Excerpt: Actually

“You need a what?” Claire’s voice is a blend of amused incredulity and offense.

“An advance. I need an advance.” I squint out at the sun rolling off the late morning sea, trying to reconcile a sleepless night and a guilty conscience. I stumble over the concept of asking for money, tripping myself with my typical inability to articulate gracefully to my boss.

“Felina, my pet, you will have nothing of the sort.” She snorts to herself and mutters a droll aside to someone nearby. The omnipotent Roger, I presume. “McPhearson wants an advance. Must think I’ve the coffers of King Midas at my command. Little ingrate.”

“Claire,” I protest before she can hang up on me. “I’m serious! I really need some cash!”

“Why on earth could you possibly need anything?”

Spontaneity, seldom my companion, continues to be a fickle friend. I glance at my profligate surroundings and can’t summon a single reason acceptable to Claire as to why I’d need an advance. I begin to stammer. “Well, I’m stuck out here! You kept all my credentials and I can’t get any cash for… stuff. Things I might want to buy. Like fruit from that guy who sells fruit. Or maybe I’d like to rent a jet ski. Or something.”

“Absolutely not! You know how dangerous those jet skis are! I can see it now. You take out a jet ski. You die. Or worse yet! You break both your hands and can’t write. Or get a concussion and forget how to write. Or both. Felina, no jet ski.”

Wrong tactic. I reposition. “You know I’m good for it.”

Claire laughs for a long moment.

“Of course, my little gold mine,” she coos, “Of course I know you’re good for it. But quite frankly, I can’t see why you’d need it. Roger gave you walking around money when you got off the plane, plenty of it. Everything else your heart could ever desire has been delivered to your room. And then some.” She pauses, and her tone shifts with a sudden ferocity. “Unless you’re plotting some escape with my book. That’s it! You’ve sold my book to another publisher. Felina, you conniving little…”

“Claire! Claire!” I cut in before her paranoia can reach a fever pitch. “It’s just,” I stall for time, casting about in my brain for some plausible reason for needing a vast amount of cash when I already feel like the leader of the Lotus Eaters. I try to think of what Claire might use such a sum for. And then it comes to me, in a blinding flash of opulence. “It’s just that I want to throw a party.”

“A party?” I hear her mouth curl around the idea with comic pleasure. “You? Literature’s most notable loner wants to throw a party?”

“Uh, yes. A party.” I stammer. “To promote the book. A really grand party, you know, a totally over-the-top event. Regal. Splendid.” I begin to babble, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “A Nerissa party.”

I realize my error the instant I hear Claire’s delighted intake of air. “Felina, that is a brilliant idea! The last thing I would have expected from you. A plantation-style soiree to promote the book. Perfection.” Her voice lowers to a register reserved for plotting something wicked or wonderful or both as she begins planning in her mind. “I will invite all the very best people…”

My stomach lurches and lands in an uncomfortable heap somewhere near my knees as I realize the full weight of my error. I teeter on the edge of risk, critically aware that the armor in which I’ve encased my social proclivity for living in hermitage is heavy enough to pull me right over and into the abyss. I look into the void as I precariously tip toward a level of code-red discomfort heretofore avoided. My palms start to sweat and my mind races for some plausible reason to recant. And even in my desperation, I realize I am doomed. Claire seals my fate with a single sentence.

“A costume ball.”

I sit in stunned silence at the vast edge of my stupidity while Claire carries on with both length and gusto, outlining the kind of embarrassingly lavish event I would avoid even reading about in the social pages. I am an unwilling witness to her enthusiasm as she details to Roger the finer points of her first choice in caviars. I am hostage to the hypnotic cadence of her voice over the phone, rich with adrenaline and enthusiasm as she starts toting up the guest list, a Who’s Who of notables and necessaries. I am a puppet, a pawn, a dog at a tea party, destined to be dressed up in doll clothes and dragged about. I am not listening.

“Felina! You are not listening to me!” Claire’s voice cuts through my reverie, and for a brief moment I am lucid enough to wish I had a pen. Claire’s rants are usually good for a few hundred words in one of my books, or at least to provoke some new vocabulary. I look around for something to write with like a halfhearted zombie. “Stop sitting there like a twit. You have an appointment at the spa. Roger has booked you in for the day. You need hair extensions. And nails. And a facial, I’m certain. By the time you’re back the dressmaker will be there.”

“I need what?” I reach up in a nervous gesture to twirl a strand of my regular brown hair around one of my regular unmanicured fingers.

“Felina. You can’t possibly expect that I’d introduce Nerissa to the world without editing, do you? You need the works.”

“Nerissa?”

Claire sighs, confirming wordlessly that I am, indeed, the biggest idiot on the planet.

“Felina. YOU are Nerissa.”