Sibella & Sibella

by Joseph Di Prisco

  “Towel’s a long story, Myron, which Calypso’s isn’t? Hers is the shortest nine-hundred-thirty-two-page thing ever written, because it ended on page one and a half?”

  “Please don’t tell me?”

  “You know what? That manuscript?”

  “It’s garbage?” he said.

  The Irish might be a judgment-enhancer after all.

  “And I may be a sibyl wannabe, but I don’t see any good coming from it so let’s not publish this, please, Myron?”

  “Too late?”

  “Can we talk about this?”

  “First take that towel off?”

  And yes, our fucking uptalk had returned with attitude to burn, don’t remind me.

  Another unpleasant development bah-loomed on the horizon, however. This disagreeable development was fleshfully present in the foyer, dressed like somebody about to go on stage for her pole dance at the anything-but-gentlemen’s club. I wish I had merely constructed another one of my betrayed-mark over-the-top metaphors. And I hold you discountable, Kelly, that I hesitate to use the word literally because this was the perfect occasion to give the thorny word a callback.

  “You have a visitor?” The disgust with which I invoked the passive-aggressive “visitor” revealed, no doubt, my contempt for the thus-far-unnamed personage in question mark.

  “A visitor?” whispered he, with trepidation. “Can you please take that ridiculous towel off?”

  I could, and I did.

  “Ashlay Commingle?” I should have whipped out my death ray? “More like visatrix?”

  Had Myron forgotten they had an appointment? He was preoccupied, of course, by the turbulent goings on, but he didn’t want to burn a bridge with Ashlay, and he could liberate a couple of minutes for an appointment with the likes of her? And yes, that’s the distinctive spelling of his author’s name? For reasons soon to be obvious? And articulating her whole name made it sound like a puzzling and filthy sentence, salacious subject and provocative verb? Ashlay Commingle? Okay, I’ll stop?

  Fine, all right, I mean it this time.

  He put the bottle and the shot glasses into a file drawer for later disgustation. He wasn’t completely hammered, so there was hope for him if not for Ashlay.

  “Ashlay,” he sugarly called out, “come on in, sweetheart.”

  Upon further review, maybe he was hammered.

  On the other other hand, it never hurts to adopt a honeyed tone, whatever the circumstances, don’t you agree? But if you do, you are beyond hopeless. I noticed all over again how Ashlay was terminally de Minnie Mouse diminutive (much like Junior’s present meal ticket), which might account for my elevated bias against her. And to underscore this point or to assert for his benefit my higher-archical dominance in case Myron had forgotten, I made sure to position myself alongside his working girl lady caller as to primitively emphasize my standing, of which there was, in the first place, little doubt in my mind if not in yours.

  Ashlay click-clickety-clacked into his manlyish cave and the two of them warmly and whiskily embraced. Normally, that sort of clinch would have been the highlight of his day, on subpar with his inevitable veal chop, and for the same reason. He wrapped his arms around her, his sternum against the tippy top of her crown. She was dressed in a rhinestone-studded, bone-white jumpsuit, zippered—I should say unzippered—to the nether region of her twenty-inch baby doll waist, but the effect seemed to extend all the way down to her six-inch black open-toed high heels, which barely got her up to five feet. Yes, or I mean no, no discernible undergarmenture in evidence, and Victoria herself had no secrets to hold back. Bronze chest, long golden locks, green adder eyes, something like Junior’s micro-fantasy in the flesh.

  Let me get something off my chest. Is it my fault that some of the women who bugged me were pervertically challenged? Sure, whenever somebody used the bleak expression “flying under the radar” I winced and took it personally. I couldn’t fly under the radar even if I was doing the limbo. But am I mean-spirited and unkind to the undersized set, which included Junior’s micro-trophy girl? I can see why you might be suspicious, but remember, Kelly also got my goat and she is not very short, and she Great Daned to call me a “heightist,” a dumb-as-Kelly neologism (look it up, Kelly). Even so, did she have a legitimate point, which would amount to a first for her? I will have to think this through—as soon as I ever give a flying-under-the-radar fuck.

  As you might be swift-boatly surmising, Ashlay used to be a porn star. Her movies remained in wild, pulse-racing circulation and I may have had my doubts about her, but there were a few problems with my reasoning with regard to her. Publishers jabber about promoting writers with a platform, an established presence that makes their books more marketable. Ashlay had a platform in spades, a fucking platform under strobes. Again, Kelly, thanks to you, another missed dopening for a “literally.” At the same time, she was also a terrific writer, go figure, which you’ll have to agree is tall of me to concede. Myron was confident the literary world was going to celebrate her when her first novel, Slip, Slippery Girl, came out. Besides the working-too-hard syntax, yet another damn Girl book title. Oh, well, at least she didn’t live in Brooklyn. Even so, she was wickedly smart and as promiscuously entrepreneurial as Warren Fucking Buffet. She had had Xtensive Xperience in the Xciting and Xpanding universe (four X’s in a row, personal best!) of X-rated entertainment (make that five!) before doing a one-eighty of sorts and procuring her doctorate in literary theory from Berkeley—though she would argue it was not really much of a do-ouevre for her. Berkeley was where I heard they didn’t read books or teach literature any more, only texts and hothouse obscurity with a soupçon of self-importance. Sacrè bleu. Ashlay was her actual name, too. Her stage name was different, and in every sense classic, as you will discover if you don’t know already.

  Disrespectfully, a point of personal privilege, if you would. Thank you.

  What the fuck was it with guys and their porn? Now it was cool? Now it was antisocially Xceptable? Now it was avant fucking en garde? Sure, some women claim to endorse porn, including some feminists, but I did not understand. Call me a prude if you want. Junior and you would have something in common. But for the broken record, I had nothing against a woman’s free choice and sexual expression, though, as you have seen over and over, it obviously had plenty against me.

  As it happened, Ashlay and her book had aroused my first argument with Myron when he acquired the intellectual property. We were promoting pornography, I contended. And pornography was demeaning to women, I don’t care how many times the post-modern types trumpeted the supposed transgressive nature of porn and how it was a vehicoughle for women’s empowerment, pleasure, subversion, and resistance.

  Well, that’s what I told Myron, and the first problem with my contention was that I was adamantinely opposed to censorship. But the greater difficulty for me was that, without being conscious at first of this, I was soon to be Chanel Ing my professorial maman. Never a good look for a growing or overgrown girl, and fuck, Mom usually made more sense than I ever wanted to hear. She lectured me on how feminism had had its first wave and its second wave and was now in its third wave. I was a big beneficiary, being a female Division 1 athlete, of the first and second waves. She may have been a feminist Doc Ball or Duke Kahanamaka shooting the pipeline, but she lost me at wave.

  Myron countered that Ashlay’s book was not porn, despite any fuckation narratively repenisented. Point, Myron. And it wasn’t his place as a man to be judging the sexual choices women had made—except with respect to his ex-wife, where this principle did not apply. Again, fucking point, Myron. And true, it wasn’t like Ashlay was a victim of the sex slave market—but if you dare to make that observation among certain rabbidinnical feminists, you could get your head handed to you the way Salome did in the Oscar Wilde play, because they would say by definition all porn actors were exploited. Don’t tell any of them what I am about
to say, please, but I found that argument to be an oversimpletonification. I know I’m fucking contradictating myself.

  “Tell me, Myron. Have you seen her movies and did that influence your decision to take her book?” I’d bet Junior had seen them.

  “Define influence?” We may have stumbled upon yet another one of Myron’s uptalking stress points.

  “I don’t need to. You need to.” But see? It wasn’t my stress point.

  “I’m celibate, I told you, remember?”

  “Let’s not do that again, I beg you.”

  “Come on, Sibella, you know Ashlay wrote a terrific book?”

  “And?”

  “And if you’re committed to the dignity of women, why can’t you give her work the respect it demands? The author is not her book, Sibella. Keep the two separate?”

  “I will if she does.” Time would tell. Man, it would tell a complicated story, and I had one question, which I kept to myself:

  How can we know the pole dancer from the pole dance?

  ✴✴✴

  “You growing a beard?” Ashlay asked Myron.

  The idea had never crossed her publisher’s mind. He had never made it home to shave this morning is all.

  “Sexy,” she said. “I like it.”

  Maybe he should grow a beard, you could tell he was considering this pogonic choice. (Kelly, here comes my Oh I E D alert: refers to beard, Little Bird.) If he rubbed the top of his bald head, he was going to be a goner.

  In the day’s hubbub, he had forgotten what they were supposed to be meeting about, but she reminded him once she sat down and the seams on her straitjacket of a jumpsuit popped like tiny strips of bubble wrap. She was here to discuss marketing gimmicks for Slippery. Myron always had a soft spot for an author who was ambitious and didn’t despise him yet. Then again, he always had a prominent soft spot for every woman, no need to remind you. None of her suggestions made a whole lot of sense to him. He was pretty optimistic they were going to finalize a movie deal in advance of publication. One idea she kept pushing was this: marketing alongside the hardback book a shiny monogrammed Ashlay Commingle Special Scrunchie. In her defense, back then was when desperate publishers were way gimmickacious. What was true then is still true today: only an idiot thinks an author knows the first thing about marketing.

  “Scrunchie?” he gamely tried, authentically baffled.

  “You know, scrunchie? A hair tie.”

  Sloppy seconds passed.

  “Oh, Myron baby doll, you don’t get it?”

  Guilty as charged. No, wait. She didn’t mean…

  “Yes, now you’re using your head, which is the whole point. A girl who reads my book is the kinda liberated fun-loving girl who might have lots of erotic opportunities to tie back her hair.”

  And yes, that referenced activity was the particular go-to move on the part of her grandiloquently mouthy protagonist. Boys and girls the world round would one day be pleased Myron was publishing her. Don’t make me think about Junior again, please, and I was no fucking prude.

  At this point I heard a shriek barely this side of human: Cry, the Unbeloved Country Kelly. Yes, Kelly, you B-cup busted your way into Collusionville, congratufuckinglations! You should answer the fucking phone more often.

  Sibella Flew Over

  the Cuckoo’s Nest

  The normally discreet and composed, except around me, senior editor was bounding uninvited and hyperventilated into Myron’s office, and she was in such an emotional state that as a result an uptick had been stapled on her tongue at least temporarily, and her gum chewing took a sabbatical, too. And whatever possessed her today to start answering the phone?

  “Myron, phone?”

  “I’m in a meeting, can’t you…?”

  “Pick. Up. The. Phone?”

  For some incredible reason he decided to obey. Myron’s taking two calls in one day. What was he going to do next? Moonwalk? “Ashlay, you mind?” She didn’t, she said, as she was in the moment tying back her hair in a way that probably inspired Myron to return to her book gimmick idea as soon as he got rid of this caller. It did have possibilities, I support hose. For her book, I mean, for her book—which was a real book, unlike others I could name. The voice he heard on the other end of the line proved to be a shocker—and I heard it, too, because he clicked on speaker. What? Had he just discovered today that he had a speaker phone? More revelations loomed for all of us lashed to the Beamish mast.

  “Moron, Fontana here.”

  “Figgy, you’re alive!”

  “And mah dick’s hard, too.”

  Cheap shot. Myron would let that pass. But that was Downtown Figgy Fontana.

  “But thass not why I called ya, ta report the latest on mah plumbin’.”

  “There have been crazy rumors going around all day and I’m very happy—”

  “I don’t have time ta esplainidate. Moron, you en me, we’s done. You git mah message othah day I gave yo phone grrl? I ain’t gwyne on no book tour and I don’t want ya’ll to publish mah books no more.”

  “What are you talking about, Fig? What’s happened?”

  “None of you’s bidness is what happed. But I’m thinking I might need a new publish, if I yever write a book agin, whichen I might not do anyways. I could say nothin persnal, but what the fuck, iss fuck all persnal, g’luck, Moron, not rilly.”

  Myron was thinking fast, but not fast enough, because he did casually mention the three-book deal for which Figgy had received his generous advance—although nowhere in the region of six hundred fucking thousand.

  “Ain’t hap’nin, Moron, we done. Mah fat sow’s gotta bettah chance of makin bacon outta me then you en me got’ve doin enny mo bidness.”

  Myron could tell the phone was not the best medium for communication with a troubled author back from the dead and devoid of one ounce of gratitude, an author who had sold a ton of books a few times over.

  “Let’s not be hasty, Fig. Whatever the problem is, I can solve it. Let’s talk, face to face, okay?”

  “Gotta go, Moron. Been nice knowin ya’ll, least when the checks arrive in the mailbox.”

  “About those checks, Fig—”

  Click.

  Double dribble, turnover, loss of possession.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures—that’s what they all say, and you know what, after all the desperate times that followed from that day forward, I began to believe whoever they are they could be right. When Myron proposed a sit-down, Fig did not rule it out. Myron made a decision. He was quickly scanning his options. It was time to pay the man a visit, talk this through like mature men, even if neither of them qualified.

  He then made, in my opinion, a very impulsive miscalculation. Miss Calculation Herself, Ashlay, he thought would be useful company for his AAAA onto the Fontana Farm. If men are so predictable when it comes to women, how come I cannot predict them? I’ll take my answer off the air and I’ll check with the next genuine clairvoyant I come across. But, no, he was not thinking quickly like that. Her conversation along the journey would certainly be more diverting for him than YGB’s—and he was already counting on taking him and me. The publisher’s posse, riding to the rescue.

  “How about let’s take a little ride?” he inquired gently of his porn star darling, his entreaty instantly misconscrewed.

  Ashlay knowingly winked.

  “Not that kinda ride, darling. I’m impotent.”

  I intervened in vain: “This is not going to end well, to not coin a phrase.”

  “Guys always say that,” she pouted.

  “They do?”

  “A ploy for sympathy. No guy wants to use a condom.”

  Myron was going to break out Ashlay’s new book with all the Viagrified vengeance he could muster, but that was something he could not think about right now. He had some pressing Figgish b
usiness to take care of and Ashlay could lend a hand or another convenient body part. As far as he was concerned, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have someone like her alongside him in the Figgified midst. The good news? Figgy Fontana was not dead. The bad news? He was killing Myron.

  “Ready to take a trip?” he said to Ashlay.

  “You know me, Myron. I’m up for anything.”

  Are you beginning to see why I was all over the fucking place on the complicated Commingle Question?

  ✴✴✴

  That made one of us who were up for anything. Me? I was up for something in particular.

  I did harbor this one microscopic hope. My Commingle-size hope was simple. Getting Myron out of town might work wonders. If he had the distasteful fiduciary duty to confront Fontana, something unexpected might trigger inside to get him out of his deal with Calypso O’Fucking Kelly once and for all. A change of scenery might magically dispel the trance Her Weirdness had gauzed over him. And it wouldn’t be bad for me to get out of town either. Kelly could start answering full time the fucking phone.

  I would be proved right about everything, you shall see, and then completely wrong, thereby continuing my lifelong pattern of being an unbankable sibyl.

  Cannon to right of them,

  Cannon to left of them,

  Cannon in front of them

  Volleyed and thundered:

  Stormed at with shot and shell,

  Boldly they rode and well,

  Into the jaws of death,

  Into the mouth of hell

  Rode the six hundred grand.

  Yes, they did.

  Calypso! Gypsies! Ashlay Commingle! Figgy Fontana!

  Poor fucking Myron.

  Poor fucking me.

  Part Two

  Sibella Budd

  Come dawn and pre-commute gridlock, our cracked crew of Nervy SEALS assembled at the Worldwide Offices of Hard Rain Publishing. I was in mid-reason form. Without benefit of adequate caffeination, I double shot daggers in Ashlay’s black-jumpsuited direction. And how many jumpsuits in how many colors did she possess? Did some movie of hers involve sky diving bombs away! onto some poor mook’s erectile function?