The Accidental Bestseller (3 page)

Tanya drew a deep breath. Her calf swung up and down in agitation. “Don’t call your little sister that, Loretta. How many times have I told you . . . Ret! Retta? No! Don’t put your grandma . . .”

Tanya closed her eyes. Her leg stopped in midswing. “Hello, Mama. Yes, everything’s fine
here
.” The emphasis on the last word was apparent. “No, Mama. I have
not
had a chance to call Kyle to see if he can pick up the girls for the day. You know how unreliable he is. And you said you’d be fine. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

Tanya sat silent for a moment, her body still. Kendall was careful not to make eye contact.

“Yes, I know how your migraines get. You go on and lie down for a while. Crystal is nine years old. She can make her own breakfast. All she has to do is pour the Cocoa Puffs into the bowl and add some milk. It’s not rocket science, Mama. They’re big girls now. No one expects you to do everything for them.”

Tanya stood and walked away from them toward the window, her shoulders hunched in, her voice intentionally low.

“I know, Mama.” The back of Tanya’s head went up and down. “I know. And you know I appreciate it. I’ll be back tomorrow in time to make dinner.”

Tanya flipped the phone closed. When she turned to face them, her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Frustration filled her voice. “Everything is too much for my mama. Everything has always been too much for her.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “I swear, if I have to get a third job I will. And I am selling that proposal for a bigger book this year, you see if I don’t.” Her long-fingered hands smoothed the sides of her miniskirt. “And then the girls and me are going to move into our own place. One with an actual foundation. And a yard. And our own freakin’ bedrooms.”

Faye straightened on the couch next to her and Kendall could tell she was dying to go offer comfort to Tanya, but Tanya smiled a wobbly smile and shook her head. “You two go get dressed now, OK? I’m going to go pull Miss
New York Times
away from the laptop that she had surgically attached to her fingers. I need food and then I need our day of pampering so bad I can taste it. Do you think we’ll get to ride in Mallory’s limo again?” She was already heading for Mallory’s door. “I want to be sure to get a picture of me emerging gracefully from it for the girls.”

Somehow, she’d never be sure exactly how, Kendall made it through the day. Mallory and Faye and Tanya led her from one activity to the next, distracting her with a steady stream of chatter and laughter, pretending they didn’t notice her ever-increasing anxiety and decreasing levels of participation.

It took everything she had to make it from brunch at Tavern on the Green to four hours of primping and prodding at the Red Door where they all had manis and pedis followed by massages, facials, and hair appointments. From there Kendall and Mallory had raced back to the hotel for the awards ceremony run-through, where Kendall had been forced to confront her competition—a formidable group of much bigger name authors who had all already won at least one Zelda.

Now she sat in the reserved section of the grand ballroom, wedged between Faye and Tanya, her palms and underarms sweaty, her lips completely dry; an apparent trick of body chemistry in which her armpits and hands somehow sucked all the moisture from the other parts of her body.

Her hair in its updo felt stiff and unnatural, the black evening gown too low cut. Her arms, which she knew were too heavy to be bared this way, were covered in goose bumps in the over-air-conditioned space. The body shaper—she wasn’t sure when they’d stopped calling them girdles, but she wasn’t fooled—was too short and bit uncomfortably into her crotch.

There were quiet whispers and rustlings in the back of the ballroom while the video history of the founding of Wordsmiths Incorporated played out on a supersized video screen. But around her, in the section reserved for finalists and their “dates,” tension hummed like a high-voltage wire. A Zelda could do anything from attracting a bigger agent or better offer at another house to reaffirming your value with the ones you already had.

Though many authors quibbled with the judging being done by potentially jealous or competitive peers, no one would argue the prestige of winning. Or pretend that they wouldn’t give their first-born child to carry a Zelda home with them on the plane.

Kendall licked her dry lips and silently thanked God they didn’t have cameras on the waiting finalists like they did at the Oscars. Who but an actor could pretend to be comfortable waiting to find out his fate? Or happiness when someone else won?

Were all the other finalists as nervous as she was? She stole a glance around her, but Kendall didn’t know any of them well enough to tell whether they were as engrossed in the ceremony as they looked. Or silently screaming the words “Freak out!” from the Chic song “Le Freak” in their heads like she was.

Kendall gnawed her lip again and contemplated the ramifications of pulling out her purse to reapply lipstick. If she did actually end up on the stage, magnified on the pounds-adding, pore-revealing screen, she didn’t want her lips to look like the cratered surface of the moon. On the other hand, any move to primp now could be construed as an indication that she believed she was going up on that stage to receive a Zelda soon. Which would appear foolishly overconfident and totally pathetic in the event that she didn’t.

Worse, it might tempt fate to decree she not win in the same way that washing your car could bring on rain.

Kendall drew another deep breath and tried to stem the tide of her thoughts. Which even now in her panicked state she recognized as completely pointless and stupid.

The winner was already determined, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Nothing she did—or thought—now was going to change the name on the card that Mallory was going to read.

As one, Faye and Tanya each took one of her hands in theirs.

Looking up, Kendall saw Mallory’s name flash across the screen. Music swelled and a deep, prerecorded voice began to recap Mallory’s astounding ascent from debut author to permanent resident on the
New York Times
list.

Pictures and video flashed on the screen: Mallory looking beautifully coiffed and elegantly dressed on a television talk show set; Mallory signing books for a line of avid fans that snaked out the front door of a Barnes & Noble; Mallory with the publisher of Partridge and Portman himself; Mallory at her computer in her tastefully appointed home office, conspicuously overdressed for writing, presumably pounding out yet another bestseller.

Kendall forgot about her lips and everything else. Faye and Tanya squeezed her hands so tightly that her fingers went numb even as her heart began to pound much too quickly.

Then the video screen filled with the real-life Mallory St. James.

There was Mallory, striding out onto the stage with her deep brown hair swept into a sophisticated French twist; Mallory, whose bare shoulders in the strapless dress were white and lovely and whose sinewy arms were perfectly toned.

And who Kendall knew did not need to wear a crotch-splitting body shaper beneath the full length white Grecian gown.

Kendall braced herself as Mallory cleared her throat and flashed her megawatt smile into the camera lens. She offered a silent prayer as Mallory began to read the names of the finalists for Best Mainstream Women’s Fiction, beginning with her own.

3

—A. A. MILNE

 

 

 

Kendall held her breath as her air-brushed face filled the mammoth screen, making her immensely grateful that she’d spent the money on a makeup artist and photographer to ensure that her head shot made her look like an assured professional writer, and not her everyday self.

The cover of her book,
Dare to Dream
, appeared beside her screen photo, its stylized bold black-and-gold stepback cover and her name in twenty-four-inch point across the top, the best cover art she’d ever been given, a gift from the publishing gods, which apparently, based on her latest cover, was never to be repeated.

The four other finalists received the same exposure and then a hush of expectancy filled the room—a potent form of silence that was as pulse accelerating as a drum roll.

Kendall wanted to hide her eyes behind her hands as Mallory lifted the envelope, but managed to keep them in her lap.

Her mind raced from thought to thought at speeds so dizzying she could barely keep up with them. Maybe she should have written a speech after all so that she struck the right tone between deserving and appreciative and didn’t forget to thank anyone in the event she actually won. It was always so embarrassing to hear a writer ramble disjointedly—it made you wonder how focused his work could possibly be. Kendall often spent hours polishing a paragraph or a phrase in a manuscript, but it was hard to sound eloquent extemporaneously, especially in front of a live audience.

Kendall sighed. Writing a thank-you speech had felt even more jinx inducing than applying lipstick during the ceremony. She simply hadn’t been willing to take the risk. It mattered too much.

Mallory’s hands encasing the envelope shook slightly; her manicured fingernails fumbled with the seal.

Please God, Kendall thought, as she clasped her own hands together, don’t let me trip on the way up there if I win. And don’t let me humiliate myself too badly if I don’t.

So much for allowing only positive thoughts and energy.

Mallory managed to get the card out of the envelope and Kendall stopped trying to feign nonchalance and began to pray in earnest. She realized as she did so that she hadn’t addressed God in any way since her father’s fatal illness five years ago. And if God hadn’t responded to that life-and-death situation, what were the chances that He was going to bother with a matter as small as Kendall Aims’s career?

“Just this one award, God,” Kendall prayed silently. “I know you have all kinds of things to deal with, but please just let me win. I won’t ever ask again, I promise. Just this one thing tonight. To save all I’ve worked for.”

Mallory pulled the oversized card free of its envelope and lowered her gaze to read it. Her eyes skimmed the card and then she glanced quickly down at Kendall, but Kendall couldn’t decipher the message in her eyes.

The praying, begging, and negotiating going on in her mind coalesced into a single desperate “Pleeeeeaaassssseeeee!” that echoed in her head and filled her very soul.

Mallory leaned into the microphone and her lips began to move. “And the winner of the Zelda for best mainstream women’s fiction is . . .”

Mallory looked directly at her and Kendall’s body began to rise from the chair of its own volition. She was halfway out of her seat when the winner’s name left Mallory’s lips and reverberated through the ballroom, but Kendall could barely hear it for the ringing in her head.

Finally the name broke through the barriers of sound and resistance and registered in Kendall’s brain as Faye and Tanya yanked her back down into her chair.

The name was a name she knew well. It rolled easily off the tongue and had a very definite ring to it. Unfortunately, the name was not hers.

Hillary Bradford Hines walked up the steps to the stage and moved to the podium where she embraced Mallory, took the statuette in her hands, and stepped toward the microphone to give her acceptance speech.

Kendall didn’t hear a word she said. Nor did she hear the wrap-up of the ceremony, the announcements about the reception to follow, or a reminder about airport shuttle reservations for the following morning.

She’d lost. Lost the award, lost face, lost her last hope. She was, in the most literal sense, a loser. Unlike the mythical story character, she was not going to be entering that innermost cave. And she would definitely not be returning with the elixir.