by Lolita Files
“No,” he said, a slight crinkle in his beautiful forehead. “Not until I heard your author say it when he announced you to the crowd.”
He was so convincing, she thought. And more gorgeous than she remembered. How could a man be as gorgeous as this?
He was biting his bottom lip, lips that had been all over her less than twenty-fours earlier. She couldn’t stop remembering their sweet taste.
“So why were you in Barnes and Noble?”
“I told you why. I was getting a book on Sartre.”
“What for?”
“Because it’s a free country, and Sartre’s books are for sale.”
She would have laughed if her heart wasn’t aching, but it was aching, breaking, quaking for him. She just wanted to hear him come out and say it—that he had stalked her on purpose, just like every other writer who’d done the same thing, and that was all he’d wanted from her, a book deal, and he’d used sex to do it.
“Beryl, I didn’t stalk you, if that’s what you think.” The prescient words blew her back on the couch. “Imagine how embarrassed I felt when I saw someone actually do that to you. That skinny guy who came over with his crappy, stained manuscript? The way he tried to force his work on you, then got all hostile when you told him the rules? Do you think that’s the kind of person I am? Do you think that’s the kind of person I want to be? That guy made me ashamed for writers everywhere. I mean, there’s hustle, and there’s hustle. I would have told you everything sooner, but for that guy. After the way he came at you, me telling you that I was a writer too was the last thing on earth I wanted to do, believe me.”
She searched his quantum-blue eyes, sinking into them, wanting to do just that, believe.
“Why Sartre?”
“Because I love philosophy and theories and crazy stuff like that.”
“And Wagner.”
He smiled, suddenly coy, dropping his lovely cleft chin.
“Yes, Wagner. I guess you noticed all that stuff when you were in here before.”
She felt flush, fully aware of his implication. She knew he knew she’d gone through his things, how else could she have gotten the manuscript? But he seemed to be cutting her slack on that, just letting it hang over them, a huge bubble of hot confession, waiting to be popped. She’d have to be the popper. She was the one who had chosen to put him on the defense.
“I’m sorry I went through your things,” Beryl said.
He was silent, which rattled her more.
“It’s just that, you know, everybody always seems to want something, always trying to hawk their books, and each one gets more creative than the next. No one’s ever tried sex before. I have to admit, it scared me.”
“So you think my angle was sex?”
Beryl wanted to run out of there. Her legs were shaking. She reached for her steaming cup of tea, clutching it with both hands, oblivious to the heat. He would tell her the truth now, that, yeah, he was using her—what was she, nuts?—he’d never have someone like her as his girlfriend. He was a god, after all, and she was most definitely not a goddess. She had narcolepsy, among other things. She was a chockablock of defects.
He had his head in his hands now, quiet. Beryl watched him, waiting for him to lay into her, tell her about herself, deride her for dreaming beyond her station.
His lashes were wet when he lifted his head. And his eyes were red.
“Penn?”
“How dare you,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl. “How dare you come here and accuse me of that.”
Oh no! she thought. What had she done! Look at him. The poor boy was stricken!
“Penn, I—”
“So that’s why you ran out of my house like that today? You go through my things, my personal things, and you see my manuscript and you figure that’s who I am? That I’m just another dickwad like that guy at Barnes and Noble? That I’ll fuck for my supper, because that’s the only way I can get ahead?”
And she was up now, her hot cup of tea back on the table, and she had thrown her arms around him, even as he cowered away from her. What kind of horrible person was she? she thought. Look at how she had upset him so. This was not her intent. It was never the plan.
“I’m sorry, Penn, really. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Yes you did, babe, you did. That’s what you think of me. But what’s even worse, that’s what you think of yourself. That I couldn’t just want to be with you for you.”
She hadn’t heard his last words. Everything had cut off at “babe,” which was ringing in her ears like the bells of Notre Dame, clanging crazily upside and inside her head as she tried to absorb the fact that he had slipped into vulnerability, and in that state of weakness, he had called her his “babe.”
He did love her! It wasn’t a ruse!
“Oh, Penn, babe, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She squeezed him close, the hood covering her face thrown back, and she was rubbing his flaxen hair now, the hair that she had fallen instantly in love with, the hair on the head of the body with the eyes and mouth and mind of the man, her man, with whom she had fallen in love at first sight.
“Stupid me,” he was saying, “I had some ridiculous romantic notion that maybe fate had brought us together. I mean, what are the odds of it? Me seeing you and you seeing me and both of us having a fucking coup de foudre like that, and then it turns out we have even more in common, both of us being fans of the word? I mean, what are the fucking odds of us being simultaneously struck down by love? Shit, when you collapsed, I was like, fuck, love struck her down for real!”
Penn had a wild look in his eyes, a flame of hope and mad, mad passion. Beryl wanted to thrash herself for questioning it before.
“And there I was,” he ranted, “believing it could happen, that fate was bigger than coincidence, because that’s how it happened for my mom and my dad, and that’s how I had always dreamed it would happen for me, and then you pull that shit this afternoon, just run out on me like that, and now you come here, you, you, you have the nerve to come back to my house and tell me I fucking used you…”
He was talking so fast, so hard, he was panting.
“You tell me that I used you, when you were the one I should have been keeping an eye on all along. You were so busy thinking I was trying to fuck you over, that, without a second thought, you fucked me over.”
Beryl wanted to crawl into the ground. She was a clod, a heel, a cad(ette?), the scum on the bottom of scum on a shoe. She was fucked up. Really. If Ripkin was here, he would tell her that, tell her how she put the loon in loony, and she’d know he was right, because she was loony, a full-blown looney tune. Her man was here, right in front of her, an Adonis extraordinaire, with not just looks, but brains to back it up. And what had she done? She’d gone out of her way to humiliate him and run him off.
“Please, Penn, please,” she sobbed, her arms still around him, “say you’ll forgive me? Please. I was scared. I was so scared.”
“Don’t you think I was scared, too?” he asked, still cowering away from her. “I wasn’t looking for you that day. I was looking for a damn book. If I could scratch that whole—”
“No,” she cried, “don’t say that. I don’t want to scratch it. That day changed everything for me. I love you, Penn. I love you so much I didn’t know how to…”
He got up from the chair, leaving her there, babbling erratically, terrified that her future, her whole life, was now slipping from her grasp. What an idiot she was. She’d had love on a platter, perfect love, beautiful love, and she’d practically beaten it away with a stick.
No, she thought. She couldn’t let that happen. Not after sixteen years. Not after sixteen long years.
He was standing in the middle of the room, his back to her, very, very still. She ran over to her man and faced him. Because he was her man, and she was going to make sure he knew she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
His eyes were red, beet-red, and his cheeks were flushed and wet, wet, w
etter than wet. He was gushing with love for her. All his love was gushing away.
She threw her arms around his middle.
“Please, babe, say you’ll forgive me.” Her tears were coming hard. “Please, babe, please, please, please say you won’t turn me away. I love you so and I know you love me. I know that now. I believe it. I’m sorry.”
And his arms, which had been limp at his sides, were now wrapped around her, tight, tighter, tightest, and the two of them were sobbing together, letting it all out, and coup de foudres—the kind of bolts from the blue that resulted in love at first sight—were coming from every direction, as Beryl realized that, when fate was ready and the heavens decided to open and shed goodness one’s way, that goodness came with a vengeance, as lightning bolts of love were hurled from the sky without respite, back to back to electrifying back.
“It’s so funny and sad,” she was saying. “I was laughing really hard in some parts, but when they started exploiting him in all those porn flicks, it was awful. His roommates were pigs. I was in tears. They made all that money off of him, yet he was just this…thing…even though he had once been a man. He wasn’t always a thing, but everyone around him seemed to forget that.”
“Wow,” Penn said. “It sounds like you really connected with it.”
“I did. Poor Gregor Balzac. Everybody either used him or treated him like a freak. I spanned the entire emotional landscape. It was totally cathartic.”
“Really? It really did that for you?”
“Oh God, yes. This book is going to win awards, and plenty of them.”
They were in Ekeberg, beneath the covers, naked, limbs entwined, cuddling. They hadn’t had sex. She was a little sore, she’d said. He was more than relieved. He still wanted to bask in his memories of Sharlyn’s luscious body and what awaited him the following afternoon. If he’d had to mount and service Beryl before that, it might have tainted the dream. He would have done it if he had to, but he didn’t. Which was good.
“How did you come up with it?” she asked. “What made you decide to redo Kafka?”
“I don’t know,” Penn said, thrilled to be talking about his masterpiece this way. “It just seemed like the logical thing to do.”
“It’s going to be the biggest hit I’ve ever had.”
Penn leaned back from her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I have to do this. You have to let me do this. There’s a few things I could help you fix. You know, tweak the story just a smidge so that everything’s just perfect. This book is such a gem.”
Penn started to sit up.
“No, Beryl, c’mon. Not like this. Not after everything we just—”
“Sshhh,” she said, pulling him back down, her finger on his lips. “There are no coincidences. We’re supposed to be together, and I’m supposed to have this book. Who says good things can’t all come from the same place?”
“But don’t you think I owe it to myself to show it around a few places? If it’s so good, shouldn’t I get an agent to shop it?”
“Do you have an agent?”
“No.”
“I know the way this business works. I could help you. I guarantee you that whatever offer an agent gets, I’ll best it. I’ll make a preemptive offer.”
“What’s that?” he asked, feigning far more ignorance than she could imagine. He knew what a preempt was. He was curious about how she would explain it, wondering if she would downplay the money.
“If your book goes to auction where several houses can bid on it, a preemptive offer is one that’s enticing enough to take the deal off the table before the auction can ever happen.”
“Interesting. What if someone goes really high, I mean really, really high, higher than what you plan on making with your preemptive thing.”
“Trust me,” she said. “No one’s going to top me. No way. I’ve had a string of bestsellers, so I’ve got some capital to spend, so to speak. I can go pretty high.”
Penn pulled her into his chest, crushing her close, his broad hands rubbing her skinny back.
“So, babe, what do you think a book like this would fetch?”
“Something high concept like this? It’s got all the right angles, and we could do some really good tie-ins with it. I’ve got a friend over at Apple. I’m thinking some iPod stuff, and maybe Starbucks, and, I don’t know, there’s a lot of things. I could go crazy with it. Leak the manuscript to Hollywood, maybe get a movie deal to further hype things up.”
“A movie,” he said. “You could see this as a movie?”
“Yes. And it would be tasteful, not pornographic. This could be something really bittersweet, like The Elephant Man. It’s a real testament to American culture, and all the obsession with money and sex at the expense of human emotion and concern.”
“Wow,” Penn said. “Wow.”
This was extraordinary, he thought, almost scary, the way she had jumped, full-bodied, into the idea of it all. She had taken the ball at the ninety-yard line and was running it all the way to the end zone, oblivious of everything else. Beryl was laying out the blueprint to his dream, and she was coloring in everything in between. Her obsessive mind was on a tear, and master schemes were spilling out of her faster than he could keep up with. He’d always had a grand vision for himself, but hers was grander, if that was even possible.
“You should definitely be on the cover. People need to see you as a part of the total concept.”
“Total concept?”
“Hell yeah. You’ve got model written all over you. I was thinking about that this afternoon as I was reading. I’ve got a buddy at Calvin Klein. I think if I pitch it right, we can get you in one of their ad campaigns. Your body’s perfect for it, and your face. The people at Calvin will go nuts, and so will the rest of the world, once they see you.”
“Uh-oh. Now you’re talking about exploiting me. Am I your Gregor Balzac?”
“Not exploiting you, babe. Branding you. Before the book ever hits the shelves, people will know who you are. They will have seen you and lusted for you and idolized you, and by the time this book drops, you’ll be a star.”
“A star, huh?”
“Yeah. A star. My star.”
She was smiling. That was the thing he liked best. That nuclear smile. It was the first time he’d seen it all night.
“Can you handle that, babe?” he asked. “Me as a star?”
“Can you handle it?” she said.
“I asked you first.”
She suddenly grew serious, considering his words.
“Maybe this afternoon I couldn’t. But I was afraid then. I wasn’t sure of you. Of us.”
“But you’re sure now.”
“I’m sure now.”
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
He was showing her his paper now, the one on top of the TV that she was supposed to have seen when she first came to his place, the dissertation on Wagner and his theory of Gesamtkunstwerk, and she was awestruck by it, thrilled that they were so simpatico about even this, cross-promotion and the concept of branding.
“Can I have this?” she asked. “I’m going to sell my boss on it. I’m going to get everyone so hyped on the possibilities that when I make my preemptive offer, no one’s going to balk at how much money it is.”
“You never said how much you think it’ll be,” he said.
Her face grew somber again.
“We won’t be able to be a public couple, though. I could lose my job. If anybody found out I got you a deal this way, it could ruin everything, even though I know this book is going to make all of us rich.”
“Do you mind us not being able to be out in the open?” Penn asked.
“No. No one really knows my business at work anyway. We can just keep everything on the low. I like that phrase, ‘on the low.’ I think we can do it. We can still have our relationship, we just can’t show it off to the world. Not just yet.”<
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“I don’t know, babe,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hide my feelings. I mean, if it’s a choice between fame or you, I don’t think—”
“It doesn’t have to be a choice,” she said. “Don’t you see? We can have it all.”
“How’s that?”
Beryl fixed her eyes on his.
“Where do you see us in the long run?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, as a couple. In the long run, where do you see us?”
Penn was smiling inside. This must be how David Blaine felt when he saw his magic (rather, his nonmagic) working; that jedi mind trick stuff where he hung in midair for days at a time and people would start out ridiculing him, but by the end, they were in captivated awe. No matter how exhausted or food-starved he was, when he was in that extraordinary moment in time where he knew everyone who was witnessing him believed, Blaine must have felt invincible. That kind of power was intoxicating. It was really heady stuff.
“Do you see us together?” she continued. “As a couple? Are we just dating? In a serious relationship? What?” She was looking up at him, wanting to be in that David Blaine moment. Wanting to believe.
“I see us married, of course,” he said. “At least, that’s how I feel. I want what my parents had. I won’t settle for less than that. I can’t. That’s the gold standard to me.”
“Ooh, me too, me too!” she squealed. Penn could feel her trembling now, as the intensity of it all really began to sink in. “Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you something. A peace offering, just in case you didn’t want to see me again.”
She rushed over to her big purse and pulled something out.
“Aw, babe, you brought me one of your African violets.”
“Yes. A blooming one.”
He hugged her.
“Thank you, babe. I’ll make sure it stays that way.”
He placed it on the nightstand, next to the bed. Beryl smiled with approval.
“So what about this,” she said, “what if we get you out there, expose the world to the amazing Pennbook Hamilton, get you a book deal, turn you into a star, keep our relationship ‘on the low,’ and after you’re on your way, I’ll quit.”