Especially on a weekend. School wears a kid out, but by Sunday, they are recharged and ready to go.”
“Oh,” Miranda said.
“Oh, you didn’t anticipate that?” Scott asked.
“Not that, I’m recalculating. We will eat pancakes and then go to the zoo to walk them off.”
“Run them off, you mean, but okay. The zoo, I like that. I was afraid you were going to say church.”
“Well, maybe church, we’ll see about that. Maybe your basketball games count for that. But let’s start with the zoo. What animal would you be?”
Scott didn’t hesitate. “Otter,” he said.
“Otter? Tell me why. I have to hear this.”
“They swim and have fun; have you ever seen a moping otter at the zoo? Never. They swim. They play with balls in the water. And people love them. Think they’re cute.”
“I think you are cute.”
“See, I’m already half way there,” he said.
“I love you, too. That’s it. You must be an otter,” she said.
“Then it’s a done deal. I will be the otter. And you my dear, you are a giraffe.”
“A giraffe? How did you get to that otter man? Why can’t I be an otter, too?”
“You are more majestic than an otter. You rise above, beautiful. You see things.”
“I see things?”
“Yup, that’s why you are a poet. You see the things other people miss.”
“I miss you,” Miranda said.
“Oh, baby, I miss you, too. I’ve been missing you for far too long in this life. I can’t wait for that Sunday to happen. It’s going to be a three-Red Bull day tomorrow”
He yawned.
She yawned.
The clock read three fifteen.
Most nights, they fell asleep with phones on until their batteries died.
In the morning, still thousands of miles apart, she sent him articles about the dangers of energy drinks. In response, he sent her pictures of his students in various states of chaos with baking soda and vinegar volcanoes and red clay models of the founding fathers.
“Touché,” she replied back. To be cheeky, she had Kristen ship a case of Red Bull to the apartment. He took a picture of that and posted it on Facebook announcing to the world that romance was no longer dead.
She replied with a word sculpture on the Blocked Poet feed. Bull, Love, Red, Devoted, Yours.
Ambrose replied to that. “Keep doing this. Corporate loves the love. Selling rights.”
Kristen sent a new contract the next day, which offered better payouts than a B-list celebrity’s. Every post with the corporate sponsor’s name earned a flat rate of ten thousand dollars. Click-through rates applied to each liked or shared post. If someone used the embedded coupon code, the click-through rate when up by twenty-nine percent. With her followers expanding every day, even a poet could do the math and see the value enough to sign.
Miranda spoke at another store, school, community center, hotel banquet room. Then she got on a plane and did it again and again and again.
The car Kristen arranged dropped her off in front of a house that made her parents’ house look like a child’s toy. The driveway wound so far back that Miranda had mistaken it at first for just another road. The house, three stories tall, featured grand columns out front like Tara and outdoor double staircases winding up either side to the front door on the second floor. Festive greens dotted with red berries flanked the doorway with a pineapple at its pinnacle. Miranda knew it as the colonial symbol for welcome and that it stood proudly on the university’s main gate. This was obviously the right place.
She took the stairs to the right and examined the door unsuccessfully for a bell. Instead, she lifted the heavy brass ring that hung from a lion’s mouth on the center of the door. As she lifted the ring, a chime rang out Pachelbel’s Canon in the interior of the home. Footsteps quickly followed, and Miranda found herself enveloped in a hug from a petite brunette in a red business suit.
“Hello,” said the woman. “Did your driver find the place okay? Well, silly me, obviously, or you wouldn’t standing there. I’m Ellie,” she said. “Class of ’88.”
“Hello,” Miranda said.
“Well do come in—everyone’s waiting for you.”
Miranda was led down the center hallway past the grandest staircase ever. They continued past a series of doors all shut until they reached a set of double doors at the end of the hallway. Ellie opened both at the same time, and the two women stepped into a glorious glass-walled room filled with game tables and beautiful potted plants. Foursomes of women played Scrabble. Wait-staff circulated the room with pots of coffee and trays of cookies shaped like Scrabble tiles.
“The conservatory I call it,” Ellie said, making a sweeping gesture with one hand, “but the only thing I conserve here is my sanity. Without these gatherings, I think I would just die of boredom. When I heard you were at the university, I called up there to have them send you down right quick. You are just the type of thing I like to have here.”
“You do this often?” Miranda asked.
“Oh, yes,” Ellie went on. “I have all sorts come and visit and share their talents. Musicians, scholars. Why once I even had that man from the television, the one who yells at people who own restaurants poorly? I had him come down and do a cooking demonstration.”
“Here?” Miranda asked.
“Indeed, my husband, class of ’86, had a whole television kitchen brought in. We filmed it and gave out the DVDs to our friends for the holidays that year.”
“So what do you want me to do exactly?” Miranda said.
“Oh, you know, your usual. I was told you will make up poems on the spot. They’re going to collect the pictures from your website and make a special book for my friends. But first, please eat something. The buffet is still set.”
After her meager evening meals of food gleaned from hotel mini-bars and snack stations, Miranda did not need to be asked twice.
“Lisa,” she said to one of the passing servers, “Please show the Blocked Poet to the buffet—see she gets what she needs, then seat her at the head table.”
On the other side of the room, on a raised platform was a table for one with several Scrabble boards waiting for her. Miranda indulged on a variety of things from California rolls to sliders with bacon and bleu cheese. Despite Ellie’s small size, she appeared to understand food. Miranda mentally took notes to share with Avery. The shot glasses of tomato soup with little rounds of grilled cheese on top were simply too whimsical not to share. She considered taking out her phone and snapping a picture, but she wasn’t sure of the etiquette. After all, she was the help.
After the ladies finished up their Scrabble games, Ellie lauded the redhead who earned the highest score of anyone in the room, giving her a floral quilted purse filled with lotions and soaps. “Just a little something,” Ellie said. “Now for our main event. The Blocked Poet.”
Miranda ran through her samples, and then opened the floor to requests. Quite a few equestrian themes, one unexpected about NASCAR, one about Paris that she could barely contain her composure for, and many, many on friendship and debutantes and cotillion—the last two breaking her seven-letters rule.
“It’s okay,” a blonde in Barbara Bush’s pearls and pale pink twin set told her. “It means more if it’s about what we want.”
Ellie herself asked for one about orchids. The group luckily pitched in on that one calling out different types and colors until finally Miranda was able to fill the board.
After all the sculptures were complete, another buffet table was unveiled with tiny cups of cappuccino topped with delicate sugar cookies and pies the size of half dollars on lollypop sticks. Miranda mingled through the guests, answering their questions about two-letter Scrabble words and their favorite poets.
At the s’more station, Miranda found herself next to a six-foot-tall woman who announced herself as Ellie’s sister.
“Sister?” Miranda asked, looking the tall woman up and down.
“In law,” the lady said. “Class of ’85.”
“Oh, how nice, you all went to the same school.”
“Yes, nice. For those of us who earned our place and didn’t flounce in on legacy.”
“Oh,” Miranda said. “There’s something to be said about tradition.”
“Tradition. Speaking of that, I really wanted to ask you about that student of yours.”
“Which student?”
She leaned in to speak to Miranda and wound up hovering over her. “Aren’t you coy? You know. The one that landed you here. Rumor has it you bedded a student for an entire year.” The woman accepted her s’more from the attendant. She popped the whole thing into her mouth and then licked the marshmallow off one finger at a time. “Was it worth it?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Miranda said.
“Oh, you know, based on the email the student sent to Jonas, it sounds like you knew every inch of his body. What was it you said to him, “Put out or get out? Isn’t that quite the poem?” She leaned back and called out over her shoulder to the table of the women behind them who were pretending not to eavesdrop. “That’s right, girls. That’s what she said. “Put out or get out. To a student.”
“He wasn’t a student,” Miranda said.
“So it is true,” the woman said springing back. “I knew Ellie wouldn’t have been able to pull this off otherwise.” She reached over and took the s’more the attendant was handing Miranda and floated off, waving the treat in the air. “Ellie,” she called out. “We simply must talk about what I just learned from your little poet.”
Miranda’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. The car wouldn’t be back for another half an hour.
Instead she skulked about the edges of the conservatory, hiding among the various orchids and ferns, talking to the few guests who hadn’t yet heard the rumors burning through the room like a wild fire. The ones who had heard just winked at her or raised their cups of coffee in a mock salute. After her sister-in-law pulled her aside, Ellie left the conservatory and didn’t reappear. One of the waitresses fetched Miranda when the car finally arrived.
She dialed Scott the minute she reached her room, her ability to hold back her tears dissolving the minute he answered.
“Randa, slow down,” he said. “Slow down. What is it?”
She told him eve
rything. The house. The food. The tall sister-in-law. The stolen s’more. The utter crushing embarrassment of the whole thing.
“The rotten shit,” he said. “How could he share that? That violates several different employment and student privacy statutes. We could sue.”
“I don’t want to sue,” Miranda said, her voice clogged with tears. “I just wanted to keep my job.”
“I told you this was blackmail. Now it’s worse than that. It’s blackmail and punishment. What the hell? You don’t even have to keep on doing this.”
The more he went on the more Miranda felt herself unable to focus. She didn’t want him to fix it. She just wanted him to listen. Instead of feeling better, she felt worse—first embarrassed and now lectured.
“Scott, please,” she finally said. “Listen, I need to take a shower. I have some early events tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “How can you even think of continuing?”
“I gave my word; people are expecting me.”
“Well, I’m expecting you, too,” he said. “I love you.”
“Scott, why are making this more difficult? I just wanted you to listen to me.”
“I am listening to you.”
“Then why don’t you understand that I want to be on this book tour, that I want to be doing this, that I want to keep my job, and that I never wanted to be just a mother.”
“Never wanted to be a mother?”
“Not that—just a stay-at-home mother. I want to keep my job.”
“But you didn’t say that—you said mother. What are playing at? You know what Lynn means to me. You knew this was a package deal.”
“Of course I do. You’re not listening. You misunderstood.”
“Maybe I didn’t, Miranda. Maybe you said exactly what you meant to say. And I’m done listening to it.” He hung up.
She tried calling back, but each time it went to voicemail.
C H A P T E R
Triple Love Score Page 24