Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
“Whatcha got going on in there, Nancy Drew?” Steve asks, pointing at my head.
“I’m just thinking… Who would have had something to gain from seeing you fail?
“Gain?”
“Yeah. Either in actuality or just, I dunno, Schadenfreude?”
“Schadenfreude? Nobody. It’s not like my success means someone else’s failure. Or vice versa. Terry and Shawn succeeding at writing their stuff isn’t why I couldn’t pop.”
“Yeah. Yeah…” I ruminate aloud. And then a thought occurs to me. A possibly conspiratorial but still also completely plausible thought. Or at least not implausible.
“Cordy? Super-chill Cordy? What’s on your mind?”
I shake my head a little, take a breath, and say, “You don’t think it possible that—?”
But that’s all I get out before the loud, disruptive feedback of a microphone crackling to life overtakes the room.
Leslie Munch taps her foot three hundred twenty-seven times after pushing the call button for the elevator, and still, no elevator comes.
“It’s a conspiracy,” she mumbles. “They are trying to ruin me. Humiliate me. And make me think I’m crazy.”
Two women—probably readers—join her at the elevator bank. They side-eye Leslie. Probably because she’s talking to herself about being crazy.
They take the stairs without comment. And Leslie might go that route too, but the moment the door to the stairwell closes, the doors to the elevator open.
“Finally.” Leslie steps in, punches the button for the signing hall, and lets out a breath of relief as the doors close.
Finally. Finally! She is going to get them.
But the elevator doesn’t move.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She pushes the button again, ready to scream, and… then downward she goes.
She lets out another breath. “OK. This is it, Raylen. Your big moment. You are going to expose those lying, cheating, piece-of-shit twins if it’s the last thing you do.”
The pep talk is helping. Her shoulders drop. Her mind clears—well, not really. She’s still very much feeling the residual effects of Vicodin and Jack Daniels from her early morning binge.
And then… then… the elevator comes to a stop and the doors part.
Immediately her senses are bombarded with a cacophony of noise. The sound of happy, satisfied readers. There are several dozen sitting on the floor up against the various walls. Some are alone, reading. Some are in groups, going through their bags of loot.
All of them look at her and do a double-take.
Then they start whispering.
This is when Leslie realizes she’s in her nightgown. Which she doesn’t even remember putting on. And not only is the aforementioned nightgown on her body, it’s not something one pictures a writer of highly erotic romance wearing. It goes all the way to her knees and has pictures of cats all over it.
The romance world loves cats, but Leslie is now thinking she might’ve, perhaps, acted too swiftly up in her room. She is barefoot, with a smashed-up face, bloody toe, hair probably a mess—pretty much a given—in yesterday’s makeup, and wearing a granny-cat nightgown.
In public.
She understands the optics. And when this is over and the Smith twins are ruined—hiding under a rock with their tails between their legs—she will need to do some serious damage control.
But that’s a worry for another day.
Nothing—and she does mean nothing—is gonna stop her now.
No one is checking tickets at the entrance to the hall. It’s a total free-for-all because the signing is over. Authors—loaded up with bags, and carts, and boxes—are already leaving.
Several stop to stare at her as she breezes past them into the gargantuan room.
“Hello!” Leslie yells. “Helllll-ooooooo! I have an announcement to make!”
A few people close by glance at her curiously, giving her a look—which Leslie interprets as shock—then turn their backs on her.
Turn. Their backs.
“Oh, hell no,” she mumbles. “Hell. No.” Her eyes dart around for a solution and then… then… then she sees it. The room dims for her and a light shines down onto a table just to her left—probably an indication that she’s lightheaded and about to faint. But Leslie pushes that thought aside and concentrates on her goal.
The announcement table. Where all those self-righteous, SS-loving volunteers called out wristband numbers on the PA system.
And the table is unattended.
It’s a sign from God.
Grounds for what is about to happen next.
Her just reward for having to endure the last five days of a SS-induced nightmare.
She hobbles her way over there, grabs the microphone, holds down the push-to-talk button, and clears her throat.
The microphone crackles over the loudspeakers.
This is it. Her big moment.
Which doesn’t feel as big as it should. Or, more aptly, as it could. In the end, she will likely regret her decision to climb on top of the table, but in this moment, it feels like a grand idea. A real cherry-on-top kind of thing.
She clambers onto the table, steadying herself with outstretched arms the way a tightrope walker might up on the high wire, and then slowly stands to her full height.