by Sabrina Kane
“Why?” Sally finally asked. A one-word question that sounded childish to her ears but, really, what else was there to ask at this point?
The waitress brought their lunch. Fortunately, this time she didn’t linger because another table needed her attention.
“I mean, did you do this to meet women?” Sally whispered.
Max leveled his best boss-glare at her.
“Yes, Sally, I became a best-selling lesfic author to meet gay women. This was all part of a brilliant but diabolical dating strategy I came up with.”
Sally blushed. When he put it like that, it was a silly question.
“But why lesfic?” Sally asked, quite happy with herself because it sounded like a better question than her most recent one. “I mean, you’re a man and, therefore—as you pointed out—not a lesbian.”
Max sighed and took a bite of his kale salad with trout.
“You know how Amazon sends those emails each month with a list of free books you can read on Kindle?”
Sally nodded. She got the same emails and every now and then she’d find a new book to try from that list.
Max went on.
“Well, a while ago, one of the books listed was a lesbian romance—I forget which one. None of the other books interested me and so I downloaded that one and read it out of curiosity. Halfway through it, I started thinking, ‘Hell, I could write a better book than this!’ And so I did. When I was done, I published it on Kindle. I figured nothing would come of it. But the next thing I know, that stupid lesfic book I wrote was outselling all my other books combined.”
“Stupid?” Sally asked indignantly. How dare Max call any of Jillian Ashley’s books stupid! Where did he get off disparaging—
She gasped as she realized her mistake.
Son of a bitch!
“Anyway,” Max went on, “I figured since that book sold so well, I’d write another one.”
The Queens from Kings County, Sally considered. The second book in the series.
Max went on.
“Lo and behold, that one also sold really well and so then I wrote another one. The rest is history. Now I’m Jillian Ashley, one of the top lesfic writers in the universe.”
Max sat back with his left arm on the back of the seat, looking patiently but expectantly at Sally, indicating he was done with his tale.
This was all so surreal to Sally. Jillian Ashley was important to her. During the depths of the Covid pandemic, reading and sometimes re-reading Jillian Ashley books had helped her deal with the enforced isolation because of the quarantine in California. Even now, with the quarantine long over and most Covid restrictions relaxed because of the distribution of the vaccine, Sally still often pulled up a Jillian Ashley novel to read even though by now she practically had the first three books memorized.
But that’s what Jillian Ashley meant to her. Jillian Ashley was like comfort food to Sally—something she returned to when she just needed to feel centered and cozy and safe. The women in a Jillian Ashley novel were just like her. They weren’t fabulously wealthy celebrities or ice-queen CEOs. They were gay women who had jobs and bills and cars which occasionally needed new fan belts and parents that drove them crazy. And because they were just like her, Sally always connected with them.
Now, she suddenly found herself sitting across from the woman who had created those characters. And the woman was a man.
“So, I don’t get it,” Sally began after taking a moment to compose her thoughts. “What do you need my help with?”
“Ah, yes,” Max said, leaning forward again, holding Sally’s eyes with his own. “The crux of the matter.” He took a sip of coffee. “I need you to pretend to be Jillian Ashley.”
Sally, who had just taken her own sip of coffee, nearly choked to death on it and spent a few embarrassing moments hacking like a cat about to upchuck a hairball. When she finally gained control again, red-faced, with tears streaming out of her eyes, she dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and said, “What are you talking about?”
“I got an email the other day from one of those pod people…”
“Pod people?” Sally interrupted.
“Yeah, you know, the ones with the podcasts. I don’t know what the people who host those are called.”
“Podcasters. Just podcasters.”
“Alright, fine. Anyway, this podcaster contacted me—well, she contacted Jillian—begging Jillian to come on her show. Now, normally I’d say no—Jillian always says no to things like that, for obvious reasons—but now I feel she can’t do that anymore. This whole Jillian Ashley thing has just gotten so big. I mean, do you have any idea how popular she is?”
“Yeah, Max, I do! I’m a lesbian!”
“Anyway, if Jillian doesn’t start doing things like podcasts or YouTube interviews, people are going to start getting suspicious and might do some digging around, and so I need someone to pretend to be her.”
Sally’s eyebrows shot up.
“Max, I’m not an actress!”
“I know, that’s perfect! If you were, you might come off as a fake.”
“I will be a fake!”
“You don’t have to worry about anything. During any interview you do, I will be there next to you telling you exactly what to say.”
“How many will I have to do?” she asked.
Max shrugged.
“Who knows? Not a lot. I don’t want to overexpose her. The reclusiveness thing works for her. I just need you to do enough of these interviews to get Jillian some face-time, show all her fans that there’s a flesh and blood woman behind the books and then I can get her back to being a shadowy figure again.”
Sally sat back and took a deep breath. She needed time to wrap her mind around all this.
“God, Max, it just sounds so deceitful…”
“I’ll give you twenty percent of the royalties I earn from Jillian’s books,” Max stated.
Sally’s mouth dropped open.
Whoa!
Sally busied herself with stirring more sugar into her already sweetened coffee while she attempted to appear cool, calm and collected.
“Um…well, I suppose that, um, a twenty percent cut sounds about right,” she said, hoping her voice sounded normal.
Max nodded.
“Especially considering that I’m about three-quarters of the way through the next book in the series and you doing all of these Jillian interviews will go a long way towards drumming up the sales numbers once I release it…”
That was a good point, Sally considered. A good twenty-percent point.
“Um…yeah, I see the logic behind that,” she said.
“So, we have a deal?” Max asked.
“Fine, we have a deal. Wait! On one condition!”
Max quirked an eyebrow, waiting.
“You let me get Tiffany’s phone number for you and you call her for a date!”
Max stared at her.
“Who’s Tiffany?” he asked.
Sally sighed.
“Our waitress.”
Max winced.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sally! You’re determined to send me to jail, aren’t you?”
“She’s twenty-three, you goof! Anyway, that’s the offer. Deal?”
Sally held out her hand expectantly. A moment later, Max took it and shook.
“Deal,” he grumbled.
Chapter 5
Later that afternoon, Amy was at home in her living room, sitting on her super comfy, incredibly-expensive-but-so-worth-it Italian leather sofa she bought last year, typing with her laptop on her lap. Even though it was only three p.m., she was already dressed in a favorite pair of flannel pajama pants and a cami top which clung to her small, round breasts. She had no plans to go out for the rest of the day. Her and Rachel had spent the morning walking the beach as far as the Oceanside pier and back—an easy 10,000-plus steps—and then had eaten lunch together at their favorite pizza spot. Now, she wanted to just be comfy and get some work done.
Amy was curre
ntly blogging about a lesfic novella she had started reading the day before and had just finished about an hour ago. It was not going to be a good review. She didn’t normally like to tear down the works of lesfic authors, but this one had been particularly bad. One of the risks of the ease with which writers could get their books published on Amazon’s Kindle was that a lot of really bad fiction was out there. And At Lynette’s Place was terrible.
Putting aside the plot holes, one-dimensional characters and sex scenes that were damn near impossible—Scissoring on an exercise bike? Really? What were they, acrobats?—the writing was awful! Amy was certain her seven-year-old niece had a better grasp of writing the English language. The writer had also managed to hit virtually all of Amy’s pet peeves, like using “of” when she meant “have”; “you’re” instead of “your” and using the non-word irregardless. What’s more, the author had trouble remembering that in some passages, there were two characters! During one sex scene, for instance, Lynette had not only kissed herself hungrily with lips tasting of strawberries but she had also sucked her own clit to a toe-curling orgasm.
If I could do that, I wouldn’t be looking for a girlfriend.
So, Amy was now feeling like it was her duty to the lesbian community to make sure no gay woman ever read At Lynette’s Place.
Her laptop pinged and a little notification window popped up. A new email had arrived. Clicking the notification, her Gmail account opened and when she saw who the email was from, Amy gasped and hurriedly took the laptop off her lap and placed it down on the coffee table as if the computer had suddenly become too hot to touch.
She sat super still on the sofa, her legs crossed, staring at the machine with wide eyes, hardly daring to breath.
The email was from Jillian Ashley.
The subject line read “Re: An Invitation.”
Amy was too afraid to open the message. She got up, went to her kitchen, opened the fridge and pulled out a chilled bottle of white wine that she had first opened a couple of nights ago. Pouring herself a glassful, she went back in the living room and started drinking the wine while pacing in front of the laptop, occasionally looking at the screen where the email seemed to mock her, taunting her.
Jillian Ashley had replied to her message.
The Jillian Ashley had replied to her message.
The only question now was, what was the reply? Yes or no? All Amy had to do was click open the email to find out.
Instead, she called Rachel.
“What’s up?” Rachel asked by way of greeting.
“She wrote back,” Amy replied.
“Who wrote back?”
“Jillian Ashley! That writer I told you about! The one I want on my podcast!”
“Oh, yeah.” Rachel paused. “Well, what did she say?”
“I don’t know, I’m too afraid to open the email.”
Amy heard Rachel sigh over the phone.
“Aims, just open the message!”
“What if she said no?”
“Tell you what, if she said no, I will hunt her down and kick her ass for you.”
Amy sucked her teeth.
“Stop being silly!”
“Silly? I’m not the grown woman afraid to open an email! Now, go on…open the damn thing.”
Amy knew Rachel was right. This was silly. After taking another fortifying sip of wine, she sat back down on the sofa. She put Rachel on speakerphone and then rested the device on the coffee table next to the laptop.
“Okay,” she slowly told Rachel, “I am opening the message…”
“Okay,” Rachel replied. “Be careful. Do not cut the green wire!”
Amy blinked.
“What?”
Rachel laughed.
“It just sounds like you’re trying to defuse a bomb.”
“Shut up! Okay, I’m opening it now.”
Using her forefinger on the trackpad, Amy guided the cursor to the message and clicked it open, wincing as she did so, prepared to see bad news.
Hello, Amy!
Thank you so much for reaching out to me! I am super happy that you liked my latest book! Fans like you are so important to me!
Regarding your invitation to be on your podcast, I would love to!
The message continued but Amy didn’t care.
“Oh my god, she said yes!” she squealed. “She fucking said yes!”
“Yay!” Rachel cheered from the phone.
“Holy fuck, I’m going to be interviewing Jillian Ashley! This is…This is un-fucking-believable!”
“Congratulations,” Rachel said. “Can I go now? My Saturday just won’t be complete without a nap.”
After saying goodbye, Amy hung up and then sat back on the couch and let out a relieved breath.
Wow!
Now that the initial exuberance of Jillian’s acceptance was out of her system, Amy read the rest of the email. It was mainly Jillian asking for details about the day and time for the interview, stipulating that it had to be in the late afternoon or evening because she was always busy during the early part of the day. She also asked about the technical requirements for participating in the podcast.
Amy pulled up her calendar. If it were up to her, this interview would be happening today, but she knew that was impossible. She thought about suggesting tomorrow, Sunday, but many people were often uptight about being disturbed on Sundays. Sunday was a family day. But wait...Did Jillian have a family? Was she married? Did she have kids? There was so much Amy didn’t know about her favorite author. So, Sunday was out. But would Jillian also think that Monday was too soon? Amy didn’t want to appear overeager even though she was, in fact, very overeager.
Tuesday?
Tuesday sounded right. It was far enough away that Jillian wouldn’t feel hounded by Amy. It also gave the impression that Amy was a cool customer; like, “Oh, well, thanks for agreeing to be on my podcast but I think we can wait until Tuesday to get this done.”
So, Tuesday.
But what time?
Jillian’s email was frustratingly vague in this regard. “Late afternoon or evening” covered a lot of hours. Not only that, both of them were open to interpretation. What did Jillian consider late afternoon? Three o’clock? Four? And would Jillian prefer early evening or late evening? And when did early evening become late evening? Five o’clock? Six? And speaking of evening…when did Jillian usually have her dinner?
Shit!
Amy wanted at least an hour of actual interview time with Jillian. But before the actual interview could begin, there would need to be checks done to make sure Jillian had no trouble connecting to the podcast software; then of course they’d spend a few minutes introducing themselves and just chatting a bit before Amy hit Record. All told, she’d need about ninety minutes of Jillian’s time.
After a quarter of an hour deliberating with herself, Amy finally settled on suggesting 4 p.m. to Jillian. She then spent another quarter of an hour composing the perfect reply to Jillian, one that was appropriately grateful but also chill, like, Hey, this is no big deal, really.
When she finally hit Send, Amy then sat back and looked at the screen, waiting anxiously for a reply before rolling her eyes at her own silliness. She was acting like a lovestruck teenage girl waiting for the girl she had a crush on to text her back. Besides, the Jillian Ashley probably received a bazillion email messages every day. Not only that, but Jillian was probably way too busy to be sitting around anxiously awaiting Amy’s response.
Just as she was about to get up and refill her wine glass, though, the laptop pinged and Jillian’s reply magically appeared in her Inbox. Amy didn’t hesitate opening this one.
Tuesday at four is perfect!
Chapter 6
On Tuesday afternoon, after work, Sally took a deep breath before shutting off the engine of her BMW in Max’s driveway. She wondered if what she was feeling now was how an actress feels when about to walk into an audition. Only, this wasn’t an audition, she reminded herself. She had the part! All
she had to do now was perform it.
She gave herself another look in the rearview mirror because for some reason Max had promised this Amy Whatever-her-name-is that this could be a video podcast episode.
“I really need Jillian to start being seen,” Max had explained last night over the phone. “I’ve been keeping her hidden for too long. Any longer and my readers are gonna start rebelling.”
Sally had understood. She had been following Jillian Ashley on Twitter since Jillian’s first book was released. Frustratingly, Jillian had never tweeted a photo of herself. Her profile picture on Twitter was the same one used as her author photo in her books: an image of a dark-haired woman, seen from behind, looking out to sea. The various Jillian Ashley Twitter topics which Sally followed often contained tweets by others wondering what Jillian Ashley looked like and why she only consented to written interviews.
Max let her into his large, two-level house in Oceanside which was just a two-minute walk from the beach and which offered fantastic panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean from the upstairs picture windows. Upon entering, Sally immediately made for the floor-to-ceiling mirror Max had in the foyer and once again examined her appearance.
“Come on, you look fine,” Max said, gently taking her elbow and leading her away from the mirror and deeper into his house. “We only have twenty minutes before Jillian is supposed to dial in and I need to explain the set-up.”
After crossing his sunken living room, Max led Sally to his den, a room decorated in the art-deco style. Sally had always admired Max’s sense of style. His entire house was tastefully decorated with artworks and stylish contemporary furnishings that were cosmopolitan but not overly masculine. There wasn’t a sports poster or a picture of bikini-clad bimbo holding a bottle of Miller Lite to be found.
In the den, Sally saw that Max had added a large folding picnic table, the kind people use when they’re hosting a backyard barbecue, and one folding chair. On the table were two Apple laptops. One of the laptops had a small external LED lighting rig attached to it.
“Okay,” Max began, “Here’s the deal.” He pointed at one of the laptops. “I’ve got this computer talking to that one via Zoom.” He pointed at the second machine, the one sitting in front of the folding chair. “That computer will be connected to Amy via some podcasting software we’ll connect to when the time comes.”
