The UPS driver has left the Ingram boxes by the back door. When I was working at a much larger division of this same chain, in Portland, the books were delivered to a loading dock by an eighteen-wheeler, there were so many of them. I could get high on the smell of all that new paper. But that store was too far from William’s house. Two and a half hours in good weather. Longer in bad. Just about impossible in snow. And an indie bookstore in a town nearer where he lives, even a library, would have been a much better commute but a bad idea. There’s a saying,Everyone’s famous in a small town, and I don’t know about that, but I do know the more rural the community, the more visible you are. I need a situation that’s as anonymous and disposable as a Dixie cup. Completely unmemorable. Hence Augusta, this strip mall, my sh*thole studio in an apartment complex on the frontage road. I was surprised to find it suits me rather well.
I slice open the boxes, mindful not to cut too deep and slit a cover. Of course, William’s face stares up at me. The invoice shows we’ve ordered another thirty copies ofAll the Lambent Souls. Even though it’s a bluebird day and nobody’ll come into the store, and although everyone complains about the high price of hardcovers, I guarantee we’ll sell out of these by the end of the week.
I load William onto the shelving cart, but before I wheel him out ontothe floor I detour back into the staff room, bringing aLambent Soulswith me. From my tote bag, which I got free at the Boston Book Festival when William was on tour withMedusa, I take Sam Vetiver’s latest book,The Sodbuster’s Wife—we had two copies in stock. I at least love the setting, because who didn’t grow up reading and watchingLittle House on the Prairie? I used to secretly side with Mary, the goody-two-shoes older sister who went blind, because most readers favor the younger, feistier Laura who became the famous author. You shouldn’t ever dismiss the good girls, is my feeling. You never know what they might have up their sleeve.
Sam Vetiver is no Laura Ingalls Wilder. She’s got chops. But. I looked up her numbers on Tim’s computer, and that thing is happening to Sam Vetiver I’ve seen happen to lots of authors over the years. She had one success, so her publisher’s making her write the same book over and over, faster and faster. It’s like the tigers in the fairy tale who chase each other until they turn into butter. The books get thinner until they have no substance at all, and readers get bored and go away. They find different authors. There are always more.
I think this is what’s happening to Sam Vetiver.
Not that I feel sorry for her.
I set Sam Vetiver’s and William’s books on Tim’s desk face down, side by side. They look up at me from their author photos, Sam Vetiver smiling with her jellybean eyes, William leaning with his arms crossed against his living room fireplace.
They do look good together.
F*ck.
But maybe Sam Vetiver is a nonstarter. Maybe William decided not to drive her off the lot after all.
Because I know what Sam Vetiver’s Jeep looks like now from when I accompanied her to it after the café, a very decrepit yellow Wrangler with a row of rubber ducks on the windshield, which makes it easy to spot. Very considerate of her.
And I did not see it in the parking lot of William’s hotel this morning.
Nor last night.
Nor in the hotel or bookstore lots for the past few nights.
Nor was she at his events.
So maybe the email I’m about to send isn’t strictly necessary. But it’s always good to have insurance.
I reopen Tim’s computer, using his twins’ birthday as his password—really, a GM should be a little more circumspect—and compose an email for Sam Vetiver care of her website.
Or rather, [email protected] writes it, from an account I just created for her. Poor bibliogirl, not very original. There are about five hundred thousand bibliogirls in the world.
STAY THE F*CK AWAY FROM WILLIAM CORWYN. IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.
My usual opening shot.
I hit Send.
Then I delete the bibliogirl081569 account, erase Tim’s browser history—sorry, boss—and say a little prayer.
Sometimes this is all it takes. It scares off the weak ones.
I can’t tell if Sam Vetiver is in that group or not. I have an uneasy feeling she might be scrappier than she looks. A few days’ time will tell.
I hope not. I don’t want to have to ratchet up.
Unless I’m really really forced to.
Chapter 8
The Darlings
Although Sam’s fears were real, she had not fibbed to William: She had never shared her writer problems with anyone; she was a literary island of one. Hank had understood creativity, of course, but because Hank as a photographer wrote with light and Sam with words, their artistic empathy had been limited. There were the guys from Sam’s graduate program, but although Sam had found great camaraderie there, she’d been the only woman in a workshop with eight men who wanted to be Raymond Carver or Faulkner, and she would have died before admitting any insecurity. That left Mireille and Patricia, and although Sam turned in rough-draft pages to them, of course, she preferred to get them as right as possible first. Sam thought of herself as Charlotte in the web: What good would it have done if the spider’s promotion of her endangered pig friend had said HUM instead of HUMBLE? Before her dinner with William, Sam had not confessed her troubles to... anyone. Ever.
Therefore it was a first that Sam was now navigating the corridors of the Portsmouth, NH, Marriott, seeking the Emerson Ballroom, which she knew she’d found when she came to this sign:
