Rachel sighed deeply as the doorman pushed the button that let her into the building. The entrance was all flawless glass and brass finishes – the shallow brown scars in the marble looked as if they had been left by the claws of a giant predator.
The soft beige carpet led her around the corner to the deep mahogany elevators, which were so recessed that they looked like a row of hollow coffins.
In the elevator, narcoleptic jazz fell slowly around Rachel as she checked out her reflection – thanking the designers for the two-facing mirrors, so she could review herself from the back.
The penthouse corridor was as silent as a body buried in an abandoned library.
Rachel’s own community was loud – dogs barked, children cried and the heartbeat bass of rap music often pounded its lost way through the streets.
This penthouse floor, though, was a mausoleum of soundless success. Not even faint strains of classical music, a highbrow nature documentary or a podcast complaining about majority privilege could be heard through the tall wooden doors.
PH-4…
Rachel tapped on the door, even though it had a knocker. She half-expected every other door to open at once, so the bodies could check out the solitary rare visitor to this soft hallway of sky silence.
What sort of heads would pop out of the doors, craning to see the intruder?
Old heads, for the most part – querulous women with tight buns, bald men with horn-rimmed glasses, constellations of liver spots, and shapeless bodies in baggy ancient clothes.
And everyone would disapprove, thought Rachel, for no particular reason – perhaps just in the hope of making their day a little brighter by setting a stranger against herself…
This was the floor where people came to fade out. This was the last stop before convalescence, where life savings would get burned up on the altar of endless extensions of a miserable existence.
Rachel suddenly remembered a phrase she had heard in her teenage years, from an old woman talking about her own sick father, who had gone to the Home for Incurables…
Home for Incurables…
Even then, Rachel had shuddered at the thought of decades long past, when buildings could be named according to frank reality. Truth had not been deemed brutal; it was inconceivable that facts would be considered abusive, and things could be named for what they actually were.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names…
Rachel sighed.
Nothing could be named any more – everything had to go through the filter of brute inflicted consequences.
The heavy wooden door opened slowly, a chain widening at eye height.
Rachel’s Aunt Crystal stared at her in the nervous manner of a woman who has lived alone for far too long. Rachel’s first impulse was to remind her aunt of the many layers of security that stood between her and the wild world outside.
“Rachel!” cried Crystal in joy, closing the door and fussing with the chain.
She could hear the tears in her aunt’s voice – suddenly regretted coming.
Aunt Crystal had once been Crystal Pavlovich, a world-striding reporter of legendary dimensions. She had covered dissidents in China, rebels in Africa, the Arab Spring in Syria – she had interviewed warlords in Afghanistan, drug dealers in Hong Kong, and human traffickers working the deep blue of the Mediterranean. She had intermittently gusted through Rachel’s childhood like a blowsy hurricane, bringing her strange ornate gifts containing convoluted rattles, odd scents, and hidden compartments.
Crystal was a wonderful storyteller – as befitted her profession – and could hold a dinner table spellbound for upwards of 20 minutes.
Crystal had been briefly married to a Russian of aristocratic descent, but the marriage had detonated in epic fireworks of rage, betrayal – and rumoured drug abuse. Crystal had thrown herself immediately into an expose on anti-abortion forces.
She was, to put it mildly, larger-than-life – and had fastened onto Rachel like a gasping mother determined to blow up a thousand balloons for a birthday party.
“Life is an adventure, young Rachel,” Crystal would say – taking an occasional pinch of snuff, as if she had stepped out of the yellow pages of an Agatha Christie novel. “Never wait for other people to tell you what to do! I would tell you to take life by the horns, but that is terrible advice, because you and the bull are one! Be the bull, be the horns, be the wild muscly meat of your own explorations!”
And Crystal was no hypocrite – she did live unimaginably large. She won awards, wore combat gear and evening gowns, made glittering speeches, and had an entire old-fashioned rotating card-wheel of famous people. She took and discarded lovers like a woman with infinite allergies at an endless buffet.
She had no children, of course – “It would be cruel to have children, just to have other people raise them!” - but had enough generosity of spirit to praise the “breeders” (as she called them). “Where, oh where would I get my readers from, dear people, if others weren’t out there making them from scratch? Somebody has to give birth to the people I end up interviewing!”
Crystal had general liberal views, but had little to no patience with lengthy abstract definitions. She viewed the world as containing an endless series of bipeds with either excess or deficient “resources.”
“I was born with an excess of energy – thank heavens there was no such thing as ADHD when I was a kid – I never could sit still – still can’t – and that’s like being born with an excess of money! I didn’t earn it, I just inherited it from good, kindly nature – but it’s impossible not to notice that there are many people out there with a serious deficiency of resources – you know, the monotone folk whose words drop out of their mouths like exhausted soldiers on a death march. I bound from treetop to treetop - but most people seem to have a tough time getting out of bed!” Crystal would shrug. “It’s the way of the world… If I were a good Christian, I would feel blessed by God, but I lack the vanity to think the entire universe revolves around my thyroid gland! I have an excess, most people have a deficiency – and so they have a right to my energy! I can burn it all up – since it is inexhaustible – to stimulate them, and get them out of their – prison of the doldrums, or whatever. Now you, Rachel – you are poised between both worlds… You are ambivalent – which is not what most people think it means – they think it means you don’t care either way, but the word actually means that you have very strong feelings in both directions! I saw that in a movie, but I knew it before… And it is my goal to get you on the right path, my dear, so that you too can burn high and bright enough for the lost souls of humanity to navigate by!” Crystal would laugh. “My God, I would never get such a florid line past an editor, but that’s why I enjoy conversation even more than writing – my inner poet can stride free of all restraint!”
Crystal had mentored Rachel, got her into the right school, tried to point her in the right direction, gave her the right contacts – but Rachel had been raised with the hyper-caution of modern youth, and lacked the giddy panache to dance over the landmines of post-modern ideology.
For all of Aunt Crystal’s supposed originality, she was in fact something of a cliché – the wild woman who scorned criticism, strode the world like a colossus, and blew through people’s lives like a random illness, or addiction. From her occasional snuff to her endless scarves, her braying laugh to her unkempt hair, Crystal was so ambitious that she had carved her personality into an impressive air siren, rather than a natural conversation. She perceived herself to be unequalled, and so could never find love.
Crystal’s energy was far higher than normal, but refreshingly short of manic. She made good decisions in her career, cultivated the right relationships, pursued reasonably correct stories – and had enough momentum of prior fame and achievement to carry her through her occasional politically incorrect scandals. She had once referred to Ugandans as ‘you people’ - which drew scathing attacks, and an attempt to de-platform her – but she judo-reversed the criticism by claiming that she was referring to the letter – ‘U-people,’ as in people who lived in Uganda – “It’s what they say locally,” she lied – and that any suggestion to the contrary showed blanket bigotry on the part of her critics.
Also, because Crystal had “paved the way” for the next generation of female reporters, she was given a fair degree of latitude – “She’s going to say the wrong thing from time to time, because she had to ignore all criticisms just to break the glass ceiling for us!”
Her energy did begin to flag in her 50s, however. Crystal was so sure that she was actually shaping the world that, when the world suddenly changed beyond her comprehension, she became dazed and disoriented. Many prominent public figures feel that they themselves can move mountains – it can shock them deeply to find out that there is a tectonic energy far below their surface words that moves the world from place to place – and rarely from a worse place to a better place.
She began to run out of assignments – she had worked for a major network in her early 30s, but had been freelance for over 15 years – and because her wanton energy shielded her from the grim passage of time, she had barely noticed that she was ageing out of camera-friendliness.
“That doesn’t happen to men!” she railed - as if women have never ever benefitted from double standards.
The usual complaint of a camera-facing woman in late middle age – that the world only judges women by appearances – was easily echoed by young male reporters with bad chins and mediocre hair – who couldn’t get any camera time because they weren’t physically appealing enough – but Crystal’s immunity to feedback prevented her from listening to such “lowbrow whining.”
Oh no – although her physical attractiveness had paved the way for her, as it faded, suddenly being judged by looks was shallow and petty…
Also, because Crystal was ungovernable – which had its good and its bad aspects of course – she could not be fashioned into a useful tool for the increasingly agenda-driven style of reporting, in which all public activity was judged relative to the goals of decreasing inequality, or increasing state power (to do good of course!) – and furthering other, more hidden and sinister goals, the tentacles of which reached so deep into the hidden underworld that few mere mortals dared explore their roots.
It was the pandemic that did Crystal in.
Naturally sceptical – of authority, which was good, but also of morality, which was not – Crystal opened her heart, mind and cameras to those unconvinced of the safety and efficacy of the new mRNA shots.
Crystal had a minor specialty in pharmaceutical corruption, having exposed various corporations – particularly in the Third World – for putting profits above people.
Over the course of 2020, Crystal researched and interviewed major players on conflicts of interest, the suppression of alternative treatments, and suspicious rehearsals for what was occurring.
When she tried to air her reporting, she found herself instantly smashing into invisible brick walls – the kind of which she had never before seen over the course of her long career. She was dropped, ghosted - and utterly exiled from the spotlit center of her glossy world.
This was a deep, enormous shock for Crystal. Prominent public figures – particularly in the media – imagine that they have become famous for their ability to tell the truth – when they find out that they became famous only because they served the hidden powers of the world – which they quickly discover whenever they accidentally stop serving those powers – they go from prominence to invisibility literally overnight.
People can achieve a lot if they feel irreplaceable – when they find out that they are in fact utterly replaceable – totally unimportant to the deep physics of hidden authority – they take a blow to the ego from which few ever recover.
Crystal tried to feel her way around the sudden invisible walls that stood between her and her public - she had vaguely sensed them rising with the 2020 election - then escalating intensely during the pandemic - but she couldn’t find any purchase, any feedback – anything! People clammed up, they refused to engage – calls to colleagues of 30 years went unanswered – and it all felt like a fever dream of flailing inconsequentiality.
And then – and then, Crystal had gotten sick…
It started with a certain – fatigue. Nothing major, nothing that couldn’t be ascribed to simple aging – except it kept increasing. First her eyes closed a little in midafternoon, then she had to sit down, then she had to lie down, then she had to have a nap – then the nap got longer. Then she had the worst curse of late middle age, which is to sleep badly at night – if at all – and then be exhausted throughout the day.
For decades, Crystal had been suspicious of the entire healthcare industry – the inevitable result of scepticism and study – and she knew well how female complaints were dealt with by impatient male doctors. So she persisted – tests were run, theories were explored, diet and exercise were altered, but nothing seemed to help.
The closest Crystal was able to come to a diagnosis was Gulf War Syndrome – she had spent time in Iraq and Kuwait, following up on the aftereffects of the invastion – but no toxins or viruses could be found in her system. Her life was bleeding away, with no measurable or tangible cause.
The fact that her illness coincided with her loss of professional status was not lost on her, but Crystal tended to crawl to self-protection by saying that her tiredness – no, exhaustion – had led to her ejection from her industry. Highly incentivized memories can be produced by the unconscious seemingly at will, and the cause and effect became at first muddled, and then clear. Her health had failed her, she had made mistakes, and then she had fallen from grace. She was a victim of the patriarchy’s impatience – first with honesty, then with female sensitivity and faltering vitality.
It is certainly true that women’s bodies tend to be more enmeshed in unconscious conflicts than men’s – more prone to failure through misery and contradiction. The infinite wisdom of nature prefers that women outlive men, and in order to achieve that, most men remain blissfully ignorant of internal conflicts until their hearts explode in their chests.
In other words, women may malinger, but they certainly linger.
Aunt Crystal opened her door and almost pulled Rachel through.
Vague smells hit her nose as she entered. One thing Rachel had noticed was that – at some point in life – people just gave up trying to impress others. Teeth faded to yellow, stains remained on clothing, hairy moles remained unmolested – and rooms fell into a slow spiral of decay.
Crystal’s various abodes had always been chaotic, since she fell solidly into the center of the cliché that people with organized thoughts rarely have organized environments.
Like the traditional professor of physics who has an organized universe in his mind – while half buried in a blizzard of random papers in his office – Crystal had a magical ability to keep stories well structured in her thoughts, but could easily spend half a day hunting for a receipt.
Rather than attempt any kind of regular maintenance, Crystal tended to let things slide, then spend a whole weekend organizing everything, labelling everything, and promising to God and man to do better in the future.
Now, however, it had been about six months since her last cleanup, because she had become anxious – and increasingly hopeless – from her fatigue, and contractual obligations. She had also gained weight, which had buried the glamour from her bones, covering it with standard-issue middle-aged pudge.
“Rachel, great to see you, thank you so much for coming!” she cried, marching Rachel to an orange couch and half-pushing her down.
“How are things? How is that gorgeous slab of man-meat you call a boyfriend?” She laughed. “It’s a shame he couldn’t make it – I cleared a whole section by the end table so he could do his sit ups – I assume he doesn’t go more than an hour or two between… Sorry, I’m babbling, how are you?”
“I’m – well,” said Rachel slowly, attempting via contrast to put the brakes on her aunt’s pressured speech.
Crystal sighed. “I’m sure you know that I have asked you here with intent – but there’s no reason we can’t have a nice chit-chat before the hammer comes down! How is your career going?”
Rachel took a deep breath, her heart churning. She looked around the condo, at the slivers of mahogany shelving peeking out from under the mountains of files and books and papers. She could see the green velvet base of some award facing her on a shelf. There was a wooden box of framed pictures by the front door. The vertical Venetian blinds were half open, draping the slightly claustrophobic room in soft vertical bars.
An ancient laptop sat on a desk – as Rachel looked, the screen saver kicked in and covered up the title “Chapter 3” - the screen underneath was empty, a blank white pixel desert.
“My career? God knows, it’s a mess.”
“Well, the best careers always are!” said Crystal encouragingly. “What in particular at the moment?”
“Have you – heard of the men’s rights movement?”
Crystal snorted. “Men’s rights? Ha - I assume that’s pretty much all of recorded history, my dear!”
“Yes, you’d think so,” said Rachel distractedly. “But there is this whole – movement… Men who say they are hard done by in the modern world, and are looking to – get their grievances redressed. That’s my understanding…”
Crystal leaned back and rubbed her face. Rachel was shocked at the deep wrinkles that radiated out from under her aunt’s pressing fingers. “So you’re doing – bless you, the Lord’s work… You’re kicking over rocks and taking pictures of what wriggles underneath!”
Rachel sighed. “Well, yeah, that was one of my original ideas, but Ian – Cassie’s husband – has been swallowed up by this – wriggling thing – and he wants me to take a – softer approach.”
“Uh, uh, uh,” said Crystal, wagging her finger. “Journalists can’t do favours for family, my dear! Unless its the Statin presidential family! I’m kidding… Not really…”
“Well, I’ve been getting the most – savage responses from editors.”
“If the editors aren’t savage, the article will probably be total crap! What did you send them?”
Pulling out her phone, Rachel found her query email and turned it over to her aunt.
Peering through her glasses, Crystal read rapidly.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! Why on earth don’t you run things past me? This is total amateur hour!”
Rachel’s cheeks turned red. “What do you mean?”
“Oh God, it’s right here – right here! You literally say that these men could have legitimate grievances! Saying it’s a great idea to listen to Nazis is not any way to sell an article!”
“Ian is not…”
Crystal interrupted her with the wave of a hand. “That’s your problem, right there – forget about Ian! Family crap just – always clouds your judgement. It’s as clear as day – sorry for the cliché, I’m tired – that you aim to – massage this article into something that appeases your brother-in-law! What editor is going to want to get involved in that? They would have to fight for a month to get you to see the light, and what if – God forbid, and the devil too – some hint of sympathy made it into the published version?” Crystal sighed in exasperation. “Rachel… You know - everyone’s hanging by a thread these days… Riches and fame await the conformists – pain, exclusion and your own personal cardboard box under a rainy bridge await those who poke at the orthodoxy.” She sighed. “Readers used to be curious, back in the day – now they just want their own beliefs reflected back at them in seventh grade language. You want to challenge people? They feel that like a death threat – and react accordingly. I wish – I wish you had asked me beforehand – it’s so frustrating, I can’t get what I need done finished, but I sure as hell can help you not screw up in this kind of way!”
Crystal was almost panting at the end of her speech, her eyes glaring.
Rachel almost shuddered, but suppressed the impulse. “I’m sorry, you’re right…”
Crystal paused, holding her gaze, then nodded slowly. “To hell with Ian. What’s going on with his motives? He trying to sabotage you, dearie?”
Rachel started. “What?”
“Say: excuse me,” said Crystal reflexively. “Oh, he’s quite the corner store patriarch, that one. He got Cassie pregnant again, right?”
Confused, Rachel nodded.
“Yeah, he hates to see a successful, ambitious woman. He just wants to use you for his own ends… But hey, what do I know, I’m just snarling from the sidelines… How are we going to fix this?”
“I’m going to… Go on.”
Crystal snapped the fingers of both hands rapidly. “Good, good, don’t let the bastards keep you down… I can put in a good word or two – not that I’m drowning in call-backs these days, but I still have some clout… You going to rip them a new one, eh?”
“Auntie, do you think..?” Rachel took a deep, sudden breath. She desperately wanted to ask her aunt if it’s possible that feminism had gone too far, that the revolution never knew when to stop – at least, as long as there was money and power in it – but knew that the postmodern, new-found Arctic chill would descend upon their relationship, and cut the flow of any and all comfort.
“Well, we’ll sort it out,” said Crystal abruptly. “You’ve always had great instincts – a great nose, as they used to say back in my day – not that my day is over, but it’s currently on – pause, or hold… And now, to my agenda!”
Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Aunt Crystal – when did you get rid of your cats?”
The older woman blinked. “Oh, it’s been – six weeks, two months?”
“Is that – the litterbox?”
Crystal glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah, but it’s mostly empty. I’ve been tired!” she snapped.
“Yeah, I know…” But – the word died on her lips. “For heaven’s sake, hire a maid or something!”
There was a long pause. Crystal was not offended, but her eyes did sharpen. “Are you any good with money?”
“Why?”
“I’m not,” said Crystal simply. “It would be ridiculous at my age to have no idea of my strengths or weaknesses… I’m a good strong writer, got a great instinct for a story, pretty good at negotiation, I can do Tom Waits songs with eerie accuracy, but I’m bad with money.” She laughed sadly. “Of course, in planning my life, I didn’t expect to be turned into a semi-invalid in my middle age. I thought I had at least another ten years…”
“Don’t you have – insurance?”
“Of course!” snapped Crystal. “But they won’t pay a damn thing until I get some – actual results that – indicate what might be wrong with me. ‘Malingering.’”
“Did they say that?”
“Oh, honey, you don’t get to be a famous reporter without knowing how to read between the lines! To them, I’m just another crazy Karen in a sky box - childless, loveless, causing problems for goodhearted executives in innocent insurance companies…” Crystal scowled. “If I had more energy, I’d eviscerate the bastards in an article, or a lawsuit… But they know they’ve got me over a barrel, that they can just – wait me out… Either I get better, or I die – either way, they won’t have to pay a penny.”
“Are you – financially..?”
“Well, I’m not starving – as you can see!” Crystal’s voice caught suddenly, with exquisite vulnerability. “I can sell this place – not that it’s paid off much, but there would be something… But here’s – here’s what I wanted to ask you about, Rachel. I promise I will help you with your article, help you with your career, I will not leave you hanging…”
“What is it?”
“Help me up.” Rachel helped wrestle Crystal up from the couch. Her arms and shoulders were doughy, sloping – even the buried bones felt soft.
Crystal brushed the touchpad on her notebook, and the screen jumped back to life.
“That’s it,” she said, pointing at the text.
“Yeah, I saw that, coming in – Chapter Three?”
“Chapter Three,” repeated Crystal decisively. “Oooh crap, get me back to the couch – quickly!”
Almost falling, Crystal took three steps and plunged face down onto the faded orange couch. Rachel saw the cloud of dust pump into the air, and shuddered as she imagined breathing in skin particles and cat fecal matter. She took an involuntary step backwards.
“Oh God!” cried Crystal, bursting into tears.
Her heart pumping with grief and horror, Rachel reached forward, awkwardly patting her aunt on the thigh.
“God, everything is so hard!” sobbed Crystal.
She cried softly for a minute or two, then wrenched herself to a sitting position, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve. “Well, self-pity won’t pay the bills!”
“What – do you need?”
Crystal gestured at the computer screen.
“It’s all that goddamned blank space under the title!”
“Is it – your autobiography?”
“Well of course!” snapped Crystal. “You think I’m sitting around pissing off editors with inappropriate articles?” She sobbed again. “God, Rachel, I’m so sorry, I’m just not myself, haven’t been for – ages…”
“No, that’s okay,” murmured Rachel. She suddenly wished she had brought Arlo – but Crystal was right, he did want to go to the gym. He always found Crystal depressing, and God forbid any clouds mar the sunshine of his damn days!
“You want me to – proofread?”
“Oh God, it’s more than that… I’ve under contract, I been looking for it for two days… I’m too – nervous to ask for another copy, that would send up all kinds of red flags… I’m overdue, I’m… I know it - but it’s more an instinct than anything – measurable or practical. I’m afraid to open my emails, Rach – guess you have that too… I got two chapters done – those were pretty easy, in a way, because they’re just about my childhood, and I can get your mother to double-check things – but it’s nothing – objective, nothing that needs notes or cross-references – and everyone’s… Well, there’s not going to be any defamation in there, they were all pretty great, in their way…”
Rachel frowned. “Well, I’ll be happy – I’d be happy to read them, of course!”
“NO!” snapped Crystal loudly. “I don’t need anything for those, I just told you! It’s the next part, about my – that damned marriage, how I got started, what happened after school, when I covered the – near coup on Gorbachev, the Iron Curtain stuff, all the Stasi files in East Germany… God, it’s a monster of a story – so many stories - and I’ve got notes! I knew – at the time – that it was all going to be important, that I was going to write about it later – and now it is later, and I know I have everything, but it’s all over the place… I’ve got some kind of zip drive that Olaf set up for me, and I don’t even know where to plug it in, there’s nothing on the laptop…”
Rachel nodded fearfully.
“You don’t have to look like that!” cried Crystal. “I’m not asking you to move in and rub my feet!” Her voice cracked again. “I couldn’t even take care of my cats, and I’m supposed to – organize my whole life?”
“But – you must know proofreaders, editors… Can’t you afford an assistant?”
“An assistant? Are you really going to humiliate me in this way?”
“I don’t – mean to…”
“Rachel,” said Crystal in a soft, dangerous tone. “I am facing bankruptcy and homelessness – and living on your couch – if I don’t get this book done. I’ve been surviving on the advance, and I’m pretty sure they'll want it back if I don’t give them something pretty damn soon. I know I would…”
“But they – surely they – care that you’re sick…”
“Of course they care,” said Crystal heavily. “But they have their bills to pay, and so do I…” Her eyes narrowed. “And I am very happy to lean on your youthful wisdom and vitality, so you can just tell me what to do, dear Rachel. I am in your hands, putty in your fingers. Save me. I am yours to command.”
“Oh, I don’t…” started Rachel uneasily.
“Hey!” cried Crystal suddenly. “You remember that time that I stayed up with you all weekend, to finish your final essay in that philosophy class? I became quite an expert in logic trees… And how spots on the edge of my vision form when I’m over-caffeinated.”
This was such a transparent ploy that Rachel did not know how to respond.
“Yes.”
Crystal laughed in a brittle manner. “Oh, I’m not trying to ‘pendulum’ you – I’m just trying to remind you that we can have a lot of fun working together, we always did!”
Rachel tried to move her legs, but felt stuck to her chair. “I know…” Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat. “I know we did, I just – need to know – what you need, because I’m not sure I can – provide it…”
“Ha! Most delicately put! Look, I just need – things to be organized. I know Cassie’s a little – better at that stuff than you, but she’s – busy, with – everything. Everyone’s got something…”
Except me, thought Rachel, with a bitterness that surprised her. If I told her I was pregnant, I would be off the hook!
That thought crushed her heart with a desperate sadness.
“I don’t have – any experience with memoirs…”
“But – you have experience with me!” retorted Crystal. “You know me better than anyone!”
I haven’t seen you in months, thought Rachel, and her sadness intensified, mixed with a new rich vein of guilt.
Crystal laughed again. “Here’s the part in the negotiation where I would normally say – very passive aggressively mind you – that I will just find another way… In the hopes that you - you know… But Rach - I am out of options. I have nowhere else to turn.”
What about one of your old boyfriends? thought Rachel with sudden bitterness. But there was no point…
“Listen, I love you – of course I will do my best to help,” she said with great heaviness.
“That is some rather – thin applause,” said Crystal slowly.
“Well – I’m facing a bit of a crisis myself…”
“Haven’t I always taught you that helping others is the best way to – get over your own stuff?”
Rachel frowned. “I’m not sure I remember…”
“Well, it wasn’t explicitly, but it was certainly by example!” snapped Crystal. She leaned her head back against a faded cushion. “Look, I’m… I hate to be rude, but I’m just about all done in. I hope you will help, it’s hard to know what’s going to happen in life. With your vitality – you have all these resources… I’m just – running on empty. I know it’s a big ‘ask’ – not a huge one, but not a tiny one. Talk it over with your pretty boy, that lovely man… If the book does well, I can cut you a slice…”
“Oh no,” said Rachel automatically. “I couldn’t take any…”
“If it does well, what am I going to do, buy more throw pillows?” said Crystal bitterly. “You take the money, buy off some editors.”
“One step at a time…”
“Yeah, yeah… I’ve put a box by the door – just look it over… Listen, I’m really fading, call me later, please forgive me…”
“Of course,” said Rachel. She stood up, leaned over and pressed her lips to her aunt’s cold and clammy forehead. She could almost feel the thoughts scattering under her soft touch.
The elevator ride down seemed to go on forever.
Chapter 9-10: https://freedomain.locals.com/post/3476441/the-present
