I've decided to show off the bunny that had me spun out... It's a romantic comedy about a writer who got mildly famous for writing something stupid, some kind of Carrie Bradshaw thing, but in the intervening years she gets in an accident. It's not all bad because her writing is much better than it used to be, but now people don't want it...they think it's too dark. But then she meets a once-hot writer guy at some event that's supposed to come up with a book, but he's busy...chasing women or something so he's got nothing. So she uses him as, like, her book's public face, right? He's the one that hits the road with it, and people love it from him because he looks so sensitive and insightful about women, and probably they fight about that and hook up in the end. Not my usual turf, exactly, is it?
The nervous writer waited as her mentor scanned the pages she’d brought. “I...have more. I thought I’d just bring the first few chapters...save wear on the printer, you know?”
“Of course... these are fine,” Max said, stroking his beard in that way it seemed all men with facial hair did. “Better than fine...they’re fucking brilliant. Clever, insightful, even sexy, you naughty girl. You can say you’ve been getting rehabbed in there, but we all know the truth don’t we?”
Carla cracked a smile. “It wasn’t all from life.”
“Well, it was lively enough.”
Carla felt a breath she hadn’t known she was holding leave her chest. Thank God, some light at the end of the Ramen tunnel. All the sacrifices, the struggle, it was all gonna be worth it.She felt a few traitorous tears well up. Since her travel writing accident and the broken back, she was all too emotional, but she was just so grateful, with all she lost, that she got her mojo back at the desk. If that hadn’t happened she wouldn’t have been sure if she’d wanted to go on living. She’d written something almost every daysince she was six.
“It’s too bad,” Max said
.
”What’s too bad?” she asked. “Not the writing. Chapter three is especially, and I’m quoting my friend here, but it’s ‘the shit.’ You know it is.”
“Excrement or not,” Max said, but his voice softened, “It’s not the sort of writing people want from the author of “Red Hot San Francisco.”
“That was five years ago,” she pointed out. “And I’m not the same woman.”
“Yes, I know. It inspires me the way you’ve picked yourself up after...everything.”
It’s a wheelchair, Max. You can say it. And I write better now, too.
“But...”
”It’s a downer, Carla, pet. Wheelchair sexcapades just don’t sell.”
“But it’s my life, Max. Write what you know, you know? And I don’t get it...why is it inspiring for me to put my skirt on right, but not for me to keep doing something I’ve done my whole life?”
“ Surely the disability press...”
‘Hardly ever can pay me anything. I made $15 last month. Sure, I’m making it barely, but I owe people, and my printer’s about to go the way of a stone tablet...”
“ I think it’s great,” he said again. “It’s the business I don’t trust. They got to know you a certain way, and now you go and spring depth on them...it’s bound to be a shock.”
“ I still have the panties, Max.” The piece that had made her reputation, a love letter to a red thong, was one her friends had loyally credited with starting the major thong fad in the mid-nineties.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you considered fetish sites?”
”No...well, yes. I’m waiting on an e-mail from one now.”
Fetish sites. Christ.
“ Are you still planning to come to my group tonight? They’re really excited about meeting someone published.”
”Ah, Max. You always know what to say. They’re probably just shocked I’m not dead or drooling in a cup.” Carla wheeled herself to the window and admired Max’s view.
“Not at all.”
“You flush when you lie, Max.”
“Okay, maybe for the first five minutes. But you can make them all forget that. I know you can.”
“As long as I don’t try to sell my (continued...)