In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (35 page)

“I’m sorry, E,” Phoebe apologizes. “It’s not fair for me to ask about him.”

“It’s not that.” Evie shrugs. “It’s just sorta sad.”

*   *   *

There’s a partially downloaded e-mail on Sharon’s iPhone from Evie at the Saperstein Group, but the spinning white wheel indicates the echoy lower level of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is a network dead zone. Searching the costume-clad Fan-Con attendees, she finds her photographer from
The Enquiring Sun
shooting what must be his five thousandth picture of women dressed in Princess Leia’s
Return of the Jedi
metal bikini. Signaling she’s stepping out, Sharon weaves through tables of vendors selling old comic books and action figures, and heads out the door, shivers in the late January air as the message loads.

Ms. Gallaher—

We’d like to thank you for your interest in our client, but Mr. Zoellner is doing limited press at this time. He will be making an appearance at the “Thirty Years of
E&E
” Convention in Detroit next week, if you would like to include that in
The Enquiring Sun.

Thank you again for your interest,

Evie Saperstein

Painful flare of disappointment as Sharon wanders back to the bustling convention floor. She hadn’t
really
expected Adam Zoellner’s rep to offer him up to the least respected of the three NYC dailies, but she’d hoped … a lot, more than was probably healthy. Maybe hoped that somehow the interview would take place not on the phone, but over coffee, hoped that she might have made Adam Zoellner smile, that he might touch her hand.

She’d gotten the media alert about the
E&E
convention in Ed Munn’s hometown weeks ago, but her editors had been lukewarm about the anniversary story to begin with. There is absolutely no way they’ll send her to Detroit.

Back in the exhibition hall, her photographer has moved on from nearly naked slave Leias to a pale girl, very possibly underage, in a teeny tiny Sailor Moon costume. Shoving down her gloom, Sharon is heading over to make sure Nick got the photo release form signed when a tall redheaded guy in a vintage
Eons & Empires
T-shirt puts his hand on Sailor Moon’s shoulder and asks, “Nat, what’s going on?”

Shifting her phone and notebooks into one hand, Sharon fishes a business card from her purse and explains that she and Nick are with the paper and would obviously
never
run photos without getting consent from a guardian.

“I’m not sure it’s mine to give.” The redheaded man softens, says Sailor Moon is his sister. Then, looking at the girl, “I’m thinking Maura wouldn’t be on board with this.”

“It does seem highly unlikely.” Sailor Moon shrugs, straightens her blond wig, and goes off to talk to guys in
Star Trek: The Next Generation
uniforms. Nick starts snapping a lady in Wonder Woman’s strapless bathing suit.

“Sorry about that.” The redheaded brother smiles at Sharon.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing.” Sharon wonders if the curious way he’s looking at her means he’s going to ask her out. Mentally she prepares her patented rejection.

“So, I don’t mean this like a pickup line,” he says, “but you look really familiar. Have we met?”

No one
ever
recognizes her author photo (more because so few people bought
The Atheist in the Foxhole
than any inherent flaw of the picture), but sometimes
The Enquiring Sun
runs her head shot when they post her stories online. She mentions this, and he shakes his head.

“Sorry, I’m a
Daily News
guy.”

He glances at the card she handed him. “Gallaher, only one G.” Trace of recognition crosses his eyes like water moving under ice. “I remember now, it was Thanksgiving, like, ten years ago, in Chicago. I dated Phoebe Fisher for a while, and you were there with her bro…”

Then it all comes crashing back: talking too much about the election; how proud Chase had been to introduce her to his family; feeling short and ugly next to his model sister. And this guy—Owen, no, Oliver—Chase had been so excited to see him (though apparently no one had been expecting him). The guy had stayed for breakfast, and everyone joked about how Chase had tagged along on his and Phoebe’s first date. “He’s a really good dude,” Chase had told Sharon repeatedly. “So much better than those assholes Phoebe dates now.”

Sharon feels her heart kick-start, sweat dripping down her spine to the waistband of her tights, and that odd sensation that the floor of the Javits Center might open up and suck her down to the molten center of the Earth’s core—something she hasn’t felt since she finished her book.

“Oh.” She actually drops her notebooks and press badge, her phone. “Right. Thanksgiving,
Bush v. Gore
and all of that stuff…” Talking too much when she’s nervous again.

She bends down to pick everything up, and of course Oliver follows.
He’s a really good dude.

“Right, right, right,” she says. Her hands bumping his as she hastily collects her things. “Gennifer made French toast.”

Even as it’s happening, Sharon can see Oliver registering his mistake. This traveler from another universe trying to make it better with some mix of words: “sorry,” “so young,” and “tragedy.”

“Well, it was a really long time ago.” She’s already moving away from him. “Anyway, thanks for all your help. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure none of those photos of your sister run.”

Then she’s hurrying through the tables and dressed-up fans toward the door, bumping into a man in full Batman armor and knocking a vintage Spider-Man lunchbox off a table.

Behind her someone, probably Oliver who used to date Phoebe Fisher, is calling, “Wait,” but she keeps up her pace until she’s out the door and in the cold January air off the Hudson.

*   *   *

“You’re
positive
we don’t know each other?” The coal-haired girl—Nikki or Nancy or was it something like Rachel—is leaning so close Adam wonders if she’s stable on her bar stool. In the dim light, it’s impossible to tell her age, somewhere between eighteen and thirty—younger than him, anyway.

“Pretty sure.” Adam smiles, unconsciously turns so she’s facing his good side, thinks about adding some line about how he’d remember having met someone as captivating as her but decides against it; if the girl’s been in LA more than a week, she’ll know it’s crap.

“Jacqui Holland’s party in Santa Monica?” She points at him, her mock accusatory finger a centimeter from his chest. “You brought a Pomeranian?”

“Nope, don’t know any Jacquis, and I don’t have a dog—Pomeranians are dogs, right?”

“Are you
sure
?” Nikki-Nancy-Rachel drawls. “You look familiar.”

“I don’t know,” Adam says, as if it’s only now occurring to him. “I’m an actor.” From behind the counter, the bartender rolls his eyes conspiratorially.

“Someone I would know?” asks the girl.

Honestly, Adam didn’t come here to pick up an aspiring actress/unemployed waitress, he didn’t. He came because the place is mellow and almost always empty before ten, because he couldn’t spend anymore time lamenting that god-awful
Murder Island 3
is
still
in theaters and worrying that no director will ever work with him again because he publicly admitted the film was god-awful. More time
not
reading scripts (always sci-fi, always the villain) that his manager had sent over. Not thinking about what he’s going to say at next week’s “Thirty Years of
Eons & Empires
” celebration in Detroit or why, after two years of trying to disassociate himself from Captain Rowen, he let Cecily convince him to appear with her at the convention in the first place.

But …

Nikki-Nancy-Rachel
is
cute, and if they go to his place, she’ll likely continue to be a distraction. He goes for the endgame.

“I
was
on a show for a while,” he says.

Wait for it …

Still waiting.

A sound editor might insert chirping crickets.

The bartender hums the
Eons & Empires
theme song, from the movie, not the series, but it’s enough.

“You’re Captain Rowen!” The girl is back in her own space, nervous, almost reverent. “My … my brothers watched it growing up.” (Clearly putting her in the closer-to-eighteen-than-thirty camp.) “Ohmygod, I didn’t recognize you with hair.”

Now Adam is the one behind the wheel, telling her he’s got wine at his place just down Wilshire. She probably has a car somewhere, but he doesn’t factor that into the equation.

Ten minutes later they’re in the Winston Tower, where Adam’s opening a bottle of Barolo and Nikki-Nancy-Rachel is nervously looking around. Handing her a glass, he clinks it to his own in a toast.

“It’s good,” she pronounces, though she cringes at the taste; he should have opened a merlot or something sweeter. “Your apartment’s really awesome.”

Pretty standard reaction.

He hadn’t bought a house in Malibu (or Palm Springs or Montana) with the
Murder Island
series money. Looking at property (even paying someone to look for him) had seemed a lot of work. So he’d hired Marty’s decorator wife while he was out of the country and told her to make the place look completely different. Terri Minerva had gutted the space, knocked out walls, installed recessed lighting into new granite floors, and replaced everything homey he and Phoebe had picked out with derelict metals and smoked glass, dark wood, and darker stone. The place oozes sex, but all the furniture is distractingly uncomfortable, and sometimes he’s actively frightened of the artwork.

They make their way to an object one might find in the Cooper-Hewitt that’s actually a couch. He’s about to kiss her when she points to a stack of scripts on a petrified redwood table that cost more than most cars.

“Are these movies?” Nikki-Nancy-Rachel asks nervously. “Like, for you to be in?”

“They’re all pretty awful.” Adam actually hadn’t glanced past the first one when he saw the title was
Galaxy Warrior
. Prereading scripts had been one of Phoebe’s non-jobs, anyway.

“Oh.” She swallows, eyes wide and terrified—definitely closer to eighteen than thirty. “Wow.”

Starting to feel like a lion circling a wounded zebra, Adam eases away from her, accepting that, despite all prior signs, he’s probably not getting laid tonight. “Do you wanna watch a movie?” he asks. “I have screeners—”

She’s the one who initiates the kiss, though he notices she does take a stabilizing breath before charging toward him. Hands in her hair, he can feel the bonds of her extensions. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Los Angeles glows twenty-four stories beneath them.

*   *   *

Four stories above East Seventy-fifth Street, in a rent-stabilized apartment with an excellent view into the apartment across the street, Sharon strips off her wet coat and dress, still shivering. She’d meant to go back to
The
Enquiring Sun
’s Midtown office but had been so thrown by the encounter with Phoebe Fisher’s old boyfriend that she’d called in her quotes instead (the Fan-Con story is the same every year, anyway—a few fun comments to go along with photos of attendees in elaborate costumes).

She’d wanted to start on the new novel Diana from Greenlee on Hudson keeps trying to convince her to write, but heart still thumping in her chest, Sharon feels completely justified sinking into the sofa and turning on the
E&E: Rising
season two DVD already ginned up.

She’s probably seen the episode five times, but instantly Sharon’s engaged, feels herself relaxing.

*   *   *

Mid-thrust, it occurs to Adam he could conceivably be tired of sex.

He wonders why he bothered picking Nikki-Nancy-Rachel up in the first place, why he does anything he does lately. To be fair, he likely wouldn’t be contemplating any of this if she weren’t lying underneath him like a lump of Kryptonite.

Perhaps it says something about his mental state that the image popping into his head is of his mother in her pink nurse’s scrubs, her gray eyes down in the expression she has when talking about the meth heads in the Coral Cove ER. Mother image says that if he’d bothered to learn Nikki-Nancy-Rachel’s name, perhaps she’d be a more enthusiastic partner.

So he strokes a stray hair from the girl’s brow, lowers his lips to her forehead. Eyes fluttering open, she looks at him with a mix of confusion, hope, and something barely shy of contempt—she’s really, really closer to eighteen than thirty.

“You enjoying this at all?” he asks, slowing their non-rhythm to a standstill.

“Yeah.”

And he wants to tell her to go back to Kentucky/Oklahoma/San Diego, because she’s
never
going to make it as an actress.

Instead he nods.

Faintly in the background, some maudlin alt-rock crap whines from the sound system, and he remembers, with a dollop of disgust, that the song had figured prominently in one of the
E&E: Rising
series montages. He’d mentioned it in the DVD commentary.

As the world comes crashing down, I just want you around …

*   *   *

I just want you around.…

On the screen Captain Rowen and Cordelia Snow are still kissing in a shadowy industrial space.

On the couch a blue plastic vibrator hums between Sharon’s thighs.

On the screen Rowen pauses, holds Cordelia at arm’s length, hesitates before closing gray eyes.

On the couch Sharon points her toes, knocking off a week’s worth of newspapers and yesterday’s clothes.

Through a haze of pleasure, prickly thoughts tickle, like early indicators of a sneeze. Things like how it’s probably long past time she found another human being to do this stuff with.

*   *   *

Adam doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he’s got a knot in his neck, a used condom crusting on his cock, and an alarm clock that insists it’s after 4:00
A.M.
Nikki-Nancy-Rachel is wrangling thin hips back into ridiculously tight jeans. If she weren’t much, much closer to eighteen than thirty, the jerky movements would be even less appealing.