He smiled. “The shop couldnae hold her.”
“That’s no a nice thing tae say, Garrett!” Jenny scolded him, but she was laughing. “Big girl then, ae?”
Garrett just shook his head, assuring Jenny that he needed to get work done. This was true; the constant stream of writers and readers had brought in a massive surplus, but they still hadn’t received the second shipment for the morning’s reading, and he wasn’t sure they’d have enough copies to meet demand. To top everything off, he was nervous as hell. He hadn’t spoken to Georgia in months; long enough, he feared, to be forgotten.
He’d tried everything to find her – emails, calls to agencies and book shops where she was meant to have a talk. The readings dried up quickly, many shops realizing they didn’t have the venue to cater to the crowds she drew. She’d been booked at a few conventions in the States, but Garrett barely had the money to get settled in Edinburgh, let alone fly off on a whim to go celebrity stalking. This was his last ditch effort, find out one way or another whether she’d forgotten him. Whether she ever thought about him the way he thought about her. Every day. For months.
Jenny gave his shoulder a squeeze, made one last passing remark about his kilt, then slipped out of the shop, leaving him to settle affairs on his own.
The air was thick outside the auditorium, and Charles Street Gardens bustled in the wake of the festival events. Garrett stood in his kilt and button down shirt, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand. He was running later than he would have liked, the line outside dwindling as the last few people filtered into the venue. He hustled across the way, grateful for the breeze blowing up his boxers in the hot summer evening. Edinburgh was experiencing its week of Summer, and his Scottish blood wasn’t accustomed.
He rushed up to join the crowd, the sound system inside echoing with the early introductions of the speaker.
“Garrett?!”
He stopped dead, spinning around to meet Jenny’s wide eyed expression.
She was beaming. “Tell me yer no meetin yer friend here!”
Garrett’s face burned, painfully aware of the flowers, of his outfit, and how absolutely ridiculous he felt.
“Nae, I ehm, she’s inside.”
Jenny snuck a peek at the card tucked into the leaves of the flowers before he could snatch them away.
She started laughing. “Ye know Victoria Mason, then? Ye don’t!”
Garrett nodded, glancing over his shoulder at the clearing doors. “I do. I have tae get in there, though. I’m late.”
“If ye know her, can ye get me in? I tried today, but there isnae tickets left,” Jenny said, tucking the card deeper into the bouquet.
“I don’t think I can. I’m lucky I managed one, myself.”
“You had tae buy a ticket? If you’re her friend an’ all -?
There was a loud, almost thunderous sound, and Garrett turned just in time to see the second door slam shut. “Fuck!”
He ran for the auditorium, ignoring Jennifer’s calls, and hurled himself toward the door, searching in his sporran for his ticket. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the doors were closing.”
The woman turned to him, her brow set sternly beneath her wire rimmed glasses. Behind her a doorman stood, arms crossed.
“Sorry, no admittance after doors are closed.”
“What? No! Ye can’t be serious. They just shut the bloody things!”
The woman raised an eyebrow and the doorman took a warning step forward.
Garrett shot the doorman a glare. “You’re no serious. It’s the book festival for fuck’s sake, stand down man.”
“Can’t open the door, sir. Should have come earlier.”
Garrett clenched his fists, the thorns of the roses in his bouquet digging into his palm. He made his way down the steps and looked up at the building, half plotting some Spiderman worthy move of scaling the beast and swinging in from the rafters.
Garrett turned to find Jenny’s reddening face and then stormed off around the building. The stage door was open, guarded by another similar doorman clad in black clothing. This seemed rather high stakes for a reading event at the Edinburgh Book Festival. He couldn’t imagine droves of middle aged women getting rowdy enough to constitute bouncers, but who was he to question.
“Aye, I’ve been locked out front. I have a ticket, and I actually know Victoria - Georgia. Might I sneak in this way? I won’t be a bother.”
“You got a pass?” The man asked.
Garrett retrieved his ticket again, but the man shook his head. “No, lad. A pass.”
“I haven’t, but I do know her.”
A young woman with a light blonde bob appeared in the doorway. “What’s that?”
Garrett met the young woman’s gaze and smiled, turning on whatever Scottish charm he might possess. “Hello, ehm. I’m tryin tae get into the event. I have a ticket, and I know Georgia.”
She eyed him, glancing at his flowers, suspiciously. “How do you know her?”
“We met a few months back. I think she’ll know exactly who I am if ye ask her. From Inverness? Name’s Garr -”
The woman shook her head. “Not possible, sir. She’s already on stage.”
Garrett clenched his fists again. “Ah, fuck. Can I just slip in then? I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Nae bother. I swear – I have a ticket!”
He quickly brandished it as the young blonde touched her finger to her ear, listening in to something. She gave him a nod and disappeared inside, rushing off. Garrett sighed in relief, ready to follow suit.
The man in black planted a hand against Garrett’s chest. “Sorry, lad. Ticketed entrance at the front.”
“She just nodded at me to come in, ae?”
“I saw no nod.”
“Ah, fer fuck’s sake, ye prick.”
The man stepped forward and Garrett squared his shoulders. Perhaps a fist fight with a massive black guy would relieve some of this frustration.
The man pointed over Garrett’s shoulder. “Have a good night, sir.”
Garrett threw the bouquet at the brick façade of the building and stormed back along the walk, fuming. He wanted to break something, but he knew the only chance he had was to wait here, perhaps catch a glimpse of her as she left - catch her attention then. He thought of that scene for a moment, of him waving to the well-to-do writer as she is rushed off to some glamorous thing or another, standing there in his best kilt like a complete fucking idiot. Hey, remember that time I bent ye over a table and spanked ye?
Twat. Garrett turned from the auditorium and stormed across the walkway.
“You’re no friends wi’ her, really, are ye?”
Garrett turned to find Jenny’s smug face smiling at him from the front steps of the auditorium.
He took a long, slow breath. “You’re fired.”
“What?!”
He was gone before she could respond.
***
Georgia shook her head at the interviewer. She’d been paired with another well-known author, Cody Mitchell, sitting before a large crowd of readers, writers, agents and other publishing minds as the masses picked her brain for anything they could. This was the UK, and Georgia had come to recognize how intimate an interview in the UK could get. The British tabloids and news agencies loved a juicy story to scandalize and blow out of proportion. This resulted in many interviewers going straight for the nitty gritty, demanding to know where inspiration for her stories came from. One had gone so far as to ask after the number of sexual partners she’d had, a question she politely declined to answer. Cody had just posed the ever favorite question of many of her readers –
“Do you try out all of your material in the real world to see if it works?”
Cody wrote horror novels about alien invasion and spent a great deal of time describing human brain dissection.
Georgia took a deep breath and smiled at him. “Do you?”
He grinned at her as the crowd laughed. “Touch
é, my dear. Alright, we’re going to open up to the crowd. Anyone have any questions for Victoria?”
Despite the dark of the room, Georgia could see several hands shoot up. Cody began to call on them one by one.
The reading and interview were two hours long, and they were closing in on the final fifteen minutes. Georgia was looking forward to freedom. Though several other writers from the festival were planning a bit of a night out after the event, Georgia wasn’t sure she could stomach a drunken social tour of Edinburgh. Still, she gave everyone her utmost, answering their questions as though they were the first person to ever ask such a thing.
“Are you working on anything else?”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“When will the next book be released?”
“What is your writing approach?”
Each answer was memorized, save for a flourish here and there to make it sound interesting. Finally, they were down to the last two.
“What is it about Scotland that made ye decide to set your books here? Had ye been here before?”
Georgia leaned in, shielding her eyes from the spotlights overhead to make eye contact with the young, ginger haired woman with a million freckles.
Georgia smiled at her. “I don’t know. I did come here with my family when I was very young. I had a wonderful time, went to half a dozen castles – saw the tattoo.”
A few people in the crowd whooped in response.
Georgia stopped a moment to think. “Honestly, if I were to try to put it into words – I feel called here. Ever since I was very young, I’ve felt as though I’m meant to find something here; like a piece of myself, maybe?”
Cody Mitchell took a sip of his water. “Almost like you’re writing your way into discovery, maybe?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I think you’re right, writing is an act of self-discovery, in essence. I think it’s like an egg; you sorta crack yourself open and pour yourself out. Sometimes you have two yolks, sometimes you smell like farts. It’s a crap shoot.”
The crowd laughed at this as Georgia leaned in to meet the young woman’s gaze. “I think it was a way for me to commune with that thing I feel is here for me. And given I couldn’t afford to up and fly to Scotland unless my parents were footing the bill, I escaped her in my mind. Does that answer your question?”
The girl smiled wide and nodded, turning from the microphone to take her seat.
“One last question,” Cody said. “There. Go ahead, sir.”
Georgia scanned the crowd, spotting the short gentlemen toward the back of the venue. He was thick in the neck, had a brutal case of neck beard, and a messy mop of black hair on the top of his head.
“So, having read Woman in White, and now The Seafarer, I was wondering what your stance was on ‘authorial influence,’ and realism.”
Cody’s eyebrows shot up as Georgia leaned in again.
“Can you explain that for me?” She asked.
“Authorial influence. When the author steps in and plays God for the sake of plot, rather than allowing character to drive the story.”
Cody chuckled. “We’re writers, it’s our job to play God.”
The crowd laughed, but Georgia kept her eyes on the squat fellow, his American accent reminding her of a pompous philosophy professor she’d had in college.
Georgia ignored the laughter, and instead responded. “I think I know what you’re saying. I try very hard to let character be the driving force of my writing, personally. I’m not a fan of taking extra license, in that respect.”
“You don’t feel that you stepped in at the end of The Seafarer for the sake of your happy ending?”
Several voices in the crowd gave low, warning groans of disapproval. They did not appreciate his tone, nor did Cody. Cody started speaking, ready to shut the man down, but Georgia waved him off.
“No sir, I don’t. Do you - what’s your name again?”
The man cleared his throat. “Matthew. And yes, I do.”
The crowd was growing agitated and more verbally so. Georgia continued as though it were just she and Matthew sitting down the pub. “Well, how so?”
An usher gestured for Matthew to take the microphone and come toward the front. Georgia smiled at him as he came into view, despite the self-important air about him.
Georgia wasn’t a fan of self-importance.
“In Woman in White and The Seafarer, you have these characters going on sea voyages, dealing with piracy, shipwrecks, all these massive events, and I understand at the center, you wanted to draw in the love story element, but Deirdre and Douglas go their separate ways.”
“Not by choice,” Georgia said.
“No, not by choice, that’s a given, but still – how much time passes while they’re separated? Months? Years?”
“A long time, yeah.”
Matthew scratched at his neck beard as he held her gaze. He was enjoying this, clearly. “In real life, men don’t go on with their lives for months and years on end, then up and decide to go after the girl. That’s not a realistic male character.”
The crowd again voiced their chagrin.
“Don’t you think that by making Douglas uproot his whole life on the off chance that after so much time maybe Deirdre still had feelings for him – don’t you think you were writing with a heaping helping of wishful thinking? Don’t you feel that by writing that ending, you took a great deal of authorial freedom there, and instead of letting the character Douglas be who he is and move on, you decided to make Douglas who you wanted him to be? To propel the story?”
Georgia exhaled out her nose in a half laugh. “You like that word, huh Matthew? Authorial.”
He returned the laugh, but stared her down.
Georgia sat back in her chair, pursing her lips in thought. The room was eerily silent, and she could hear her own breathing through the microphone. She lowered it a moment and thought. Then she lifted it to her lips for a second. “You’re single, yes Matthew?”
The crowd burst into laughter, but Georgia waved her hands at them to be still. “Hey now, hey now. I am, too. No judgments.”
Cody leaned into her. “Do you want me to shut it down?”
Georgia shook her head and turned back to Matthew, honoring his question with some thought. She couldn’t help but think of her train ride the day before, of leaving Cass to fend for herself in Edinburgh while she took off for Inverness on a hope and a prayer that maybe Garrett might like the sight of her on his doorstep. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t see a striking parallel. Finally, she brought the microphone back her lips.
“Yes.”
Matthew’s eyebrows shot up. “You admit it? Wow, I respect that.”
“Well, what good would it do me to deny it, of course I took authorial license with the characters of my own book.”
Several people in the crowd hollered their approval, but she continued.
“Here’s the problem with your logic, Matthew. See, I can’t ‘make’ Douglas MacCready do something he wouldn’t, because I am Douglas MacCready. He is a part of me. He always has been. I’ve been carrying him around in my very soul long before I wrote him. He’s just waiting for the day I would acknowledge him and put him on the page, and when I did, he spoke, moved, shagged just as he wanted to and just as I wanted him to, because we are the same damn person. My villains, my heroes, my heroines – they’re all me, to some extent.”
Cody chuckled beside her, feigning to move his chair away. The crowd laughed with him.
“When Douglas MacCready throws up his hands one day and goes after the woman he can’t stop thinking about, do I think that was my influence on that character, yes. It was. Because that’s exactly what I would have done, by god. And if that’s what came out of me when I wrote it, then that’s exactly what Douglas MacCready would have done.”
The crowd cheered to this, several women near Matthew making a point to stand up and clap in his direction.
Georgia just smiled at him. “And honestly, if men in this world won’t go after a woman they love simply because time has passed, then honestly, I’m glad I’m single.”
A couple people whooped at this from throughout the crowd. Georgia leaned, smiling toward Matthew. “Did that answer your question?”
He nodded, smiling back at her. “It did. Thank you.”
Matthew headed back to his seat and Cody wrapped up the interview, thanking her as the crowd hollered and clapped. Georgia stood to a crescendo of applause, waved to the faces she could make out, and snuck backstage, meeting Cassie in the green room to settle herself.
“Was a good showing, yeah?”
Georgia nodded. “It was. I’m freaking starving now, though.”
Cassie set down her notebook – the precious object in which she jotted down every minute detail of Georgia’s life – and pulled out her phone. “What do you want? I’ll have somebody run and get it.”
“I can’t. I have to go out and sign.”
“Well, I’ll have somebody grab it anyway. Have it ready for you.”
Georgia gave in to Cassie’s commands and ordered a chicken kebab with garlic and chili sauce, then hustled out into the lobby of the hall. The line for the signing table was wrapped around the perimeter, three people thick. She would be there for a while.
“Oh my god, I love your books! Where can I find a Douglas MacCready?”
Georgia smiled up at the lovely blonde. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
The signing went as usual. A lot of the same questions, same comments, posing and smiling for pictures, accepting hugs. The number of male readers had grown over the last few months, most of them kind and humorous, some of them creepy. Still, they bought her books.
Georgia flexed her hand, smiling down at the big pen she now signed with as a habit. The same kind of pen Garrett MacCauley had given her.
“We’re looking good. Only a few more after this crowd. Do you want me to see if there is anyone outside waiting?”
Writing Mr. Right Page 11
