The Elizas: A Novel(30)

“Eliza?”

A tall woman with kind eyes stands at the little gate that separates the café from the street. She has at least a foot on me. Her arms and legs hang apishly low. Even her fingers are spindly. She’s got a candy floss fluff of black hair around her head, she’s wearing a strappy sundress despite the fact that it’s only 60 degrees and gloomy, and the sundress’s fabric pulls tightly against her swollen, pregnant stomach.

“Posey?” I say almost inaudibly.

“Yes!” She sandwiches my hand between hers. “Did you just get here? Shall we go in?”

The fingers on my other hand are still wrapped around my phone. “I, um—”

But she’s already pulling me into the restaurant. “It’s hideous of me that I’ve waited so long to come and see you. I mean, your book is practically out in the world! But I had to go through the IVF procedures for these”—she gestures to her belly—“and that seemed to take forever. Do you realize they have a vaginal wand in you every day? You can’t have a life. And then there was the morning sickness—I practically couldn’t leave the house.” She leans over herself and speaks to her stomach. “Why have you made it so hard on me? Couldn’t you have given me a break?” She uses a barking, militant voice.

“How many are in there?” I ask nervously as we walk up the stairs.

“Three.” Posey grins. “Three little boys.”

“Whoa.”

Posey grabs a menu and walks to the back of the restaurant like she’s a regular. She gestures for me to sit at a booth, and I don’t know what else to do but comply. I will talk to her for a few minutes, I reason. Then make an excuse and go. Surreptitiously, I peek at my phone and cancel my Uber request. I glance around the room. No one is staring at me anymore. Maybe I’m okay. I feel safer now that I’m not alone.

Soon enough, there are three sandwiches, a big bottle of juice, and an enormous slice of carrot cake I’d seen behind the glass in front of Posey. I order a smoothie with acai berries, but I can’t fathom drinking it. “Now,” she says, lacing her hands under her chin and peering at me. “Tell me everything. Tell me about you.”

I shrug and place my smoothie down without spilling it, which is a wonder, because my hands are still trembling quite badly. “Oh, well, you know. I’m nothing special.”

“The world is fascinated with you right now. You’re the mysterious author who flung herself into a pool.”

“I didn’t fling myself,” I say quickly, and then I cock my head. “The world?”

“Well, maybe not the world, but a lot of people. I have to admit we added a little fuel to the fire—we said the woman in the novel goes through quite an ordeal, and perhaps creating that character was too much for you. Perhaps you were exorcising your own demons, which led to the incident.”

“But . . .” I’m astonished. “That’s not true!”

“All the more reason for you to explain that in interviews after the book is published,” Posey chirps happily. And before I can protest that, she goes, “So. How did you come to write The Dots? Just so we have our stories straight.”

This is just Posey’s job, of course, and it’s natural she’s curious. She bought my novel, gave me an advance that equaled probably ten years of a typical twenty-something’s salary, and now she wants it to succeed. I can’t hold these questions against her, though the whole rise-to-infamy thing makes me feel . . . dirty. Like I’ve sold out—and I haven’t even sold anything yet. Successful books should be judged by literary merit and literary merit alone, shouldn’t they?

There’s another thing. None of my other drowning incidents were publicized—there was no reason to publicize them, as I wasn’t anyone of note. But if someone wanted to dig, they’d find some records about me. The guy and his son who’d lugged me out of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica might come forward with a report. Or the janitor who came in to clean the Days Inn hot tub and saw me lying facedown in the bubbles. I could just see that story in print: She wasn’t even staying with us, the janitor would say. Didn’t have a key card or anything. I don’t know how she got into the Jacuzzi area, either, as it’s usually locked tight. And she said there was someone after her, except I didn’t see anybody . . .

I feel Posey waiting for my answer. I don’t know what propels me to say what I say next, I don’t know what drives me to make the leap. It just comes out. “Halfway through my junior year at UCLA, I got a brain tumor.”

“Like Dot?” Posey asks, hand on the side of her face. “Good Lord!”

“Kind of like her. A similar tumor—I stole that detail because I knew how it worked and could guess what the treatment for it was.”

Posey narrows her eyes. She has somehow gotten a piece of lettuce on her cheek, but I don’t want to embarrass her by calling attention to it. “What do you mean you could guess the treatment?”

“My treatment was kind of a blur. They operated immediately, and then I was in a sort of . . . haze.”

“Really?” Posey leans forward and scrutinizes my scalp. “You must have had a good plastic surgeon. I don’t see any scars.”

“LA, right?” I laugh, a little mirthlessly, a lot awkwardly. “They used a new technology where they didn’t have to do much cutting. Anyway, I guess I’m okay now. Amazingly. Everyone says it’s a miracle.”