by Anna Roberts
She frowns at me for a long moment. "No."
"You-know."
"I really don't."
"Yes, you do."
"I totally don't. You-know could mean anything. I mean, are we talking Voldemort or what here?"
"Voldemort?"
"Yeah. You-know-who."
"No. You-know-what."
She licks her spoon and stares blankly at me. She's so unhelpful. I'm sure she's doing this on purpose.
"You know," I hiss. "That. The reason why the television remote doesn't work."
"Oh, you mean MASTURBATION?" says Kate, at a volume I'm sure can be heard in Mexico. Alicia stirs on the couch.
"Shh."
"What? It's normal. Everyone does it - well, unless they're weird." The airy expression slides off her face as she looks at me. "Oh, right. Yeah. 'Cause you...don't, right? Is that what he said to you?"
I nod. "He laughed and said I probably didn't know how."
"But you don't."
"I do," I murmur. "It's all coming back to me now. When I was a teenager..."
Kate's eyes are like saucers. "Whoa. Hanna, was there some kind of bad-touch going on back when you were just a baby dingbat? - because if there was I take back everything I said about you being sexually stunted, maladjusted, prudish, hypocritical and just plain weird."
I nod. "There were...workshops. That's what my mother called them. Hairy women with handmirrors. They wanted us to..." I sniff, overwhelmed by the sense memory of patchouli. "...to paint them. And write poetry to them. It was all in the interest of...getting in touch with our 'essential womanness' or something."
"Write poetry to what?" asks Kate.
"To our...you-knows."
"Oh my God, we are not doing this again, Hanna. They wanted you to write poems to your vagina?"
I nod. "And paint pictures. And after that I just couldn't...well...I couldn't face it."
"Okay, I'm kind of getting the picture," says Kate. "Your Mom made you go to some kind of pussy-gazing group where you got all Georgia O'Keefe and read out selections from The Vagina Monologues?"
"Yes."
"Did anyone touch you in your bathing suit area?"
"No. They just wanted me to..." I shudder. "Celebrate it."
"Gotcha. So I'm guessing after your Mom forced you to join the Hoo-Ha Sisterhood you rebelled and turned out like...well...like a weirdo who can't even name her own genitals, right?"
I nod and lick up the last of the brownie mix. Name it? I giggle. "What am I supposed to call it? Irma?"
"Irma?"
"It kind of looks like an 'Irma', now I think about it." Maybe it's relief at finally reliving my traumatic past, but I can't seem to stop giggling. This strikes me as a fantastically funny thing to say and I begin to laugh.
"Dude, better that than Voldemort," says Kate, and we're shrieking, tears streaming down both our faces. My sides hurt and I think I'm going to pee myself. Jesús peers in and the look on his face sets us off again. "Good brownie mix," I manage to say. "Really good. Is there any more?"
Kate screams and falls off her chair.
Chapter Fourteen
Beautiful Monster
It’s Friday and tomorrow is the day of the masked ball. Crispian has arranged for a hairdresser to come round and cut my hair but at this rate I’m going to be keeping him waiting; Timothy Grope has just dumped another three first chapters on my desk.
I blink up at him for a moment. He stares back. “What?” he says, eventually.
“Nothing,” I murmur.
“Good. Get reading.” He wanders off muttering about passive-aggressives.
No, it’s no use. I can’t stay late tonight. I just can’t. “Um...excuse me,” I whisper, following him to his office door. “Ahem...um...hello?”
He turns and sighs. “What, Hanna? I’m not asking you to proof-read the fucking things. Just wave an eyeball over them and tell me if they make your panties sweat, okay?”
"My what?" I let out a small shriek. Timothy Grope bundles me into his office.
"What do you mean?" I gasp.
He sighs. "Are you really this dense, Hanna? You read fuckloads of romance novels on a daily basis and you still don't understand why people read them? I don't believe you. Nobody is this stupid."
Oh, that does it. "I am not stupid!" The windows rattle at my voice and people turn to stare. Timothy Grope yanks down the blind.
"For God's sake, Hanna..."
"I'm not stupid," I hiss, in a deadly undertone. "I can't be stupid. I'm a brunette."
Timothy Grope stares at me for a long moment. "Yeah. Okay. Leaving that aside for a moment...just look at the chapters, okay? I've seen you watching the clock all day and I know you're eager to get off..."
I shake my head. "No, no. This is...'leaving that aside'? You can't just call me stupid and expect me to stand here and take it. I'm an intellectual. I have a college degree."
"You kind of don't, what with the whole bribery mess and your..."
I let out a small scream and he glances anxiously at the blinds and puts his hands in the air. "Listen, Mr. Ironic Pabst Blue Ribbon, I'm not like all those other girls. I'm not blonde. I'm not peppy. I was never a cheerleader. And I'm okay with that. Are you? Because it seems to me that ever since I've started working here you've been consistently threatened by my quiet but considerable intellect."
Timothy Grope sighs again. "Hanna, you thought Milan Kundera was Spanish. And I have it on good authority that you thought Camus was a fuckin' vegan friendly dip made with garlic and chickpeas. That's hummus, Hanna - hummus. And it's pronounced 'Cam-oo'."
I open my mouth to speak, but he shakes his head and interrupts. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles is not a romantic comedy, Hanna. Ditto Wuthering Heights. Petit bourgeois is not a brand of yoghurt. Catch-22 was not a threatening text message - it's a classic novel by Joseph Heller. Written after 1950, believe it or not. Same with In Cold Blood, only that was Truman Capote," I open my mouth again but he cuts me off "...and no, it's pronounced 'Capot-ee' - trust me on this. There is no nice way to say this, Hanna, but I'm afraid you are a moron. You're probably not a bad person, but you are a moron."
I blink for a moment or two. My eyes blur with tears and I gaze down at my hands. "Fine," I murmur. "Okay. But I'm still The Chosen One."
He smooths back his hair and exhales slowly. "Yes," he says. "Yes you are. So I'd really appreciate it if you could give me maybe thirty minutes and skim those extra chapters before the authors decide to skip the middleman and just puke them out on KindleWorlds without so much as a find/replace, okay?"
"I can't," I say. "I'm much too stupid."
"Don't."
"What? I'm too stupid. How could I possibly guess the next big thing in publishing if I'm that much of..." I gulp and sniff. "...a moron?"
"Hanna," he says, taking hold of my shoulders. "It's not a reflection of your intellect, trust me."
"Thank you."
"Yeah. You're welcome." He frowns for a moment, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he figures out what to say next. He has nice teeth - better than Crispian's. Despite expensive orthodontics Crispian has always had a bad teeth-to-gum ratio.
"Look," Timothy Grope says. "It's not about how smart you are, Hanna. It's who you are. It's what you are. We need you and we need the hungry ravings of your vast, indiscriminatory id. We need you to roam wild in the forests of popular literature, devouring everything in your path like the beautiful, beautiful monster you are."
I blink, lost for an instant in my own complex neurological processes. "Did you..." I stammer. "Did you just call me beautiful?"
He sighs. "Oh Hanna," he says, his voice surprisingly gentle as he reaches out and weaves his fingers into my hair. "You fucking idiot."
And so that was how I came to stay late at the office on Friday evening.
I arrive back at the apartment to find a skinny young woman pulling a leopard-print tank top on over a lime green lace bra. "Oh, hey," she says. "You must
be Hanna."
"And you must be whore."
She frowns. "Actually I prefer the term 'sex worker'," she says, primping her thick black hair with a hand. "I'm a certified massage therapist and accredited sexual surrogate."
I don't understand. "I don't understand," I say, padding the wordcount.
"Yeah," she says. "He said you wouldn't."
Just then Crispian comes out of the bathroom, fastening his pants. "Hey," he says. "You're late. So I see you've met Darlene."
"Dolores," says Darlene. "My name is Dolores. But hey, you tried." She gets up from the couch, towering over me in her six inch lucite heels. She takes hold of a hank of my hair and fingers it thoughtfully. "So wow - these ends are gonna have to come off."
"DON'T TOUCH MY HAIR!" He touched my hair. He said it was pretty.
She steps back. "Right. So...yeah. How do you want to play this? Because I'm not going to be able to cut your hair..."
"...you're damn right," I snarl. "Crispian, what is this woman doing here?"
"She's a hairdresser, honey."
"She says she's a sex-worker."
"True," says Dolores. "But I'm thinking of getting out of it, you know? That’s why I’m going to Beauty School. Tricks are so fuckin' needy. It's all 'wah wah, my wife doesn't understand me. Boo hoo, my girlfriend freaks out and cries for six hours if I so much as mention roleplaying My Little Pony: Friendship Is M..."
Crispian grabs her by the waist and steers her towards the door. "Okay, so maybe this wasn't a great idea," he says.
She ignores him. "...I mean, it's the eternal whine of the john throughout history, isn't it? Kind of begs the question why they don't fuckin' talk to these women who they claim would never understand them."
I feel faint and slightly sick. There are ten dollar bills floating in the lucite heels of her shoes. "I have a friend who would love those shoes," I murmur, fixating on random details in my profound distress.
Nice of you to tell us you were out of sorts. The readers would never have figured that out on their own.
- They can't figure out everything.
Oh, I don't know. I'm willing to bet they know exactly what you meant by 'staying late at the office'. It's not rocket science.
- Will you be quiet?
Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of your Libido singing Ode To Joy.
"What about my money?" says Dolores.
"Money?" Crispian snorts. "You haven't cut a single hair on her head."
She arches a stencilled brow and holds out her hand. "Are you fucking kidding me? You said fifty and twenty more if I did the voice. Which I did. Now pay up."
"The voice?" I murmur.
"Pinkie Pie," says Dolores.
"Hanna, this isn't what it looks like..." Crispian begins, but I am already halfway to the wine-rack. It's exactly what it looks like. I'm not stupid.
Yes you are. Let's not have this conversation again.
"You paid a woman to do My Little Pony voices to you," I say, opening a bottle. "And I know why. You are so lucky my mother went off to a crystal-healing workshop this weekend. After all the time and effort I've poured into making this relationship work, Crispian..."
"I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's just..."
"YOU'RE NOT SORRY!" I howl. "If you were sorry you wouldn't do it..."
"...I know, I know, baby. I have weird compulsions - you know that. It's all part of my general fucked-upness. And be honest, would you really love me if I was normal, huh?"
I sigh. He's right. He's broken. He's wounded. I have to fix him. He calls to every nurturing instinct inside me. "I don't know," I mutter, staring into the bottom of the glass. "I feel like we've had this conversation before, Crispian."
"What can I say? I'm fifty shades of fucked up."
"And I'm fifty bucks out of pocket," says Dolores. "Plus twenty for the Pinkie Pie impression."
"Will you stop saying that?" I shriek. This is wrong; so wrong, and so disturbing. How can I trust him?
"Hanna," Crispian takes hold of me by the shoulders. "Listen to me, baby. I know we have issues. I know it's complicated, but I love you. I want to marry you. Ever since the first time you faceplanted at my feet I've known that you were the one. The thought of anyone else having you is like a melon-baller scooping out my dark soul. You beguiled me, Hanna. You wrapped me in the Saran wrap of love, pounded me flat on the chopping board of desire and then filled my soul with the garlic butter of devotion. You are warm, witty, honest, wise, innocent, beautiful and pure..."
Huh. Look at that. By a strange coincidence this book has finally taken a turn for the D'Urbervilles...
- ...will you leave me alone?
Hell no. Things are just getting interesting.
"...and there's nobody else like you, Hanna. Nobody. I love you so much, baby. Can you ever forgive me?"
Can you ever forgive me, I start to say, but then he gives my hands an extra hard squeeze and says "And I know this probably isn't the best time to ask this, but do you have any spare cash on you?"
I stare blankly at him.
"Wow," says Dolores. "So that's why they don't talk to their wives."
I take the bottle of wine, walk down the hall and lock myself into what I think is the nearest bathroom but turns out to be Narnia. There a friendly faun meets me and invites me to tea. We finish the wine, bust out his stash of brandy and get very drunk. He tells me about a dryad who betrayed him with a dwarf whose claim to sexual expertise lay mainly in the fact that he only came up to her waist. Then we get arrested by the White Witch's secret police - as usual. She's like "What are you doing in my dominion, Daughter of Eve?" and I'm like "Hiding from my boyfriend, who pays hookers to do My Little Pony voices and draws anthropomorphic horse vaginas when he thinks I'm not looking." She asked me if he had a centaur fetish and I started crying and said I wished he had because at least then he'd be interested in half of me. Then it came out that he asked me for money to pay the hooker.
The White Witch was actually surprisingly sympathetic and said I wouldn't have made a great lawn ornament anyway. So after that she adopted me as her heir and I ruled as Ice Queen of Narnia for about sixty of their years. It was all going pretty well until a bunch of British school children turned up with some Jesusy lion and drove me out of my own dominions, whereupon I found myself standing in the hall again, clutching an empty bottle and nursing the beginning of a really nasty headache.
Luckily the wine rack is fairly full (Claudia hasn't been around - she's been too busy trying to find a therapist for her feral part-time cryptid of a daughter) and I uncork another bottle of Merlot. At first I think there's no sign of Crispian but when I'm halfway through my third glass I glimpse the crown of his fedora poking out from the top of the couch.
"Crispian?"
As I approach I realise there is something wrong. Very wrong. Oh holy fuck. Really wrong. In fact it's so disturbing and wrong that I devote yet another pointless sentence telling the reader just how wrong and disturbing it is. Chilling, even. Yes. Chilling.
He is kneeling on the floor next to the couch, his hands on his knees, his eyes empty. He is softly humming the My Little Pony theme tune under his breath. Holy crap - he's gone all catatonic.
"Crispian! Look at me?"
He raises his eyes to mine and smiles vaguely. "I'm a pretty pony," he says, in a strange, mechanical voice. "Would you like to brush my hair?"
I drain my glass and begin to sob. "Oh my God. What happened to you?"
"Let's play," he says, in the same dead but chirpy tones as before. "Sharing is fun!" He sounds like a toy with a pullcord. This is wrong. Just wrong.
So you've said.
- Like you're any help at a time like this.
There's nothing wrong with him, you idiot. You caught him cheating with a hooker and now he's pretending to be batshit insane so that you'll feel sorry for him.
- Don't be ridiculous. It's far more likely to have something to do with his abusive childhood.
It
has something in common with childhood, I'll grant you that...
I kneel before him so that we're eye to eye, equals.
...well, you kind of are, given that you've both just chea...
- LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
"Crispian, please," I plead. "Don't do this. It's wrong. And disturbing. And chilling. And without you my life will be all dark, without light. And...and I'll bump into things all the time, just like I used to and then mysteriously didn't sometime around chapter seven of book one. Before I met you my life had no meaning, but then you came and you were..."
I swallow down a burp. The wine has gone to my head. Oh dear.
"...you were all damaged and that was sexy, and I could bolster my piffling self-esteem by trying to figure out what was wrong with you, instead of acting like a fucking adult and dealing with my own shit before hurling myself headlong into a relationship..." Oh God. That was a bit of sick came up. I'm really quite drunk. I've never been this meta while sober.
"Please, Crispian," I wail, grabbing his shoulders. "Please - snap out of it! I love you! You are my life now, such as it is! I've had so many insights into your stone-obvious mommy issues; every night I thrash and toss and turn in and out of symbolic dreams. You are the master of my universe (original title drop) and if I can't muse on Facebookish pop-psych sentiments every time you behave like a total fucking asshole then I'll probably die alone and get eaten by cats. Or grow the hell up and develop a real sense of self-worth. I love you so much. Please don't leave me. Please."
He just smiles at me, bland and benign. I start to cry. I'm so unhappy. And I need to pee. I'm going to end up like Alicia - fat, feral and living in dumpsters. That's what happens to women when they can't have Crispian Neigh.
I shake him like a baby. "CRISPIAN! SNAP OUT OF IT!"
His gaze doesn't falter. "Friendship is magic!" he says.
Oh God. I shook him too hard. My brain hates me and so does my body. I deposit a large quantity of red wine puke over his hands and lap.
"GROSS!" he screams, and leaps to his feet.
"Crispian! You're okay!"
