Unamused
a short story
by
Rosalyn Wraight
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© Copyright 2012 Rosalyn Wraight
a Don’t Waste Daylight publication
Smashwords Edition
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Unamused
Deirdre Munro sweat like a pig.
Designer perfume, designer clothes, and tissues pulled from a designer handbag couldn’t mask it.
But, the pumps on her feet successfully diverted attention from that swine sweat. Everyone who passed in that long, cold, marble hallway took a gander. She couldn’t blame them. The torture devices were purple, a shiny, glittery purple, desperately seized from the back of her lover’s closet that morning. And they clashed, desperately clashed with the garish clothes nabbed from a drag queen’s closet the day prior. It was a hodgepodge of borrowed items to make her look professional.
Still, none of it changed the fact that she sweat like a pig.
Diaphoresis, the wordy portion of her brain specified, sweating to an unusual degree as a symptom of disease or the side effect of certain drugs. The brusque portion added, Or just waiting too damn long.
Finally, she heard her name, delivered as a question from a mousy man with a clipboard. When she hurried to him, he instructed in a similarly questioning tone, “Follow me, please, Ms. Munro.”
He led her through a doorway that seemed taller than her apartment building, beginning in the basement. His highly polished shoes clicked on the highly polished floor, and the purple pumps kept a perfect time.
At the far end of the monstrous room, three conference tables formed a surly U, and three haughty women sat at each. None of them so much as glanced at her, but eventually, one made a feeble gesture toward the lone empty chair.
She seated herself and instantly felt surrounded, at least on three sides. The sole escape was whence she came, and that was not an option.
Only knowing the women collectively, she squinted to read the name placards on the tables. The distance and her effort to be discreet made the task impossible.
Suddenly, one of them cleared her throat, all prim and proper-like. She leaned to look at the woman near the center and asked, “Calli, are you ready to take notes?”
The Calli person nodded, gave Deirdre a once-over of condescendingly epic proportion, and flipped open her writing tablet.
The first woman unfurled an official-looking scroll and gave it a quick perusal. “Deirdre Munro?” When she saw Deirdre’s bobbing head, she set down the scroll.
Then, the nine of them picked up a book sitting in front of each. In near unison, they turned the front toward Deirdre. All identical, the cover was azure. Not blue. Azure. Its boldly clean font boasted the title: Burnt Offering.
“Deirdre Munro,” the first woman again called. “You wrote this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Every word of it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she uttered, utterly proud of every single word she brought forth over the course of a year, between shifts at a local cheese factory. Herds of curds and words. “All 87,312 of them.”
“Hardly an epic,” the note-taker Calli noted.
Deirdre politely defended, “I believe quality is more important than volume.”
“Volume? You mean this is the first volume of an epic?”
“No! I meant quantity. Quality not quantity.”
She looked down her sleek nose with great scorn. “Writers should say what they mean the first time. Conversation isn’t a rough draft.”
Deirdre’s hair-trigger temper produced the image of a purple pump pitching through the air and—
The first woman interrupted the reverie, “So, Deirdre Munro, you say you wrote every word of this.” She mindlessly flipped through the book’s pages. “Are we to understand that to mean that you did so all by yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said again, wanting to beam with pride but readily understanding that none of them was the least bit impressed.
“I see,” she responded. “Well, that would surely explain it.” She closed the book, set it down, and slid it away from her, as though it befouled her airspace. “Because I see absolutely no historical relevance to this work.”
“What, no warrior princess?” one of them questioned. In immediate response to a shaking head, she gasped, and the rest of them followed suit.
A woman with bangs that nearly hid her entire face sermonized, “Not only that, but the whole thing is quite ungodly. Some of the language is downright blasphemous!”
Another piped up, “Well, ungodly wouldn’t be so terribly bad, Poly, if it was at least lyrical!” She narrowed her eyes at Deirdre. “I take it you have no experience with the lyrical—making words flow with beauty, grace, and rhythm.”
Deirdre imagined the other purple pump plummeting onto a skull as she respectfully argued, “I thought my words flowed quite well.” Indeed, she had read every word aloud before committing it to her final draft.
Unswayed, the woman countered, “Oh? Just listen to this.” She opened the book and read from a page she obviously had marked, “‘The pomegranate juice giddily trickled between her lover’s alabaster breasts.’ You call that lyrical?”
She did, but she reasoned, “You’re taking it out of context. Read the whole scene.”
“Yes, do! Read the whole scene!” That giggled plea came from the one wearing a stark amount of red lipstick. Even when the smile momentarily left her face, the lipstick clownishly kept it there.
“We don’t have time for that, Thalia,” yet another said before her index finger tapped the table. “For the record, Calli, let it be stated that while the stars are mentioned, well, it is only in passing.”
“Well, the moon was there, sister, and at least she didn’t have these lovers spooning under it. Spoon. Moon. Buffoon. Writers with rhyming dictionaries are like children with guns.”
“Well, children with guns may have at least given her something besides the trite happy ending.”
“Yes! Yes! The lover—the one with the alabaster breasts—could have just poured her heart out at the loss.”
“I agree completely, Mel, and Ms. Munro here could have then turned that pomegranate juice into a metaphor instead of just something salacious.”
Deirdre suddenly felt as though she didn’t exist. They went on and on, taking potshots at her and her work. Constructive criticism was one thing; this was something rabidly different. But at least what they were spewing wasn’t ineradicably posted on some Internet site for the world to see.
Finally, they ceased, and the first woman said, “Deirdre Munro, I’m afraid you’ll have to cease publication of this book immediately. We see no merit to it.”
Flabbergasted, she barely managed, “Excuse me?”
She nodded quite adamantly. “As a writer, you have contractual obligations, Ms. Munro.”
“I have abided by all the terms of the contract with my publisher.”
“No, dearie, the contract you have with us, the things we bestowed upon you, the stuff that made you think you were a writer to begin with.”
She stared, speechless, and one seized the pause to inquire, “Did she at least put ‘to my muse’ on the dedication page? A lot of writers have done that, giving credit where credit is due.”
The first woman shook her head, and again they gasped. She said, “You’ll need to remove the book from public consumption, Ms. Munro. That is what the Board of Muses orders.”
“I will not remove it!”
“You will, at least until one of us rewrites it with you. I assume it’s not doing very well anyway.”
“Actually, it’s doing rather well,” she instinctually defended, although she was sure “well” was by her standards, not anyone else’s. Still, she maintained, “I will not remove it.”
The first woman said, “Oh, yes, you will! You are supposed to have one of us present whenever you write.”
“And what about when you don’t show up? What was I supposed to have done then?”
“Your contract says you are to wait for us. We inspire. We—”
“But you didn’t show up! I waited! Man, I waited and waited and waited!” She swallowed hard and then braved, “Listen, if you leave a dyke to her own devices, she will make her own way.”
In synch, they gasped.
“The insolence!”
“The disrespect!”
“The sacrilege!”
“The utter ignorance of which side her bread is buttered on!”
“We’re her bread and butter.”
“Bread always falls on the buttered side.”
“‘I'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new-year's gift.’ Now, Shakespeare knew how to be lyrical, and all because of me!”
“How about Proverbs? ‘Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter.’”
“Yes, but Ms. Munro here would do far better to butter us up.”
“Ah, but fine words butter no parsnips.”
“I bet butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
“Butter, my ass!” Deirdre blurted, unable to stand their barbaric nonsense a second longer.
They stopped their butter tirade, and the first woman began again with her name and prepared to follow it with what Deirdre knew she didn’t want to hear.
“Listen, you arrogant hags!” she yelled as she flew to her feet, nearly losing her balance on the purple pumps. “I showed up at work everyday! I sat there day after day after every damn day, humped over the keyboard until I looked like Quasimodo, waiting for you—any of you!” Her eyes flashed anger at the one with the long bangs. “I’d have written your goddamn religious poetry!” Furious, she kicked off the purple pumps and fumed, “Damn alpha femmes! You want to be buttered up and coddled, but you don’t invest a damn thing! Worship me. Beg me.” Very lyrically, she sing-songed, “Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.”
Stunned and obviously uninspired even to ponder a retort, they gaped at her. She glared right back, her eyes narrowed as if daring them to continue.
Finally, one of them shrieked, “Well, I never!”
“You’re right: You never! Get off your asses, ladies! Quit being so damn full of yourselves!” She bent to grab her lover’s purple pumps; she did indeed know which side her bread was buttered on. With a huff of indignation, she turned and aimed for the tall doorway, her bare feet slapping and slipping on the highly polished floor.
Halfway there, a split-second of rationality seized her. She stopped and spun around. “Oh, and give me back my books!” She marched back to the surly U, dropped the purple pumps, and began snatching the books. “I bet you sell them on eBay®!”
“They fetch a better price with an autograph,” the one called Poly said, refusing to relinquish her copy, obstinately clutching it to her chest. “Would you mind?”
Deirdre’s jaw dropped.
“‘To my muse,’” she specified. “And then just sign your name.” She held out a pen.
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About the Author
Rosalyn Wraight is the author of the Detective Laura McCallister lesbian mystery series: Woman Justice, Secrets and Sins, Corpse Call, and The Watson Evidence.
She is also the author of the ongoing Lesbian Adventure Club series. Thus far, the series consists of thirteen titles: Scavengers, Ledge Walkers, Savages, Loose Sleuths, Sisters, Leakers Ignited, Scraps, L-Word C-word, Spiders, Likely Suspects, Stalemates, Laura’s League, and Sutures. A backstory prequel, The Queen of Terrified & The Newly Brave Landowner, is also available.
On the Web
Author Blog: LesbianWriter.com
Author Bookstore: LesbianAdventureClub.com