Yes, Sam thought. She was unaware she’d breathed it aloud until her coil-haired neighbor glanced her way.
“It was such a helpful jam session,” said William, “that we—because of course I was the young man—decided to keep it going. We met every week until graduation, and I maintained the group after that, wherever I happened to be. Because talking to one another about the problems was so helpful in siphoning off the darkness.
“So that is the Darlings,” said William. “A support group for writers. A sort of moveable feast of camaraderie that takes place around New England. Because I failed my darling—I failed to see she was in distress, to reach her—I help others as they helped me. It’s the least I can do.”
He stopped and drained his water. After a moment of stunnedsilence, the room burst into applause so explosive Sam felt it in her throat. The women gave William a standing ovation, Sam included. The only one who seemed unimpressed was the librarian in the baseball cap, who was doing a golf clap.
Laura came to William, and they hugged, rocking back and forth.
“Oh, I got mascara on your suit!” she said, laughing and wiping her eyes. “Thank you, William. We’ll check out the Darlings for sure... William will be signing here at the table, folks, and you can buy more of his books at the register.”
“William thanks you too,” called William, his voice almost lost in the scrape of chairs and stampede of feet. “Oh, and the Darlings meetings arefree!”
Sam stayed put, waiting for the room to clear. She felt stun-gunned, limbs weighted in a familiar way. Part of her wanted to go home and crawl onto the couch. But she still wanted to meet William, now more than ever. Laura spotted her and waved Sam over.
“Two Sam sightings in a month,” she said, “how lucky am I! Do you know William? You guys are both published by Hercules.”
“Only by reputation,” said Sam. “And he wrote me a lovely letter aboutSodbuster.”
“C’mon, let’s cut the line,” said Laura. “Author perk.”
At the signing table, William was scrawling his signature in a hardcover with a Montblanc fountain pen that put the disposable in Sam’s braid to shame. He smiled up at the reader he was signing for. “Is that Barbra like Streisand or Barbara old-school?” he asked, and then he saw Sam. His face went still for a second, then lit again in that delighted grin.
“Excuse me a moment,” he told the reader. He stood and walked around the table.
“Itisyou,” he said to Sam.
Then he was hugging her. Sam stood inhaling his woodsy-musky cologne and a sharp note of sweat. He was roasting hot and damp, as she always was after she performed. His heart thudded against her cheek.
“You came,” William said, when he released her. “Hi. Hi.”
“You’re so tall,” Sam said idiotically.
“Comparatively,” he agreed, smiling. He turned the mic back on. “Ladies and... ladies! You’re in for a treat. Tonight you get two writers for the price of one: Sam Vetiver is here! Author of the classicThe Sharecropper’s Daughter. Her new book is just out, you can buy it up front, and she’s agreed to sign with me.”
He put down the mic. “Okay?” he said.
“Okay!” said Sam. “If you’re sure. I don’t want to intrude—”
“You can’t intrude if you’re invited,” said William. He smiled and lifted one of the folding chairs over the table as easily as if it were a marshmallow. “Come,” he said, and patted it. “Please. Sit here by me.”
The Rabbit
One of the great things about tailing William on tour is I get to go to a lot of different bookstores, and it’s always interesting to be in a store that’s not mine. This one is an indie in the Boston suburbs, a precious little place with a green-striped awning, big picture windows, lots of front-table real estate—New Releases! Fiction! Nonfiction! YA! Graphic Novels! Staff Picks!—and impulse items like life-size literary stuffed animals and spinning racks of Sassy Socks.F*ck off, I’m reading, they say on the bottoms, and100% Lit B*tch, over cartoon women reclining in beanbags with books. This is a far cry from my store, which is a small branch of a big chain in a strip mall off the interstate near Augusta. We’re between a dry cleaner and a Chinese food joint, and we sell more scented candles, tea towels, and picture frames than books. Corporate’s decision. Once you walk past all those items to the back, we do have actual books, a couple of shelves featuring perennial book club favorites, classics, and bestsellers—which means we stock, now and forever, plenty of William Corwyn.
Not that I’m knocking my store. I’m not. I love it. It’s a huge advancement from the one I started at, in Aegina, New York, where I grew up. Barbara’s Book Nook, which wasn’t actually a store but a hole in the wall on Main Street with stacks and stacks of used books, all of them reeking of cigarette smoke and mildew. The owner of that store, Barbara, called herself a bookseller, but really she just wanted to sit around smoking menthol Virginia Slims and reading romance novels. The paperbacks sold for 25 cents, the hardcovers a dollar, and would you believe people haggled overthe price? If they found a suspicious stain in a book, or if it was missing half its cover, or if they were buying a bundle of them. It was one of the happiest days of my life when I quit that sh*thole to go to Upper Great Lakes Community, and when I graduated from there and left my Harrington writing program and got my job at my current strip-mall situation, I just about fell on my knees on the industrial carpet and cried.
That’s another thing that’s interesting, the different customers in these stores. They’re always women, of course—women read. The occasional man might wander in, but usually to accompany his wife, or buy a gift for her, some title he’s written on a Post-it all creased and hot and damp from being in his pocket next to his butt. Otherwise it’s all women, and in my store they are soft and squishy grandmas who wear pastels and eye shadow, or women with raspy smoker’s voices and lined faces that speak of hard lives they want to forget. Those ladies would not have been out of place in my original store, Barbara’s Book Nook, which is where I learned that booksellers provide escape. That’s what stories are for.
Here and at most of William’s readings, the women are different. They have disposable income, they’ve been in college and graduate school, they work full-time, and they want books for the same reason they eat organic food for their bodies: to nourish their brains. They wear gym clothes, but don’t let that fool you: Just one of these zip-up hoodies with the little thumb slits costs more than my weekly paycheck. And those running shoes? Two months’ rent. They don’t wear a lot of makeup, and thanks toMedusa, more than most readers here have crazy gray hair. William might have unleashed women’s inner goddesses with that novel, but he also sure as sh*t f*cked up a hair-care industry.
I’m glad my baseball cap covers my wig, because I miscalculated a little bit today, I admit. It’s blond and curly, and I got up at 4:00 a.m. to make those beachy ringlets with the weird iron I got at TJ Maxx. I was afraid the high heat setting would damage the synthetic hair, but it proved surprisingly resilient, so I should be able to wash it after this and bring it back to the store with the iron. Which maybe means I can get a pair of those Sassy Socks by the register here. I kind of like the ones that sayRingmaster of the Sh*tshow.
All of the women here are William’s ideal readers.
None of them are his type.
I relax a little into the rear bookshelf I’m standing against.
