The Accidental Bestseller

by Wendy Wax

  The writers Faye knew wrote very different things, but they wrote because they had things to say and because they were compelled to do so. There was nothing like expressing your feelings on paper, even if you had to disguise them as a fictional character’s.

  And, as she well knew, sometimes the writing was about the money and what it could do for your family. That was legitimate, too.

  “Sara, that’s quite enough. You sound like all those igno ramuses who read a romance novel back in the stone age or once read some titillating back-cover copy and think they have the right to judge. When you can sit down and produce a four-hundred-page manuscript that can transport a reader somewhere else for a spell, maybe I’ll allow you to criticize.”

  “No need to get so worked up, Mother. You know we’re proud of you and what you do, even if some of the parishioners do give Dad a hard time about it.”

  No doubt the casserole makers and dessert bakers trying to prove their own piety.

  “All right, dear.” Having made her point, Faye was eager to patch things up. “Shall I come to your house tomorrow or do you want to drop Becky off here?”

  They worked out the details and rang off. And then, because she already had the phone in her hand and couldn’t think of a good excuse, Faye dialed Calvin Aims’s cell phone.

  9

  The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

  —JOHN LE CARRÉ

  If you got to the Downhome Diner in south St. Petersburg on a weekday before 8:00 A.M., you could get a man-sized breakfast for $2.08. Weekends it cost a good bit more, but that didn’t stop folks from piling in and spilling out the front door to wait at the concrete picnic tables or peruse the ancient motorcycle sculptures made from scrap metal and old parts that dotted the parking lot.

  On Saturday mornings like this one, bikes and expensive choppers sat cheek to jowl with minivans and late-model sedans, just like the leather-clad bandana wearers sat up close and personal to other patrons in khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

  Tanya reported to work at 4:45 A.M. six mornings a week, including Saturday. The doors opened at 5:00. The stream of waiting fishermen would come in first to take their seats at the counter. After them came the day-shift cops followed by a batch of old men who’d allegedly been coming there every morning since the doors first opened, which was almost as long as Tanya had been alive.

  Belle Whalen, who’d been one of the original waitresses, had bought the place in the midseventies and had owned it ever since. She was pushing seventy now and had tough, leathery skin from an ill-advised love affair with the sun and decidedly feminist leanings. Pigs, which represented the male chauvinist kind, came in every form from stuffed to glass and occupied shelves, walls, and corners. Behind the cash register and all over the walls were plaques and posters that declared the supremacy of the female sex. Almost none of them were politically correct. “Give a man an inch and he’ll call himself a ruler,” proclaimed one. “If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport,” read another.

  Here the waitresses were competent and sassy, and fools, especially of the male variety, were not handled gently.

  “How’s Trudy doin’?” Red Thomas, a big bear of a man with a gray ponytail that had, in fact, once been red and a voice almost as big as his forearms, had been the head cook and Belle’s main squeeze, for most of the last thirty years. He was a legendary speed cooker, having been clocked at forty eggs cracked in sixty seconds and claimed to go through 1,200 eggs, 140 pounds of potatoes, 50 pounds of sausage, and 40 pounds of bacon on a busy day.

  “Same as usual,” Tanya said, as she stowed her purse and tied an apron over her jeans and T-shirt. Tanya’s shift had once belonged to her mother. In fact, they had shared the shift during Tanya’s high school years, long before forward-thinking corporations had sanctioned the idea. One day when Trudy couldn’t get out of bed after a night of partying, Tanya, knowing just how nonexistent their finances were, had simply shown up for her mother’s shift. When no one threw her out, she worked it right up until she had to leave for school—when her mother had straggled in to take over.

  Without discussing it, they’d fallen into the pattern—Tanya starting the shift at 4:45, Trudy taking that extra two hours to sleep off her hangover. Or enjoy her latest man.

  Today it would have been called enabling, but then it had been a matter of survival and Tanya had been grateful that Belle, who’d had her own issues with alcohol, had let it pass as long as one of them was there to carry the shift.

  Tanya had come back eight years ago when Kyle bailed out on them and she and the girls had been forced to move in with her mother.

  Theoretically Trudy stayed home to get the girls up and out to school and be there when they got home in the afternoon. The truth was that Loretta and Crystal mostly did for themselves, but Trudy’s presence allowed Tanya to take the early shift at the diner and the afternoon shift at the Laundromat. No one was getting rich, but the jobs and her book earnings meant they could pay the bills and put a small bit aside each month for emergencies. It was the best she could do right now and if she was always tired and more irritable than she’d like to be, then that was the price of survival. One day, she hoped, her girls would understand.

  Stifling a yawn, she retrieved her order pad from a drawer and lingered in the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  Beside Red at the griddle, Brett Adams, the latest in a long line of aspiring assistants, was doing his best to imitate Red’s one-handed crack and release. Somewhere in his late thirties, he was well over six feet with broad shoulders and dark waves of hair. Dark stubble covered angular cheekbones and a squared jaw.

  He shot Tanya a cocky grin as he cracked an egg one handed in a pretty fair imitation of Red’s motion and dropped the shell directly into the trash in one smooth move.

  “Not bad, boy.” Red gave him an approving nod and then guffawed and shot Tanya a wink when Brent’s next crack sent rivulets of yolk running down his hand.

  “Damn,” Brett swore. He looked up and saw Tanya watching him. “Pretend you didn’t see that.” He tried again with the same result. “Or that!” He shook his head and picked up a rag to wipe off his hands. “I’m blaming that one on you,” he said, pointing a finger at Tanya. “How’s a guy supposed to concentrate with such a good-looking audience?”

  “Oh, be still my heart!” Tanya dismissed him with an exaggerated bat of her eyelashes. Brett was very nice to look at, but he was an outrageous flirt with enough charm to be dangerous. There was already a restaurant-wide pool as to who would sleep with him first. Tanya had placed a bet but had no intention of competing for the privilege. She’d already been married to a man with too much charm and not enough follow-through. She didn’t intend to make that mistake twice.

  Tanya left the kitchen and began to work her way around her section. The regular customers knew whose tables were whose and were careful to sit at their favorite waitress’s table. Two waitresses had once come to blows over a big tipper who came in still blitzed at five one morning and accidentally sat in the wrong spot. The atmosphere might feel slightly bawdy, but it was also highly competitive. The waitresses were here for the tips, pure and simple. And they knew they had to earn them.

  Tanya poured a cup of coffee for Jake Harrow, a former navy captain with tattoos of women’s names running up and down his arms, one of which was Trudy’s. Graham Andrews, a long-haul trucker who had also once dated her mother, sat with him. For a while, Tanya had wondered if one of them might be her father—Trudy absolutely refused to discuss Tanya’s conception—but although they always asked after her mother and made a point of sitting in Tanya’s section, neither had ever left a tip large enough to be construed as child support.

  By ten, Tanya had made what felt like a thousand trips between the dining room and the kitchen. Her back hurt and her right knee ached, but she continued to flash her smile freely and squeeze a shoulder or laugh at a joke where appropria
te. It was this personal touch as much as her efficiency that made people choose her section and up the tips. It was a point of pride with her that some customers would pass up an empty table in somebody else’s section to wait for one in hers.

  “Hey, Red, what’s going on with my order?” she called now through the pass-through. “You’re making me look bad.”

  “Hold your horses, girl!” Red snapped, not looking the least bit harried or put out. At the Downhome a certain amount of sniping and return fire was expected. “The kid’s got your order and he just ain’t a full-fledged speedster yet.”

  “But I will be.” Brett flashed a smile at her as he began to plate the order. Lord, the man liked to show his teeth. “I figure in another ten years or so, Old Red here is gonna be eatin’ my dust.”

  As if he’d be around that long, Tanya thought. Red had been here for an eternity, as had most of the waitresses, but Red’s assistants were a more transient lot. They came, caused a bit of a stir sleeping their way through the waitstaff, and then they were gone. Not exactly something worth investing in.

  “Who’re you callin’ old?” Red pointed to his still thick head of hair. “I got every one of these gray hairs from this place. Workin’ with all these women will drive a man insane. Made me old way before my time!”

  Tanya’s phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out to check the caller ID. It read “home.”

  “Make it quick,” she said, bringing the phone to her ear. “I’m on the clock.” Belle had a real short fuse for waitresses who yacked on their phones when they were supposed to be waiting on tables. Tanya didn’t blame her.

  “Crystal is being such a big baby,” her older daughter whined. “All I said was . . .” A long-winded explanation followed.

  Tanya cut her off. “If you are not bleeding or on your way to the hospital, Loretta, I do not want to hear from you again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama, but Crystal . . .”

  “No. Stop right there. I have customers to wait on. Where is your grandma?”

  “In bed.”

  Of course she was. Tanya didn’t know why she would have expected otherwise. A shriek reached her over the line. “You go take care of your sister right now,” Tanya said. “And you two start behavin’ yourselves. Do you hear?”

  “But . . .”

  Tanya did not have time for “buts.” She flipped the phone closed and slipped it back in her pocket. She managed another pass through the dining room, took orders from two newly filled tables, freshened coffees, presented three checks, and then headed back to the pass-through. Her phone vibrated. Again.

  Ducking back into the kitchen, she whipped the phone out and put it to her ear. “What?”

  “Mama, Loretta is being a big old meanie. She won’t let me watch what I want ever. Tell her to let me or . . .”

  Tanya didn’t even bother to answer before she hung up this time. Looking up, she caught Brett watching her with a slight smile on his lips.

  “You think I’m funny?” she demanded, fisting her hands on her hips. “That’s cause you don’t have children plaguing you about every little thing.” Or a mama who could sleep right through it.

  He grinned right out at her for about the fifth time that morning. “Now how do you know that?”

  She looked him up and down. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure these things out. I know your type. I have completely got your number.”

  “Is that right?” He continued to crack eggs and flip hash browns, but his brown eyes held on to hers. He jammed his other hand down on the bell to announce the order was ready and flipped his spatula for good measure. “You do not have my number, girl. I can promise you that. You don’t even have the first digit.”

  She heard her name called and turned to see Jake trying to catch her eye. She was off this morning, not her usual competent self, and her daughters’ calls were not helping.

  Her phone vibrated again. This time Tanya yanked it out of her uniform pocket, flipped it open without looking at the caller ID and practically shouted, “What in the hell do you want this time? Can’t a woman work in peace anymore?”

  There was a moment of silence and then she heard Mallory’s voice. “Sorry. I should have realized you’d already be at work,” she apologized. “Faye wanted us to have a conference call to talk about Kendall.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, we’re both here, Tanya,” Faye’s voice chimed in. “Sorry we caught you at a bad time.”

  Tanya could picture them in their silent offices in their beautiful homes. She was backed into the corner of the ancient kitchen trying to avoid being seen. She looked up and saw Brett watching her again. One of the other waitresses came back to her corner. “Your natives are getting restless. A couple of them want their checks,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Tanya said. “Can you tell them I’ll be right with them?” Into the phone she said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Cal said he and Kendall have split up. He claims he doesn’t know where she’s gone.”

  “Do you believe him?” Tanya asked. None of them were big Calvin fans, having heard one too many stories that demonstrated just how clearly Calvin Aims’s life revolved around Calvin Aims. “I mean, you don’t think he’s done anything to her do you?”

  “You mean like stuffed her in a trunk or tied a concrete block to her foot and dropped her in the closest body of water?” Mallory’s tone was dry. “What are you, a writer or something?”

  “No,” Faye said. “We’re not going to be seeing old Calvin on America’s Most Wanted. He sounded too irritated to have done her in.”

  They all digested the “irritated” part.

  “So what do we do?” Tanya asked, over the clatter of dishes and the clank of silverware. Out on the floor Belle poured coffee at two of Tanya’s tables. Any minute she’d be back here looking for her.

  “Well, both Faye and I think she’s got to be at the mountain house,” Mallory said. “And we think one of us needs to go there.”

  “Oh.” Tanya wished she could volunteer to go, but she couldn’t even stay on the line much longer. “I could maybe go next weekend if that would help,” she began. “You know, maybe drive up Saturday and come back Sunday night.” It would be ten hours each way from St. Pete to Kendall’s mountain place, a weekend spent mostly driving, but Kendall and Faye and Mallory had always been there for her.

  “I could probably go by midweek,” Faye said. “Steve and I have a fund-raiser Monday night and I’ve got to get my proposal in by Wednesday. But after that I could . . .”

  “No, I’ll go,” Mallory said. “I can go first thing in the morning.”

  Tanya was surprised at Mallory’s offer. It wasn’t that Mallory wasn’t one to help; it was just that her offers normally came in the form of money or a gift—something that didn’t eat into her writing time. She was the most prolific of all of them and other than when she was on a book tour or making an appearance, she seemed to spend most of her time working. “But you never . . .” Tanya began.

  “Are you sure you can take the time?” Faye asked, getting to the words faster than Tanya. “I know you have a deadline coming up.”

  “I’ll just take my work with me,” Mallory said. “Maybe I’ll even stay a few days once I make sure Kendall’s OK. Just stay and write there for a while with Kendall.”

  Was that a wistful tone Tanya heard in her voice? No, it couldn’t be. Mallory could write all day every day already if she wanted to. She didn’t have Trudy or Loretta or Crystal or two jobs and a double-wide to take care of. She just had herself and that good-looking husband of hers who waited on her hand and foot.

  Tanya tried to picture that, someone else taking care of her—fussing over her—but she just couldn’t imagine it. Not even a little bit. If Tanya had a setup like Mallory’s she’d never leave it. She’d bury herself in that beautiful office and write nonstop forever.

  “My flight gets into Atlanta late tomorrow morning. I’ve reserved
a rental car so I can drive up to Kendall’s. I, um”—she cleared her throat—“found the directions in the bottom of my desk.”

  Was that a note of embarrassment in Mallory’s voice?

  “I’m not stepping on anybody’s toes, am I?” Mallory asked uncharacteristically. “Is someone else able to go sooner?”

  Than tomorrow? Tanya bit back a flip comment about her private jet waiting outside the diner to fly her up there.

  “No,” Faye said. “I’m glad you can go. But you have to promise to call us as soon as you get there and tell us what’s going on.”

  “Yeah,” Tanya added, popping her head out to scope out her tables, while trying not to let Belle see her on the phone. “After you give her some shit about avoiding us like she has.”

  She saw Jake raise a hand and make the scribbling motion for a check. Another one of her customers got up to take a container of artificial sweeteners from another table. She needed to get back on the floor.

  “Don’t forget to let us know how she is and what has to happen. It would be hard for me to get away right now,” Tanya said. “Unless it’s an emergency.”

  In which case, she’d put her kids on her back and walk through Florida and Georgia to get there if she had to. As far as she was concerned, she owed Kendall, Faye, and Mallory pretty much everything. And she didn’t intend to ever forget it.

  10

  Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks—chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.

  —FRAN LEBOWITZ

  Kendall lounged on the deck, her feet propped up on the railing, and stared out at the distant peaks. It was Sunday right around 1:00 P.M. and she was still wearing her pajamas and drinking coffee in hopes the caffeine might somehow jolt her out of her reality and into some kinder, gentler universe. It was beautiful here, soothing, contemplative even, but if she allowed her inner voice to have its say, she’d have to admit that she’d done little more than trade the family room couch for the strapped outdoor chair she was sitting in and the television for a breathtaking mountain view.