“Fuck me,” Paula said, double meaning intended.
On cue, Kat rested her hand on Paula’s thigh, and said, “Oh, don’t worry, I will, honey.”
Paula hadn’t picked up anyone at a bar in a long time. The last time she’d tried was at a bar in Attica, New York, when she went up there to visit Max Fisher. Attica, not exactly a party town, and worse, a lesbian-free zone, at least on the night Paula was there.
During a break in the action at the loft in Dumbo, sweaty bodies intertwined, Kat asked, “So who are you?”
“I told you... my name’s Paula.”
“I didn’t ask you what your name is. I asked you who you are.”
Bitchy, yeah, but sexy.
“I mean you have to be somebody,” Kat went on. “Kick-ass apartment, view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Please, just don’t tell me you’re a Hilton.”
“Do you know Bust?” Paula asked.
“I know yours now,” Kat said, squishing closer.
“No, I mean the bestselling novel, Bust, soon to be a TV show from Lionsgate Entertainment.”
“Oh, that Bust,” Kat said. “I think I read a review in People while I was tearing out the cover story on Kim and Kanye.”
“It was reviewed in People?” Paula, asked, full of shit. She’d fucking memorized that rave even though she’d said in the Times Mag story, “I never read my reviews.” The moral? Don’t believe anything you read in the Times even if it isn’t by Jayson Blair.
“Yes, and it was a good one too,” Kat said. “I think I’ve seen that book on the front page of Amazon.”
“You probably have,” Paula said pseudo-modestly.
“And you wrote it? Are you serious?” Kat’s face was glowing. “Wow, it looks like I’m the starfucker, not you. I just have a name, but you are a name.”
“No, you are the name, hon,” Paula said, as it hit her that this was it — the final piece of her puzzle of literary domination.
If anybody wanted to make it to the top these days, if you wanted that extra jolt of cachet, you needed to have a relationship with a Kardashian on your resume. Even if you break up, a Kardashian in your past could help catapult you, or at least get you a reservation at a hot restaurant, sipping the wine right alongside Donna Tartt and Jay McInerny. And not just literary fame — fame fame. Move over Ellen and Rachel, the world of gay women was going to have a new spokeswoman. Hell, it was only a matter of time till Paula had her own TV show. Hello, red carpet. She’d call her show Paula and it would become the new Oprah.
She turned Kat onto her back and was on top, pinning her down.
“What’re you doing?” Kat asked.
Paula kissed her hard, went, “Sealing the deal, you naughty kitty Kat, you.”
A few days later Paula arrived arm in arm with Kat at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square for the big reading/signing/discussion of Bust.
Here she was, back at the store she had been tossed out of when she’d sort of, well, assaulted Laura Lippman, but now she was returning, as a literary star herself. She’d have to put this in the next book.
Of course Paula was dressed to impress. Hot pants were back, where had they gone? A tight two-sizes-too-small T-shirt that would look like she and Jennifer Aniston hung out and swapped clothes.
The store was crowded. Didn’t they say reading was dead? The news hadn’t filtered down to these yuppies. Mind you, they were reading but not fucking buying, unless it was a triple grande light decaffeinated vanilla latte. But they were reading, and they were here in the store. What Paula didn’t get was why people weren’t swarming her. Didn’t they read Penthouse? It was hard to believe that everyone was like her and just looked at the pictures. Where were the cameras? With a Kardashian in tow the masses were just letting her, like, pass by?
For a fleeting moment it occurred to her that she was behaving a lot like Max Fisher. Was it possible that, like many authors, she’d become too close to her subject? She’d come to know Max so well — his delusional thoughts, his megalomania, his addictions. It was why she’d been able to pull off writing Max as a character, getting in his head, making him seem so real. But had she gone too far? Had she crossed the proverbial line and actually become him?
But like Max would, she shrugged off these concerns with, “Ah, fuck it,” and continued through the store.
Heading up the escalator, it was hard for Paula not to get sentimental, but she couldn’t cry in front of the public and photographers — there had to be photographers around somewhere, right? She went up to the top floor to get a peek of her adoring fans. Would she have more than Hillary Clinton?
Whoa, what the fuck, she had maybe fifty people here, and some were in chairs, drinking coffee and reading magazines, and may not have come for the reading. While fifty people was forty-nine more people than she’d had at the last reading she’d done when the publicist at St. Martin’s Press was setting up her events — and the one attendee was the publicist herself — for a bestselling author of her caliber it was a disgrace.
“This is a disgrace!” she shouted.
“Calm down, baby,” Kat said. “All will be well. Everyone’s probably at the coffee bar.”
It was so soothing to have a Kardashian by her side. Kat was like the pony, leading the racehorse to the starting gate.
There was Charles Ardai engaged in a conversation with Lars Stiegsson, taking about porn, or whatever straight men talk about. Paula blew a kiss to Charles, but he was too engrossed to notice her. Paula’s agent Janet came over to Kat and seemed enamored when she heard the word, “Kardashian.”
“Where are my fans?” Paula whined to Janet. “Where are my handlers?”
So much for soothing.
“I’m not sure,” Janet said distractedly. Then to Kat, “So what was it like on the kibbutz?”
“Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” Paula said, and stormed away.
This was perfect — a tantrum, that’s what all the celebs did, right? Maybe she should start toppling bookshelves, kicking and punching security. It would be very AlecBaldwinian; was TMZ here? In the aftermath, she could blame her fame, then admit she had a problem and check in for some rehab, and then get out, pull a Lindsay, and go on a coke binge. Or what was that new drug she’d read about, the one related to those shootings in Brooklyn? PIMP. Yeah, PIMP. She’d go on a PIMP binge.
Paula returned to the ground floor, still surprised she hadn’t already been stopped numerous times for autographs, and sashayed to the information desk. That’s right, sashayed, because she was the new female literary star and that meant she could be as big of a sexy tart as she wanted to be. Goldfinch that.
She approached a lanky James Bond type at the desk.
The guy said, “Help you?” The accent was southern, and it sounded polite but not interested. The clothes weren’t speaking to him, probably one of those schmucks who did stuff to sheep. She adopted her best little-girl-lost voice, never failed, whimpered, “I’m Paula Segal. I’m reading here tonight.”
Being modest about it, but not because she was feeling modest. Saying with her modesty that I’m such a big deal, I can afford to be modest.
“Oh wow,” the guy said. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ll get the Events Manager, but first...” He reached under the desk, brought out an advance copy of Bust and said, “Signature only.”