by Anna Roberts
And he steps out of one of the mirrors like in that Eighties music video where they go through the mirror and turn into cartoons, only the other way around because he's not a cartoon. He's real. And he's wearing old fashioned clothes too and he says "Prithee dost thou forgettest me so soon, my sweet Hanna?" and I say "No, but get bent because you were doing something nasty with your sister right up to the last moment before your helicopter exploded, weren't you?" and he's like "Nay, my fairest turtle dove - she waseth only my adopted sister, sweet damson."
"Yea," I say. "Your antiquey speaky sucketh verily. Isn't that like some kind of plum?" and Crispian is all like "How the fucketh should I know? I'm a ghost. My brain is see-through." And I say "Seriously? I never thought about that."
And then there's this ghostly freezing cold draft blowing down the back of my neck and I wake up and scream because there's a duck sitting on the end of my bed.
The duck quacks, flaps and poops all over my Egyptian linen bed sheets. It must have come in through the hole in the wall, which is not so much a hole in the wall as a whole wall that isn't there any more. There's nothing but a large, clumsily draped tarp between my bedroom and the elements. I was planning to have the whole back wall of the house replaced with glass, like the Cullen house in Twilight, except Bennett wasn't kidding when he said they hadn't finished the house yet.
I storm downstairs to find a bleary eyed Kate attempting to feed oatmeal to Celestia. I don't remember her having that much hair. Celestia, that is, although Kate's is nearly shoulder length now. "What the hell is going on here?" I gasp. My oven is missing. And the refrigerator. Oh my God - and the dishwasher. They were all built into the wall and now there's no wall there - just more tarpaulin.
"Yeah, welcome home, shitlord," says Kate.
"Will you stop saying that? You know she's at the age where she repeats everything."
"Shitlord, shitlord!" says Celestia, happily splatting her fat little hand into her oatmeal.
"So you enrich her vocabulary," says Kate, getting up from the table. "She’s your kid, after all. Hey, Lezzy - who's this? Who's this lady, huh?"
Celestia squints at me for a moment and says "Heeeeey sexy lady!" before bursting into giggles.
"No," I say, pointing to my face. "Mommy. Can you say Mommy?"
"Oppan Gangnam Style!"
What?
"Dancing parrot," says Kate, cryptically. "YouTube. I've got it bookmarked if you need it."
"Why would I need a dancing parrot? Any more than I need a stupid duck."
Kate pours out coffee. At least they didn't take the Gaggia when they knocked the wall out. "Duck?" she says, handing me a cup.
"There is a duck in my bedroom. Due to the lack of wall."
"Yep. You noticed that too, huh?"
I take a long swallow of coffee. "I hate coffee," I moan. "Why is there no Twinings? Where is the fridge? And the oven? I don't need this. Oh my God - this is horrible. Horrible. We were six hours in the first class lounge at Heathrow and they only had a Swedish masseuse - all that pummelling crap. I was airsick on the flight from Nice and we had to take the goddamn Eurostar, which is just slumming, and then when we finally got to the Heathrow there's Bjorn with his giant ham size hands and hello, is there a hot stone masseuse in the entire first class lounge? Finally get on the plane, I ask for a pink gin and you know what they give me?"
Kate blinks slowly, her face impassive. "Go on," she intones.
"Grenadine. Gin and grenadine. I said no, it's gin and angostura bitters and this snitty little flight attendant was determined it was gin and grenadine so I said look it up..."
Kate holds up a hand. "Yeah...Hanna? I'm just gonna stop you there, okay? Because if you keep talking I'm gonna kill myself. Actually I'll probably kill you first before turning the gun on myself, but either way, I don't think it's going to be a good early memory for your daughter."
I sigh and rub the nape of my neck. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I just didn't expect to come home to find that Betty Lasagne or whatever her name is had removed the wrong wall of my house."
"My heart bleeds. I just flew coach cross country with a two year old who didn't understand why her ears hurt like hell. As you can probably imagine, it was more fun than fucking Disneyland."
"Dizeelan?" says Celestia.
Kate switches the channels on the TV. There's a documentary about birds, and for the first time since I've known her Celestia sits quiet and pays attention. Kate pushes the flap of the tarp back and lights up a joint.
"Not in front of her!"
Kate just sticks up a finger. "Eat me, Hanna."
I push her outside. She pulls her tatty cardigan around herself and sighs. "How the hell am I supposed to toddlerproof a house with a missing wall?" I murmur. I’m staring directly at the wall of the house next-door. On the other side of the house is the wild beauty of Puget Sound, marred only by the steaming lump of the Seasteading Institute. The sunsets are spectacular and I wanted the glass wall to look out on them, so that I could drink in the twilight and dream. Instead I just have a view of next-door’s bathroom window. They have frosted glass but when the lights are on and they forget to close the blinds you can still see that people are naked.
“You know,” I opine. “I don’t think that architect knows east from west.”
“How come?”
“I asked her for an east facing glass wall.”
Kate frowns at me. “Yeah?” she says, and offers me the joint.
I shake my head. “No. I have to think clearly. Did you hear about Ben’s office being arsonised?”
“Yeah. Heavy shit. Do they have any idea who did it?”
“No. The arsonist didn’t leave a note.”
She sighs and scrapes her fingers through her hair. “I love you, Hanna. Every time you go away it’s like I forget that someone like you can be real. Then you come back and you are, and it’s like...mind blown. Every time.”
“Really?” I gasp, touched. “You’re not just saying that?”
“Nope. I mean it. Every word.”
“Oh Kate. You’re a strong, beautiful independent woman and I love you dearly.”
“See?” she says. “How are you even real? Who fucking talks like that?” She waves the joint under my nose again. “Sure you don’t want a little something to get you through the day?”
“No.” It won’t get me through the day. It just makes me giggle and crave carbs. I put on four whole pounds in Europe.
“Did you e-mail me at all?” I ask. “When I was in Europe?”
She squints. “Umm...nope.”
“Oh. Weird.”
“Why do you ask?”
“No...it was just....well. I had this really weird e-mail. I think it might have been from Crispian.”
“Crispian,” says Kate, staring at me like I’m a lunatic. “Dead Crispian?”
“Yes. It was signed ‘anonymous’”
“Was it asking for money?”
“No.”
She gives a nasty laugh. “Then I guarantee it wasn’t Crispian. Or his fucking ghost.”
Kate flips the tarp back and goes into the kitchen. When I get back in there she’s lifting Celestia out of the high chair. She has oatmeal in her hair. Actually both of them do. Is that normal? It’s not that I lack maternal instincts – in fact I’m overflowing with them – but it’s just that Celestia is a very sticky child. She was kind of gunky when she was born and kept producing fluids and substances from both ends. I wondered if it would improve with age but actually I think she’s getting worse.
“Don’t let her out of your sight upstairs.” I call after Kate as she takes Celestia up for her bath. “She might fall out of the house.”
Her voice floats downstairs. “Like I couldn’t have figured that out for myself!”
Jeez. She’s so sour and sarcastic these days. She keeps saying she doesn’t miss Jesús but she’s not her old self – that much is obvious. If only I could play matchmaker...
Why don’t you?
- Duh. Because Jesús mysteriously disappeared in between book two and three. Don’t you know anything?
Apparently not. You didn’t think to mention this relatively important plot point?
- It’s only Jesús. And what happened to staying quiet until the car chase scene?
Kind of moot considering that you did a whole monologue on the inadequacy of the masseuse in the first class lounge at Heathrow but somehow failed to mention that a major character is missing.
- He probably just went off to research his upcoming ‘novel’. You know. The next in the Sasquatch Gangbang series.
For over two years?
- You know Jesús. He’s intense like that. Method. He’s probably gone native. Learned their ways.
Oh my God.
- Look, we’ll talk about this later. I have to e-mail the office. I hate to think what they’re doing without me.
Probably nothing to worry about. I expect they’re burning you in effigy and defecating in your desk drawers.
- Don’t be so disgusting. I’m sure they’re not doing that.
No, you’re right. They’re probably not. They’re probably doing that other thing they do when you’re not around.
I gasp.
- You mean they’re using my special porcelain teacups for their coffee? Do you think so? I told them about doing that. The coffee stains the china and you can’t ge...
My Inner Goddess sighs and rubs her forehead.
I was going to say ‘work’, but yes. They’re probably doing that too.
Chapter Five
Sasquatch Gangbang
RIP Publishing of Seattle had suffered a rough handful of years.
It had once enjoyed a reputation as a lean, mean independent publisher with a keen eye for new talent. Its brief flowering was largely laid at the feet of Hanna Neigh (neé Squeal) who was often given free rein in the commissioning department because Liz, the senior editor, believed her to be The Chosen One, the incarnation of the publishing legend that somewhere out there is one gifted with the dark voodoo powers of spotting potential bestsellers on sight.
While it’s true that many of the books Hanna selected did sell like gangbusters, her powers were no match for the astonishing sales figures racked up by self-published romance authors. Once upon a time these ladies had churned out twenty thousand words a week for the piffling royalty rate of fifteen per cent of cover price, but no more. They went feral, for three bucks a pop on Kindle. They were fast, they were aggressive and above all they were hungry.
And few were as hungry as Jessica Waters.
They called her the Queen of the Amazons, the T-Rex of Romance. She sold her first thousand copies in under a month. She started out in Kindle porn, where her Sasquatch Gangbang series turned into an unexpected viral hit.
After conquering the world of Kindle porn, Jessica realised the smart money was in Romance. She 'went legit' in grand style, hitting the New York Times Bestseller list with Tread Softly, a short but boring novel about a couple of whiny college kids who fell in love, had some sex and then cried about it so much it was a wonder they didn’t weep all of the liquids out of their bodies.
RIP bravely kept churning out find/replaced Twilight fanfiction in the vain hope of keeping pace with Ms. Waters, but the share price kept sinking and many looked wistfully back to the days before Timothy Grope’s disappearance, when they’d still had some kind of credibility.
Sorry – did I mention that Timothy Grope disappeared? Well, he did. You see what happens when I hand off the narrative heavy lifting to Hanna? She really is hopeless.
Naylor drives me to work on Monday. Bennett is concerned because he thinks someone might follow through on setting fire to his office and set fire to me. He's such a worry-wart. Besides, it's not like I'm particularly flammable - I have a very low body fat percentage and I never wear synthetics.
When I enter the office my heart sinks. She's still here. Alicia.
I never wanted to take Alicia on as my personal assistant. Actually I'd rather have hired a garbage bag with a cut out face glued on it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The alternative was watching my drunk mother-in-law howl around the house blaming me for Crispian's death and talking about poor Alicia's trauma in the wake of the helicopter crash. That and he was wearing her favourite Ralph Lauren dress at the time, and it also perished in the crash.
"If only she had something to do," Claudia kept saying, day after day. "Something to occupy her mind."
Alicia has plenty to occupy her mind, which is weird and obsessive even by Neigh standards. Once known as El Fupacabra, Alicia used to eke out her days as a part time cryptid and neglected plot point, lurking in dumpsters and shrieking fangirl Japanese at passers by. Sometimes I almost miss those days. These days she never leaves the house without wearing something tweed and a monocle.
"Wotcher jolly old cock me old china," she says, as I walk into my office.
"What?"
"It's cock-er-nee rhyming slang lord love a duck up the apples and pears I say what?"
I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Again, I say what?"
"Jack the Ripper, pound a pint, cor blimey guvnor you ain't gonna believe yer mince pies when you check your epic fail."
I sigh. "Alicia, you forget that I've been to London. And I didn't meet anyone who spoke like that."
She gives me a dirty look. "That's because I'm innovating," she says, in an accent like the one Britney Spears affected when she was having a nervous breakdown. "I'm inventing new rhyming slang. E-mail, epic fail. Like it?"
"No." I suppose I'd better get this out of the way now. I take a deep breath. "Alicia - I brought you a gift from London."
She clasps her hands together. "Oh Em Gee! For real? A gift? For me?"
"Yes." I take the gift out of the bag. The box is wrapped in Union Jack paper. Alicia sees it and she's off.
"Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" She runs out of the door, still squeeing, runs round the office, getting in people's faces as she squees.
Claire from Accounting sticks her head round the door, her face contorted with pain and annoyance. "Hanna, what did you say to her?" she says.
I wave to the gift box on my desk. "I got her a gift while I was in London," I say, shamefacedly.
Claire groans. "You mean she hasn't even opened it yet? This is just the reaction to the giftwrap?"
"Yeah. Sorry."
"Fuck you, Hanna. Fuck you so very, very much."
I gape at her. "You can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss! Besides, I thought we were going to be friends."
"Why?" says Claire. "Because I'm black?"
I flush. "Huh? What does that have to do with anything?"
"Because you're weird about minorities."
"I'm not weird about minorities," I stutter. "Who said I was weird about minorities?"
"Your Inner Goddess," says Claire. "Book two."
"Goddamn her. That bitch gets everywhere."
Claire hurries back to her desk as Alicia returns my office.
"Eeeeeee the wrapping paper!" she squeaks. "It's the Britishest thing that ever did British! I can feel it coursing through my veins, changing me! Is my accent getting stronger? It is, isn't it?"
It's at times like these I miss her dumpster diving days. "Alicia, were there any messages for me while I was away?"
She doesn't hear me over the sound of her own high pitched batsqueals of fangirl ecstasy. Claire was right - I've made a terrible mistake. Alicia hyperventilates over the Union Jack patterned tissue paper inside the box and then lifts out a Keep Calm & Carry On mug with the kind of reverence better suited to the Holy Grail.
"For me?" she gasps. She puts the mug down on the table and removes her steamed up monocle. "It's real? Genuine? Purchased in old London town?"
"Yes," I sigh. "I bought it at St. Pancras."
"St. Pancras," she intones, with drooling reverence. "The patron saint of the pancreas."
"Is that right?"
"Of co
urse. The British hold the pancreas in great reverence."
I sigh once more. I have no idea what she's jabbering about. "Alicia, I'm pleased you like the mug, but could you focus here for a moment? Were there any messages for me while I was away in Europe?"
She straightens up, replaces her monocle and adjusts her deer-stalker at an angle she probably refers to as 'jaunty'. "Yes, m’lady," she says. "As of my reckoning this morning there were six hundred and forty-two individual messages left for you."
"I see. Did you answer any of them?"
"Oh no," she says, turning coy. "One would not presume."
"Couldn't you just tell them I was on vacation and that I'd get back to them when I got home?"
Alicia frowns. "I confess, I had not thought to tell people you were on your holidays. You see, I say holidays instead of vacation..."
"...because that's how the Brits say it. Yes, I know. Now go away."
"Would you like a nice cup of tea?"
"Yes. Twinings. And bring me my messages." She prances out. "Fucking idiot."
Is it seriously too much to ask for someone to do some work around here? If I can read three whole first chapters - and made notes on them - while on my honeymoon, surely it's not too much to expect them to do things while they're at the actual office. I open up my e-mail. Four hundred and twenty-five new messages. Ugh.
I call Kate. "I need your help," I say.
"Why? What's wrong now?"
"What do you mean, 'now'?"
"I mean you regularly lurch from one self-constructed crisis hour to hour, pausing only to reapply lipgloss and totally misunderstand Thomas Hardy novels."
I wish I hadn't asked. I may as well clear this up while we’re on the subject. "What was the name of the heroine from Far From The Madding Crowd?"
"Bathsheba."
"What?"
"Bathsheba. Bathsheba Everdene."
I snort. "Bullshit."
"No, it was."
"Are you sure you're not thinking of The Hunger Games?"
"No," she says. "I'm not. Her name was Bathsheba Everdene. Then there was Gabriel Oak the gentleman farmer and the sexy-but-slightly-sociopathic Captain Troy - who she married even though Gabriel Oak would have been a much better match, because he wasn't an asshole."