Forced Proximity
Two failed escape attempts and nearly ten minutes later, the lock to the speakeasy clicks open.
Hartley hands me back my earring, bent beyond recognition. “If this has all been an elaborate ruse for a surprise party to
celebrate my success, you should know I hate surprises.”
“Me too,” I say.
Cooper-Brad raises a hand. “Love ’em, myself. The unpredictability of life is a gift.”
“One I require a gift receipt for,” I say.
He laughs. “I can’t wait to read Tucana.”
“Says the turncoat.” Hartley’s nostrils flare, but I can see her wandering eyes, once again checking out the path to the elevator.
This is the only reason she agreed to pick the lock. Her chance to escape is much higher outside the crate. She faces Cooper-Brad.
“We had an agreement. I gave you everything you wanted.”
“No,” he says, “you gave me only what you were in a position to give. Sofie and friends happen to be in the position to actually
give me everything I wanted.”
“Nice try. Sofie doesn’t have friends. Another reason I chose her.”
Holes or no holes, we should have left her in the crate. I don’t have time for this.
Hartley glares at Cooper-Brad, tightening her jaw. “Doesn’t your word matter at all?”
“You didn’t just say that,” I spit out. “ You . You’re a fraud from that silver dye job to this prairie-bohemian-whatever look you’ve got going on. You’re Frey level, Hartley.”
“Actually I’m not,” she says, though she touches her roots. “He presented his memoir as fact when it wasn’t and never intended
the truth to come out. I always intended this truth to come out. This wasn’t done on a whim. I planned every piece of this.
Perfectly.”
Cooper-Brad tips his chin at her. “Current circumstances notwithstanding.”
Hartley keeps her dirty look squarely on Cooper-Brad, but her feet shimmy to the left. I nudge him to block what’s clearly
another escape attempt.
“Inside, now.” I check the time on my phone. Clarice is afraid of Lacey, which surely delights my publicist to no end. But
it also means my launch party remains full of readers waiting for me to return. I’m due back in just over ten minutes. Rosie
or Fiona or Grace have less than that to get here. With his own words, Cooper-Brad has proven he’s committed only to the best
offer that comes across the table. And while I’m pretty sure if Hartley had more to offer, she would have already, I’m not
risking leaving them alone together. They need a babysitter. “And hurry.”
Bravado in her gait, Hartley enters first, followed by Cooper-Brad and the crate, and then me. It’s darker than the black hole Vance uses to travel between realms. I fumble for a light switch. (Clandestine better not mean lit only by candles.) When I finally find something that feels like a dimmer, I tap until the room is bathed in a soft dancing light.
“Cooper!” I shoot my hands in the air. “Drop!”
A line of policemen holding nightsticks scowls at us from the other side of the bar.
Cooper-Brad’s face pales. His Adam’s apple bobs. “This isn’t what it looks like,” rushes out. “We’re writers.”
“Authors,” I correct, and Cooper-Brad pulls a face. What? It’s more professional. It legitimizes us. “Research. We’re doing
research for—Hartley, no!”
She rounds the bar, putting her makeup-smeared face an inch from the first officer. She lifts her hand, places it on his chest,
and shoves. The officer falls to the floor without a sound. Except the whisper of cardboard grazing the floor. She pushes
each of the officers, and one by one, they go down, wafting a slight breeze through the room.
“Course, course,” Cooper-Brad says. “Knew it. Just having a laugh.” He saunters to the bar where he takes a seat beside a
cardboard cutout of a flapper. Pearls, feather in her bob, silver cigarette holder—the whole kit and caboodle. “Come here
often?”
Hartley gives a small shake of her head.
In our defense, they’re quite lifelike. High-end, for sure. They make the lobster in the restaurant window across from Harbor
Books look like a paper doll.
Hartley stands between two mafioso, one holding a pistol and the other a bottle of unlabeled alcohol. “Underground, I presume? No windows, maybe even soundproofed, if this place is actually original. Again, repulsed and in awe. So, this is where we are. And this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to skip the indignation, the how-could-yous, the crocodile tears, the wait -until-the-police find out, the wait-until-social-media-finds-out. We’re here. Let’s be here. What do you want?”
Fire ignites under my skin. I’m not letting her take control of this situation. “You make a statement that you were misguided.
That you have come to realize using AI to imitate me was wrong and an insult to the great author that I am. You leave the
convention. Recall your books. Discourage writers from doing what you did. And never write anything that has even a whiff
of my voice again.”
If this place isn’t soundproofed, the decibel level of Hartley’s laugh will bring half the hotel here.
“Okay then, have it your way,” I say.
I never expected her to agree, but she doesn’t even make a counteroffer. Instead, she circles the bar until she finds the
hinged piece that flips up to allow her through. She enters the horseshoe and stoops to search the lower shelves.
Cooper-Brad slaps the bar top. “Woman after my own heart. Never too early. But for appearances sake, make it a mimosa. Bloody
Mary, but only if that’s all you’ve got.” He looks at me. “Not the biggest spice fan.”
My resting bitch face is on full display because this isn’t the time for jokes. This has spiraled, already, and we’ve barely
started. Hartley’s fall and threat to say I intentionally hit her, followed by that hideous thing with the crate, and now this hidden speakeasy feels much more serious that the original
plan of simply locking her in a hotel room. I flip off the Read or Bleed hat and dig my hand into my pocket, finding the damp
box of chocolates beside my phone. I yank out the disgusting box, toss it on the bar, and text Grace a non-incriminating question
about their ETA.
The clink of glass against glass, and Hartley’s head pops up from behind the bar. “Nothing. Just barware.”
“That’s disappointing,” Cooper-Brad says.
“Understatement. Not even a dried orange wheel, and I’m starving.” Hartley comes out from behind the bar. “Wait, chocolates?
Can I have those? Sofie?”
Grace and Fiona are still at the store, at least twenty minutes out. My heart threatens to stop beating.
“Sofie? I asked you a question? You’ve kidnapped me, the least you can do is answer when I’m speaking to—”
“What?” I start calling Rosie.
“Chocolates. Can. I. Have?”
I flick my wrist. “Whatever, yes. Assault your taste buds, what do I care.” Rosie answers, and I lower my voice to explain
where we are and how we got here.
Hartley lifts the box lid. “Why is the box all wet? Did you lick it or something?”
I march away from the bar, hoping the thrumming in my foot isn’t from a broken toe. Apparently, decades of healing slows down
recovery as we age, which I learned from my dermatologist when a simple hangnail festered and I had to use some ointment made
of silver for weeks, like I was fighting a werewolf bite.
“Sofie, do you have a map?”
“What? She doesn’t need a map.” I press the phone harder against my ear. “No, not you, Rosie. Just follow the ladders to the
end of the hall.”
“Here, let me see,” Cooper-Brad says. “Sometimes it’s underneath.”
I hear the tumble of chocolates on the bar and then spin around to see Hartley two feet from the door. “Cooper!”
“What?” he says. “Oh, no.”
“You’re supposed to be watching her!”
“You never said that.”
“Implied, it’s implied .”
“Sorry, it’s my first kidnapping.” He sprints past me, three chocolates in hand.
“You’re eating? You’re actually eating while she’s—”
“Trust me.” He sticks a chocolate between his front teeth and says around it, “Hazelnut.”
Hartley stills.
“And pecan. Almond too. A tree nut bonanza.”
She spins toward him. “You’re bluffing.”
He’s close enough to grab her wrist but instead says, “Try me.”
Her lips part and her brows rise. She’s not angry. She’s scared. She retreats from the door.
“So you’re really that allergic?” I say. “If he actually bit that in half would you—”
Hartley’s face pales. She looks woozy. I turn and see Cooper-Brad chewing. He actually ate the chocolate? Either he isn’t
really her friend—even a craft-fair friend—or he really, really wants to impress me. Hartley shrieks, and I rush to ferry
her across the room. I’m starting to hyperventilate. I don’t want to go to jail or kill her— right, or kill her —and then Cooper-Brad smiles.
“Have I mentioned I used to be a professional poker player?” He chews loudly. “Mint. Surrounded by white chocolate and something
gummy. Caramel, I think. A rather disgusting combination in actuality. But the only flavor in the box, so if you still want
them, they’re all yours.”
I’m currently hugging Hartley’s waist beside a stack of jazz records. She’s shaking. I let go.
“That allergic?” I ask. “Even encased in chocolate?”
“Maybe?” She expels an almost hysterical laugh. “I don’t actually know.”
I give her some space, and she migrates to a booth filled with cardboard customers. Her head drops to the table and she wraps her hands around the back of her neck.
Cooper-Brad wasn’t joking, was he? Or wrong? Could there actually be nuts? I hurry to the bar and scoop up the box. No ingredients
listed on the outside. My gluten intolerance means I can’t risk testing them myself. I drill my eyes into Cooper-Brad’s.
“Mint, I swear,” he says.
He hands over the product information, and I scan each and every ingredient twice. No nuts, no gluten, just lots of chemicals,
making me reconsider the young Natuhlee’s affection for me.
All gluten does is make me best friends with a toilet for a day and a half, but still I understand her fear. I return to Hartley
and pass her the sheet. “They’re safe,” I reassure her, knowing how meaningful it is for me to hear the same. Sweat still
dots her forehead, and her eyes have a far-away look in them. “Is it something else? Are you, uh, feeling okay? Was the crate
uncomfortable?”
Her lips curl back like a rabid possum.
“I mean, overly so? As in are you hurt or do you need medical attention? Food, you need food. Right, we can—”
“Sofie, stop, just stop. You trying to be nice is making me want to hurl.” She sucks in a breath. “It’s a phobia, all right?
Go ahead, spread it all over social media if you want. Hartley West is nuts! Pun intended. I don’t even care.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
But Lacey would.
“I am allergic. My first and last tree nut was Nutella on toast when I was three, but my mom instilled the fear of every god
in me. She blames herself to this day. Makes me text her photos of my EpiPens in my bag.”
“Sounds...” obsessive? “...nice.”
“She’s my biggest cheerleader and the smartest woman I’ve ever known. My inspiration for Addie.”
“I thought that was Jocelyn?”
She straightens her spine. “Certainly, Jocelyn too. Mostly Jocelyn. But my mom’s in there too.”
The expression on her face unnerves me, but whatever this is, we’re done. She’s gotten something from me, but I’ve gotten
something more, without even having to crack open her book. Something that’s going to end her escape attempts. Something that’s
going to lead to her voluntarily giving my keynote back. Maybe even make all those memes disappear. This new information changes
everything, and now I’m all in. The high that comes when puzzle pieces fit together envelops me.
I take out my phone to call Grace. “Change of plans,” I say as she answers. I’m about to open the door when there’s a knock
from the other side. I gesture for Cooper-Brad to keep his eyes on Hartley, and he gives me a thumbs-up.
As I open the door, I greet Rosie and join her in the hall. She listens as I explain my incredibly brilliant and mildly unhinged
idea. I have Grace’s breathing in my ear and Rosie’s face before me. Rosie laughs, thinking I’m joking. When she realizes
I’m not, her eyes widen. But then, the wheels turn in her mind.
“Certainly increases the stakes and consequences, doesn’t it?” Rosie says.
Hartley’s purse is still draped over my torso. I open it and find the sleeve housing Hartley’s hotel room key. I hand it to
Rosie.
“Someone needs to put the Do Not Disturb on,” I say. “Quickly.”
Rosie nods, her long silver earrings grazing her shoulder. “Your instincts are enviable, Sofie. It does all center on food.”