“Excuse me,” the emcee said. “I fail to see how this relates—”
“If you’ll let me finish.” The man glared over his shaggy beard. “Now the levels of pain for the bull are debatable. A local anesthetic is generally applied. But one thing is certain. The bull’s temperament is irrevocably altered by the procedure. He grows smaller, more docile, more predictable, easier to manage, more… cowlike, as it were. Of course, the bull is not a cow. In addition to obvious anatomical differences, the animal would never be accepted by the other cows as an equal. But neither is the bull truly a bull anymore. Farmers understand this and give the animals an entirely new designation. They call them steers. And what, you may ask, is the function of a steer? To be eaten. That is all. To have any utility, the animal must die. One can’t help but wonder if—”
“I’m sorry,” the emcee said, “but we’re running short on time. I’m afraid we’re going to have to move on to our next author.”
“Now hold on just a second…”
After a brief tug-of-war, the undergrad reclaimed the microphone, and the emcee removed his hand from my shoulder. The bearded man kept talking, shouting what sounded like “Resist!” from the back of the auditorium, until two forbidding young men in dark-rimmed spectacles went over to physically remove him from the room.
I followed my own path out of the auditorium, plodding over to the wings, where, on the small muted television, men in suits were wandering around in a daze, as if they’d lost something important. I retraced my steps to the foyer, where I found the organizer setting out refreshments and the students who’d removed the bearded man, looking grim. The bearded man was nowhere to be seen. The organizer impatiently directed me to a long signing table where a small pile of books awaited each author, along with a bottle of water and a cheap-looking pen. The young men paced around me like prison guards. Muffled applause drifted out of the auditorium. After a very long time, the side door burst open and the remaining authors bounded out, grinning like loveable criminals in a heist movie. They took their spots without acknowledging me, while the crowd filed through the main doors. Kim appeared and headed straight for the signing table, her lipstick framing a dangerous-looking smile. “Darling!”
“I need to leave,” I said, quietly but urgently.
She glanced at the authors flanking me, then threw back her head and laughed. “You’re so funny. Well, I’m going to go mingle. See you in a bit…” She strode off in the direction of the refreshment table. The authors on either side of me leaned ever so slightly away, as if from an offensive smell. People had begun to line up at the signing table. I was just considering how to make my escape, when I saw Jasmine again on the far side of the room, smiling faintly and looking around with interest. The crowd opened and closed behind her, bringing her inexorably closer to the signing table until she stood directly in front of me—my first novel, the one she’d been reading the night I followed her onto the bus, in her hand. She set the book down on the table and smiled, pleasant but distant, as she might have smiled at a cashier at the bank.
“Angela,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
It was the first time I’d heard her speak. I’d seen every inch of her body. She’d written the most explicit things imaginable to me. But up to that moment, her voice had been a mystery. She sounded older than I’d expected, more educated, her A’s betraying a slight mid-Atlantic accent.
“My name,” she said. “For the inscription.”
“Oh. Right.”
I’d always assumed that Jasmine was a stage name, but it had suited her. She didn’t look anything like an Angela. I opened her book, distracted by the scent of something coconut-y drifting across the table.
“Do you—” My voice failed me and I cleared my throat. “Want me to say anything in particular?
I watched her closely for a sign, some acknowledgment that we’d met before.
She shook her head. “To Angela is fine.”
It occurred to me that she might not have even read my latest book, a book I’d written specifically for her. Given the degree to which it had been sabotaged, that could have been a stroke of luck. My pen hovered over the page. I was just working up the nerve to ask for her last name when Kim came galloping back over to the table with an incredulous look. “Angie?”
Jasmine turned to her with a smile that I would have murdered to have put there. “Kimmie?”
They squealed. They hugged.
“Oh my God!”
“I know!”
“Where have you—”
“Don’t ask.”
I sat with a strained smile, waiting to be introduced, but Kim seemed to have forgotten she even knew me. The friends linked arms and wandered over to the refreshment table, happily chatting. Kimmie and Angie. The whole thing felt strangely orchestrated, designed to cause me pain.
The authors on either side of me were busily signing books. Still holding Jasmine’s copy of my first novel, I opened the front cover and wrote two words: To Jasmine. I underlined her stage name twice, then slammed the book on the table and headed for the exit. My vision blurred. My legs felt like they’d been hollowed out and filled with cement.
“Felix!”
The voice sounded so much like my father’s that I froze, but the man coming at me through the crowd was more heavyset than Dad and closer to my own age, his neat goatee framing a wide, confident smile. David, my agent. He grabbed my hand and pumped it, radiating a minty, boozy smell. “What did I say? I told you you’d do fine, didn’t I?”
I responded with a feeble shrug.
“Quite the interrogation they gave you up there,” he chuckled. “They really come out of the woodwork for these things… So, where are you off to? Not leaving already, I hope?”
“I’m not feeling well…”
“Really! Well, before you go I have something I need to talk to you about.”
Kim and Jasmine were huddled over by the coffee urn, laughing uproariously at some shared reminiscence. Kim met my eye across the room and leaned over to say something in Jasmine’s ear.
I stepped towards the exit. “I really have to…”
“This’ll only take a minute,” David said, ratcheting his smile up a notch.
“Hel-lo,” Kim said brightly, having left Jasmine to come eavesdrop on our conversation. Through a gap in the crowd, I could see Jasmine going back to the signing table to collect her book. Kim slipped her hand into the crook of my elbow, while David sucked his teeth for a moment.
“So…” he said, “it isn’t that your book isn’t doing well. It’s doing fine, as far as it goes. But the people upstairs had hoped it would do…” He bounced his hands in the air, as if weighing a pumpkin. “Better. I’ve been told that you’re not getting enough exposure. This reading’s a good start, but they want more. Interviews. Festivals. Now I know how you feel about doing publicity…”
Jasmine had nearly reached my vacant spot at the signing table.
“Let go,” I muttered to Kim, unable to move with her hand locked to my elbow.
“There are ways of dealing with these things,” David continued. “Mindful meditation. Deep breathing. Pharmaceuticals.”
I pried at Kim’s fingers. “Let. Go.”
Across the room, Jasmine picked up her book and turned to the inscription.
“Would you fucking let go already?” I shouted, jerking my arm free. The room went quiet. Kim stared at me with an oddly vacant expression, like a doll on a shelf. I put my eyes on the floor and headed for the nearest exit, not daring to look at Jasmine, or anyone else. No one tried to stop me. No one said a word as I reached the front doors and pushed out into the warm, dark evening. Orange halogens illuminated the empty street. The bearded bull expert was sitting on the grass. “Spare some change?” he asked. I backed away from him, power-walking down the sidewalk, then breaking into a run. The wind caught my tie and carried it over my shoulder. I passed the library and my old dorm building, sprinting now, past students in backpacks, leaving them to watch after me and wonder if they themselves had cause to panic in the face of this most ominous of sights: a well-dressed man running for his life.