The Rabbit
One of the great things about tailing William on tour is I get to go to a lot of different bookstores, and it’s always interesting
to be in a store that’s not mine. This one is an indie in the Boston suburbs, a precious little place with a green-striped
in a strip mall off the interstate near Augusta. We’re between a dry cleaner and a Chinese food joint, and we sell more scented
candles, tea towels, and picture frames than books. Corporate’s decision. Once you walk past all those items to the back,
we do have actual books, a couple of shelves featuring perennial book club favorites, classics, and bestsellers—which means
we stock, now and forever, plenty of William Corwyn.
Not that I’m knocking my store. I’m not.
I love it. It’s a huge advancement from the one I started at, in Aegina, New York, where I grew up.
Barbara’s Book Nook, which wasn’t actually a store but a hole in the wall on Main Street with stacks and stacks of used books, all of them reeking of cigarette smoke and mildew.
The owner of that store, Barbara, called herself a bookseller, but really she just wanted to sit around smoking menthol Virginia Slims and reading romance novels.
The paperbacks sold for 25 cents, the hardcovers a dollar, and would you believe people haggled over the price?
If they found a suspicious stain in a book, or if it was missing half its cover, or if they were buying a bundle of them.
It was one of the happiest days of my life when I quit that sh*thole to go to Upper Great Lakes Community, and when I graduated from there and left my Harrington writing program and got my job at my current strip-mall situation, I just about fell on my knees on the industrial carpet and cried.
That’s another thing that’s interesting, the different customers in these stores. They’re always women, of course—women read.
The occasional man might wander in, but usually to accompany his wife, or buy a gift for her, some title he’s written on a
Post-it all creased and hot and damp from being in his pocket next to his butt. Otherwise it’s all women, and in my store
they are soft and squishy grandmas who wear pastels and eye shadow, or women with raspy smoker’s voices and lined faces that
speak of hard lives they want to forget. Those ladies would not have been out of place in my original store, Barbara’s Book
Nook, which is where I learned that booksellers provide escape. That’s what stories are for.
Here and at most of William’s readings, the women are different. They have disposable income, they’ve been in college and
graduate school, they work full-time, and they want books for the same reason they eat organic food for their bodies: to nourish
their brains. They wear gym clothes, but don’t let that fool you: Just one of these zip-up hoodies with the little thumb slits
costs more than my weekly paycheck. And those running shoes? Two months’ rent. They don’t wear a lot of makeup, and thanks
to Medusa, more than most readers here have crazy gray hair. William might have unleashed women’s inner goddesses with that novel,
but he also sure as sh*t f*cked up a hair-care industry.
I’m glad my baseball cap covers my wig, because I miscalculated a little bit today, I admit. It’s blond and curly, and I got
up at 4:00 a.m. to make those beachy ringlets with the weird iron I got at TJ Maxx. I was afraid the high heat setting would
damage the synthetic hair, but it proved surprisingly resilient, so I should be able to wash it after this and bring it back
to the store with the iron. Which maybe means I can get a pair of those Sassy Socks by the register here. I kind of like the
ones that say Ringmaster of the Sh*tshow.
All of the women here are William’s ideal readers.
None of them are his type.
I relax a little into the rear bookshelf I’m standing against.
The place is packed, as it always is for William. He comes in from the staff room laughing with the bookstore owner, a cute
girl with tatts and purple hair. William has a goatee today, and I roll my eyes beneath my cap brim. This isn’t a good look
for anyone except a frat boy with a Frisbee in one hand and red Solo cup in the other. The crowd doesn’t seem to mind, however.
When William waves and smiles, they all go Ahhhhhh, as if they’re having a collective climax. And they fall silent the instant
he starts to read, like he’s thrown some magic powder over them.
All except one woman who pushes her way in late.
She’s small and panting, and her mascara’s running like A Clockwork Orange. Her white tank is plastered to her body. It wasn’t raining when I left Maine this morning, but it must be now. Otherwise
this little chickie just walked through a car wash or something.
An alarm bell goes off in my head.
I look at William. His head has popped up like an animal scenting another at a watering hole. He’s beaming right at her. But
I could be imagining it. Because he always does this thing, panning his smile across the crowd.
He recommences reading, and I tune out. I’ve heard him so many times now, I have practically memorized this new novel along
with the others. I heard this passage in Portland, and every day since then, and for a week before his launch, when I watched
him pace his living room performing for nobody, making notations in his reading edition with the No. 2 pencil he had stuck
behind his ear, recording himself on his phone so he could watch the videos back.
But nobody here has heard him read before, at least not this book. They angle toward him, they hold their breath. They close
their eyes to let the master’s words wash over them. It’s so quiet I can hear the frantic clickity clicky click of the knitter’s needles.
All except the little latecomer, who is watching William with a skeptical expression. She’s wearing her red-blond hair in a side braid like a Disney princess—who does this over age 12?—and whether she knows it or not, she’s twirling the end of it round and round one finger.
She has a pen in her braid. Looks like one of those disposable fountain numbers.
Another alarm bell goes off.
William finishes, everyone applauds, they ask the usual questions, how does he write women so well, what about the Darlings,
blah de blah. Which is annoying, because I have to listen to William tell the story behind the story of the Darlings again. Not that I have anything against the Darlings. I get writer problems. They’re real. And that poor girl William was engaged
to—that is a tragic story. But the group, come on. I know why William really started it.
Finally the show is over and the signing line begins. I don’t see the little braid-twirler anywhere, which is a relief. Maybe
she thought Meh and went home. And I want to get out of here myself, before the crowd thins out, not only because it would
not do to have William spot me but because, unlike our author, I can’t afford a fancy hotel for the night, so I’ll be driving
back to Maine, to my sh*thole studio. And to New Hampshire tomorrow. Another day, another William Corwyn event.
But then I hear him call to those of us remaining, “You’re in for a treat!” and more alarm bells go off, because I see him
standing with his arm around the little braid-twirler, who’s looking proud and embarrassed at the same time, an expression
that looks a bit like constipation. Still, and despite the fact that half her makeup is streaking down her face from the rain,
I can see that her eyes make jellybean shapes when she smiles.
Sh*t.
And she’s a writer. Apparently.
F*ck.
Which I learn when William trumpets her name:
Sam Vetiver.
Who?
It sounds familiar, which irritates me all the more because I can’t place it.
That does it. I’ll have to buy one of her books now.
So much for the Sassy Socks. And there goes my evening, my drive back to Augusta and a burrito and a beer and checking William’s social before a decent night’s sleep.
Because looking at William and Sam Vetiver together, all my alarm bells are going off at once, it’s like a f*cking five-alarm fire in there, she is exactly his type, and it’s going to be a long night after all.