Goldy paused long enough to hear the high-ceilinged studio hum: cameras, audio-processing equipment, boom mikes, even the agitated curls of Goldy’s Dolly Parton — style wig.
“Bavarian modern, baby,” Goldy continued. “With cotton-candy smoke burbling from a candy-cane striped chimney, and all the doors wide open. So what would you do, ladies? Maybe what I did — climb in through one of those convenient, Hobbit-style windows, pull yourself up to the porridge bowl, and after a good hard dose of victuals, eventually fall asleep dreaming of feathery opulence in a just-right lacy bed. I felt like a million bucks. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. A warm home, warm food, cool sheets, all the things I’d ever dreamed about and more. Little did I realize that fast fate was already hastening toward me through the hoary woods. Little did I know, ladies, what Papa Bear had in store for me when he got home.”
Goldy let the sentence hang, establishing eye-contact with every working-age woman in the studio audience. I am your sister, Goldy’s glance affirmed. And I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.
“We’ve all got a Papa Bear in our lives, ladies, even though we may call him by different names. I’m talking about that guy who comes home late every night stinking of pretzels and beer, slamming all the kitchen cabinets, enacting his plans for world domination on our soft, life-affirming bodies. Which brings me, ladies, not-quite-so-coincidentally, to the subject of my new book—”
Goldy held up a bright laminated glare to the camera. The assembled studio audience blinked.
“It’s my latest,” Goldy concluded, “my best, and the one which the New York Times recently described as ‘thrilling, sad, heartbreaking’ and ‘packs a huge wallop.’ Entitled The Goldilocks Syndrome, it’s currently available in the lobby at a today-only discount of $21.95. And if you act now, I’ll sign and date this sucker at no extra charge.”
Goldilocks hated book tours. She hated the silent-time in chauffeur-driven stretch limos when the cellular phone didn’t beep. She hated the articulated virtual-landscape of acoustically muffled hotel corridors and velour-scented penthouse restaurants. She hated predawn wake-up calls, the hard crack of ice machines in the night, and hasty publicity girls going ballistic over memos. In fact, the only things Goldy did appreciate about book tours were hotel room-service and movie people. Because both entered and departed her life on perfectly fitted steel casters. And both always made just enough of a fuss to let her know that they really cared.
“We love you, Goldy,” Sid Croft said. “We love everything about you. We love the way you look, the way you write, even the way you comb your hair. When Barbara and I first read your book, we couldn’t help it, we both said, ‘Wow.’ Isn’t that right, Barbara? When we first read Goldy’s book, what’s the first thing we said to each other, huh?”
Barbara looked up from her blue loose-leaf notebook and finished biting the eraser off her Number 2 Ticonderoga.
“I’m not sure, Sid. But didn’t we both say something like, I don’t know, like ‘Wow’?”
Barbara looked like she had spent most of her life on an IV drip. About the only weight and buoyancy in her entire body was confined to her pointy breast-implants.
“That’s it! That’s it!” Sid was bouncing up and down on the flexible toes of his beige penny-loafers as if he were preparing to return a particularly wicked volley. “We said, ‘Wow.’ We said ‘double-Wow.’ And what’s more, Goldy — we meant every word of it.”
Goldy was perched in front of her vanity mirror, gauging the depth of her own reflection. Goldy loved moments like this. Moments when everybody else waited for her.
“So what is it, Sid?” she asked finally, applying a modicum of blush to each cheek. “I’ve got a conference call at five, and a TV gig at five-thirty.”
Sid was as short, round, and immovable as a mailbox. With an almost audible pop, a bright bead of sweat broke from his receding forehead and slalomed down the right side of his face.
“We love the anti-male thing,” Sid said, exchanging a rapid semaphore of glances with Barbara. “We love the woman-striking-out-on-her-own thing. We really, well, we’re really intrigued by the three bears in the gingerbread house thing, but maybe we can talk about that, okay? I mean, couldn’t they be reindeer, or lions, or even East Germans? Think about it, Goldy. I’ve got Sandra Bullock’s agent on the line, and he just doesn’t go for this bear thing at all.”
Goldy’s unmascaraed eyes pinned Sid’s reflection to the mirror like a butterfly to a killing tray.
“So what are we talking about, Sid? Because if we’re not talking contract, I’ve got better places I need to be.”
Sid, with a long expiring exhalation, wiped his forehead with a monogrammed silk handkerchief and smiled.
Ahh, Sid thought. Take a deep breath. Now another. This is the moment when Goldy waits for you.
Sid reached into the left breast pocket of his white linen sport jacket, withdrew the folded legal documents, and slapped them perfunctorily onto Goldy’s vanity table like a summons.
“Of course we’re talking contracts, babe. Guild deal, pay-or-play, mega-points, your script until you lose it. But not until you’ve gotten us signed releases from all three bears, especially Papa. We’re asking primary rights, subsidiary rights, foreign rights, you name it. Those bears don’t go to the bathroom we don’t own the rights to it, get me? You deliver what we need, Goldy, and we’re ready to make heap-um big medicine on this one. We’re gonna make you the deal you’ve been waiting for all your life.”
Even Papa Bear couldn’t remember what really happened anymore. He had rationalized events in his mind, then re-rationalized them, then re-re-rationalized them again. He told Mama Bear one version of events, Baby Bear another, and himself alone in his bed at night still another. He woke from cold sweats dreaming about what might have happened. What probably didn’t happen. What never happened but seemed like it had. The most frightening thing of all, though, was that he couldn’t escape one firm unalterable version of his own history. And that, of course, was Goldy’s version — available in trade-paper, CD-ROM, and audio-cassette.
“You ruined the best years of my life!” Goldy screamed, appearing from her long sleek limousine in a thigh-length sable coat, pearl-drop earrings and a sequined raw-silk blouse from agnès b. “And maybe if you hadn’t made me lose so much confidence in myself, I could’ve developed into a more stable, nurturing-type personality, and gotten married and raised my own family, instead of ending up like this. You know what I mean, Papa Bear. Totally fucked up!”
“Why don’t you calm down, Goldy,” Papa Bear said without inflection. “Then maybe for once we could talk things over without getting so, you know, emotional all the time.”
Mama Bear stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her sudsy paws on the hem of her white cotton apron. Oh Papa Bear, she thought simply. When will you learn to keep your big mouth shut?
It began as less than a whisper. And ended as more than a roar.
“Me?” Goldilocks replied. “You want me to stop being emotional?”
As Goldy’s heat gathered, Papa Bear gazed out the frosty window at her limo in the driveway. Its density belongs to a different world than this one, Papa Bear thought. Somewhere cleaner, perhaps. With firmer lines and harder surfaces.