by Ann McMan
For some reason, the damn elevator was stopping on every floor. Each time it came to rest, the doors would roll back, but no one would be standing there. Shawn kept pushing the button with the big, illuminated number nine on it, but the thing just took its sweet time. She glanced up at the brass plate fastened above the door opening. Otis. It figured. Her Uncle Warren used to work for the old Otis Elevator Company in Erie, and she recalled that he always moved in the same deliberate way, no matter how much Aunt Jane yelled at him to hurry up.
She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and looked it over. Lame. Her remarks were nowhere near pithy enough to counter the slash-and-burn summary that she was positive Kate Winston would be delivering to the salivating crowd tomorrow. She shoved the paper back into her pocket without bothering to refold it.
The elevator groaned and stopped again. Fourth floor. Shawn waited for the big metal doors to roll back. They did. And, once again, there was nothing waiting out there but a big swath of hideous carpet. What was that pattern, anyway? Cabbage roses?
Maybe I should just get off and take the damn stairs.
She was too agitated. Acting like a total klutz in front of Winston all but obliterated the tiny bit of chutzpah she had left. She tried to imagine what proverbial bit of wisdom her mother would reel off right now—after she exhausted her usual litany of complaints.
“How long has it been since you got a haircut?”
“Those pants make you look like you’re standing in a hole!”
“Why don’t you wear some makeup? You look like death takes a holiday.”
“Are you still seeing that blond bimbo with the braces?”
“Why can’t you settle down with a nice boy like your cousin, Jerome?”
It always took her a while to get warmed up.
“Don’t be so mishugina—this, too, shall pass. You worry too much, Shawnala.”
That part was certainly true.
She looked down at her shoes.
Her mother might be right about the pants, too.
Shawn sighed. Maybe a good workout would make her feel better. There was nothing quite like working up a good sweat to get her mind off the other things in her life that were making her crazy.
The elevator stopped again. Fifth floor.
Seriously?
On the other hand, why worry? By the time she reached the ninth floor, the fucking conference would be over.
She leaned back against the wall of the tiny metal box and resolved just to enjoy the ride.
Sometimes, things just had a way of working out the way they were supposed to.
The shower didn’t make her feel much better. But she knew it would take more than a damn shower to take the edge off her grand departure from the conference room trailing bits of wilted lettuce and crushed mini-quiche in her wake—not to mention the bright orange swath of cheese spread that was plastered to her hair like spackling compound.
It was not a good look. And it didn’t help that it was V. Jay-Jay Singh who hauled Kate to her feet and brushed the worst of the . . . comestibles from her clothing. And Kate didn’t miss the fact that V. Jay-Jay managed to work in a gratuitous grope of her backside while she was “helping” her out.
Erotic authors. Jesus, Mary, and Winston Churchill on a cracker. Why did it have to be their table she chose for her Flying Wallenda act?
How in the hell was she supposed to stand up in front of all these people tomorrow and put her best Bitch on, now that they’d all seen her splayed out like some kind of ludicrous Blue Plate Special? Her only consolation was that maybe Shawn Harris hadn’t been in the room to witness it. That would have been the final mortification—the last nail in the coffin containing what was left of her self-confidence.
Shit. This was getting her no place. She’d never be able to relax and get any sleep.
She picked up the fat notebook that contained the roster of hotel amenities and flipped through its laminated pages. There was a decent-looking fitness center on the concierge level. Maybe forty-five minutes on a treadmill would clear her head?
It was nearly nine-thirty. She had just over twelve hours until the opening session’s battle royal with Shawn Harris commenced. She needed to find a way to unwind, or she’d be worthless tomorrow. And working up a good sweat always did the trick.
Why not give it a shot?
She changed into shorts and a t-shirt and snapped up her card key. Nobody would be in the workout room at this hour. She left her room and headed for the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.
She ought to be safe.
Kate got to the fitness center and was greeted by a couple of annoying discoveries: she was not alone, and one of the four workout machines was in obvious disrepair. A placard taped to the front of the broken unit proclaimed that it would be repaired by . . . Kate squinted to read the date. Three weeks ago?
She sighed and rolled her eyes.
Of course, the two other hotel guests who had picked this ungodly hour of the night to work out had installed themselves on the functioning end units, leaving only the middle right treadmill between them available. They were both running. At least, the woman was running. The large man with a very hairy back and spandex shorts that left little to the imagination, was doing more sweating than anything.
She looked around for alternatives.
There was a wall-mounted flat panel, tuned to HGTV, or “Hey Girl TV”—an odd choice for a workout room. Beneath it, a sagging rack held up an indifferent-looking set of hand weights. It was tucked next to a long bench covered with ripped red vinyl.
It was a conundrum. The weight bench or the center treadmill were her only options. She looked at the weights again.
Don’t see that happening.
She was too embarrassed to turn around and leave, so she dropped her bag to the floor and resolved to try a twenty-minute run on the center treadmill. That was long enough to be respectable, and maybe she’d luck out, and the other two people would finish up and leave so she could enjoy some solitude.
The large, hairy man was grunting now and shaking his head with apparent disgust at the hideous padded headboard that designer David Bromstad had just added to someone’s Florida vacation home. Everyone’s a critic. But, in fact, Kate did not disagree with him. The monolithic headboard was hideous enough to adorn a high-roller suite at the Bellagio.
As discretely as she could, she took her place on the center machine. The woman to her right glanced at her, then quickly looked away as if she’d seen a ghost.
What is her problem? She programmed her unit, and the rubber conveyor beneath her feet moved. Soon, the three runners were laced into their individual rhythms, and the only sound in the small room came from the slapping of their shoes against the mechanical moving sidewalks.
Meanwhile, David Bromstad had completed his appointments in the master suite of the house he was making over. The result was too much for the man in the spandex shorts. With a snort, he punched the stop button on his treadmill and grabbed his towel.
“That looks like a goddamn bordello,” he said to no one in particular. “This dude should be designing Motel 6 lobbies.” He climbed down off his machine and huffed his way out of the room
Kate just shrugged and kept running. The woman beside her didn’t even look his way. She was too intent on staring at something fascinating on the blank wall next to her treadmill. The two of them ran on in silence for a few more minutes until they fell into step with each other. Their footfalls seemed to strike the conveyors with exactly the same cadence. It was eerie, and began to feel awkward to Kate. As discretely as she could, she reached out and punched up the speed on her machine. That was better. She was running faster now.
Then the woman beside her did the same thing. After a few seconds, they were running in tandem again.
Are you kidding me with this?
Kate reached out and punched the up arrow. Two clicks this time. In short order, the woman beside her caught up again.
Kate was incredulous. What the fuck?
She punched her up arrow three more times. She was edging dangerously close to the unit’s top speed, but damn if she’d let this annoying woman best her. It wasn’t long before the other woman followed suit. They were both flying now. It was ridiculous. The muscles in her legs were starting to sing from the exertion. This was really far too fast for her, and she knew there was no way she could sustain this pace for very long. Her machine whined—it sounded like the bearings were shot.
Great.
She was starting to sweat now—profusely. But damn if she’d be the one to slow down first.
The run went on and on. Well past good sense or safety. David Bromstad morphed into Candice Olson. Now, someone’s kitchen was getting the Motel 6 makeover.
Beside her, the woman with the short blond hair was panting. Hard.
Serves you right, Kate thought. Her shirt was so soaked with sweat it was sticking to her like a second skin. It was getting harder to remain coherent. She was feeling light-headed. Not a good sign. She needed to slow down before she passed out.
She heard an odd, thumping sound. At first, she thought it was part of the motor whine coming from her treadmill—the thing sounded like it was on its last legs. But then she realized the sound was tied to her foot striking the rubber conveyor. She glanced down. Shit! The entire sole of her shoe was flapping like the loose jaws of that woman who had been ahead of her in the drink line at the Pre-Con mixer.
Nice. So much for these damn hundred-and-fifty-dollar Gel Kayanos.
Now she’d have to stop, or risk tripping over her sole.
What a cruel pun. Even Kate had to smile at the irony of that one.
Just as she reached out in defeat to slow her machine down, the bottom of her shoe flew completely off, breaking her stride. She stopped running and started stumbling, but the conveyor kept moving at its programmed, breakneck speed. She was airborne for the second time that night with no admiring coterie of erotic authors to break her fall. She was going down. Hard.
“Fuck me!” she yelled, as she spun completely around and fell toward the unmoving treadmill that had been vacated by hairy-back spandex-man. She flailed her arms like a lunatic, pirouetted, and finally came to rest flat on her back. As she fell, the yawning abyss of the rest of her life unreeled before her eyes in cold and unforgiving black and white—a bleak and relentless film montage that made the best of Ingmar Bergman look like a Mel Brooks double feature. She’d be a paraplegic—living a somber and colorless life of abject solitude in someplace hideous like . . . Indiana, routinely spewing her pent-up vitriol by writing caustic, unsolicited reviews with a breath-controlled mouse.
Roll credits. Cue the orchestra. Bring up the house lights.
While Kate was busy watching her personal home movie, her companion hit the emergency stop button on both machines and scrambled over to her.
“Good god!” she gasped. She was still breathing heavily from her own ridiculous part in their duel with disaster. “Are you okay?”
Kate’s legs were sprawled across her own treadmill at an impossible angle. One foot was still caught beneath the conveyor of the unit by what was left of her mangled shoe.
“Do I look okay?” she hissed, before she could think better of it.
“Sorry,” she added.
“It’s okay.” The other woman knelt beside her. “Can you sit up?”
“I think so.” Kate allowed the woman to slip an arm behind her shoulders and help raise her into a sitting position. Her heart was still pounding from the aftermath of her run and the adrenaline rush that accompanied her dismount.
“Let’s get your foot out from beneath that conveyor,” she said. “Can you move it?”
“I’m afraid to try,” Kate said. “My ankle hurts like hell.”
The woman nodded. “It’s already swelling. You’ll be lucky if it’s not sprained.”
“You think?” Kate grimaced as the woman carefully extracted her foot from beneath the belt. “I knew I overpaid for these damn shoes.”
“I think we should get this off your foot—in case your foot starts to swell, too.”
“It won’t swell,” Kate deadpanned. “You only get that feature if you spring for the pumped-up kicks.”
“Better run, better run?” The blonde woman unlaced Kate’s mangled shoe. Kate looked up at her with interest. She had hazel eyes that were crisscrossed with smile lines.
Kate nodded. “Faster than my bullet.”
“Interesting metaphor.” The woman dropped Kate’s shoe to the floor. “You like Indie bands?”
“Not really,” Kate replied. “But I’ve done my time at outdoor music festivals.”
“Groupie?”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Hardly. I used to be a stringer for Wired.”
“Really?” The other woman looked intrigued. “Why’d you give that up?”
“Ever been to Manchester, Tennessee in June?”
The woman thought about it. “Bonnaroo?”
Kate nodded. “Sharing a bathing trough with fifty-thousand stoners tends to lose its magic after the first few visits.”
“I don’t know. That sounds a whole lot like my fond memories of scout camp.”
Kate raised an eyebrow.
“We were an esoteric group. We earned badges for things like converting smudge pots into bongs.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Did you say scout camp? Are you sure you didn’t mean to say Wilderness camp?”
The other woman shrugged. “You say tomato . . . Besides.” She waved a hand. “What’s the difference, really?”
Kate rubbed her sore ankle. “For starters, a juvie probation officer and a court order.”
The other woman laughed. She had a great smile. “Spoken like someone familiar with the drill.”
“I had two older brothers,” Kate explained. “Let’s just say that I barely escaped deportation.”
The blonde was still smiling. Kate thought that something about her seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. She really was awfully cute. Kate wondered if she were in San Diego for the Con. There were reputed to be upwards of six hundred lesbians staying in this hotel. It would be just her luck to stumble across one of the straight ones.
Literally.
“Think you can stand up?” The woman gestured at Kate’s sore ankle.
Kate sighed. “Only one way to find out.”
“Can I give you a hand?”
Kate hesitated for only a second. “Sure. If you don’t, I’ll probably have to spend the night in here, watching reruns of bad headboards.”
The other woman stood up and offered Kate her arm. “I think that might actually violate the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Don’t believe it.” Kate took hold of her arm and slowly hauled herself to her feet. “They said the same thing about Ice Capades.” Her ankle hurt like hell, but she actually was able to put a bit of weight on it without screaming. It could have been a lot worse, and with her, it usually was. Maybe things were looking up.
“How’s that feel?”
Kate turned her head to look at the other woman. Their faces were very close together.
Yep. Things were definitely looking up.
“It’s not as bad as I was expecting,” Kate said.
“Think you can walk back to your room?” the woman asked. “Or is there someone I can call for you?”
“No,” Kate said a bit too quickly. “I’m here alone.”
Oh . . . smooth, Winston, she thought. Why don’t you just offer her your goddamn room key?
She tried to cover her mortification. “I’m here for the literary conference.”
The woman nodded. “Me, too.”
Score.
“Really?” Kate tried to feign innocence as they slowly walked toward the red weight bench so she could sit down. Who the hell was she? Was she here with anyone? And more importantly, had she been downstairs when Kate took her fir
st nosedive of the evening?
She sat down. “What do you do?”
The woman let go of her arm and stepped back. She looked embarrassed. “I’m . . . one of the . . . um . . . authors.”
Kate was surprised. “You are? What genre?” No wonder she looked familiar.
“Um. I don’t really fit any of the standard categories.”
Kate was intrigued. “You don’t? What have you written?”
The woman shrugged.
Kate thought her coyness was charming. “Tell me. If it’s one of the books being featured at this Con, I’ve probably already read it.”
The woman seemed extremely uncomfortable now. She was looking anyplace but at Kate.
“Yeah, I know,” she finally said. Then she sighed. “What the hell?” She looked at Kate. “You have read my book. And tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, you’re going to tell me and half the population of the lesbiverse why you hated it so much.”
Kate felt all the blood drain from her face. This was not happening. She closed her eyes. “You’re Shawn Harris.”
It was not a question.
The author of Bottle Rocket nodded. “Guilty.”
Kate’s head throbbed in sync with her ankle. “You know,” she said in a small voice, “maybe I will just stay here tonight.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” Kate said for the tenth time through clenched teeth, as she limped along a boulevard of rust and amber curlicues toward her room. Who designs these fucking carpets? She winced as they turned a corner. Probably that Motel 6 guy. They still had another long hallway to traverse. Kate had been adamant about getting a room as far away from the elevators as possible. These conferences were like key clubs, and she didn’t want to be up half the night listening to the damn doors open and close.
“Of course I do,” Shawn Harris said sweetly for the tenth time. “Sometimes, adhering to conventions is a good thing.”
