by Ann McMan
“Exactly.”
More silence.
Then Barb laughed. “You’re a fucking genius.”
Gwen smiled. “So I’ve been told.”
“Let me shop this idea around and get back to you.”
“That’ll work.”
“Later.” Barb hung up.
Gwen glanced down at her computer screen. During her five-minute phone call with Barb, two more hostile reviews had posted at Amazon.
She smiled.
Things were looking up.
Shawn looked at the little digital timer for what felt like the ten-millionth time.
It had to be stuck. She knew from the amount of sweat dripping off her forehead that she’d been on this damn thing for at least an hour.
She glanced at the wall-mounted TV. Kelly Ripa was gushing all over Ryan Reynolds, whose hairline was seriously starting to recede.
She hated this gym. The TVs were always tuned to horrible stuff. Didn’t anybody watch the news anymore? It’s not like there was a presidential election going on or anything . . . Couldn’t people care about that—even a little bit?
Ten more minutes had to have passed. She glanced at timer again.
Two?
No fucking way!
She hated this gym, and she hated this damn NordicTrack.
And right now, she hated Kelly Ripa, too.
Although Ryan Reynolds actually was kind of hot—in a breeder sort of way . . .
She shook her head to clear it. Okay. Clearly she’d been on this thing long enough. She was starting to get delirious.
In recent years, Shawn had been fighting a guerrilla war with her weight. Extra pounds would creep in, under the cloak of darkness, and strike without warning. Garments that once had been safe and familiar became objects of torture. And this really mattered now that she had such a public persona, and had to do so many damn interviews. She was convinced that this experience—having to squeeze her ass into “girl” clothes—was so egregious that it could replace waterboarding as a way to make even the most hardcore terrorist sing like a canary. Hell. After her first two hours in a pair of Privos, which were supposed to be casual, she was ready to confess to eighty-five capital crimes.
Gwen had taken her shopping, and they’d filled her closet with “outfits.” Shawn now called this repository her WMD: Wardrobe of Mass Destruction.
She felt like a diesel mechanic in drag.
But she had to admit that Gwen knew her business, and some of that shit actually looked pretty good on her. And Gwen said that if her goal, as a serious author, was to dance to the music of the mainstream market, she had to step up and pay the piper.
On gym days, she wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.
Her timer beeped. Finally. She climbed down off the machine and grabbed her towel. Cheated death again.
“Shawn? I thought that was you.”
Or maybe not.
Shawn sighed and turned around to face the woman standing in front of her. Bernadette. Great.
“Hi, Bernie.”
Bernadette smiled at her. Shawn could see that she was still wearing her Invisalign braces. The woman had been manic about them during the month they dated. She wouldn’t eat or drink anything but water while she had them in, and she had them in a lot. Shawn thought Bernie looked . . . thin. Really thin. Kind of like a camp survivor—with unusually straight teeth. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a bun so tight that her skin was stretched across her cheekbones like Saran Wrap. She was wearing a hot pink Lululemon ensemble that looked like it had been applied with spray paint.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Shawn used the end of her towel to wipe the sweat off her face.
Bernie shrugged. “I work out here all the time. I wonder why I haven’t run into you before now?”
Shawn held out the front of her soggy t-shirt. “Well, as you can see, I don’t.” She smiled. “It’s hit or miss for me, and lately, I’ve been missing more than I’ve been hitting.”
“I don’t know.” Bernie looked her up and down. “I think you look just fine.”
Shawn raised an eyebrow. There was no accounting for taste.
“And by all accounts, you’re getting plenty of exercise in your online cage fight with Kate Winston.”
Shawn was intrigued. “You know about that?”
Bernie laughed. “Who doesn’t? It’s all over Facebook. I heard that Ellen DeGeneres even Tweeted about it the other day.”
Swell.
On the other hand, that couldn’t be bad for book sales . . .
“For real?” Shawn asked. “What did she have to say?”
Bernie shook her head. “Beats me. But you’re sure in the big leagues, now. Must be some kinda book.”
“Have you read it?”
“No.” Bernie slapped Shawn on the arm. “You know I’m not much of a reader, honey.”
That was true. Bernadette even had a hard time making it all the way through a “Six Signs That Your Sex Life Is On The Skids” quiz in Cosmo without nodding off. And it was worth noting that nodding off during the quiz was one of the six signs.
“I remember,” Shawn said. “Maybe you can get the audio book?”
Bernie’s eyes grew round. “There’s an audio book?”
Shawn rolled her eyes. “Surethere is. Meryl Streep is reading it.”
“Really?” Bernie’s voice dropped to a near whisper.
Shawn stared at her in amazement. “No. Not really. God, Bernadette.”
Bernie slapped her on the arm again. “You can be such an asshole. No wonder Kate Winston hates you.”
“Kate Winston doesn’t hate me, she hates my book.”
Bernie looked incredulous. “Hello? Been to Facebook lately? Last time I checked, she had you listed in her profile under Things I Most Hate. As I recall, you were in a dead heat for third place—right after Brussels sprouts and the Tea Party.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?”
Bernie shook her head.
Shawn was fuming. Attacking her book was one thing, but going after her personally was a declaration of war. This bitch was going down . . . and not in any of those warm, fuzzy, I’ll-call-you-in-the-morning ways, either.
She picked up her jacket and her bag. “It was great to run into you, Bernie—but I’ve got something I need to go and take care of.” She started toward the exit, then stopped and turned back around. “How long until you get those things off?”
Bernie looked confused. “What things?”
Shawn pointed at her mouth. “Those Invisalign things.”
“Oh.” Bernie didn’t have to think about it. “Three more weeks. Why?”
“I was thinking that maybe I could buy you something to eat.”
“You mean like go out to dinner?”
Shawn shook her head. “No. Like buy you some groceries. Seriously, Bernie—you’re starting to look like Karen Carpenter.”
Bernie seemed horrified by the comparison. “Karen Carpenter had horse teeth.”
“Yeah, well. She also digested her own organs.”
Bernadette thought about that.
“Call me next month.”
Shawn nodded. “It’s a date.”
The first thing Shawn did when she got back to her bungalow was shuck off her sweaty workout clothes. She hoped it would help to calm her ass down. Then she took a long, cold shower. She hoped that would help to calm her ass down, too. When she got out of the shower and realized that her ass was still someplace far south of calm, she opened a bottle of wine and poured herself a big glass. Why not? It was after four . . . someplace.
Maybe a few minutes on the porch with Al would help?
Shawn’s house was located in a trendy, transitional neighborhood on the fringes of Dilworth—one of downtown Charlotte’s more desirable residential areas. All the houses on her tree-lined street had tiny yards and big front porches. It was a nosey dog’s paradise, and most of her neighbors had very nosey dogs.
Shawn’s nosey
dog, Al, was a big golden retriever who just showed up on her doorstep one day in the deep of summer, bearing nothing but a smile, a huge appetite, and most of a gnarled Nylabone. Shawn tried valiantly, and actually did succeed at locating Al’s owners, but they said she should just keep her. They said the dog kept escaping from her run, and that they didn’t really like her all that much.
Shawn didn’t really want a dog, but she couldn’t face turning Al over to a rescue outfit, and the Pound was out of the question. After all, she wasn’t that much trouble. She seemed perfectly happy just to lounge around on Shawn’s big front porch and chew on her tennis balls. And, oddly, she never tried to run off.
Shawn named her Albatross—Al for short. It seemed to fit because Al had a way of looking at Shawn with those big brown eyes that seemed to suggest she, too, knew what it felt like to carry a big load of ennui around.
They understood each other.
So Shawn sat with Al in the declining light and drank her glass of Darioush. It was fabulous. She had to admit that this was one of the best things about having a best seller—easier access to better wine.
But when even twenty minutes with a truly fine Shiraz didn’t succeed in calming her ass down, she gave up and grabbed her laptop off the table next to her chair. Part of her knew that looking at Blogula’s Facebook page was going to be a mistake, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what Bernie told her at the gym. Hell. She might not even be able to view it.
They sure as shit weren’t “friends.”
She typed Kate’s name into the search window, and her page loaded immediately.
Well, wrong about that.
Gwen pretty much managed Shawn’s Facebook page, so she must’ve friended Winston, along with every other damn reviewer on the planet.
Shawn was surprised when she saw Blogula’s profile photo. She was . . . interesting, in a spawn-of-Satan sort of way.
She tapped her track pad for a moment, then gave in and clicked on the icon to view Winston’s photo album. A dozen small pictures filled up her computer screen. There she was, posing at some awards gala with other Gilded Lily types. She was wearing a tight little black dress with a big bow across the chest. There was another photo of her with her arms wrapped around the head of a brown and black dog. Shawn thought they kind of looked alike—both had heads full of short, husky-looking hair. No wonder some of Kate’s detractors nicknamed her Eraserhead. It seemed to fit.
Cute dog, though.
Another photo showed Winston in a bikini lounging in some tropical locale.
Jeez. Why did people always cram their Facebook pages with photos of themselves looking great?
Shawn clicked on that one to make it larger.
Winston was laughing and holding onto some candy-ass-looking drink with a parasol sticking out of it. There was another woman with her in the photo. Shawn moused over her image and the tag “Randi” popped up.
Yeah. I’ll just bet you were, love chunks, she thought.
So.
Eraserhead goes for the FemBot types?
It figures. No wonder she hated my book.
Shawn clicked out of the photo album.
She sat back and picked up her glass of Darioush. She really needed to spruce up her own profile photos. Not that she looked shabby or anything, but those pictures of her in Tool World posing with the 500-amp ground clamp probably didn’t do a lot to make her look like a serious author. She glanced back at Kate Winston. She had dark blue eyes. Damn.
She drained her glass.
Let’s get to the rat killing.
She scrolled down the page to read Winston’s lists of hates and loves. How friggin’ sophomoric is this?
She started to read the “loves” list. Yadda, yadda . . . poetry, yadda, yadda . . . Edgar Meyer, yadda, yadda . . . The Iron Chef, yadda, yadda . . . Hannibal Lecter . . .
Hannibal Lecter?
She shook her head. That figures.
What else do we have here?
Under “dislikes,” Winston listed bigotry, religious intolerance, Nutella, the novels of Norman Mailer, and formulaic lesbian pulp fiction. That was it. Shawn checked the list twice to see if her book—or her name—showed up anyplace. They didn’t.
Bernie was nuts.
She sat back. Unless, of course, Winston considered Bottle Rocket to be an example of lesbian pulp fiction.
Probably.
She thought about that. It was true that in writing Bottle Rocket, Shawn set out to lampoon some of the more ridiculous conventions that were the mainstays of the genre—like the mind-blowing, multiple orgasms that always occurred on a first date. But she wrote that bit of apocryphal sensationalism into her book with great intentionality. It was supposed to be funny and ironic, and not a serious depiction of lesbian relationships. After all . . . everyone knew that real relationships didn’t work that way. At least, they never had for Shawn.
She glanced up at Winston’s profile photo again.
And probably they never have for you either, Eraserhead.
But she had to admit . . . Winston was kind of cute—in a pit bull puppy, I-know-I-look-sweet-but-I’ll-rip-your-throat-out-if-you-try-to-pet-me kind of way.
A small green light in the lower right-hand corner of the page caught her eye.
Winston was online and logged into Facebook.
Before she had time to think better of it, Shawn clicked on her name and typed an instant message into the chat window.
Message from: ShawnHarris
Do you seriously think my book is lesbian pulp fiction?
A full minute went by. Then Shawn’s message indicator popped up. Winston had written back.
Message from: KateWinston
Are you talking to me?
Shawn rolled her eyes and typed back.
Message from: ShawnHarris
No. I sent this IM to Betty Friedan and it accidentally folded space and landed in your inbox. Of COURSE I’m talking to you.
It wasn’t long before Winston responded.
Message from: KateWinston
It’s affirming to see that you’re every bit as charming as the members of your fan base.
Message from: ShawnHarris
Really? I haven’t exactly seen your name on any Miss Congeniality lists. In fact, I’m fairly certain that it’s YOUR claque I have to thank for all 37 of those toxic reviews at amazon.com.
Message from: KateWinston
Don’t jump to conclusions. Have you considered the possibility that 37 people may have been able to claw their way past your camp followers and actually read the thing without having to down a pint of your Kool Aid first?
Shawn was incredulous. Who the fuck pissed in her Wheaties?
Message from: ShawnHarris
Want to dial it back a little bit? I’d like to think that I’m capable of recognizing and appreciating legitimate criticism when I see it.
Message from: KateWinston
All evidence to the contrary.
Message from: ShawnHarris
Hey . . . who put a nickel in you?
Message from: KateWinston
Let’s see. I think you did. If memory serves, YOU contacted ME to ask if I “seriously” thought your book was lesbian pulp fiction.
Message from: ShawnHarris
That’s true. So?
Message from: KateWinston
“So” what?
Message from: ShawnHarris
So, do you seriously think that my book is lesbian pulp fiction?
Message from: KateWinston
Did you read my review?
Message from: ShawnHarris
Of course I did.
Message from: KateWinston
Then I’m confused about why you’d have to ask me this question.
God. She’s so infuriating.
Message from: ShawnHarris
Look. You’re the one whose Facebook profile proclaims a disdain for pulp fiction.
Message from: KateWinston
First
of all, what does that have to do with you? And, second, if you’re so plainly convinced that your book is pulp fiction, then you don’t need me for this conversation.
Jeez. Be a bitch, much, lady?
Message from: ShawnHarris
Look . . . I’m just trying to have an open conversation with you. Wanna stuff the rancor?
Message from: KateWinston
Sure. Wanna call off your attack dogs?
Message from: ShawnHarris
I don’t happen to HAVE any attack dogs.
Message from: KateWinston
Oh, come on! They’ve crashed the Gilded Lily site for five days in a row now.
Message from: ShawnHarris
I am NOT responsible for the behavior of my fans.
Message from: KateWinston
Really? I don’t see you out there renouncing their behavior.
Message from: ShawnHarris
And I don’t see you recanting any of the vitriol you spewed about my book, either.
Message from: KateWinston
I would hardly classify my review as vitriolic.
Message from: ShawnHarris
I would hardly classify it as fair and balanced.
Message from: KateWinston
Remind me again why we’re having this conversation?
Message from: ShawnHarris
Because, against my better judgment, I was hoping we could have some adult dialogue about your obvious misread of my novel.
Message from: KateWinston
It seems clear that having “adult” dialogue is a stretch for you.
Message from: ShawnHarris
I really don’t understand why you feel the need to be so irascible.
Message from: KateWinston
Look. This debate is going no place. Besides, it’s probably inappropriate for us to be having any kind of personal contact before the Con.
Message from: ShawnHarris
The Con?? What are you talking about?
Message from: KateWiston
CLIT-Con. You HAVE heard of it, haven’t you?
Message from: ShawnHarris
Of COURSE I’ve heard of it. What does it have to do with this conversation?
Message from: KateWinston
Hello? We’re both on the agenda for the plenary session?
What the fuck? No way! Gwen would’ve run something like that by me. Winston has to be blowing smoke.