Sheila pulled her traveling case from beneath the seat and took out her notebook, thinking of Damon. He had been impressed by her invitation to Byzantium, more than she was herself. But then he was an actor. Public appearances were something he understood, a sign of success. It had never occurred to him that Sheila might not accept – perhaps that was why she had. Away from him, though, she felt her confidence flag. She knew nothing about science fiction. Wouldn’t the others at the convention see her as a fraud? She had written a speech in her notebook, the story of how she had written Moonlight Under the Mountain, but the speech was a fraud, too, a carefully constructed fiction. She stared down at the page wondering if she would have the nerve to read it.
The notebook had been a gift from Damon. ‘For your next novel,’ he had said, giving it to her with his famous, flashing smile. And she had taken it, unable to tell him that there would not be a next novel.
Ordinary people had ordinary jobs in Hollywood, as they did everywhere else, as sales assistants, as waiters, as secretaries and caretakers, but in Hollywood the jobs were always temporary; the people in them were really actors, directors, dancers, singers, producers, writers waiting for the main chance. Damon had been an actor working as a waiter until his pilot took off: now he had a minor but regular role in a weekly comedy series. He was the wisecracking roommate’s best friend. Viewing figures and audience response were both good, and he was on his way up.
He thought that Sheila was on her way up, too. It was true she made her living doing temporary secretarial work, but she’d had one novel published, and surely it was only a matter of time until she was well-paid and famous: all she had to do was to keep on writing.
But Sheila didn’t write anymore. She no longer felt the need.
Writing, for Sheila, had always been a means of escape. It took her out of herself, away from loneliness, dull school classes, and the tedium of working behind a counter at the local Woolco. When she was writing she could forget that she wasn’t pretty, didn’t have a boyfriend or an interesting job, had no talents and no future. She’d had no friends because she never tried to cultivate any. Girls her own age thought she was a weird, stuck-up bookworm – she thought they were boring, and didn’t bother to hide her opinions. Her quirky intelligence made her reject most of the people and things around her, but did not make her special enough to be forgiven. Despite her reading, she was an indifferent student, lazy in the classroom and inept at sports. She tried to write for the school magazine and newspaper, but after several cool rejections she learned to keep her writing to herself.
She wrote another world into existence. It was a fairy-tale world full of monsters and treasures, simpler, starker, and more beautiful than the reality she felt suffocating her, and she escaped into it whenever she could. Her universe contained a vast and dangerous wasteland spotted with small, isolated villages. One of the settlements had a mountain rising from its centre, towering over everything, dominating the landscape and the lives of those who lived there. For beneath the mountain was a series of maze-like tunnels where dwelt the evil, powerful grenofen. They kept the townspeople in terror until a young girl, Kayli, won her way through a series of adventures, battles, and enchantments to triumph over the grenofen and steal their sacred treasure for herself.
Sheila shared her world with no one, and never thought of publication, except as a vague fantasy. It was her mother who brought it about, indirectly. Sheila knew she was a disappointment to her mother – she almost took pleasure in it. Something in her seemed to compel contradiction, and as long as her mother nagged her about her appearance Sheila would eat too much, forget to wash her hair, and dress in unattractive, poorly fitting clothes. Her mother thought scribbling in notebooks was a waste of time, and it was her disparaging comment on a ‘writers’ weekend’ being held at a local college which made Sheila consider attending. And it was there that Sheila met the editor who ultimately published Moonlight Under the Mountain.
She didn’t make a lot of money from the book – the reality wasn’t like her fantasy – but it gave her enough to leave Texas, to fly to Los Angeles and buy a used car and find her own apartment before she had to look for work. On the West Coast, in the sunshine, far from her mother’s nagging, Sheila blossomed. She took an interest in the way she looked, bought fashionable clothes, joined a health spa, had her hair permed, and exchanged her heavy, smudged glasses for a pair of tinted contact lenses.
Damon met her while she was temping in his agent’s office. He admired her clear, emerald eyes, her smooth, tanned skin, and slim figure, but those things were the norm in California – it was her book which caught his attention. He admired writers, and liked the idea of dating one so much that Sheila didn’t know how to tell him the truth. She had written a book, but that didn’t make her a writer in the way that he was an actor. Writing was one of the things – like baby fat, acne, and bad manners – she had left behind her in Texas.
They were like ghosts of her past, standing there waiting for her in the Campbell County Airport. Sheila knew them at once, without any doubt, and knew she had been wrong to come.
‘Sheila Stoller?’
They knew her, too, and that was another bad sign; like calling to like. She wished she could deny her name, but she nodded stiffly, walking toward them.
There were two of them: a fat one swathed in purple, and a thin one in a lime-green polyester trouser suit and teased, bleached-blonde hair. She knew them – they were the unwanted. They were the sort of people she had been lumped in with at school, always the last to be chosen for teams or dances. Her mother had pushed them on her, inviting them to parties, but Sheila had preferred loneliness to their company. She always shunned them rather than admit that she was like them.
‘How do you do,’ said the thin one. ‘I’m Victoria Walcek, and this is Grace Baxter.’
Victoria would be smart, Sheila knew. Too smart for her own good. A bookworm with a sharp tongue and too many opinions, no one would like her, but she would exert a special influence over one or two followers; dull, timid outcasts like her fat friend.
‘Your plane was late,’ said Victoria.
The tone was reproving and before she could catch herself Sheila said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Victoria smiled. ‘That’s all right. We didn’t mind waiting. Do you have much luggage coming?’
‘Only this.’ She indicated the small case.
Victoria gave a dainty shriek. ‘That’s all? How do you manage? I couldn’t possibly . . . my hot-curlers and makeup would just about fill that little bag. I always need a big garment bag whenever I go anywhere. I suppose I worry too much about the way I look . . . I like to have everything just right. It’s much more sensible to travel light and just not think about that.’
‘Sheila looks very nice,’ said Grace with so much emphasis that it sounded like a lie. Sheila tried not to mind, but she wished Grace hadn’t felt obliged to defend her. She knew how she looked: more fashionable and far more comfortable in her pink and grey tracksuit than Victoria in her ugly green polyester and high-necked ruffled blouse.
‘Of course she does,’ said Victoria. ‘I didn’t mean to imply otherwise! Only with that little bag . . . well, there can’t be more than one change of clothes in there.’
‘I’m only staying the weekend.’
‘Oh,’ said Grace, sounding surprised. ‘We thought you’d want to stay . . . being from Texas, and all.’
‘I only came for the convention. I can’t afford – I need to get back.’
‘To your writing?’ asked Grace.
The lie came easily. ‘Yes, I’ve started a new book.’
‘Oh, please tell us about it!’