Excerpt: Smokes & Powerbars; Wallace Jackson's Muse

Of course he was Scottish. It vaguely rang a bell, try as she might, the glossy book jackets were ubiquitous - three people in ever coffee shop in the United States, fifteen well-thumbed copy on every international flight, and every book club on Earth. Maybe she hadn’t known it for a fact before, but it made perfect sense. He needed an accent to pull it off. Americans loved accents and maybe even better for him - Americans bought accents. They bought food dehydrators, and cleaning products, and grilled cheese makers, because if a foreigner was selling it, it had to be better and more exotic than anything currently being sold in the States. Not just better, fantastic. What the Scot with the self-effacing smile on the couch was selling was nothing but the most outlandish of fantasy.
She hadn’t met many Scots, just one of her neighbors as a child, an older couple who never lost the low comforting burr. That was part of his sell, specific to the product he was peddling. Just a plain English accent would have sounded too crisp, too intellectual for the buying public.
It wasn’t just the accent, even she could concede. Wallace Jackson looked like he’d just come in from walking the moors, or fishing in the loch or whatever the outdoorsy Scot did in his spare time. It wasn’t that day’s news, he was a good looking man. His dark hair was mused, his cheeks sported a few days worth of beard, and every close up showed clever, bright blue eyes.
Margo Boyd rolled her eyes, reaching for the remote to change the diner TV. As if she needed to hear one more second of it - the earnest nodding and the ducked head with an almost bashful smile. Her thumb brushed over the mute button when one of the customers started muttering.
“C’mon Margo, the guy is an intellectual,” the regular dragged the last word out to about eight syllables. Carl came in three days a week for a turkey melt and a coffee for lunch, and lingered until his wife came to head home with him at five. He was sixty-five if he was a day, and definitely Wallace Jackson’s target audience of midwestern housewives. “You’re always on about how we need the set on more intellectual programming...”
“Big fan, Carl?” Margo asked dryly. “Didn’t know star-crossed lovers were your thing.” There was a snicker or two from the other tables.
“Say what you want. You kids are all cynics. In my day, we believed in love, and the divorce rate wasn’t so damn high.” Carl argued, and Margo’s face betrayed her. The old bear of a man went quiet, a moment later a dark blush covering all the territory over his bristly grey beard. Of course he hadn’t meant to say that, Margo told herself, a blush so bright on her own cheeks, her face was as hot as if she’d been working the grill herself, not the diner floor.
Instead of muting the small television set resting on the shelf, Margo turned it up and went back to refilling the coffee machine. All of them knew more than Margo wished they did, and that was the price of her comfortable life in town.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to say I know it all, after all, I’ve had my share of disappointment. I am just a single guy...” That same deep voice went on, then drowned out by hoots and hollers from the almost completely female audience. Margo watched as he glanced at the host, America’s sweetheart Rae Beesley, as if at a loss.
“Just imagine this guy at a pick-up bar.” Margo heckled. “Like he needs the help, ‘Sure, I write romantic drivel... want to help me make-believe?’ and next thing you know he’s got her back to his hotel room.” She laughed to herself, refilling the coffee mugs as the TV blared on.
“What I write... it’s not about selling books, it’s about telling stories that mean something. Telling the stories that I feel.”
Margo froze. Coffee pot tipped, coffee pouring, and then overflowing the earthenware mug, and running towards the edges of the formica table, she froze to stare at the handsome man with the heavy scottish accent on the old second-hand eighteen inch screen on the shelf.
“The people reading my books are the most important part, because it gives me the chance to remind one more person out there - the busy mother of three, the guy at the office who put on that extra fifteen pounds, and the young ones who have never even been in love - to keep believing in love. Believing in love because it’s still out there if we look for it.”
The applause was thunderous, even through the tiny, tinny speakers. The camera cut from Rae Beasley’s perfectly made up face, shaped in something almost like reverent admiration, to his. Close up, the lines around his eyes, and across his forehead were visible, his features just a little rougher than they looked from the wide shot.
“I’m moved every time a reader shares their own story of love with me - how their grandparents stayed in love despite a world war, or when lovers reunite after decades apart. These stories are all around us, but we’ve just grown too jaded to even see...”
“Margo!” Ann Cleary shouted, and Margo’s attention finally came back to the table in front of her bathed in hot coffee, the carafe half empty. Pulling the rag from her apron pocket, she sprung into action, moving to soak up the bulk of the coffee as she began to apologize profusely.
“I was just... distracted. Here, did you get any on yourself? Let me get you a towel for that, and we’ll get those slacks dry in just a second, I swear it.” Margo set the carafe down on the counter, moving on autopilot. A rag from the shelf behind the counter, her own quickly washed and wrung out in the dish skin, Margo did all these things, but her mind barely registered a moment of it. All she could thing about was the look in those laugh-lined eyes, and the unmistakable current under the warm, rolling burr.
Wallace Jackson was a fraud.