Chapter 10 Encounters of the Fourth Kind #2
Sandy was well aware of how spiky she could be, but people kept intruding into her life.
She hadn’t even been looking for an employee when Moira had timidly crept in the door and begged for work, gushing about her love of books and her need for a job that enriched her soul.
Why did jobs have to enrich souls anyway?
They were just a way to pay the bills, for God’s sake.
Even George down there was encroaching on Sandy’s space by attempting to be flirty. And yes, that’s exactly what he’d been doing. How dare he.
Why couldn’t everyone stay in their lane?
She reached for the coral in her pocket and held it in her palm, staring at it, petting it, letting it do its work.
As Sandy had told Moira, she wanted nothing to do with the signing.
She’d handle the cash register in the front room while Moira led the discussion in what was sure to be train-wreck fashion.
How many self-help books did the world need anyway?
As if someone barely thirty years old had figured it out. Please.
No one that young knew anything about life.
At that age, Sandy fell for the dazzling Tampa real estate agent with a yacht he probably still owed money on and a prick he couldn’t keep in his pants.
As they stood before their family and friends, her second marriage, his fourth, she thought she’d finally found it, the love she’d been so desperate for.
Dropping the coral back in her pocket, she descended the steps and winced when she saw only four people sitting in the cluster of chairs that faced Bianca, who couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if she’d had an accident in her pants.
Her dad sat about halfway back, stabbing at his phone.
Two elderly women who frequented the store sat up front with Bianca’s book on their laps.
Oh, goody, they surely had a lot to glean from a book of wisdom written by a toddler.
The fourth attendee was another regular, an effeminate man who’d flipped through every page of every coffee-table book in the store with his greasy fingers, but he’d never so much as bought a bookmark.
The unbearable silence was broken by the bell that chimed when the front door opened. Moira pushed through, followed by the kid Alice had brought back from Denver. Was it Harold? Sandy had only met him once in passing but had seen him around with Alice.
The building had turned into a hostel, the landlord converting most of the apartments into short-term rentals.
That would be fine if the occupants bought books, but no one did.
They were all broke kids in their twenties who barely had the attention span to get through a three-minute news article about their latest pop-star idol, let alone a book.
“Trust me, you’ll love it,” Moira said, all but dragging the kid in.
“How long do you think this will be? I wasn’t planning on going, just headed out to grab a—”
Moira turned and whispered, “Less than an hour. I’m so grateful.”
Sandy had to give her credit; Moira’s determination deserved admiration.
As Moira ushered her latest victim into the main room, Sandy pinched the bridge of her nose.
And now there were five. A whole city of expats and only five of them—one coerced and another the father of the author—had made the time.
Was it any wonder why she didn’t host more events?
Still, she had the pleasure of being right.
And it was sweeter than the torta di riso.
Had she any sense, Moira might have waited a few minutes to see if anyone else might show up, but God bless her, she started right on time, timidly holding the microphone like it was an electric eel. Her nerves were written all over her. What did she think this was, a State of the Union address?
“Thank you all so . . . so . . . much for coming.” The mouse wore a long black skirt with a white top. The only color on her was her purple fishbowl glasses. She looked more like a guppy than a mouse!
Bianca sat at the table next to Moira, facing the minuscule audience, and she looked like she was working hard to hide the embarrassment of the poor attendance.
“I wish there were more of you,” the guppy said, “but it doesn’t matter. What I know is that each of you who have read or will read this book will be forever changed. You are Megawatters in the making.”
Like a bad Vanna White from Wheel of Fortune, Moira held up the book but didn’t realize it was upside down.
“I can’t take this,” Sandy muttered to herself.
“From Meh to Megawatt is the kind of book . . .” Moira suddenly stopped.
She’d forgotten what she was going to say.
She extracted a card from inside of the book—still not noticing she was holding it upside down—and tried again, this time with the eloquence of a four-year-old reading Hamlet.
“From Meh to Megawatt is the kind of book that stays with you, that rings all the bells, that resonates with your soul. It’s my great pleasure to introduce you to a woman who has done it all.
She’s a therapist, a blogger, a podcaster, an author—with a wonderful sense of humor—and now, to our great fortune, an inhabitant of this great city.
She’s packed up her life in Austin, Texas, and now lives right across the street. Please welcome Bianca Briggs.”
What was the opposite of thunderous applause?
A drizzle of hand taps. George clapped the loudest, the proud dad with the fabulous hair and the shoes that redefined hideous.
Perhaps Sandy should google how to make those eclipse glasses.
The two women in the front looked like they were dealing with too much arthritis to draw sound from their hands.
The coffee-table booklover had his face buried in his phone, not having noticed the signing had even started.
Sandy dropped her elbows to the counter in front of the cash register to bury her head in her hands. Despite her earlier signs of nerves, Bianca seemed rather comfortable in the spotlight as she thanked everyone for coming, then turned it over to Moira for the first question.
“Firstly, since it’s our battle cry, could you talk about what ‘Leave burn marks’ means? As you know, I have the tattoo and adore it. But I’d love to hear it from you.”
“That’s a great question,” Bianca said. “And I like what you said the other day, Moira. It’s like the crater an asteroid leaves when it crashes into Earth.
You know, we have choices in our life. And I think we need to do things that matter.
We need to live like we’re already writing our eulogy.
” And on and on, Bianca went. The blind passion of youth.
Then Moira asked Bianca to read a passage, and as the author did so, Sandy went about online shopping for purses on the computer, trying to drown out the supposed life-changing wisdom. If the book was so wonderful, why was Moira, who’d supposedly read it twice, still a moron?
The tiny audience clapped after Bianca finished reading.
Having tried as best as she could to tune Bianca out, Sandy had still heard clips, something about the power of self-reflection, of stepping into the confessional of your heart and speaking to your higher self; how self-assessment was the key to releasing guilt and shame.
Moira turned her microphone back on, causing ten seconds of ear-piercing feedback that forced everyone to cover their ears.
Why she was using a microphone for this tiny group was anyone’s guess.
After an apology, Moira finally got out, “I think about that passage all the time, the idea of there being two of us, the higher self and then this hurt inner child who doesn’t even know to ask for help.
Or is she too ashamed to? I love how Peggy Meh reaches this point of enlightenment where she not only creates this space for dialogue in her heart, but she even confesses her deepest secrets to her friends, because she’d shed her need to keep pretending. Her higher self has nothing to hide.”
“Exactly,” Bianca said into the microphone, showing a bit too much enthusiasm. “All these lies we tell ourselves, the secrets we so desperately try to hide from ourselves—and others, to your point—they must be released if we’re ever to set free our inner child.”
Moira gave her version of a confident smile coupled with a poorly executed wink that made her look like her face had been overcome by Bell’s palsy. “And we all have our secrets, don’t we?”
Sandy smacked her head against her palm.
What secrets did Moira have? That she washes her whites and colors together?
That was no secret. Or that she secretly loves mortadella, despite saying she’s a vegetarian.
All these kids and their secrets and their life wisdom.
At what age would they realize there is no special recipe?
“Bianca,” Moira the Guppy started, still timid as a deer facing a cheetah, “can you tell us about yourself, about your journey to becoming a healer. I can only imagine the work you’ve done as a therapist in Austin, the people you’ve helped.
It’s amazing that you’re sharing this life-changing recipe that you developed, all these ingredients that were previously only available to your clients. ”
There it is again, Sandy thought. Life-changing.
Despite any evidence. In no way was Moira exhibiting any such characteristics.
Still the same Moira who crept into work like a mouse with her heinous black hat, then scurried away at the end of the day to go lose herself in her silly romance novels and God knows what else. Microwave dinners? Dollhouses?
The bell above the door chimed. A potential customer dipped her head in, noticed the signing, whispered “Oops,” and disappeared. Sandy could barely wait to point out to Moira that her event had actually hurt sales!
Never again!
Never. Again.