Harriet cleared off a table in the café section. She found a copy of The New York Times and saw that they’d reviewed Totally Reality. Harriet felt a sense of relief. The Gray Lady wouldn’t let her down. The newspaper of record would set the record straight.
By the time Isabelle brought the tea—and a couple of pistachio biscotti—over to the table, Harriet was seething.
“Did you see this?”
“What?”
“The Times reviewed that stupid book.”
Isabelle smiled at her. Again, with the expression of someone who is a little alarmed but doesn’t want to show it. She put the tea in front of Harriet and spoke in a soothing voice, the kind of tone a veterinarian might take while treating a wounded rottweiler. “Have you thought about internet dating? I mean, you’re online all the time anyway.”
If she were being honest, Harriet would admit that she thought about internet dating frequently. Of course she thought about it. She’d even tried to put up a profile but could never get her picture to look right. She was attractive in an intellectual-with-chunky-glasses sort of way, with soft brown hair cut into a severe bob. She was pretty, with plump lips and a roundish face that was sprinkled with freckles. If pressed she would say her eyes were her most attractive feature, even though she refused to manicure her eyebrows into topiary or whatever it is that women do, and besides, they were always behind her glasses. She knew she had a nice figure, maybe not a feline yoga silhouette like Isabelle, but she wasn’t a tall person, she was petite with petite curves. She could look sexy, she was confident of that, but there was no way in hell she was going to wear some low-cut dress and dangle her tits for a dating profile photo; that would attract the wrong type of man. Besides, they never gave her enough room on those sites to fully express her interests, hobbies, and turn-ons. Why limit her interests to four hundred words? That’s barely enough to scratch the surface on David Foster Wallace, let alone describe her interests in Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, or the dozen or so other living authors that she considered important to her.
“When was the last time you went on a date?”
“I’ve been on dates. Just not recently.”
Isabelle nodded thoughtfully, then leaned forward. “When was the last time you had sex?”
Harriet ignored that. She didn’t want to admit to anyone that it had been over four years since she’d last been intimate with a member of the opposite sex. It’s not a crime. It was nothing to be embarrassed about. She just hadn’t met anyone she wanted to do that with.
Harriet slapped the newspaper with her palm. “They compare a reality television show to Jane Austen. That’s just moronic.”
Harriet had always like that word, “moron.” It was an ancient word, probably some combination of sanskrit murah, meaning “idiotic,” and the Latin morus, which meant “foolish.”
Isabelle stirred some agave nectar into her tea and nodded. “You know there are lots of nice single men out there. You work so hard, it wouldn’t hurt you to go on a couple dates.”
“Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Several other customers looked over and saw Harriet waving the Arts section of The New York Times in the air like some kind of ersatz semaphore. Isabelle took a tentative sip of her tea. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It’s not the end of the world.”
Harriet dropped the paper to the table and looked at her friend. “That’s where you and I differ.”
Isabelle looked slightly offended. “Have you even read this supposedly terrible book?”
“Fuck no.”
Isabelle spread her hands in a gesture of open-mindedness. “Well, maybe it’s amazing.”
Harriet smacked her hand on the table, causing some tea to slop out of the cup. Isabelle leaned forward and put her hand over Harriet’s fist.
“Relax. You’ll ruin your yoga buzz.”
Harriet looked at her friend. It was true. Whatever calm and spiritual glow she might’ve earned from doing yoga had evaporated the second she saw the books on the front table. Harriet closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She exhaled, feeling only microscopically less angry.
Isabelle patted her hand. “The bookstore needs to make money. You’ve gotta remember that.”
Harriet sighed. “I’m not blaming the bookstore, but it just kills me. I mean, I worked my ass off on my novel, for, I don’t know . . . years. I got rejected by almost everyone and instead they publish this drivel.”
“But your book came out and it was a good book. That’s all that matters.”
Harriet smiled. “Do you think so?”
Isabelle opened her eyes wide, displaying her absolute conviction, and nodded her head vigorously. “You’re a West Coast writer. You’re too avant-garde for New York.” Isabelle took a tentative bite of the biscotti before continuing. “You know how those things go. They probably hired a ghostwriter.”
There was something about the way Isabelle said it that gave Harriet an idea.
“You know what? This is perfect. I’m going to use this.”
“To do what?”
“I’m going to expose this book for the canard it is. I’m going to bring the whole stinking apparatus down.”
Isabelle bit into her biscotti. “Canard?”
Harriet smiled, suddenly feeling energized. “You know. Sham. Fabrication. Fake. Big fat bamboozle. Pick one. But that’s exactly what this is.” Harriet pointed at the picture of Sepp in the paper. “How can he write a book? He can’t even wear a shirt.”
8
San Francisco
Sepp followed Len out of the building. He’d just been on a San Francisco public radio station and it had gone okay, or as good as they ever went. They asked the usual questions, like “What’s it like to write a book,” and Sepp had given his usual answer, “It’s totally cool.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He didn’t say he’d written the book, he just said that writing a book was totally cool. It probably was. Right?
Just like on the TV morning show, the DJ asked if he was seeing someone. Sepp thought it was sweet that people in San Francisco were so concerned. They probably felt a little guilty, since it was on the San Francisco episode of Love Express that Sepp rebounded from Roxy with the woman who would break his heart for the second time on national television.
If Roxy Sandoval had driven a stake through his heart and left him ground up like fresh hamburger meat on the set of Sex Crib, then it was Caitlin Hartman who threw the burger on the grill and torched it until there was nothing left but crunchy carbon.
The premise of Love Express was simple: famously spurned reality TV star travels the country in a tricked-out bus with a team of stylists and relationship experts to find a new love and mend his broken heart. The ratings for the series finale of Sex Crib had broken all kind of records for a reality show—even those singing shows didn’t score this high—and with the country still reeling from Roxy’s betrayal, it made sense to roll out the Love Express.
The producers sorted through thousands of video auditions for blind dates with Sepp, interviewed the finalists, and then scheduled the tour. The bus would arrive in a city and the crew would film every moment of the blind date from both sides. The primping and prepping with the stylists, the date itself, and then a “debriefing session” with the experts. There was also a confessional for the women to spill their guts before, during, and after the date.
If Sepp and his date hit it off, he’d offer her a “ticket to ride” and she could come on the bus to the next town. Then her challenge would be to try to disrupt Sepp’s next date. The producers liked this format because it added conflict and competition to the show, plus a healthy dose of evil scheming and compulsive lying that, as everyone knows, are the most important ingredients for successful reality television. There was a lot of duplicity and dysfunction on the bus, but no one could come close to Caitlin.
She was as sweet as a praline, with a syrupy cotillion-queen accent and the perky figure of a high school cheerl
eader. Caitlin wore her blond hair perfectly perfect and she could dress in jeans and a button-down shirt and somehow make it the sexiest outfit he’d ever seen. Sepp spent a lot of time watching reruns of the old TV show Gilligan’s Island on late-night cable, and thought of Caitlin as the Mary Ann to Roxy’s Ginger. Sepp had always thought Mary Ann was hotter than Ginger anyway, kinda like how in Three’s Company Janet was sexier than Chrissy, even though Chrissy was played by Suzanne Somers and she was supposed to be super hot.
His confidence at an all-time low, his self-esteem shot through the heart with a Roxy-size hole, Sepp was hooked by Caitlin right away. It was understandable—people often bounce from one extreme to the other, and Caitlin turned out to be the mother of all rebounds.
In the game of Love Express—if human relationships and love can be considered a game—Caitlin was a boss, kicking ass on every date up and down the West Coast. She had a firm grip on her man, only her man wasn’t that firm. Sepp was ashamed to admit it, but it was with Caitlin that he discovered his Roxy-based erectile dysfunction. Luckily Love Express didn’t show any between-the-sheets action—the network wanted it to be a show about finding love and not hooking up—so to the country it looked like Sepp had finally found his perfect match. It was a fairy-tale coupling, a magical affirmation of true love, proof that you could get your heart broken, bounce back, and find “the one.” The story had resilience, redemption, and a happy ending. Stories about their love gushed forth from Entertainment Weekly, People, Us Weekly, and all the other supermarket tabloids. The network even floated the idea of doing a two-hour wedding special and following them on their honeymoon.
But once the Love Express rolled in to Albuquerque, well, Sepp didn’t see it coming—no one saw it coming—but like he heard somebody say, it’s not a twist if you see it coming.
Sepp had a date with a lovely young neurosurgeon. Smart, beautiful, and with a great sense of humor. Some reviewers wondered why a woman like this would want a date with Sepp Gregory; others wondered why she would agree to appear on a reality show. USA Today suspected that she was a fake, an actress-for-hire. Sometimes reality shows would do that, throw in a ringer to mix things up, but the lovely young doctor was the real deal, a bona fide drop-dead gorgeous brain surgeon with a great rack. Everyone thought she might be the one to capture Sepp’s heart and knock Caitlin off the bus, but it all went awry when Caitlin and the lovely young neurosurgeon hit it off in a big way and left Sepp sitting at the bar watching his frozen margarita turn to slush.
The show, which was meant to be a celebration of love and a sexy frolic in the dating world, took a dark turn and Sepp plunged into depression. The dates that followed this betrayal became awkward and hard to watch; gone was the free spirt from the beaches of San Diego and in his place was a moody, pained, and slightly pathetic mope. One of the last episodes featured Sepp eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s “What a Cluster” ice cream and talking to a real therapist, Dr. Jan, for an entire episode. The producers tried to cheer him up—they plotted surprises and brought in some of his best beach volleyball bros—but it didn’t work, and turned out to be more than America could bear to watch. The show ended a few weeks later with the official excuse that Sepp had been hospitalized for exhaustion.
…
Len honked at a van and cursed as he tried to maneuver through the traffic. Sepp realized he hadn’t been back to San Francisco since the time he met Caitlin. He wondered if she still lived here. Had she stayed with the neurosurgeon in Albuquerque or had she moved back? Sepp pulled out his iPhone and turned toward Len.
“Do you think I’ll have time to meet someone for coffee?”
Len shrugged. “It’s your tour.”
9
Brooklyn
Curtis walked into the kitchen and saw that Pete had set up a giant pot of water and was simmering a half-dozen glass jars. A Post-it was stuck to the range hood that said, “Pickling. Be back soon.” Several heads of cabbage were sitting on the counter and a mound of peeled garlic cloves was stinking up the kitchen from a bowl on the counter.
Curtis opened the fridge and poured himself some more coconut water. He had to admit the water was working; his nausea had subsided. But the idea of Pete pickling something was disturbing. What was he making? Sauerkraut? Kimchi? Why did he leave a pot boiling?
Curtis went back to his room and lay down on the bed. He felt tired, washed out. Even his tattoos—the long medical sketch of an ulna that stretched down his inner left forearm and Samuel Beckett’s famous advice, “Fail Better,” emblazoned in a font called American Typewriter on his right inner bicep—seemed slightly faded after his boozing. He wondered if his body might be suffering from some kind of imbalance.
He swallowed a glug of coconut water and, as he habitually did, scanned the real estate section of the Times. It wasn’t as if he could afford a fabulous co-op in a doorman building in Tribeca, but that wasn’t him anyway. He wouldn’t want to live with a bunch of stock market hotshots and trust fund socialites. He wanted to stay in Brooklyn, surrounded by bohemians. His people. The artists, musicians, writers, chefs, and intellectuals who made Brooklyn the only place to be in America.
Still, he enjoyed reading through the real estate ads, and looking at the grainy thumbnail photos gave him license to imagine a better life. And then he found an ad that made his heart jump. He read the copy out loud.
“A two-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath with a large living room, wood-burning fireplace, sunroom and garden in a landmark brownstone. $2,190,000.”
Curtis looked at the photo of the building; it looked stately and important. It was his dream home. Just the kind of building a super-successful novelist would live in. Someone like Paul Auster or Jonathan Safran Foer or Jhumpa Lahiri.
Curtis closed his eyes and began to imagine the dinner parties and improvised literary salons he would host in his new brownstone. He’d make bruschetta in the modern kitchen with fresh basil and heirloom tomatoes from his garden. There would be wine, of course, but also a house cocktail, something bespoke, handmade, and unique, like a Negroni or a Blood and Sand.
He’d read about a guy who made his own bitters. Maybe he could do that too. Berman’s Bitters. That actually sounded like a real thing. He could bottle it himself and give it out to people in publishing or maybe supply the cool new cocktail bars that were popping up across the city. He could see one of the new breed of mixologists inventing a cocktail that featured his bitters. It would be a signature libation; a drink people would talk about, maybe the subject of a “Talk of the Town” piece in The New Yorker or dropped in a short story as a subtle homage—an in-joke that only the in-crowd would get. It sounded like something Elissa Schappell might do.
His new friends and comrades, all famous Brooklyn writers and editors, would gather in his living room and talk about writing and ideas and publishing-world gossip. Maybe he would get a turntable and spin some vinyl. Curtis imagined eclectic modern paintings dominating the walls, maybe something by Cory Arcangel or one of Aaron Young’s motorcycle paintings. He would get offers for the art—Salman Rushdie was desperate for the one over the mantel—but Curtis wouldn’t sell. They meant too much to him.
Best of all, he wouldn’t have a pickling cordwainer for a roommate.
Curtis blinked. Something strange was going on in his boxers. His real estate fantasy had given him an erection. He began to muse on the nature of arousal as he toyed with himself, but then he stopped in midstroke, smacked by the realization that, with his share of the royalties from Sepp’s bestseller, and the huge advance to ghost the Roxy Sandoval novel, he could actually afford to buy a place. Maybe not this dreamy brownstone, but definitely a bigger apartment.
Curtis picked up his cell phone and dialed his agent. If he was going to sell out, he wanted to get as much money as possible.
10
San Francisco
Brenda, the publicist, had scheduled a series of drop-in signings for Sepp and that meant he and Len would spend the better part of
the day driving from bookstore to bookstore, Len cursing at the traffic while Sepp tried not to get carsick. The drop-ins were simple: They would enter the store and Len would introduce him to some random employee who would then have to go round up all the copies of Totally Reality they could find for Sepp to sign. Sepp was surprised by how many bookstore employees didn’t know who he was. What was wrong with them? Don’t they watch TV?
Brenda had assured him it was good for the book and good for the stores to have signed copies around. “A copy signed is a copy sold,” she’d said. But Sepp didn’t understand why the bookstores didn’t raise the price of the books once they were signed. Like, what was the point? Shouldn’t an autographed book cost more?
Len found parking on Second Street right in front of a small bookstore called Alexander Books. It was the one thing Sepp thought was cool about the bookstores in San Francisco: They looked like how he thought bookstores were supposed to look—kinda funky, with windows piled high with books and community bulletin boards layered with flyers for bands and protest marches and announcements for lectures by Chilean poets and sublets for cheap. It wasn’t the kind of place where Sepp and his friends would hang out—they preferred gyms, juice bars, and the beach—in fact, he’d only been in one or two bookstores before his book hit the bestseller list and that was because he’d been dating a girl who went to UCSD.
They entered the store and headed toward the counter where two men, a tall handsome black man and a slightly scruffy-looking guy, stood. Len held up a copy of Totally Reality.
“Hey guys. I’m here with Sepp Gregory.”
The black man nodded and looked at Sepp.
“Dude. Take your shirt off.”
Sepp smiled and, without thinking, pulled his T-shirt over his head. The black guy burst out laughing and applauded.
Raw: A Love Story Page 4
