Chapter Three
Three
Melanie Joan was correct. She had done something really, really stupid.
After reading Book Babe’s scathing review the previous night, she’d downed a few glasses of wine to numb the hurt.
Then she’d tossed back a few more. Then she’d hit the tequila bottle.
All told, Melanie Joan—a rather petite woman—had consumed enough alcohol to make Jorgen flunk a Breathalyzer test.
But that wasn’t the stupid part.
Once she’d fortified herself with all that booze, Melanie Joan had returned to her computer. She’d given Book Babe’s review one more perusal. And at that very low point, she’d posted a comment.
“What was the comment?” Spike said.
“Get fucked, you worthless piece of shit.”
Spike’s eyes widened. “Pardon?”
“That was it,” she said. “That was the comment.”
“Oh,” Spike said.
“I also told Book Babe to do the world a favor and drink bleach,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“And eat a bag of dicks.”
“Oh,” Spike said.
“Anything else you suggested they ingest?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Well, that’s something.”
Melanie Joan leaned back in Spike’s chair. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. She looked different, somehow. Smaller.
When I’d first met her, she told me that she thought of herself as two different people, Melanie Joan the famous scribe and Joanie.
Joanie was the name she’d gone by as a young girl, before she published her first blockbuster romance novel, A Girl and Not a God.
Joanie was quiet and bookish and a little insecure.
As the years had gone by, I’d seen Joanie less and less.
It seemed that as a result of all the trauma she’d endured, her survival instincts had kicked in and her true self had been subsumed by the glamorous, thick-skinned celeb.
Now, though, it felt as if Joanie was reemerging.
“It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “And you know, Sunny, I’ve done some really dumb things.”
I moved next to her. I leaned over the computer and scrolled through Book Babe’s many comments.
Thanks for warning me off this one, one commenter said.
This doorstop is going into my “never to be read” pile, quipped another.
I’ve always thought Melanie Joan Hall was a privileged bitch, said another.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions. I was starting to get why Melanie Joan was so upset about this review.
But I didn’t see her own comment. I told her so.
“I got rid of it,” she said. “About a minute after I posted.”
“Whew,” I said.
“You guys don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t even understand it. I guess I’d forgotten what happens to my brain chemistry when I mix alcohol with my water pill.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean that I remember posting that comment. I remember deleting it. And then, at some point, I fell asleep in front of the computer.”
“Well, thank God you deleted it,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Spike. “No harm, no foul.”
Melanie Joan shook her head. “Plenty of harm,” she said quietly. “And completely foul.”
As quick as she was to delete the comment, she hadn’t been fast enough. When she woke up in her home office the following morning, Melanie Joan discovered that someone had screen-grabbed it, she said, and posted it all over social media.
“It’ll be okay,” Spike said.
“No, it won’t,” Melanie Joan said.
“So the classy romance lady used a few curse words.” I gave her a little punch on the arm. “Your fans aren’t going to abandon you for that.”
“She’s right,” Spike said. “Lay low for a few days, everyone will have forgotten about it.”
“No, no, no,” Melanie Joan said.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “What are we not getting?”
She twisted one of her rings around, a large, impressive emerald. “There was a lot more to the comment than I remembered writing,” she said.
Spike looked at her. “What do you mean by ‘a lot more’?”
She cleared her throat. “I…apparently shared some observations about Book Babe’s sex life.”
“You slut-shamed her?” Spike said.
“To the extreme,” Melanie Joan said. “This is stuff I could never imagine thinking, let alone typing.”
“Did you use the c-word?” I said.
“Repeatedly,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“As both an epithet and a body part,” she said.
“Oh,” Spike said.
“I never use that word. I’ve never…put together sentences like those. I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“I’m sorry, Melanie Joan,” I said.
“I’m getting trashed by all the reader accounts on TikTok. My name is mud on both X and Bluesky. It’s something both sides can agree on. I’m…I’m canceled.”
“There must be something you can do,” I said.
“I posted an apology,” she said. “But the responses were so…well, it obviously didn’t do any good, so I took it down.”
“Have you talked to your editor?”
Melanie Joan cringed visibly. “He wants to meet with me today. In his office,” she said. “Do you know the last time my editor asked to meet with me anywhere that wasn’t a Michelin-star restaurant, with him footing the bill?”
I winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “I brought this on myself.”
Melanie Joan stood up. “You’re right, Sunny.
I’m asking too much of you,” she said. “If I’m canceled, I’m canceled.
” She put on her hat and started toward the door.
Rosie woke up, skittered toward her, and nuzzled her leg.
Melanie Joan knelt down. She patted Rosie on the head.
“I do wish human beings were as forgiving as dogs.”
I’m not going to lie. It pained me.
I tried to imagine Melanie Joan Hall without the cheering audiences at her appearances, without the book-signing lines that went on for blocks.
I tried to picture her without her fans.
It was surprisingly sad—like imagining someone losing her life partner, her children, her best friend.
After all the disastrous relationships she’d endured, Melanie Joan’s readers were her one constant—and as far as I could tell, her only real source of love.
Melanie Joan opened Spike’s office door and closed it softly behind her. I could feel a knot in my stomach. Melanie Joan Hall, without her fans. Spike and I looked at each other.
“Better hurry if you’re going to catch her,” he said. “You know how fast that woman moves.”