by Anna Roberts
It fucking is.
Tears spring to my eyes. This is terrible. It will take weeks for the burn to settle down and I'll probably have a pair of white smiley faces emblazoned on my tan boobs for the rest of the summer. My honeymoon is ruined.
Honeymoon? Hell of a honeymoon when you don’t even know for sure if your first husband is definitely dea...
- I don't know what you're talking about.
Yes you do, Hanna. Your little flashback adventure gave you away. You remember everything about the helicopter cra..
-...oh look. The chapter's ending.
Chapter Two
Twenty-Eight Months Later
Hi. It's me again.
Yeah, you don't get rid of me that easily - I'm her Inner Goddess. Like I said, I've been turning cheap meta-tricks in her head since she was going foetal in parking garages because a billionaire didn't kiss her on the first date. You can always rely on Hanna to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Now, we were going to have another chapter of Hanna moping about on a luxury yacht in the South of France, but it can be basically summed up in a handful of words. Jet Ski, buttplugs, card index, sulk, spank, ow, nipple clamps, Jet Ski instructor, large biceps, dirty martini and saran wrap. So have fun with that. Make a mad-lib out of it or something. Don't say I never give you anything.
However, what you're probably really wondering (if you've read books one and two - and if you haven't you should. It's kind of the whole idea of a trilogy. Also the author needs new shoes) is how on earth Hanna is on honeymoon in the South of France when at the end of book two her husband apparently died in a helicopter crash. Well, hang tight my fluffy, buxom little darlings. All will be revealed. Instead let's skip merrily across the Atlantic and check in with Kate. After even half a chapter in Hanna's head I get claustrophobic. You have no idea. It's terrible in there.
You know your life has gone wrong somewhere when you're bored of watching really hot men go down on one another.
I can't pinpoint the exact moment it all fell apart. It kind of hit the skids after the El Fupacabra articles. I thought Confessions of a Cryptid would be the kind of thing the general public ate up with a goddamn spoon, but what the hell do I know? I never thought Sasquatch erotica would go viral. Or that millions of people would read lousy Twilight fanfiction like it was an actual book or something.
I flick through the channels on the TV. Tate's butt is pretty much right in my face and I feel like I should do something, so I give it a quick slap and lick his left cheek. He moans around a mouthful of Chet's dick and Chet makes a low, whimpering sound and curls his toes into the under sheet. Maybe it's because I switched birth control - my gynecologist was really dead set on selling me a hormonal IUD but I can't help thinking the fucking thing has nuked my libido from orbit. Not a single twitch down there, I swear to God.
"Kate, are you joining in already?" asks Chet, his voice throaty with lust. He's leaning back on his elbows on our super king-size bed, giving me a grand view of his powerful, tennis-instructor's biceps and solid, gold-furred pecs. His eight pack is only obscured by Tate's tousled dark head working busily between his burly thighs.
Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with me?
"Can I take a rain check on that?" I say, switching channels again. Unfortunately for the guys I happen on a thing that kills whatever lingering desire I had stone dead. On the TV screen Oprah is nodding sagely at something her guest said, and I know without looking twice who she's talking to.
Tate raises his head. "You okay, sweetie?"
"Yeah. I'm fine," I say, leaping off the bed and grabbing my clothes from the floor. "Fucking kid's going to be awake any minute anyway."
I make my way through the tangle of macramé curtains that hang in front of almost every damn door in the place and carefully nudge open the door of the kid's room.
She's sacked out on a giant patchwork floor cushion, thumb in mouth, her orange hair stuck up all sweaty on one side of her little head. Sometimes when she's asleep like this I almost find her cute. Almost.
When I open the back door the heat is like nothing on earth. I was never meant to be this far south - I'm Irish, for fuck's sake. I guess I could have gone to Seattle with Teresa and Big Bob but I don't think I could handle a cross-country flight in the company of Damien's evil twin sister. Besides, her grandparents will want to see her, and I don't think I can handle them either.
Tate comes out to find me, wrapped loosely in one of Teresa's old dressing gowns. It's trimmed with tattered lace and when I see it my heart gives a strange, lonely twist. Between that and fucking Oprah - it's like the universe has it in for me today.
"That was lousy luck, honey," says Tate, his hands settling on my shoulders. "Landing on Oprah like that."
"It's my fault. I should pay more attention to you guys. I mean, what kind of an anarcho-bisexual polyamorous collective threeway is it when one person is stuck in a fifth wheel frame of mind?"
His thumbs press into the flesh at the base of my neck, rubbing slow, deep circles. He's good at this. He used to do physiotherapy, back when he was a nurse. "You're not a fifth wheel, Kate," he says. "You know we all love having you. And you're so good with...her."
"I'd be better if I was allowed to slap her fucking wrists from time to time." The kid's got the makings of a serious klepto. Everything is 'mine'.
"No way," says Tate. "You know how Teresa feels about corporal punishment."
"I know. And didn't Hanna turn out well?"
"Honey, that's Hanna. You know she's not like other people. She's kind of a unique case."
"She's a fucking asshole. I always said she was an asshole. I used to tell her, every other damn day. 'Hanna - you're an asshole. That's why boys don't date you. That's why your only friends are me and a lying, conniving shitstain of a Mexican transvestite'..."
"Hey. Shh."
"...do you know he once tried to eat her pussy in a parking lot? I mean that should have been a red flag right there, shouldn't it? Why would anyone want to eat Hanna's pussy, unless they were into getting hairballs? I saw it once - it was like the fucking lower Amazon down there. There's Seventies bush and then there's welcome to the goddamn jungle."
"Kate...chill. You're putting new knots in your shoulders faster than I can knead them out."
We both know it's too late for that. As if on cue the hellbeast stirs. It starts with a tiny little snuffling moan, something you wouldn't even hear if you weren't listening for it, but six months of bitter experience have taught us all to be afraid, be very afraid. It's no wonder we're all best friends with the bong; as it is we spend most of our time on edge, nerves stretching to breaking point, ears constantly tuned to listen out for the dreaded sound of Celestia waking from her nap.
First there's that barely audible mew in the back of her throat. Then a kind of petulant 'mmh' sound when she realises she's alone, and then the sound rises - slowly at first but sirening inevitably louder as she fills her little lungs and gives voice to the unchecked desires of her monstrous Id.
"WANNA JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!"
"Shit," says Tate. His thumbs have stopped moving. My neck and spine have turned to stone.
"WANNA JOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSS!"
Chet comes into the kitchen, the kid perched on his hip. The sweet, blossom-tinted flush that looked so adorable on her cheeks when she was sleeping is already an angry, cherry red. It's not a good colour for a natural redhead.
"WANNA JOOOOOOOOOOOOSSS!"
"Yeah, we heard you the first seventeen times," I say, and get her a juice box from the fridge. "What's the magic word?"
She frowns at me, her little red-blonde barely-there eyebrows leaving tiny dents above each eye. Nobody has ever failed to give her exactly what she wants at the very second she asks for it and she's confused - really confused. For a moment she looks so much like her Mom that I nearly laugh.
"Please," I say, slowly, enunciating carefully. "Can you say 'please', shitlord?"
Her expression turns obsti
nate. "JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSS!"
Chet winces and leans back from the child in his arms. "Jesus, Kate - fucking warn me if you're going to do that."
Celestia flails her fists towards me, her face a deep, velvety crimson by now.
"Just give it to her," says Chet. "Please."
Wasn't exactly the result I was after, but I got a please out of someone. Maybe the little ass-basket will start learning by example. We can only hope and pray. I hand her the juice box and she falls silent as soon as she has the straw in her mouth.
"Thank you," I say. "Can you say that, Lessy? Can you say 'thank you'?"
She stares at me with an expression somewhere between deep concentration and full-on 'When I rule the world your death will be slow and painful'. I've checked under her hair for suspicious birthmarks but didn't find anything. We got through her first birthday without anyone diving off the roof with a noose around their neck, but the kid’s only nineteen months and I daresay Anti-Christs don’t view time in the same way as we do. Suffice to say, if anyone buys her a tricycle I am out of here.
Chet hands her to me. "You take her. My ear's ringing like a roadie's."
"Thanks so much," I say, hefting the weight of Daddy's little dumpling on my hip. Her days are mostly composed of sugar, TV and more sugar, and she definitely didn't inherit her twitchy mother's neurotic metabolism. Although it's anyone's guess where the red hair came from. Must be recessive.
I dump her down in front of the news. She watches vacantly. She doesn't really care much about anything so long as juice keeps hitting her tongue. The wonderful smell of cooking bacon drifts from the kitchen; the one good thing about Bob and Teresa being away is that we can all stop pretending to be vegans and have bacon cheeseburgers for dinner every night.
I watch the news. The usual crap. Government tries to do stuff. Congress doesn't let them. Meanwhile nobody's mentioning the global warming shaped elephant in the fucking room because hey, a parrot in Tallahassee has learned to dance to Gangnam Style. I switch channels. Lessy pouts. She was enjoying the dancing parrot. Although you’d have to be dead inside not to enjoy the dancing parrot. Maybe she's not totally evil.
"Look, Lessy," I say, pointing at the screen. "GaGa's on TV."
She turns back to stare. Teresa, also known as GaGa round these parts, is standing windswept with the pine bluffs of Puget Sound behind her. "I don't think anybody appreciates the seriousness of our situation," she says, ineffectually brushing her hair back from her face. The caption says 'Theresa West - Feminist Theorist'. Oh shit. She'll go nuts when she finds out they not only spelled her name wrong but gave her the same job title they gave Camille Paglia last week.
"GaGa," says Lessy.
"Yeah. GaGa. GaGa's pissed."
"GaGa piss."
"She sure is. Just remember - it's righteous eco-feminist rage, okay? She's not 'pissed', ever."
"It's typical of our species that we don't see the bigger picture," says Teresa. "In terms of geological time we’ve only been here for a couple of seconds, but for some reason we can't see our way to taking small measures to prevent what has been staring us in the face for several decades now..."
"Well, that's all very well Ms. West," says the interviewer. "But there are some sections of the American public who don't accept your hypothesis."
She blinks. "Which part of it?"
"Well, there are some who believe that the world itself is only six thousand years old. What do you say to them?"
Teresa rubs her eyes and sighs into the wind. "I say 'Jesus wants you to recycle. Please recycle.'"
"And you think that will help?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know. We didn't know exactly for sure that reducing CFCs would save the ozone layer. But we can prove it made a difference. Earth may be our Mother, but she's nature red in tooth and claw. We can't continue to do nothing. We can't allow this...shitpile to continue to accumulate on our beautiful Pacific North West Coast."
The interviewer blushes and quickly cuts Teresa off, focusing instead on the rancid towers of the 'Seasteading Institute' currently stinking up Puget Sound. It started with a bunch of Internet libertarians and Randroids and eventually attracted the attention of a bunch of rich kids who had the money to make it happen. It's known in Seattle by many names - Stankville, Cheetopia, Trashlandia. The UN has lately named it a major international environmental disaster area.
The phone rings. Tate picks it up. "Oh hey, honey. Yeah - it's on right now. I know, right? Did you tell them that Camille Paglia's correct job title is 'Troll'?"
He passes the phone to me. "Hi Teresa. How's things?"
"Gross. You would not believe what's going on out here. You know the huge slick of pizza grease and Cheeto dust that's been spreading out into the Sound? Well, it's getting bigger. Have you ever seen a greasy seagull dyed Cheeto-orange? It's just awful - awful. Those poor birds."
"Mine!" says Lessy, reaching for the phone.
"Sounds terrible," I say. "I wish I could be there, but someone has to look after Celestia."
"Mine!"
"Speaking of seagulls - you want me to put her on?"
Lessy takes hold of the phone, covering it once again in sticky juice fingerprints. "GaGa!"
"Hi baby," I hear Teresa say. "How's my favourite grandbaby then?"
"Ahhh. Ba ba ba."
I know she can talk better than that, but Teresa treats her like she's six months, not nineteen. Little shitstain regresses every chance she gets.
"Are you having your din dins now?" coos Teresa.
"Yes. Bacon!"
Lessy grins. There is no fucking way this kid doesn't know what she's done. She was born thirty-five. Thirty-five and with the mind of a small criminal genius.
"What did you say, baby?"
"Bacon, GaGa. Love bacon!"
"Give me the phone, shitlord," I say, extracting the phone from her hot, sticky little grasp. "She means veggie bacon," I say. "She's into that."
I waft away the treacherous smells from the kitchen. The sizzle of minced steak has joined the heavenly aroma of bacon. My mouth's watering but later I'm going to be scrubbing down that kitchen like Lady Macbeth.
"Is everything okay?" asks Teresa.
"Yeah. Fine."
"Did Hanna call?"
I snort.
"I'll take that as a 'no', shall I?"
"No shit. I haven't heard from her in weeks. Last I heard from her was when she instagrammed me a picture of her shiny new inflatable titties." It's one of life's better ironies that Teresa, who has spent most of her life urging people to recycle, gave birth to a daughter who is no longer 100% biodegradable.
Teresa makes a noise of disgust. "She sent you that too, huh?"
"Tess, she posted them on fucking Twitter. I know you've done your fair bit of prancing about skyclad, but I didn't think Hanna was an exhibitionist at heart."
"Oh, honey - she gets it from her old man. He was an underwear model for Calvin Klein."
"Huh. I never knew that. Explains her looks."
"Yeah." Teresa sighs. "And her brains, unfortunately. Don't worry - I'll call her. Remind her to check in."
"Thanks. I know she has the attention span of a backwards goldfish but how do you forget your own kid? She's got a c-section scar sized reminder smiling up at her every time she gets a bikini wax, for fuck's sake."
"Well, yeah - but she was always kind of bushy in that department."
There's a hairy, scary thought. Hanna on the loose on a French beach, her inner thighs sporting huge Edwardian sideburns.
"That, I'm afraid, she gets from me," says Teresa. "In a way I had to rebel against the patriarchy. It was that or spend the rest of my life at the business end of a pair of tweezers."
Chapter Three
In Which A Hairy American Monster Terrorises London
Meanwhile, back in the South of France, Hanna was wrestling with the thorny problem of finding anything to wear that covered up the dot eyes of the smiley sunblock faces t
hat some comedian had drawn on her new Tupperware tits. Unluckily for Hanna, everything she'd bought since the boob job was heavy on the décolletage and this is the kind of problem that can launch our compelling protagonist into a chapter long crisis of...ffff hahahahah.
Sorry. Who am I kidding? She's the dullest fucking main character in the world. And we're only on chapter three. Just...hang fire, okay? The plot will be along shortly. Honestly. There’s even a car chase in this one.
I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair - it just won't behave - and damn my stupid husband for lying around in a gimp mask while some asshole painted smiley faces on my breasts. I sigh and roll my eyes at my reflection. I suppose since I'm here I may as well describe myself.
Oh no you don't, missy. This is the third book in a trilogy. Everyone knows what you look like by now - big blue eyes, long brown hair, Amish dress sense and a wayward bikini line.
- Well, that's where you're wrong, actually. I've had my hair straightened, my roots boosted, my dress sense overhauled by a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus and my bikini line tamed. And I got French tips. So fuck you.
Only you could think that a manicure constituted character development.
- Do not. Besides, it wasn't a manicure. It was a mani-pedi.
In that case I beg your pardon. Clearly you are a character blessed with several dozen industrial-sized metal barrels worth of depth.
- Are you here for a reason, or are you just hanging around to piss me off?
It says a lot for your capacity to learn from experience that you even had to ask that question. What do you think?
I sigh and apply more self-tanner to my chest. It's no use. I'm too sunburned. God, this honeymoon has just been one thing after another. I can't get through to him at all. Especially when he insists on wearing that stupid gimp mask. He even wears it at dinner. He unzips it and will sometimes deign to speak when spoken to, but obviously Naylor has to feed him because he can't see to find the silverware. Maybe it was a mistake marrying an obsessive S&M enthusiast.