Unsoul'd (17 page)

"That's nice of you," Manda said, caught off-guard. She looped her arm through mine; possessively, I thought. "Sweetheart," she who had never once called me by any sort of pet name said, "I'm going to the bar. Can I get you something?"

"Bourbon and water would be great."

"You should have something to eat, too," she said in a maternal tone I'd never heard before. "You've had a lot to drink."

"I just ate something."

"Carrots and cheese. I saw. You need carbs. I'll get you some crackers."

As she made her way through the crowd to the nearest caterer, Fi grinned after her. "So, she's the new girlfriend, eh?" Fi asked, sipping at her wine. "She seems nice."

"Nice" being Fi's way of avoiding the word "boring."

"She's very nice," I said, infusing the word with its proper meaning as I passed it back to her.

"Is she enough for you, though? She seems a little..." She drank more wine. "A little... I don't know.
Normal
. What does she do?"

"Web site for pregnant women's fashions," I said, as though by rote. "And what's wrong with normal?"

"Nothing. I'm not saying anything. But you'd think she would sex it up a little for her boyfriend's launch party, you know? And she's barely talking to anyone. Never figured you for the introvert, Randall. But all that matters is that you're happy."

Fi swished away just as Manda returned -- as promised -- with a plate of crackers and a bourbon. As well as a sour look on her face.

"That's your ex?" she asked, watching Fi thread her way through the crowd, pausing here and there to touch someone's shoulder and laugh too loud. "Jesus. I didn't know you went for the slutty types. Why didn't you ever say so?"

"She's not that slutty."

"If she sits down in that dress, I'll be able to see her uterus from here. Because I guarantee you she's not wearing underwear -- not in
that
thing."

"Yeah," I said with abject neutrality

"Do you like that?" she asked, not in a jealous or wondering tone, but more in disgust. "Is that what you like?"

I didn't know how to answer, not in any sort of full or truthful fashion. Because the fact was, yeah, I liked Fi's look. I didn't find it slutty. Or maybe I did, and Manda and I just had different connotations for the word "slutty." Fi's "look" was free and open and unrelentingly sexy in an "I need you" way.

But I couldn't say that because Manda wouldn't understand. She was psychologically (gender-ly?) incapable of understanding that simply because I found Fi sexy that I couldn't also find the anti-Fi -- Manda -- sexy for the quiet heat she gave off. Or that I couldn't also find Gym Girl sexy for her barely-restrained physicality, sheathed under a sophisticated veneer.

I didn't have a "type." Or, more accurately, my "type" was women in general. I loved them all. Or, perhaps more appropriately, lusted after them all. The innocent types, the flirty types, the sluts and the MILFs and the outright nasty bitches and the sweet ones and the confused ones and even the ones -- especially the ones? -- who had no interest in me whatsoever. I knew women liked to pigeonhole men into easy categories -- breast man, ass man, leg man -- but it wasn't that simple.

"It's been over between us for a long time," I told Manda. "There's no need to be jealous."

Manda stared at me with a combination of pity and shock. "Jealous? I'm not jealous at all. I just can't believe you were ever with a skank like that. Look at how she's hanging all over that guy." "That guy" being Marshall DeVoe, the president and publisher of an imprint at HarperCollins. Fi was so close to him, touching his arm, that the slightest cock of her hip would have brought their groins into contact. Marshall's wife stood next to him, her face frozen in an overly polite smile as her clueless (perhaps) husband laughed at something Fi had said.

"She's ridiculous," Manda went on. "How could I be jealous of her? Why did you even say jealous?" she turned to me. "
Should
I be jealous? Is that what you're saying?"

"No. Not at all." I squeezed her hand for reassurance. Hers or mine, I couldn't say. "That's what I mean -- there's no reason to be jealous."

I thought it might be time to tell Manda that I loved her. It seemed the right thing to do, given the circumstances, and it would definitely get me out of my current predicament.
Don't worry, babe. I love you. I don't care about her any more.

But I wasn't sure it was true. And while I wasn't positive, I was
more
sure that it wasn't true. So I said nothing, as usual, and just held Manda's hand as people milled about and glad-handed me and told me how wonderful I was.

Wherein I Meet Lacey

Another hour into the party, Sherrie slipped over to my side. Manda by now had detached from me and was by the bar, chatting with some folks from my publisher's digital design department.

"She's here," my publicist murmured, pressing close to me, ostensibly to make sure I could hear to the exclusion of everyone else.

I say "ostensibly," but that must have been the real reason. Everything else was my own hormonal conjecture. I suddenly wanted to get laid very badly and very well.

"Who?" I asked, realizing even as I said it who it had to be. A glance around the room revealed that Roger and Blake were surreptitiously guiding the partygoers away from the platform, as well as carving out a narrow furrow from there to a door leading to a back room. As my publicist led me over to the platform, I could hear Blake saying to a guest, "If you could please just move a bit this way-- Yes, ah, perfect, thank you... Special guest coming... Very special..."

Other than the Deux Livres crew, some key folks from my publisher, and yours truly, no one else knew about Lacey's trip.

I took up my spot on the platform, behind the microphone. A hush rippled through the crowd. Was he going to speak
again
, people wondered. I wondered, too. Was I supposed to introduce her? I had no idea what to say.

Roger came to my rescue, straightening his already impeccably straight tie as he hopped onto the platform.

"We have a very special guest tonight," he began, then hesitated as though he'd forgotten something. "I mean, of course,
another
very special guest tonight." He expertly paused for a smattering of applause and laughter. "I hope you'll all join me in welcoming a truly magnificent and courageous young lady--"

He probably intended to say her name next, but his words were lost as Lacey emerged from the back room door of Deux Livres and took her first steps towards the platform and towards me. She wore a cream-colored shirt with a black skirt and boots. No jewelry that I could tell. Not dressed up, and not dressed down.

There was a collective gasp, followed by the sound of everyone in the room fumbling for cell phones.

Her deliberate self-removal from the media spotlight had only enhanced her profile and her desirability. Everyone wants the picture of the woman who won't be photographed. Everyone lusts for details from the woman who won't speak. Without meaning to (I assume) Lacey had multiplied her fame by doing nothing. Henry would have understood. And commiserated.

To her credit, Lacey did not break stride; she maintained her poise as she walked through the crowd, steadily gazing straight ahead -- at me -- as she did so, flanked on either side by two large men I assumed to be bodyguards.

The first thing that I noticed about her was how truly beautiful she was. The photos of her the world had seen on TV and on the Internet for the months of her captivity were inevitably posed yearbook shots from high school. They reflected a sort of plasticized, Photoshopped beauty, the generic beauty of makeup ads and face cream commercials. But in real life, Lacey Simonson was a stunner -- a Cupid's bow of a mouth, a slightly crooked nose, large, luminous eyes, and a chin that almost could have been drawn with a protractor, so precise were its angles. The bald spot along the left side of her head had grown out enough to blend in with the short pixie cut she'd gotten some time after her rescue.

She reached the stage and -- without hesitation -- shook my hand.

What followed was a cacophony of applause, a chaos of camera shutters and a panoply of flashes. I smiled into them and did my best, but they overwhelmed me and I eventually held up a hand to shield my eyes, turning slightly away. Lacey did the same, turning so that we were facing each other at an angle, and we shared a brief, shy smile.

"This is sort of crazy," I whispered for her and her alone.

Lacey grinned. There was no sign that she had endured something truly and literally and horrifically crazy for so long.

She leaned over to Roger and I heard her ask, "Would it be all right if I said something?"

By now, the press in attendance was shouting out questions, most of them -- fortunately -- of the benignly inane variety: How are you doing, Lacey? Where have you been? One even asked -- in a laughable moment that I'm sure my publicist nevertheless appreciated -- What do you think of the new book?

Roger, of course, nodded and immediately took to the microphone once more, gesturing for quiet, which he eventually, grudgingly received. "Miss Simonson is going to make a brief statement," he said, and then immediately gestured again for quiet. "There will be no questions." I was proud of Roger -- he said this last with an air of such authority that even I wouldn't have dared ask a question.

The store fell silent as Lacey approached the mic. I could not believe how utterly poised she was, as though she did this all the time.

The only sound was the click of camera buttons. If Lacey was aware of them, she didn't show it.

"I just wanted to say," she began, "that I'm very honored to be here tonight. I'm actually happy to be anywhere at all tonight, but especially here. And the reason for my being here and the reason for my honor are one and the same. This man. Randall Banner."

She pointed to me, as if anyone needed me identified, and the crowd applauded.

"And this book," she went on, holding out her hand. One of the bodyguards obligingly slipped a copy of
Flash/Back
into her hands. It was worn, weathered, the cover torn in places, and the room went into a sort of shock as we all realized that this was The Copy. This was the Actual Book she'd read and re-read and re-re-read during her captivity.

"This book," she said, holding it aloft, "saved my sanity. And it saved my life. It gave me the strength to endure my time." Her tone and manner invested "my time" with all the personal horrors she could not or would not give voice to. "I am so grateful for this man and his talent. And not just for his talent, but for the goodness and passion in his heart, which compelled him to write this story. I would not be standing in front of you today without any of that."

Here she turned away from the microphone to look at me and there were tears in her eyes as she said, "Thank you, Randall," in a voice only I could hear.

So. Lacey had missed the point of the book. Like so many others. Henry isn't a good person. Henry is a flawed person. He's broken, and when he tries to be honest about it, the world refuses to listen.

Somehow, though, her misapprehension of the story bothered me less than that of others.

Back to the mic, she took a deep breath. "And I was wondering... Well, I was wondering if you would sign my book for me?"

The crowd erupted in genuine and relieved laughter. I felt light-headed. Lacey turned to me hopefully, apparently under the delusion that there was a chance I would
not
sign the book. I pawed in my jacket pocket for a pen and held out my hand for the book.

It was strange, taking it from her. I don't know what I expected. But it was just a book. My book. I'd signed hundreds of them, and in the future I would sign thousands more.

Just a book. A ratty, well-read book.

I flipped the book open to the title page.

FLASH/BACK

by Randall Banner

I froze. I didn't know what to write. I had little phrases I wrote when I inscribed my books, a different one for each title. For
Flash/Back
, I usually wrote "The future is still waiting," which made sense in the context of the book, and then signed my name with my approximation of a flourish. But I couldn't bring myself to sign Lacey Simonson's book the same way I'd signed so many others, the same way I would sign so many more later in the evening. I had to say something special. Something enduring. And I was woefully unprepared for it. If I had known that I was going to sign her book for her, I would have come up with something in advance. And now all I could do was stand there, with everyone watching, and--

Before I could ponder it any further and ruin it in the thinking, I scrawled:

Lacey: Flash/Back is now and forever
your
book, and I am honored to sign it for you.

I signed my name under that. I felt a sense of triumph at having come up with something that would mean something to her. When I handed it back to her, she clutched it to her chest for a small, holy moment, as though absorbing something from deep inside. Then she flung her arms around me, to the delight of the crowd.

"Thank you," she said again, and I said "You're welcome," though perhaps "No, thank you" might have been more appropriate.