The Bitch Posse (13 page)

Tonight Anne Lamott might show up, Rennie heard, and Po Bronson, who’s got a new book out, and Isabel Allende, and a bunch of other famous people. Beth even said that Amy Tan will try to drop by (well, of course she’ll drop by, it’s Puck MacGregor after all), and J. D. Salinger’s old girlfriend, Joyce Maynard, who’s a novelist too. Tonight Rennie will be among writers of such stature they’re like
fictional characters, writers so important that being in the same room with them will make her feel like a big fat zero.

Wren Taylor, of course, Wren Taylor the Mill Valley novelist, has been invited probably as an afterthought. As for Rennie Taylor the teacher at Tamalpais High, who’s got an awful habit of fucking student teachers, well, that person hasn’t been invited; that person doesn’t even exist in these circles.

Funny how she keeps killing herself, and getting resurrected as someone else. She’ll never go back to Holland, not in a million years. She put all that behind her, froze out Amy right after it happened, stopped writing to Cherry too, because she couldn’t bear to relive those terrible moments Cherry seemed so obsessed with confronting. That Rennie Taylor is dead. Wren Taylor’s the only one who really matters, the only respectable incarnation of herself she’s been able to create thus far. Not the scared little girl at the Porter Place, God no. Certainly not the slutty English teacher. No wonder Bay didn’t want to come.

Rennie admits it, she’s kind of glad he’s not here, because she has a little crush on Puck, the ingenue who appeared from nowhere and took the literary world by storm fresh out of high school. She loved
Killing Butterflies
and his two story collections and was struck breathless, years ago, by his first novel,
Dark Blooms
(“a provocative and elegant debut by a mesmerizing new talent,” said
The New York Times),
which he wrote when he was seventeen. Some passages of that novel were so “provocative” Rennie didn’t just blush, she actually had to put the book down and mess around by herself for a while. They’ve run into each other before, when she read at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books at Opera Plaza, back five years ago it is now. He came up to her, congratulated her, tiny but troubled twenty-seven-year-old with a debut novel, he, already famous at nineteen. Eight years her junior and decades her superior in the literary world.

Now, as she turns the doorknob, music spills out. Beth’s big wolf-dog,
(why do people own those, couldn’t they go wild and attack someone?) jumps up on her and gets a muddy paw print on the front of her paisley skirt. Fortunately it’s splashed with so many colors it doesn’t matter. She laughs but is kind of pissed—why isn’t Bogie in the garage? Beth’s at the door smiling, Beth the perpetual wannabe who’s very good at cultivating relationships with writers, Beth, of the red curls, long thin lips, Beth, who calls her Wren and wants Wren to call her Bee, Beth, whom Rennie’s starting to think has a gigantic crush on her because her fingers always linger on Rennie’s arm as they’re doing now, a patchouli-scented kiss at that sensitive spot by her ear, a little too friendly-friendly (“Wren, it’s so good to see you”—Beth’s hand just happens to flutter across Rennie’s breasts—“it’s been way too long!”). But that’s okay, Beth’s her ticket in to see Puck.

She spots him right away, standing near the stereo, a chunk of streaky brown hair hanging over his forehead as he holds a plastic glassful of Chardonnay. The skinny redhead next to him must be his agent, New York Über-Icon Pepper Perryman. Rumors have always buzzed around Puck and Pepper. Just like everyone else in the world, Rennie read the
Vanity Fair
article where the interviewer asked flat out if he and Pepper were sleeping together. Puck pretended like she’d asked about the casting for
Killing Butterflies
and ran through the possibilities, role by role, in that way you avoid a question when the answer is yes but you don’t want to say so.

Rennie’s agent, New York Nobody Lisa Jenkins, has patiently accepted four drafts of the opening three chapters of her work-in-progress, alternatively titled
Lori’s Summer, The Narey Relatives,
and
The Rest of Us,
and has patiently sent them back again. This past week, Lisa’s ignored two e-mails and a phone call, and Rennie’s starting to worry that even the Sara Kiernan Book Award that’s plastered on
Go Ahead, Embarrass Me
is aging, five, six years old now. Crap, Puck MacGregor’s staring at her,
the
Puck MacGregor. Does he remember
her from the reading? Probably not. As famous writers go, she’s the least known here, ha ha ha.

She looks away from Puck and watches Amy Tan help herself to some crackers and Brie. Before Rennie knows it, Puck’s crossed the room to her, and he smiles, chocolate eyes sparkling beneath that touch-it-oh-go-ahead-mess-it-up-kiss-me-fuck-me hair that hangs in his eyes. It evokes something in her, another chunk of hair falling into another handsome face, a kiss on a stage. . . . She shuts down the thought. Her brain is half not working, and all she can think to say is “Congratulations.”

He laughs, takes a bottle of Chardonnay from somewhere near him, and fills a plastic cup for Rennie. “Good to see you, Wren. Don’t you love this kind of book party? The one no one knows about. No New York publishing people, no caterers, no evening gowns, just a bunch of friends getting together. Look, you’re more dressed up than anyone.” She looks around and it’s true; people are in blue jeans, shorts, T-shirts. One guy’s even wearing some bizarre Mexican poncho, Birkenstocks, and seemingly nothing else, judging from the curly leg hair that escorts her eyes up ever higher, leaving little to the imagination.

Even the famous people look like they’ve just come back from a pickup softball game. Po Bronson and Anne Lamott are helping themselves to hors d’oeuvres, he in a Stanford sweatshirt, she in a solid green tank top. Amy Tan’s sipping wine in the hallway, wearing a navy scoop-neck shirt and jeans. And there’s Isabel Allende, talking to Beth by the screen door. Yeah,
that
Isabel Allende. If Rennie had the nerve she’d go up and start a chat about Chile, Pinochet, the coup, even Neruda. But she isn’t up on politics anymore, and she’d probably come off like a loser. For her fashion selection this evening Isabel has chosen a plain black T-shirt and denim capris.

There is not one single other person here in a skirt.

Isabel has Beth in hysterics as she slides a chunk of French bread
through the bowl of eggplant dip like she’s at any ordinary friendly get-together. So easy and relaxed, Rennie will never be, unless she has about ten drinks in her.

Amy Tan is eating a cracker not twenty feet away from Rennie. Yeah,
that
Amy Tan. Who was a finalist for that little prize called the National Book Award. Anne Lamott’s standing near the fireplace, adjusting the strap of her tank top. Yeah,
that
Anne Lamott, whose
Bird by Bird
owns a place of honor next to Rennie’s computer. And Po Bronson’s changing the CD in the stereo, yeah,
that
Po Bronson, whose new book about figuring out what the hell you’re supposed to be doing with your life Rennie’s afraid to read. All these famous people, in the same room as her. Looking like they’re having a hell of a lot more fun.

Yeah, she would’ve fit in better if she’d come to the party naked.

Or not shown up at all.

“Hey. Wren.”

Heat rises to her cheeks as she realizes she’s standing there like a fucking idiot saying nothing when Puck MacGregor, yeah,
that
Puck MacGregor, just asked her a question. “Sorry. It’s a great party, I love Marin,” she says stupidly and gulps the Chardonnay.

“Your novel was sensational.” He’s staring into her eyes like she’s the most fascinating person in the room. “I still have the copy you signed to me.”

She nearly chokes on the wine. “You do?” Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. She got dead drunk that night after her reading, went for a drive with Puck and Beth and some others out to Fort Point, where they went walking to see the Golden Gate Bridge from below. Most of the night is blurred in her memory. She hates when she drinks so much she can’t remember things, but she thinks, she’s pretty sure, she might have kissed him. Maybe more. At the end of the evening she wrote some long, embarrassing, insipid thing in a book and gave it to him, maybe even something terrible like “To my idol, Puck MacGregor,” oh, crap.

He rests his hand on the bookcase behind her so if he bent his head just a little he’d be kissing her. “You’re working on something new, aren’t you?”

Oh, God. The dreaded question. Puck’s a writer, he should know better. But then, he’s had something in print almost every year since he was seventeen. Novels must fly through his window and present themselves at the bottom of his computer printer. “Yeah, well, I’m reworking part of it.” As in, all of it. All three chapters of it. For the fifth time now.

“Let me know when you finish, I’ll send it on to Pepper for you.”

Damned if he’ll humiliate her with such condescension. She tilts the last swallow of Chardonnay into her mouth. “I have an agent,” she says coldly.

But he just laughs again and pours some more wine into her glass. “It’s been too long, Wren. You should come down to Palo Alto sometime. We could get together.”

“Maybe.” What the hell did she do that night at Fort Point? “I’m awfully busy up here with my teaching and stuff.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were teaching now. Where? Dominican?”

And of course he’d assume that, that’s where someone successful would be teaching, where
he’d
be teaching, if he wasn’t the Alsiting Professor at the Stanford Writing Program. The program she couldn’t even get into after she graduated, the reason she took a teaching credential at San Francisco State. “I teach at Tarn. I love working with young people, my kids are fantastic.” Teaching. She’s just invited Rennie Taylor, teacher-slut, into the room, and she wishes she could uninvite her, immediately. She finishes almost all the wine in her glass, then looks at the swallow that’s left and finishes it too.

Beth stands in the center of the living room and claps her hands. “Who wants to soak in the hot tub?” Before Rennie can think straight, Beth’s shed her top and shorts and is stark naked. About half the group, including the Mexican poncho guy, start whipping off their
clothes and pour out onto the porch. The more respectable set gaze the other way, and Pepper Perryman looks panicked.

The non-hot tub group drifts into the kitchen, and Rennie and Puck are left staring at each other halfway between the kitchen and the hot tub porch.

Behind them is Beth’s bedroom, where there’s music playing for some reason, and Puck laughs and says softly, “Want to disappear?”

No one even notices as Puck MacGregor, yeah,
that
Puck MacGregor, ditches his own party with Wren Taylor the writer, and closes the bedroom door behind them.

Almost before Rennie knows it she’s taken off her top, then her bra, and he’s touching her, kissing her face, her ears, her neck. “Mmm, Wren, it’s been
way
too long. . . . ” She’s on her fifth or sixth wine now, and it’s good to be drunk, not to care. The air hums in her ears, and she slips her tongue into his mouth, kicks off her underwear. He pushes up her skirt, and they roll onto the bed, panting. “You’re such a cute little thing,” he says in between sharp kisses that he lands on her breasts. “Are you sure you’re not an elf?” She grabs him, pushes him into her, clinging, pressing her chest to his, pulling his power inside her, and if she fucks him hard enough she might even become him. Everything dissolves into kisses and ohs and wet noises, and Rennie closes her eyes and spins into the darkness. But there’s no way she can wrap her legs around him tight enough, and the question pounds through her, why does she always use sex to solve things? until she erases it all in the rush of orgasm and it’s over just like that, supersonic sex. It’s all right though because she’s too drunk or tired to want it to go on.

He kisses her and lights her cigarette, and they lie together quietly for a while, watching the smoke curl ghosts into the air as he rubs her belly under the elastic of the skirt, snuggles her under his arm, swats her on the hip a few times, just lightly, affectionately. She could fall asleep . . .

After a while he sits up, drinks some wine, and splashes some more into Rennie’s glass. They make a little small talk as they trace circles over each other’s backs, go on touching lazily and compliment each other’s bodies, blab about the war (they’re both against it but are fuzzy on the whys of it all, Puck thinks it happened because of those misguided extremists who voted for Nader and Rennie’s one of them so they shift the conversation), Beth’s dog (Puck thinks Bogie’s gorgeous, Rennie thinks Beth’s crazy to own such a dangerous animal), the cost of housing (they agree it’s outrageous, the only difference is that it doesn’t matter to Puck). The conversation circles into writing and publishing, if
Hayes
is ever going to be made into a movie. Puck tells her Angelina—he’s on a first-name basis with her apparently—Angelina’s interested in that one too. This is when Rennie hopes Pepper Perryman will come up again, but before that can happen, she runs the conversation into a wall by mentioning her old editor at Random House, Cath Zannini (shit, how was she supposed to know they’d been involved?).

Silence hangs between them like a ghost, and anyway, Rennie suddenly wants to go home. Voices swell in the living room; the hot tub crowd seems to be coming inside already since it’s a little chilly, now that the sun’s gone behind Mount Tarn. She really doesn’t want to be caught naked with Puck MacGregor in Beth’s bedroom, so she snaps on her bra, pulls on her top. He’s already dressed and slips out, saying “Call me” over his shoulder. But of course he doesn’t leave his number, and she’s so drunk she can barely wiggle her feet into her sandals. Glancing in Beth’s mirror, she notices her mascara’s run all over, and her lipstick’s smudged.
Crap.
She borrows a brush to yank through her tangled hair. God, her face looks drawn and tired.
When you lose your looks there’s not much else, not if you’re a woman, anyway.
Emotion chokes her throat, but she won’t think about any of that now. She gulps the last drops of wine in her glass, straightens Beth’s rumpled quilt, and slides out the door too.