“I’m trying.”
“I just keep thinking how unfair it is that it never won an Emmy,” he says, sounding genuinely incredulous. “Just because it’s not some hour-long HBO miniseries. Those pretentious idiots.”
“Yeah, that’s what a lot of the fandom has been saying. Indignation Central over there.”
He laughs quietly. “What other responses have there been?”
I shrug. “Most people are moving on. I think mostly the migration is to that CW show Imaginary Detectives.”
“And you?”
“I’m sticking around.”
“Loyal.”
“To a fault.” I sigh, fake-dramatically.
“Have you started my present yet?” he asks.
“Oh, you mean that doorstop full of papers?”
Dad sent me some books—The Corrections and Infinite Jest—for my birthday.
“I haven’t gotten around to it,” I admit, “but I will really soon, I promise.”
I wonder if I should tell Dad about the Gideon situation. We don’t usually talk about guy stuff outside the weird metaphorical father/daughter talks based on TV shows and novels we’ve read, but it’s still bothering me a lot, and maybe he has advice.
“So, Dad, I—”
“I’ve got some news!” Dad cuts me off, then makes a fuzzy noise that I realize is a deep breath.
“Oh. Bad or good?”
“Good.” He clears his throat. “Great, actually.”
“John St. Clair’s wife actually had a hysterical pregnancy, and the show will be back on next season?” I ask hopefully.
“My book launch party is a couple of weeks from now. Friday, the eighteenth.”
I shriek with joy.
“Jesus. Scarlett, my ears.”
“Oh my God! Are you serious? Dad, that’s awesome! God, it’s been years!”
“That’s the funny thing. I mean, I wrote it years ago, obviously. In fact, when I was still married to your mother. Ha-ha!” He laughs nervously. “Although Kira helped me quite a bit with the last revision.”
Of course she did. The vision of Kira and Dad brewing some French press coffee and spending a lazy Saturday morning in the brownstone going over line edits almost makes me hurl with aspirational envy.
“Dad, that’s amazing. Seriously. You’re gonna be famous. And I am so gonna benefit from that sweet, sweet literary-world nepotism.”
He laughs. “Let’s not get our hopes up just yet. It still feels very surreal.”
“Well, get used to it, pretty soon it’ll be very real!”
“That’s true,” he says, sounding way more measured and low-key than I’d expect from a debut novelist who has been working on this manuscript since I was eight.
“Don’t sound so elated; you might sprain something.”
“What about you?” he asks. Being typically modest, of course he is changing the subject. I reluctantly roll with it.
“What about me?”
“It’s about time I saw some of your work, isn’t it?”
“It’s fanfiction, I’m not Alice Munro. And to answer your question, I’ll send something to you when you have the hookup at the New Yorker.”
“Scar, I mean it. I might not have a ton of time right now because of all the book stuff, but I really want to read them. I know you’ve been at the top of the pack in this community for years. When can I see them?”
“When they’re good enough for you to read,” I say.
“I have no doubt that they already are.”
I brush that off, insisting I’ll send one soon, but all the while a warm, loved feeling creeps up behind my rib cage like ivy.
Chapter 14
The Ordinaria
Part 4
Submitted by Scarface_Epstein
It was the night of the Pembrooke donors’ ball, when all the wealthy parents who had swimming pools or lacrosse courts in their names were rewarded with highballs, a live band, and zero mentions of the money. That would be déclassé.
Gideon’s father had basically strong-armed him into hanging out with Jason Tous and his two flunkies from school. Now here they were in his foyer, in impeccably tailored suits, sitting on stiff-backed chairs in the laboratory waiting room as Ashbot and the other (human) girls got ready upstairs.
His father, naturally, really liked these obnoxious guys— not to mention zeroed in on them as potential Miss Ordinaria consumers. Some of them had even applied to intern at the lab.
Gideon hated it at first . . . but then he surprised himself. Getting wasted and making sexual jokes about “product testing” was kind of fun. He would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy hanging with them just a little bit, having a beer with some normal guys and pretending he was one too, at least for a little while.