The Sound of Broken Ribs(40)
Lei didn’t like the idea of “readers” as a separate entity removed from her. She was an avid reader, consuming upwards of two books a week, and didn’t gel with the idea of using her hobby as a promotion tool.
“I’d rather keep my reading list to myself,” she said with a soft smile. “I mean, what if I read something my fans don’t like?”
Gail waved her off. “Oh, hell, that won’t matter. Just because you’re reading it doesn’t mean you have to say if you liked it or not. You could read My Camp and no one would judge you.”
Lei wondered if Gail was talking about Mein Campf, by Adolph Hitler, but decided not to ask. She didn’t care if this woman got the name of a book wrong. She just wanted to get this meeting over with so she could finish up and move along to the next meeting.
“Well, do you?” Gail asked.
Lei had no idea what she was talking about. “Do I what?”
Gail’s smile faltered for the briefest instance. “Do you have anything I can use?”
“Oh. Hey, why don’t I run my own Instagram for a while? I could even do my own Twitter.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Gail killed her martini in one quick swallow.
“Why not?”
Gail twitched. “Because that’s my job.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Lei’s prosthetic slipped down her lap. She grabbed the wrist and dragged the plastic hand back into her lap. Gail’s face showed a modicum of disgust before the smile returned to the publicist’s face.
God forbid this bothers you, Gail. I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable.
“I might have some pics I could send you,” Lei said, because why not play along if it meant that her book got into more hands.
“Great. We also have the Good Morning, America thing. How was that?”
“It was what it was. I’m not really a fan of live television, but I managed.”
Gail’s face said that she didn’t really care what Lei thought of live TV. “All right. I guess that’s it. This was… fun.”
Sure thing, Gail. Sure thing.
*
In Fontana, California, Belinda Walsh ran a box of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes across the scanner of her register. The register beeped to show that it had accepted the item. Automatically, Belinda dropped the box of cereal into a plastic bag and grabbed the next item.
Author Lei Duncan, equipped with fake arm and beaming face, graced the cover of The Interlocutor, one of America’s juiciest tabloids. In the six months of her working at Von’s supermarket, Belinda had never actually seen someone buy one of these magazines. That combined with who graced the cover caused her to pause.
“That’s something—isn’t it?” asked the lady on the other side of the counter.
“What?” Belinda said in a detached voice. She saw Lei’s head bounce off the hood of her car and twitched. How long had it been since she thought about running over the author? Five, maybe ten minutes? That must’ve been some kind of record for her.
“What happened to that Duncan lady—that was something, wasn’t it?”
“Oh. Yeah. Poor lady.”
Belinda looked then—really looked and saw the woman across from her for the first time. In Belinda’s opinion, the woman was pretty for a black chick: high cheekbones and full lips. Dudes of all colors would find her, at the very least, fuckable. And then Belinda noticed the woman’s lopsided chest. One cup of her bra looked empty.
“Breast cancer sucks.” The woman smiled and Belinda grimaced.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Of course you didn’t. But instead of people having to stare and wonder, I like telling them what’s up. Plus, if I can make sure one other woman gets checked out and catches the disease early, I consider my struggle worth it.”
“That’s nice of you.” Had she really just said that?
“Belinda, is it?” The woman tapped the air in the direction of Belinda’s nametag. Belinda looked dumbly down at her own chest and nodded. “My great grandmother’s name was Belinda. She was an actual slave. Found that on one of those ancestry websites.”
“Wow. That’s awesome, that you found her. Not that she was a slave,” Belinda said, but her feigned shock did not overflow into her actual words.
“Yeah. It really is.”
Belinda rang up the rest of the items—tampons, a candy bar, and a box of fig cookies—and gave the lady her total. The woman swiped her card and said, “You from around here, Belinda?”
“Born and raised,” she lied. There wasn’t a trace of dishonesty in her voice. She’d been telling this story for over two years now, ever since Carl had moved out here to chase his dreams of being a world-renown drag queen on par with RuPaul.
“Really? This always struck me as a place people moved to, not somewhere people were actually born.”
“Kaiser Permanente, nineteen-eighty. Says so on my birth certificate.” The ease with which this fallacy rolled off her tongue always shocked her. She’d become such a good storyteller since hitting the author. Maybe some of Lei Duncan’s gift for tall tales had rubbed off on Belinda when her face bounced off the Toyota’s hood.
“The one on Sierra?”