“Hey Lace,” she said, her voice bright and clear over thrumming guitar riffs in the background. “I want you to go to your door in four… three… two…. one. Now.”
Curious, I got up and found a FedEx truck pulling into the driveway outside my door.
“How do you do that?” I asked as the deliveryman climbed out of the truck with a large purple shipping box.
“GPS tracking systems,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve been monitoring the delivery progress. I wanted to hear your reaction when you opened your present.”
“You are a frighteningly clever girl,” I told her as I signed for the package. “And you really don’t have to send me presents.”
“Well, I can’t lure you to the dark side without bait,” she said. I opened the box to find a gift basket inside, topped with a lurid purple bow.
“The First Wives Club. Enough. Sliding Doors.” I read the covers of the DVDs nestled inside. “And a mix CD entitled Music for Angry Chicks.”
I sifted through the bottom of the basket, which was lined with typed statements from women from all over the country. Texas, Mississippi, Washington, Delaware. “What’s this on the bottom?”
“You might call them case studies,” Maya said. “These are some of the clients who have expressed interest in newsletters from And One Last Thing …. I thought you might like to read some of their stories. You’ve got husbands who left their wives for their receptionists, babysitters, dry cleaners, golfing buddies. One woman’s husband slept with her identical twin. He tried to tell her he didn’t know it was cheating.”
“So you lure me in with girl power movies and then you sucker punch me with women crying out for vengeance?”
“I don’t like to think of it as sucker punching,” Maya said. “I prefer to think of it as setting a mood.”
“You’re the devil,” I told her as I skimmed over some of the statements. Maya’s clients were from all walks of life, all over the country. The one thing they had in common was an unfaithful husband and an overwhelming need to get their dignity back. They could suffer the loss of love, the life they thought they had, the luxuries of a two-income household, if they could just hold their heads up when they went to the Walmart. And they seemed to think they could get that back if I helped them. The problem was helping them meant repeating one of the more reckless things I’ve ever done and directly disobeying my attorney, whose patience I did not want to test.
“Just read over them and get back to me,” Maya told me. “And enjoy the movies. I’ve been where you are right now. You’re hitting that two-month lonely stage when you start to question what you did. Your friends’ sympathy is starting to wane, because they’ve never been through something like this and they think you should be over it by now. So you’re up all night, alone, watching bad television. I thought I might help remedy that. And the CD is mostly Pink, post-divorce.”
“Actually, I’m doing okay,” I told her. “I’m not really that lonely.”
“Have you met someone?” she moaned. “Damn it.”
“And why would that be a bad thing?”
“Because if you’re all dewy with the first blush of new love, you’re not going to want to help wronged women get revenge,” she griped. “You’re in the middle of nowhere. How could you possibly meet someone there… Oh, wait, the hunky neighbor. The plot thickens.”
“Yeah, he remembers you, too,” I commented drily. “And I’m not dewy with anything. I just made a friend.”
“Well, every time you start to feel all giddy with hormones, I want you to read another one of these letters and remember what it feels like to have the rug pulled out from under you by a man.”
“I’ll try,” I promised.
“Are you still at least considering my proposal?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I am. I’ve just been sidetracked by another project. I’ll try to give you a decision as soon as possible. And thanks for the movies. I’ll e-mail you.”
“And listen to the angry music!” Maya called as I started to hang up. “We’ve got to stick together on this, Lacey. I’m sending you more movies. And some books. And some -”
I pushed END and batted packing peanuts out of the way as I examined my new movies. “Strange girl. Brilliant, but strange.”
It took me a few days to work up the nerve to show Monroe what I’d written. And then I took it right back. Several times.
“I changed my mind,” I said, snatching the papers out of his hand before his eyes could focus on the page.
“Okay, if you keep doing that, I will not be able to read it. Also, I will get a headache. And then I will be annoyed.”
“All right, fine.” I shoved the stack of pages at him.
He glared up at me. “You’re going to take it away again, aren’t you?”
“Just one more time,” I promised, but as I grabbed for it, he pulled his hand out of my reach. I gasped as he pulled away the title page and settled into his chair. “You’re going to read it now?”
“Yes.”
When I reached for the paper again, he gave my hand a light smack. I bit my lip. “You’re right. I needed that.”
He flashed a grin at me. “Now, the question is, are you going to sit here while I read it. Or do you want me to wait until you’re home?”
“Which would you recommend?”
“Here, let’s make it even,” he said, handing me a manuscript called Two-Seven-Zero. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“But -” Without looking up from my opening page, Monroe pointed to a chair by the fireplace and pressed a finger to his lips. Slightly disgruntled, I sat and flipped past Monroe’s title page. I looked over the edge of the paper and watched his face. I dreaded hearing what he thought, but desperately wanted to know. What if the newsletter was a rage-fueled fluke?
Monroe was distressingly straight-faced and silent as he read. Seriously, he couldn’t twitch or something?
Without looking up, he called, “Read, Lacey. Read and breathe.”
I cracked the manuscript and got lost in the story of a patrolman who gets sent to a routine burglary and meets a seemingly normal woman who then pulls the full-on Glenn Close routine. The numeric title was based on the police code for dealing with a crazy person.
I was so wrapped up in Monroe’s description of the stalker showing up at the cop’s house with a caterer to discuss the couple’s upcoming wedding that I’d almost forgotten that Monroe was reading my stuff. No, wait, there was the paralyzing anxiety again. A few minutes later Monroe announced that he was finished. I resisted the urge to bolt out of the front door.
“This is my professional hat,” he said, pointing at his head. “Nothing I’m about to say is personal. This is just one man’s opinion -”
“Quit stalling and get on with it,” I told him.
“Obviously, you’re going to go through a couple of drafts, but I think it has potential. You have a strong voice, a good ear for dialogue, and there were some truly horrible, disturbing images in there.”
“I am going to take that as a compliment. There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there?”
He nodded. “Is there going to be any sex?”
“Well, I’m writing about a woman who’s in the middle of a divorce. She’s not really going to want to date.”
“She couldn’t have a rebound boyfriend or a one-night stand? Hell, you could have a flashback of the better times in her marriage. You don’t have to go explicit, but the readers will appreciate a little sex to go with their drywall-based violence.”
“I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to write a sex scene. It just makes me nervous, knowing that someone else would be reading it.”
“Well, get the hell over it,” he told me.