Cathryn didn’t look as if she wanted to enter into this discussion.
“Um, I just like to publish fun stuff!” she said, eliciting more genuine laughter amidst the tension. “I don’t really think it’s rocket science. Writers are inherently kind of loony. I mean, it’s the truth! You have to be a little bit insane to want to write anything down and have people read it. It’s sheer madness. With all of the things that people have in the world to divert their attention, with media and texting and whatever people are doing—”
“With social media,” Ezra muttered.
“With social media! It’s so hard to know what the writing life is that we have to be a little off-kilter to even enter into this world. So I always take authors with a grain of salt. Honestly, though, I feel like we’ve veered somewhat off topic.”
“Well, sorry,” Suzie said, coughing out a bitter laugh.
“Let’s move on to the next question,” Sandy said. She flipped to the next card, frowned, then flipped to another, then another. “How about we talk about who your favorite authors are. Ezra, how about you?”
“You mean which of my Pulitzer winners do I love the most?”
*
Afterward, there was a buffet lunch in one of the ballrooms. Although they had been encouraged to socialize with other people and keep their literary conversations going, Ranjana, Harit, Teddy, and Cheryl huddled at their own table. There was surprisingly a lot for Harit and Ranjana to eat; they piled steamed vegetables and rolls and fruit onto their plates while Teddy and Cheryl assembled towers of thick cheese and cold cuts.
Everyone seemed energized, but Ranjana felt alienated. There seemed to be so much stacked against writers, and the publishing bigwigs had seemed so jaded. She began to understand how special and heartbreaking her nights in front of the computer were—the comforting glow of the screen and the silence except for her tapping fingers or sips of tea. All of that crumpled under the continuous tut-tutting that assailed everyone’s hopes in a setting like this.
“Did you enjoy the talk, ji?” Harit asked her in Hindi. Ranjana took comfort in being able to converse with him without worrying that people nearby would understand. You could pull a foreign language over yourself like a cloak and retreat into a private world, she thought. Given the weekend’s keynote speaker, there were, of course, handfuls of Indian people lurking about, but they were clustered in their own enclaves at other tables. As for Teddy and Cheryl, they had finally found their ideal icebreaker—their mutual affection for Fifty Shades of Grey—and were busy revealing their favorite scenes.
“I’m just glad you’re here,” Ranjana said. She didn’t want to reveal her unease, for fear that her discomfort would heighten his.
Harit could sense that something wasn’t right, but he knew what Ranjana was thinking—that he should staunch his discomfort for her sake. He found this refreshing, being able to know someone your own age well enough to react in kind. Teddy was the only other middle-aged person with whom he conversed regularly, and that was, of course, a very different type of interaction, like an awning pelted by the rain.
Cheryl turned to Ranjana. “Is that what you’re writing, sweetie? Are you off on your own, writing little erotica stories?”
“Oh, Cheryl. No. I am not writing ‘erotica stories.’”
“But that’s where the money is at. Don’t you want to make money?”
“People don’t just write for money, Cheryl.”
“Be honest: if you could make the type of money that these women are making, you wouldn’t give a damn what you wrote. I heard that Danielle Steel has twenty cars.”
“Danielle Steel writes romance, not erotica,” Ranjana said, quoting a line that Stefanie loved to blurt out.
Cheryl: “What’s the difference between romance and erotica?”
Teddy: “Where did you hear that she had twenty cars?”
Harit: “Who is Danielle Steel?”
Soon the room stirred as the masses departed for their next events, leaving the debris of crumpled napkins and shiny pieces of plasticware. Their day progressed with more panels and snack breaks. Ranjana finally ran into Cassie, who chatted briefly before saying she was late for a panel; this was their sole interaction. Ranjana felt increasingly ill-informed about the literary figures in attendance. On more than one occasion, there was that movement, that wind of recognition, when a writer of some note appeared on a panel or moved down a hallway. Most of the authors looked amiable enough, but many of them seemed resentful of the people stuffed into these compact, too-bright rooms. At one panel, a big-faced man—bushy eyebrows, wide jawline—was introduced as Aidan Nolan; he was an Irish author of three novels who was just now seeing his first novel being published stateside. Despite his being a novice on this side of the pond, he refused to answer most questions during his Q&A and scoffed through the answers he did provide. By the time the last panel of the afternoon started—“From Self-Publishing to Self-Actualization,” where a fight almost broke out due to overcrowding—everyone looked closer to Self-Mutilation.
*
The keynote dinner arrived, along with scores of faces that had not been seen during the rest of the conference. It seemed as if many attendees had signed up for the weekend simply to attend this one event. Everyone tried to ignore this and focus instead on the excitement of being in such proximity to a superstar. She was nowhere in sight, at first, but everyone knew that somewhere within the hotel, the eminence for whom they had shelled out a couple of hundred bucks was ready to appear, to educate, to enlighten, to pass along the warmth and impact of her words like God engaging the finger of Adam.
The catering was more careful for this event. Food appeared on the tables by way of a more fastidious waitstaff. Bleu cheese nestled among glistening greens and sugarcoated walnuts. Two baskets of crust-cracking breads and pastel butters were distributed to each table. There was an elaborate eggplant lasagna for the vegetarian-inclined, and Cheryl and Teddy were treated to large cubes of filet mignon with pert green beans and baked potatoes that looked like fashionable prawns. There was wine—red, white, and rosé carafes—and Ranjana was surprised to see how tipsy people were willing to get. She wasn’t shocked to see Teddy and Cheryl drink, but she was somewhat startled to see Harit dispose of three glasses by the time the entrées arrived.
“I used to be able to cook like this,” Cheryl said. “Long before I was married. I dated a chef, and he was always teaching me to make things.”
“Get out of town,” Teddy said. “Or, um, more out of town.”
“Not joking. His name was Bobby, and he made it a point to teach me one new thing a week. I could make filet mignon as good as this. I could make lamb. I could make the perfect roast chicken. I could make cock-oh-ven.”