Booked Up

by Harper Logan

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Our goal is not justice,” she said. “Our goal is eradication.”

  “Eradicating…Sergio?”

  “He is weak now. He wasn’t man enough to show for the panel. But we can’t count on that weakness lasting. When he hears how he was treated by the audience, he’ll begin to plot against us. So we must strike first… and hard.”

  “But he’s not a threat!” said Cam. “What’s he going to do, publish another review? A blog? A mean tweet?”

  Madeleine laughed low in her throat. “The beauty of utterly destroying a man, Cam, is never having to worry about what he’ll do next. But you’re fretting.”

  “It seems like overkill.”

  “What do you care? Oh, my. I see from the look on your face that you do care. Cam, where were you earlier, just before the panel began? And why did I hear rumors that Sergio showed up but left before things could get started?”

  “Oh god. Is this where I get fired?”

  With her arms crossed, she stopped again. Her cigarette hung down from her lip. It was a strangely inelegant look for her, more like a truck-stop waitress than the Lavender Contessa look she generally affected. “What did you do, Cam? And stop that fidgeting, it’s undignified.”

  He realized he was playing with his buttons again, and dropped his hands to his sides.

  She was peering at him. “Oh dear.”

  “No, no, don’t worry.”

  Her eyes widened. “What did you do with him?”

  “I didn’t say I did anything!”

  “Then why are you blushing?” Her laughter was piercing. “I told you to throw yourself at Sergio…but did he catch you? I thought all that had failed!”

  “You’re reading way too much into me fidgeting with my buttons.”

  “At the very least, you had a conversation with him.”

  “I did.”

  “And you convinced him not to come to the panel.”

  “No, that part I had nothing to do with.”

  “Of course you did. And this was either a grave betrayal on your part…or a bit of cunning deeper than I thought you capable of.”

  “Or, I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You spoke to him. What was the tenor of the conversation? Was it warm? Were caresses exchanged?”

  “No!”

  She nodded. “The vehemence of your refusal is telling, Cam.”

  “You know, for someone who is always dissing detective fiction, you’re doing a great Sherlock Holmes act here.”

  “Deflection. Even more proof.”

  “What do you want me to say, Madeleine? We talked. He was nervous about you. He left. That was really it.”

  She stared at him longer than was comfortable. Finally, she nodded. “Very well. I sense there is more to the story, but I suppose I shouldn’t press. Come along. We’ll discuss his destruction further once we get home.”

  He followed her, with the sinking feeling that while the interrogation might be over for now, there was more to come.

  10

  Serge

  Saturday brought another email from a disappointed fan. “I will never read your books again! The things you said about Madeleine were so hateful, I can’t believe one writer would say that about another. If you were even half the man Detective Valentino was, you would know better than treat a great writer like Madeleine like that!”

  Since the panel yesterday, Serge had heard his email ping over two hundred times, all from angry readers. He’d tried writing responses to the first couple. Polite little emails justifying his position. “You see, when a writer reviews another writer’s work…” But there were just so many of them!

  He’d shot a few messages over to the other writers on the panel, asking what had happened, but nobody had gotten back to him.

  Worse, tucked away in all those emails was one from his editor. “Serge, thanks for sending me that email. To be clear, we were looking for you to send actual pages of your story, not just a few paragraphs summarizing what you were planning to write…”

  He sighed and turned away from the computer. Everything was going wrong.

  Maybe Cam was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have written the review at all. What had he been expecting? A little praise for cleverly picking apart the awfulness of that huge mass of pages she’d called a novel? But he hadn’t counted on what a literary sensation Madeleine Stevens was around here. Why couldn’t they see the truth about her?

  But he couldn’t admit Cam was right, without thinking about Cam, and that meant remembering what had happened before the panel.

  He wanted it to be a dumb mistake, like tripping over your shoelaces. Just something that happens, and then you forget all about it. Something little that doesn’t define your life.

  A seduction of the enemy, an infiltration. He’d tried to justify it to himself like that before finally giving up.

  Serge would just have to be okay not understanding what had gone on between him and Cam. Not understanding why just thinking of Cam made him smile. A confused smile...but a smile nonetheless. He had this crazy urge to go out and buy something for Cam.

  Wouldn’t that be the most awkward thing on earth? Here, I bought you a present, please promise me we’ll never have to talk about what happened.

  He pulled on his jacket. Thinking here at home was not working. He’d go to the gym. That’s where he did his best thinking. Or, rather, not thinking, letting his brain rest while his body worked. Often when he was stuck on a scene, spending an hour on the weights would let his subconscious come up with a solution.

  Even though it was nearly lunch-time, there was a crispness still in the air. He’d always loved fall, the way he’d get a sudden breath of chill air that would somehow be exciting and invigorating. He decided to walk the long way to the gym. And promised himself he wouldn’t think about anything on the way. He’d just notice the world around him. Isn’t that what writers were supposed to do?

  So he carefully noted the leaves (changing color, not yet dead, still thick with juice, some fallen, some not), the sky (mostly clear with a few strands of cloud to the east), and the buildings (probably full of people who hated him).

  Because the weather was so nice, there were a ton of people (most of whom probably hated him) out and about. People enjoying their coffee at the cafe, people strolling and peeking into shop windows, people visiting the animal shelter to fill their lives with pets.

  It was while passing the animal shelter that he saw a familiar face. Cam was staring into the window, where several small kittens were playing. The sight was jarring, seeing someone so closely aligned with absolute evil, watching something so innocent and happy.

  Worse, Serge felt a weird rush of excitement seeing him. Like his body didn’t realize that this was the enemy, camouflaged within a nubbly wool cardigan. His current path would bring him dangerously close to Cam, so he prepared to step off the sidewalk and cross the street to get away from him.

  It didn’t work. Cam looked up and spotted him.

  Their eyes were locked together, but neither took a step forward.

  He couldn’t talk to Cam.

  No. That was ridiculous. He had to talk to Cam. Not about what had happened between them—that would have to be off-limits. But about what had happened at the panel. What had Madeleine said to destroy his reputation?

  So he got up his courage and walked over.

  “Looking at cats?” he said. That seemed like a benign way to start the conversation.

  “I keep coming back. It helps me relax, I guess. I like the little white one.” Cam pointed at the window. There was a tiny ball of fluff, sleeping next to a similarly-shaped orange ball of fluff.

  “Do you have any pets?” Serge asked.

  Cam’s brow wrinkled. “No. My apartment won’t allow them. I guess this is as close as I’ll get to having one, staring in the window.”

  “You could adopt one and take it to work with you. Then you could see it a lot.”

&n
bsp; “I work at Madeleine’s house. I try not to spring big surprises on people.”

  When he was writing, Serge always tried to include multiple layers of meaning in conversation. Detective Valentino would say one thing, suggest another, and the reader would understand still a third thing from all that Valentino did not say.

  But real life conversation didn’t work like that. He was standing there, not a foot away from Cam, feeling completely unable to think of any subtle way to introduce the topic.

  So, he blurted.

  “Your boss seems to like to spring surprises on people.”

  Cam blinked. “Nice segue.”

  “What happened at the panel?”

  “You should’ve been there.”

  “Apparently so. I could have defended myself. What did she do?”

  “You know, the panel wasn’t the only thing that happened that morning,” said Cam. “Maybe you forgot the thing that happened before that.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Cam looked around, and lowered his voice. “Do you know what the irony is here? You called me a drone, because all I ever do is think about work. And here you are, after what happened between us, and what do you want to talk about? Work. Are you sure I’m the drone?”

  “I have gotten literally hundreds of messages since that panel. People are turning against me. They’re furious. And Madeleine did that. She whipped them into a frenzy.”

  “Was it a prank, what you did with me? Was it revenge?” Cam jabbed Serge with his index finger. “You can’t get to Madeleine, so you take it out on me?”

  “I didn’t take anything out on you,” said Serge. He was beginning to feel frantic. There were so many people around. What if they heard the conversation? What if Cam blurted out something embarrassing?

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” he asked. “Somewhere private?”

  “Why? I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Come on. Don’t do this to me.”

  “We can get some coffee across the street.”

  “No. I can’t talk where people will hear.”

  “Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to listen to you, Serge.”

  His voice sounded strained when he said, “Please?”

  “Fine. Okay. We’ll go to my apartment, it’s a block from here. But don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t want you lunging at me or anything.”

  “Jesus, don’t think so highly of yourself.”

  Cam’s apartment was small, neat, and catalog-perfect. Serge felt a little guilty walking into the living room. The places he lived always ended up looking like student housing, with dishes in the sink, thrift-store furniture, and unruly stacks of books and papers towering on every surface, ready to slide onto the floor. By contrast, Cam’s place looked like it had been decorated by a grown-up, with lagoon-blue walls accented with white moldings, all contrasting with the well-polished old wood floor; there were two rounded white couches that no one had ever dropped a piece of pizza upside-down on. Instead of a TV, the couches faced one another, with a table in between, as though conversation would be the focus of the room. A low row of bookshelves lined one wall. White curtains decorated with a small, almost invisible pink leaf print caught the sunlight streaming in, making the room glow with comfort. One stray sunbeam slipped between the curtains, and lighted a lapis-colored vase filled with lilies.

  “Wow,” said Serge. “I am astonished.”

  Cam brushed imaginary lint from the back of one of the couches, and gestured for Serge to have a seat, then he sat on the opposite couch. “Madeleine helped. This is the first time anyone has sat on that one.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I don’t get guests, really.”

  “You understand how sad that is?”

  “Yes, Serge. I’m the saddest little drone in the hive. But now you’ve got all the privacy you need so you can avoid talking about yesterday.”

  Serge pulled out his phone and opened his email. He held it out to Cam, scrolling through all the new complaints that had come in just since he’d left the house. “She’s destroying me. Whatever she said—”

  “Is nothing like what she’s got planned for you next.”

  That stopped him. Serge set his phone down beside him. “Dare I ask?”

  “You can, but I can’t answer. Not because of loyalty to Madeleine, but because I don’t know. She’s being catty and weird. But now she thinks you’re weak, because you didn’t show up to the panel.”

  “That wasn’t because I was afraid.”

  “It kind of was.”

  “Not of her, I mean.”

  “Of me?”

  “I don’t do stuff like that, Cam. Ever.”

  “Yeah, not to criticize, but it did kind of seem like your first time.”

  There was a moment of silence between them, but Serge couldn’t help it, he laughed. It was like something that had been knotted up inside him let go, suddenly and all at once, and he couldn’t stop laughing, holding on to his stomach. The concerned look Cam was giving him only made him laugh harder.

  When he caught his breath, he said, “I’m seriously not gay.”

  “You should get a t-shirt with that phrase on it, as often as you say it.”

  “I have looked at guys. I’ve thought about them. A little. Just the regular amount, you know?”

  Cam slipped off his shoes, and drew his legs up underneath him on the couch. “Here’s the thing, Serge. If what happened out there was a one-time thing, that’s fine. Hooray for me, a hot guy went down on me. I will wave a little celebratory flag in honor of the day. I think it’s important, when people name their orientation, that we accept them at their word.”

  “Good. Thank you for that.”

  “It’s just, and you don’t know how embarrassing this is to say, it’s just I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since it happened.”

  “You didn’t…you didn’t tell Madeleine, I hope.”

  “What? God no. It’s bad enough she helps pick out my furniture, I don’t need her knowing the sordid but scanty details of my sex life.”

  Serge sighed with relief. Except he wasn’t really relieved. Because Cam hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, any more than he had been able to stop thinking about Cam.

  What was it? Cam didn’t fit any of his stereotypes about guys. In the little “guy” compartments in Serge’s brain, there were tough macho guys, there were little weenie nerd guys, there were middle-aged dads in jorts, and that was about it. Cam didn’t fit into any of those. Right now, on that clean white couch, with his unwrinkled pants and his cozy-looking sweater, his shirt buttoned all the way to the top, he looked strangely elegant, and comfortable in his own body. He exhibited a comfort Serge really only felt when he was at the gym, working hard. It was like, if there weren’t any weights around, he wasn’t sure what he should do with his body.

  It wasn’t even that Cam looked stuck-up. That was probably another compartment, one that he had really started noticing once he’d begun the residency here. A class of men who were thoughtfully well-dressed, who clearly cared a lot about how they were put together, and wanted everyone else to care, too.

  Then Serge thought about the kittens in the window. That was it, really. Cam was like a cat. He was handsome without particularly trying to be, naturally gravitating toward a dignified look without overdoing it or trying to make anyone feel lesser because of it. He didn’t know why that comparison pleased him so much, but it did.

  Then Cam raised an eyebrow. “What’s up? You’ve been quiet for a while.”

  Serge shook his head. “Nothing. What am I going to do? Your boss has it in for me, and I can’t get anything written while all this is going on.”

  “Have you considered not checking your email?”

  “I know, right?”

  Cam scowled. “No, I’m serious. When Madeleine is in her writing hours, literally noth
ing is allowed to disturb her. If the house is on fire, I have to go outside to call the fire department. No phones, no internet, no drop-ins. And she has written three times as many books as you.”

  “Yeah, quantity over quality.”

  Cam stood up quickly. “Do you want anything to drink? Coffee?”

  “I hit a nerve.”

  “No. I’m not offended.”

  “I can hear it in your tone. Besides, look at your shoulders, you’re all stiffened up.”

  Cam rolled his shoulders and neck. When his head was straight again, that cowlick had fallen down over his forehead. He walked past the bar counter that separated the kitchen from the little living room, and put water on to boil. “Look, I really don’t care about your opinion of Madeleine’s work,” he said. “I know you think she’s tawdry and boring. That’s fine. There’s room for that opinion in the world. Personally, I think you’re wrong. I found her books at a terrible, sad time in my life, and they had a lot of meaning for me. They still do.”

  Serge turned around on the couch to look at Cam. “Do you think Dona Quintana is her best work? Tell me truthfully.”

  “Do you always give blowjobs in public? Tell me truthfully.”

  “Damn, I did hit a nerve! Fine. You know what? Truce. I’ll talk about the blowjob if you will tell me what Madeleine has planned.”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Yeah. But you can find out.”

  “So…this is the weirdest trade I’ve ever heard of. If I find out what Madeleine has planned, you’ll talk to me about what you did.”

  “Yup. We can have a deep conversation all about our feelings.”

  Serge saw the interest in Cam’s eyes, and felt pretty proud of himself. It took a keen novelist’s soul to be able to work a deal like this, and he was all but patting himself on the back.

  But then Cam said: “I don’t want to have a conversation about our feelings. I want you. I want to sleep with you.”

  Silence hung between them, until the kettle began to whistle. Cam looked stunned by what he had just said. He turned off the stove, looking down at the cooking surface, the happy orange kettle, anything but looking back at Serge.