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@fatalinfluence We’ve come to the conclusion that champagne is underrated.
Harriet had heard the expression “don’t drink and tweet” but had never really thought about it until now. It might be good advice, but how could she resist? Even with Curtis feeding her berries and stroking her ass with his hand as they kissed, she wanted to make it real, not that it wasn’t really happening in real life, but by commenting on it, putting the experience online, that somehow made it really real. It wasn’t just real to her, it was real to the world. Her fans loved little glimpses into her personal life and her writing process and she didn’t need fancy metrics to figure it out; every time she put something personal online she would get dozens of “likes” and retweets and favorites and +1s. In fact, she felt like writing more than a little chirp about how she was feeling. She felt like writing an extended essay on the health benefits of copious champagne consumption. She’d never felt stronger or more energized or more confident. Or more daring.
“Do you always have to be connected?”
Harriet looked up at Curtis. He was refilling their glasses with more bubbly wine. She smiled at him.
“It’s an addiction. Sorry.”
…
As Harriet was typing furiously into her iPhone, Curtis stood and looked out at the pool. A lone figure sprawled out on a chaise lounge below but otherwise it was empty. It’s really true what they say about Los Angeles, they roll up the sidewalks after ten. A fantasy popped into Curtis’s head, a kind of heroic daydream porn star scenario featuring him and Harriet engaged in wild monkey sex on the balcony. Oh yeah. LA may be asleep, but this is how Brooklyn rolls.
He wished he’d had the nerve to stop and buy some condoms but, at the time, he didn’t know that the evening would progress so swimmingly. If he was going to have sex tonight, it would be unprotected. That didn’t really bother him. There was no way he was going to say no if she offered; a starving man doesn’t leave a banquet because he can’t find a fork. Besides, Harriet was an intellectual, and smart people didn’t pass STDs to each other, Curtis was sure of that.
…
Harriet put her iPhone on the table and looked up at Curtis. “Sorry. Sorry. I get carried away.”
“Welcome back.”
He handed her a freshly topped glass of champagne. Harriet took a sip and decided to make small talk before he started shoving more fruit in her mouth.
“So why were you interviewing that sea witch?”
“You mean Roxy Sandoval?”
He shrugged and sat down, reaching a hand out and stroking her leg. “I’m under contract to ghost a book for her.”
“What?”
“I’m a novelist. But I’m unpublished.“
Harriet interrupted. “Prepublished.” She preferred to use the more hopeful expression, however ridiculous it sounded.
Curtis just shook his head. “Whatever. This is how I pay my bills. I ghostwrite. In fact one of the books I ghosted is on the bestseller list.”
Harriet froze. “You what?”
“It’s hack work, I know. Terrible. But I was broke.”
The happy buzz of the champagne and pheromones and fresh fruit was instantly replaced by a chill that raced up her spine and made her skin crawl. Harriet spoke very slowly. “Which book is it?”
Curtis leaned back, his expression a mix of embarrassment and pride.
“Totally Reality. The Sepp Gregory book.”
Harriet was in shock. Here was the man she wanted to interview, the ghostwriter who could shame Sepp Gregory and his publisher, the extraordinary prose stylist who spun schlock into beauty and beauty into schlock. Here was a brilliant writer who chose to make his living shitting on the altar of literature. He was also the man she had been making out with, someone who, until a few seconds ago, she had been planning on having sex with. She didn’t know what to say.
Finally some words emerged from her mouth. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
Curtis looked at her and appeared to not notice that she was upset. “No joke. I’m a big-time famous author that nobody’s every heard of.”
Harriet put her glass of champagne on the table. The champagne which had been so delicious moments ago now tasted saccharine and bilious. The cool breeze that had felt so sensual now gave her a shiver. The jazz that had been so seductive was grating, the speakers on the Mac Air turning the sultry saxophone into a rasping sound that hurt her ears.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but there it was.
…
It slowly dawned on Curtis that maybe he’d just blown his opportunity for sex. From the look on her face, he was going to be spending the night imagining what sex with her would be like while he beat off on the fancy hotel sheets. But while that realization was slowly dawning on him, another thought, a steady counterpoint of resentment, began to percolate in his head. What right did this chick have to judge him? Who does she think she is? She’s no James Wood. Not that he’d try to go to bed with James Wood. She was a critic, a self-proclaimed authority. And while Curtis had, in the past, respected her demanding aesthetic judgements about other people’s work, it was an altogether different experience to stare down her twin barrels of judgment and pretension about his own work.
Now that he thought about it, why did people respect her opinion? What had she done to earn it? Where were her credentials? She was like a quack who hung a shingle and proclaimed herself a doctor. But then he caught himself. He didn’t want to be mad at her. She was, in almost every way, his dream girl. In addition to her braininess, she was also the hottest potential piece of ass that had come his way in a long time. Well, if he was being honest she was the only potential piece of ass that had come his way in a long time.
“Why?”
“Why?”
Curtis became animated. “Yeah. Why should I be ashamed of myself? Writers have been doing stuff like this for hundreds of years. Kingsley Amis, Larry McMurtry, H. P. Lovecraft. There are lots of great writers who have worked ghosting. For chrissakes, Dickens wrote newspaper ads.”
“Yeah, but . . . a reality star?”
Curtis sat down and took a drink.
“I spent a long time writing a novel that nobody wanted. I was broke.”
Harriet glared at him, her eyes fierce. “You should have some dignity.”
Curtis flashed with anger. “Oh, look who’s talking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Curtis could tell from the edge in her voice that he definitely wasn’t going to get laid tonight. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“No. Expound. Please. I’m all ears.”
Curtis shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
Harriet laughed. “The funny thing is, I was looking for you. I wanted to find Sepp Gregory’s ghostwriter. And I did.”
Curtis raised an eyebrow. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I’m working on an exposé of the publishing business. I was going to focus on your opus, but now I see you’re a veritable factory of cheap celebrity novels.”
Her tone annoyed Curtis. He wasn’t even going to think about her or her freckled breasts while he masturbated tonight. Maybe he’d think about Roxy Sandoval or any one of the dozens of Playmates he’d seen at the mansion.
“I may be a whore, but I’m not cheap. I’m getting two hundred grand for the Roxy Sandoval story.”
Harriet sighed.
“That’s even more disappointing.”
She stood and looked off into the distance, not saying anything for what seemed like a long time.
Curtis stood too. He was unsure what was about to happen. Was she leaving? Going to the bathroom?
“We can’t all teach at Yale or get fellowships at Yaddo or NEA grants. Some of us have to earn our money by doing what we can.”
Harriet tossed back the rest of her glass. She was leaving. He could tell.
“You’re a brilliant writer.
Really. You don’t deserve your talent if you’re going to squander it.”
Curtis put his champagne down and narrowed his gaze, staring at her. Harriet noticed he was clenching and unclenching his fists. Finally he just shook his head.
“Do you think I like this? I would rather be writing my own work but, you know, I have to eat. This is the real world and not some literary la-la fantasy land.”
Harriet felt the champagne stick in her throat. She whipped her head around and glared at him.
“Fuck you.”
Curtis was nodding, letting the anger take control of his tongue.
“Nice. You just sit on your throne and render judgment. What qualifies you? I always wondered. And why do you use the royal ‘we’ on your blog? What’s that about? Are you the queen of some realm?”
Harriet glared at him, her body trembling. “We are sorry we ever met you.”
Curtis’s eyes stung. Was he about to cry? “That’s right. You failed at writing fiction, so you just criticize.”
There was something about the way he said it.
Harriet scooped his Mac Air off the table, slammed the lid, and threw it off the balcony, sending it spinning like a Frisbee out into the sky. Her sudden movement coupled with the shock of seeing his new computer fluttering toward the swimming pool caused Curtis to react instinctively. His movement was awkward, impaired by alcohol and the fact that he was not particularly coordinated, but he launched himself in a heaving, spastic lunge, his hands pawing the air in the hopes of catching his laptop. He missed the computer but managed to trip over one of the chairs. He lost his balance, lurching and stumbling. And, as he tried to get some traction on the tile floor, he realized that the cool handmade shoes Pete had made for him were not sufficiently broken in to prevent him from slipping and skidding toward the railing, where—in a freakish move—he somersaulted over the bars and fell three floors down, landing on the concrete patio with a wet slap that, for some reason, made Harriet think of a sack of pork.
…
Sepp sat up in his chaise, groggy and unfocused from sleep, and saw Curtis lying on the concrete. Curtis’s eyes were open, but his head was bent at an unnatural angle, his neck snapped by the impact. Sepp knew instantly that something was wrong.
“Dude? Are you okay?”
…
Harriet stood on the balcony, stunned. One second Curtis was here, insulting her and smirking, the next he was gone, vanished into thin air. Harriet thought about that one. It was from Shakespeare, The Tempest. She was pretty sure about that.
She heard a voice from below.
“Hello?”
She looked over the edge of the balcony and saw Sepp Gregory staring up at her. Even though it was dark by the pool, she could see from the angle of Curtis’s head that he was dead. Sepp gave her a wave.
“I think this dude is hurt.”
Harriet’s brain spun. She tried to think. If Curtis was dead, had she murdered him? Manslaughtered him? She hated being so self-centered but, well, was she in trouble? It’s not like she pushed him off the balcony, but then again it’s not like her actions didn’t cause him to fall. If she hadn’t thrown his laptop, they’d still be arguing on the balcony. That made her responsible for his death. But where did she stand relative to the laws of the State of California? She was pretty sure she’d murdered Curtis. Even if it was accidental. Negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter or stupid accidental homicide or something like that. A depraved indifference, a wanton disregard. A crime of passion. The cops would call it whatever they could to make her responsible.
Fuck.
She’d go to jail for depraved indifference to a wafer-thin laptop. She hadn’t meant to do the crime but she really didn’t want to do the time. She looked over the edge at Sepp. He was the only witness. She needed time to think and she needed to do something fast. She focused her champagne-impaired brain and concentrated.
“Stay there. I’ll be right down.”
…
Sepp bent down close to Curtis’s face.
“Hey man? Can you hear me?”
Sepp listened for a moment and thought he heard a gurgled response but then he realized it was the pool’s automatic filter system swirling the water around. He turned when Harriet came running out. She stopped next to him, her hand reflexively going to her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
She turned to Sepp and grabbed his arm.
“Will you help me? We need to get him to a hospital.”
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?”
Harriet shook her head. “He doesn’t have insurance.”
…
Sepp stood outside the hotel’s back door, propping Curtis up. It reminded him of helping drunk people, how their bodies go all floppy and they piss themselves. He didn’t have time to put on a shirt, so he stood there in khakis and flip-flops feeling the warmth of Curtis’s body in his arms and the tingle of the night air on his back. The only thing that looked weird was Curtis’s head. It kept lolling, rolling, drooping, and dropping from side to side. Sepp tried to bolster it with his shoulder, raising his elbow, but then the head would tilt and spin, owl-like, in a random direction. It reminded Sepp of that game with the marble where you twisted knobs and tried to roll the ball through a little labyrinth, avoiding the pitfalls and dead ends. He used to be pretty good at that when he was a kid.
It took her a while, Sepp had no idea how long he’d been standing there, but Harriet finally pulled up to the entrance in a very small car.
Harriet jumped out and opened the door.
“Let me help.”
She took Curtis’s legs while Sepp held his shoulders and they gently slid him into the backseat. Curtis’s head spun again, unnaturally, like the devil girl in that scary movie whose head did a three-sixty and then she puked green vomit everywhere. Sepp hoped that didn’t happen. That would be gross.
Sepp bolstered Curtis’s head as best he could against the door. He looked at Harriet.
“He looks kinda dead.”
“Well, he just fell off a fucking balcony, how do you think he’s supposed to look?”
Before Sepp could answer she snapped, “Get in the car.”
…
Harriet headed east. She didn’t know what, exactly, she was going to do. In fact, she was beginning to wonder what had possessed her to bundle Curtis into the car and take off with a reality TV star in the passenger seat. Had she just lost her mind? Was this what they meant by temporary insanity? Did she seriously think she could get away with it? And what was the “it” she was trying to get away with? Why not just tell the cops the truth? They’d been drinking, Curtis fell off the balcony. That is what happened. She’d never broken the law before, had no history of violent behavior or domestic abuse. So what was she worried about? Somewhere around La Brea Avenue she almost turned around, almost went to look for a hospital, but then she realized there was no way she could explain this and come out of it looking innocent. He was dead because of her, and this driving around like a crazy person wasn’t going to provide the verisimilitude her story needed. Harriet imagined herself sitting on a chair in the police station sobbing into a paper towel as she confessed, admitting how she’d unintentionally killed an innocent man. There would be a trial. Publicity. It would cost her a fortune in legal fees and, in the end, they’d send her away for a few years.
But was Curtis really innocent? He was a fucking ghostwriter. Maybe he got what he deserved—karma and all that.
Harriet had always been a good student. She got straight As for most of her life. Maybe she hadn’t been the most social butterfly in high school or college, but she’d applied herself. She’d read a lot of literature. She’d graduated cum laude from Mills, an all-women’s college, with a degree in English. She tried to think. What would Elizabeth do if she’d accidentally caused Mr. Darcy to fall off his horse and break his neck? What would George Sand do if she accidentally dropped a piano on Chopin? Harriet wished she was more familiar with th
e oeuvre of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Then she’d know what to do. She made a mental note to add some genre books to her reading list.
None of what was happening seemed like a conscious decision to her. It was like she was on some kind of maniac-on-the-lam autopilot bubbling up from her subconscious from all the bad TV shows she’d watched as a teen. She drove east, because if she’d driven west they’d hit the ocean and then there’s nowhere to go, but east of Los Angeles was nothing but miles of road and the open desert. She needed to figure out what to do and going to the desert to look for answers was a pretty common trope in literature.
…
It was midnight when Sepp realized that they weren’t driving to any hospital. He turned and looked at Curtis in the backseat. The dude was looking pale. Sepp looked at Harriet. She was driving, concentrating on the road with a savage intensity. She looked kind of pale too. Maybe it was just the light. Or maybe something was going on.
“I think you passed the hospital.”
Harriet kept her eyes on the road. “He’s dead.”
Sepp twisted in his seat and looked at Curtis again. He’d never seen a dead person before. Well, technically that wasn’t true because once he’d seen a surfer get clobbered by a board and then wash up an hour later but he didn’t get a good look at him because there were so many people standing around, so he wasn’t sure what a dead person looked like. But now that he looked, the dude wasn’t breathing and Sepp was pretty sure that breathing was a big part of being alive.
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
Sepp settled back into the passenger seat. He didn’t know what was going on. Here they were, a dead guy in the backseat, and they were just driving. Brenda and Marybeth were going to be pissed off if he screwed up his book tour.
“I’m supposed to do a couple of TV shows.”
“Now?”
“Tomorrow. Then I’ve got a signing in Phoenix the day after.”
Harriet stared off into the distance.
“You’ll have to reschedule the TV shows. We’re going to Phoenix.”
23
Mojave
Raw: A Love Story Page 13