3

1

So here’s my theory: most of the truly great, truly earth shattering realizations in the history of the world have occurred to people while they’re kneeling in front of the toilet. Seriously. Just look at the recent history of my family and do the math: six months ago my little sister Janice called me in hysterics from that very spot, having suffered through both a violent post-breakfast Fruit Loops revolt and a suddenly logical explanation for why she hadn’t had to buy tampons for such a long time.

And now there’s me, cross-legged on the gray marble tiling of the NBC studio’s women’s room, shoved unceremoniously between the wall of the stall and the slick, ultra-modern lines of the toilet, realizing that what I’ve wanted for my entire life has turned into exactly what I’d rather die than go through.

This place is comforting, really, to feel the cool of the stone leeching through my nylons, to just close my eyes and forget about my world and how it is spinning wildly around me.

In fact, if I concentrate really hard I can almost forget that David Letterman is waiting for me.

All it takes is that one thought, heavy with false bravado, and I can feel it begin again—the resonating quiver of horror ripping unstoppably through every inch of me. That’s why I’m here, after all, adding my own sad story to the annals of a thousand years of bathroom revelations.

Oh. My. God. David Letterman is waiting for me. What’s wrong with this world? I’m a writer. I write books. Am I completely socially inept because I spend 90% of any given week in front of a computer, frantically pounding out cosmologies of my own creation, or does it work the other way around? Is writing my easy out of human contact? I can’t say for sure, but all I know is that I’m not supposed to be here; I’m supposed to be toiling in obscurity, damnit! I don’t think that’s too much to ask…what does a girl have to do to be an unappreciated starving artist these days?

Other than not sell 25 bazillion copies of her first book, I mean?

It’s not just David Letterman. Whatever. Before the reality of my situation really sunk in and I had retreated to my current hide-away, I had seen him in the green room, neatly devouring a jelly doughnut (a feat I never suspected possible, always having been one to end up wearing more jelly than I consume). It was the stage, the studio, how big and empty it was, and how Timothy’s every wing-tip-clad step echoed like a hollow heartbeat as he ran me through the dos and don’ts of my first televised interview.

"This will be good practice for Charlie Rose, Gabby. The most important thing to remember is to speak clearly, and to stay relaxed." He had paused in front of the vacant desk of the host, reaching over with a disgusted exhalation of air to straighten the leather blotter and empty "Late Show" cup that had been scattered casually across its surface—leaving them in perfect, precise alignment. Timothy turned to regard me, bathing me in the calculating chill of his gaze.

"Also important, stand up straight." I jerked to attention at his offhand words, feeling the tugging of hysteria beginning to tighten deep in my chest.

Timothy Indigo is the kind of man that people in the publishing industry whisper stories about, their voices shadowed with equal parts awe and terror; the kind of man that inspires blind obedience. Even in me, obviously. And he’s the one I have to thank for this mess, the one who’s entirely too good at his job of promoting my work. Two years ago when I signed the contract for Spellbound, I had been far, far too excited at the prospect of actually being paid to write to notice such an innocuous wordings as "The Author shall perform whatever actions are deemed as necessary by The Publisher to provide sufficient publicity for The Work, in all mediums and formats applicable." But here I am, panicked and trapped like some sort of deeply pathetic animal in a zoo, held hostage by twenty six little, harmless looking words.

A questioning knock sounded on the closed doorway, followed by Timothy’s deceptively soft voice, "Gabby?"

I’m going to throw up.

"God," I found myself murmuring, unconsciously finagling even further into my protective, if not sanitary, sanctuary. "I swear that if you please arrange a little earthquake to get me out of this, or maybe an alien invasion or something, I’ll join the sisterhood. I look wicked hot in black and A Nun’s Story is my favorite movie of all time. If it’s good enough for Audrey Hepburn it’s more than good enough for me! You’re certainly aware the celibacy thing won’t be a problem, the way things have been going lately. Just please don’t make me do this—"

"Gabby, you’re on in ten minutes and you still need makeup." At least here I’m safe. There’s no way a man so uptight as Timothy would even contemplate trespassing into the mystique-filled air of a women’s rest room. I barely even had time to fully articulate this thought to myself when my small haven was filled a resolute squeaking. A portent of doom that I quickly recognized to be the opening of the heavy wooden women’s room door. "And you really can’t afford to skip the makeup."

"Timothy! You’re not supposed to be in here!" Even to me my voice sounded strange, thick and weighty with terror.

"You’re not sitting on the floor in there." His words rang through the still air—both doubtful and disdainful—as his pale, thin face momentarily appeared before me in the gap between floor and stall.

"You are sitting in there. Did you loose a contact lens?" He hazarded vaguely, his perfectly waxed eyebrows raising in exacting unison.

"No."

"Then why?" Timothy seemed at a loss for words, unable to even fathom behavior so unreasonable as to lock oneself in a rest room to avoid obligations.

"I can’t do this." I could barely even hear myself, and as the words leaked faintly out of my mouth, Timothy’s eyes hardened.

"This, Ms. Thackery, is part of your contract with Ellunar Publishing. I’m sure that your hysterics can be held back for another forty minutes, at which point you should feel completely free to descend into madness on your own time."

"Timothy, please?" The begging was getting me nowhere, and he rose with a clipped motion, his face being replaced in my line of vision by his perfectly hanging, pinstriped trousers. The only answer was a tug on my door, at first gentle but escalating in force as he realized that it was thoroughly locked.

"Just how long do you intend to stay in there?"

"I’m thinking of moving in. The rent’s got to be lower than the Westchester County, and frankly the view in here isn’t so different from what I have at my apartment."

"Anything will be a vacation after Monica Lewinsky. Indeed." Timothy ruefully muttered to himself, pausing for an instant, doubtlessly uncertain about the most efficient course of action.

"I’m getting the janitor. And some valium." I’m not entirely sure who the Valium was for—him or me—but as I watched the lower half of his body turn abruptly, I was hoping it was the later.

The next ten minutes were probably the most undignified of my life. If you ever feel the need to really put everything in perspective, I highly recommend a nervous breakdown in a public place. All of a sudden tripping over bridesmaid dresses and directly into wedding cakes doesn’t seem like such a big deal. It minimizes the horror of past traumas, even little faux-pass like accidentally causing a few dozen fender benders while attempting to scribble a line too precious to forget in lipliner on yesterday’s newspaper while going 75 miles per hour on I95.

It took the janitor all of two minutes to pop my stall’s slide lock. And due to every high schooler’s favorite physics colliery—gossip travels at twice the speed of light—it must have taken under one minute for everyone in the studio to hear about the nutcase in the john. They came to gawk. Of course. I think at one point they were selling concessions.

Each improbable escalation of the ridiculousness of my situation saw the grip of panic holding me tighter. I was covered in clammy sweat, cold and hot all at once, and so dizzy I wasn’t sure that I could stand. But that by no means was an obstacle to Timothy, who quickly pushed his way into the stall and kneeled in front of me.

"Get up. Put some water on your face, take a deep breath. Everything will be fine," he coaxed, transparently putting his faith in tactic #2048 in the handbook of interpersonal relationships: you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

"You don’t understand. I can’t go out there." I hissed, feeling naked and exposed, a just-opened clam at a sea food restaurant. Through the now opened stall door I could see a small cluster of curious onlookers in the hall, held at bay by several security guards. Their indistinct forms blurred as my eyes began to pool with helpless tears, but not before I noticed one man in particular. He was tall and strong looking, and the expression written across his face hinted that he was just as nauseated by the scene as I felt. It’s definitely stupid, but I can’t hide from the fact that all I wanted to do was crawl into the shelter of this stranger’s arms as Timothy leaned menacingly towards me. It was fortifying that as our eyes met, Prince Charming in wrinkled khakis seemed to be wishing for much the same thing.

The guards were there for a reason, I realized as Prince Charming took one huge step into the women’s restroom, his lips tightening and his hands clenching, gaze frozen on my tormenter.

"No, Gabby. You don’t understand. This is part of your contract and you have to do this. If you don’t mind spending the rest of your life writing for the Times-Argus in East Middle of Nowhere, feel free to continue this behavior. But if you ever want to publish a book with a major house again, you’d better get to your feet." Timothy was careful to keep his tone quiet and measured his words an undecipherable blur to the spectators, but I could feel the full brunt of his hostility and annoyance rattling through every breath.

I think my publicist was Hitler in a past life.

He’s surprisingly strong, I found myself thinking with curious detachment as Timothy’s arms slithered around my shoulders, jerking me to my feet. Every inch of me was constricting blindly as I was tugged out of the bathroom and into the hallway, the overheated, smelly scent of too much panic and too many bodies whirling all around me.

Janice would have predicted what happened next from the very beginning of the encounter. I, Gabriella Thackery, built course and study like a peasant farmer, have a tendency to faint. It’s never a pleasant thing at all, and completely repulsive in its indictativeness of my incompetence to handle life, but for the first time I found myself feeling grateful as my vision began to blur, perception detaching from reality and swirling dizzily like bubbles in champagne.

When I came to, I was flying. Or, as I realized while slowly took in my surroundings through half-shut eyes, I was being carried. My first thought was that it was Timothy, but instantly I amended that, realizing that no matter how strong he had seemed while dragging me to my embarrassing demise, he could never pull this off.

My savior (captor?) was holding me tight against his chest and walking briskly and uncontestedly out of the NBC studios. When I finally fought off the post-fainting tremors enough to pull myself away and catch a glimpse of the person who was carrying me, words slipped from my mouth without thought: "What are you doing?"

"Saving you," said the longhaired man.

2

Now hold up just one blessed minute. I’m a woman of the twentieth century! I pump my own gas; I pay my own way on dates (rare though they are). I kill spiders and move furniture all by myself. I don’t need saving, and never will.

"Oh. Okay." Did I say that?

The NBC studios looked entirely different from this position: for one thing, people actually noticed that you were alive. Earlier in the afternoon when Timothy and I had arrived, we had walked through this same glossy-clean lobby, past huge pictures of past and present NBC stars twenty times life size, and we had been completely ignored. Not a single person had altered their frantic pace for us; not a single person had nodded a hello or just in general acknowledged that he or she was not the only human being in the building.

But now, well, this was traveling in style. As Prince Charming progressed through the NBC offices—somehow maintaining a self-assured gait even while carrying a woman who hadn’t seen the lower side of 140 on the scale since junior high—the mini-dramas that constructed day-to-day life in the television business came crashing to a halt. People stopped; people stared. Receptionists hung up in the middle of conversations and half stood in their chairs to get a better view. Men with briefcases and studiously blank expressions plastered on their faces froze on their feet, only moving if they found themselves blocking the unerring pathway of my chariot.

The further and further we traveled from the scene of my supreme humiliation, the more I felt myself relaxing, terror tightened muscles smoothing and breathing returning to a non-250 yard dash state. And the calmer I became, the more I noticed about Prince Charming. P.C. smelled amazing, for one, and his chest and arms were the perfect combination of sinewy strength and softness. His hair was jaw-droppingly long, hanging in smooth golden waves that I kept inhaling with every breath. Maybe that’s why people were gaping so: we probably looked like the cover of a particular breed of lower quality romance novels, what with his flowing mane and my…well...my 18^th century peasant’s body.

Outside sullen, dingy gray snowflakes were gliding in slow motion from the sky, finding their way to the slick black pavement where they quickly fizzled out of existence on the still sun-warmed sidewalk. "Can you stand?"

His words took several seconds to filter their way through my racing thoughts, and meantime he jostlingly shifted his grip, one hand finding its way innocently (or so one supposed) to my bottom.

"Hey, watch your hands, buddy!" Wow. I’ve said a sum total of eleven words in front of this man and they’ve ranged from pathetic to uncertain and now right to bitchy. P.C. was probably wishing that his gentlemanly urges had allowed him to leave sleeping swooners lie as he slipped me out of his grip and left me to my own wavering devices.

"Sorry." Now, here, away from the prying eyes in the NBC offices, he let the strain of carrying me show in his breath and posture.

Even leaning forward, hands on knees and panting delicately, he remained an anonymous traffic blockage in the flow of New York City pedestrians. The people flowing by at break-neck speed, hustling and bustling and whatever quaint city adverbs you’d like to insert, could be phased by nothing. "If you laid off the hot fudge this whole process would have been much, much simpler."

"What?" There was no way he said that, no way that my knight in shining armor had just commented on my oft-lamented excess weight.

"You heard me." I watched him as he tentatively stretched his apparently oh-so-traumatized arms, grunting with displeasure. I contemplated wailing him one. Such an action would certainly have made me feel a lot better about accomplishing something in my day, anyway. "Now what?"

"Huh?" Right from bitchy to inarticulate. I’m really breaking out all the stops to charm this fellow.

"What are you going to do? You can’t go back in there, not without dying a slow, painful—yet certainly neat—death at the hands of Timothy Indigo. Where are you staying?" P.C. had finally caught his breath as straightened up, standing alarmingly close in an attempt to be heard over the dull roar of the hectic street.

Now that was the curious thing, really. I hadn’t thought any more than ten minutes ahead at any given time this afternoon, seeing the future-ending horizon hovering indeterminately around the time of my stage call. "Ellunar put me up at a hotel for the night," I reasoned slowly. "I left my stuff there. I should go get it, and then I want out of this city."

"Do you know how to get to where you’re staying? There’s a subway station a block up."

"Yeah, I can get to the hotel." Times like these it’s all too clear why I never got to be Mary in the Christmas plays. Although, now that I think about it, my delivery of such gems as "Look! It’s the three wise men!" at eight years old was easily head and shoulders above the play-acting that I just pulled off for my random benefactor.

He looked at me for a moment, begrudging comprehension tainting his caramel eyes dark. "You don’t know where it is, do you?"

"I do. Mostly. It was near this one really tall building."

Incredulous: "You’re in New York City. Every building is a tall building."

"It was…taller than most?" Wow! No wonder I’ve made millions of dollars in royalties over the past year. I’ve got a real way with words.

Prince Charming regarded me for a moment, undergoing a moral battle almost cartoon-like in its precision. On one side we had a tiny, shaggy haired P.C.—complete with toga, robe, and harp—demanding that he treat the stray well. Help her find her hotel, send her home with an "I (heart) New York" T-shirt and a smile. He seemed to be finding the pitchfork-and-black-leather side more likable, though, and as I watched "Prince Charming" began to sidle ever so slightly away.

"I can probably find my way. There can’t be that many hotels in the city, and I’d definitely recognize it on sight." Not for the first time in my life, I silently cursed my inner Ms. reader. I need help. But not enough to beg.

"Come on." P.C. grunted in a very un-charming manner, shrugging his lion’s mane over his shoulders and hitching up his baggy pants.

***

Two subway stops and much exasperated sighing later, we arrived at what had to be P.C.’s intended destination. I could tell because he darted off the subway car as soon as the doors began to slide reluctantly open, leaving me to force my way, ala salmon upstream, through an oncoming wall of impatient bodies.

At least there weren’t any bears.

The ghost of my mother’s voice from a hundred childhood visits to Chicago echoed through my head while we ascended from the subway platform: "don’t touch anything and don’t make eye contact. You don’t know where these people have been."

Her assertion wouldn’t have been technically correct, though. It was blatantly obvious where the milling masses been: the local piercing parlor.

Prince Charming didn’t slow his stride even as he nodded convivially at several passing people, instead merely raising his eyebrows and spreading his hands open before him the internationally-recognized body language for "I picked up a prostitute downtown. Don’t tell me wife."

Or at least that’s what I imagined his gesture to be as I skidded along at a trot several steps behind his comfortingly beefy form.

It was an arty neighborhood, I was sure. Soho. TriBeca. Where ever the trust fund babies are spending their denouncing-fame-and-daddy’s-limo phases these days, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Cutesy little stores at street level boasted fresh bread that made my stomach suddenly file growling protest, and palm readers and used bookstores seemed to form the economic basis of the area.

"We’ll hit the phonebook and make some calls. I’m hoping you remember what name you registered under, at least?" I had missed P.C. veering off our previously-arrow straight path, and his voice floated down to me from several steps up on a plain, gray stone stoop.

"Of course. I had a nervous breakdown, not a daytime TV bout of amnesia." Smart ass.

"Smart ass." He laughed a little as he knocked at smoked the plate glass doorway of the building, obviously fighting to retain his cool detachment from my plight. "A couple of more books, a few more Letterman appearances, and the name you register under won’t be so easy to remember. My favorite was Pablo Neruda. Go figure, but twelve-year-old girls really just ignore poets on hotel guestbooks. Even dead ones."

"And this word, this paper the thousand hands of a single hand have written on, does not remain inside you, it is no good for dreaming." An adolescence with little better to do than memorize love poetry is a beautiful thing, I’ve always thought.

"Huh?" Trust me to get the fixer-upper Prince Charming.

"It’s a Neruda sonnet." I’m blushing. Am I blushing? I’m blushing.

"I just got the name from one of my brother’s books. It was pink."

Affirming my credit card-beatnik theory about the neighborhood, the door we were huddled in front of was thrown open by a small gray-haired man in a perfectly pressed black uniform, complete with a dopey little hat I would have sworn at this time yesterday to have gone out of style before Breakfast at Tiffany’s hit the theaters.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Hanson." Wagging his eyebrows and inspecting me none-to-subtly, the man flashed a toothy grin. "Is this the young woman I’ve been hearing so much about?"

"No. This is—" P.C. watched me for a second, apparently needing the pause to pick from a well-established book of fictions ready-made for the nosy amongst us. "Gabby, a friend of my sister."

"We’re all so proud of Ms. Jessica. I was the subject of her first profile article, you know. She got an A." The man boasted, half to himself. It didn’t even slow his words when P.C. grabbed my elbow in a leaden fist and dragged me to a nearby bank of elevators.

"See you later, Charlie!" False, hurried cheer dripped from Prince Charming’s voice as he made his desire not to talk more than clear.

"A friend of your sister? Does the asylum not allow you to bring little friends up to play?" I found myself murmuring, half amused and half annoyed. Must be that he was afraid word of the ravishing beauty he was spending time with would find its way to some significant other.

Through clenched teeth: "Charlie’s worked here for a lot of years. And I don’t trust him as far as I can throw this building."

"What does any of it matter?" I asked, stepping back from a suddenly alarming P.C. Was he going to chop me to bits and hide my decomposing body behind the drywall of some penthouse apartment?

"I just don’t need any press about this. Can you imagine? ‘Zachary Hanson kidnaps world-renowned author. Story at eleven.’"

Right. The hair. The sympathetic eyes. The drop dead beauty. Prince Charming: Zachary Hanson, cartoonist and former child star. Brother of one of the most successful producers in the music business. Brother of a New York State Representative. Of freaking course.

Sweet Jesus, I’m in trouble.

3

The apartment where our voyage came to an end wasn’t what I expected at all, based on my hastily conceived notions of Zachary Hanson, nee Prince Charming. It was huge and airy, all white washed walls and honey golden hardwood floors. Every available surface was filled with things—girlie things like Chinese fans folded from paper so delicate and thin it was possible to see the wood grain of the tables beneath them. Masculine things like sports trophies and—hanging from bright yellow cording above the unused looking fireplace—a brightly polished musket so ancient looking I was sure it had to have been involved in romantically nefarious deeds from one end of the country to the other.

The decorating style, call it Early American Junkyard, would have been so wrong in many hands. (Mine, for example.) The black velvet paintings of sunflowers and stars, the collection of incense burners, the fake zebra-skin rug covering half of the living room floor, might added up to be the trashiest décor in the world. Well, since that episode of Pamela Anderson Lee on MTV’s Cribs, anyway. But it all worked out. Prince Charming was obviously Martha Stewart in disguise.

Leading me through room after room fairly bursting with fascinating randomness, P.C. didn’t seem to notice a thing. He strode blindly, steps wide and self-assured, not quite driven enough to be speedy, not quite slow enough to be a comfortable match for me.

"I know he’s got a phonebook around here somewhere. Even Taylor must get takeout…" Zachary mused, coming to a halt in the center of a light paneled kitchen that would have caused fits of ecstasy in whatever sort of person does the set for that particular brand of romantic comedy that relies more on interior decoration than script.

"Nice place." Was that a Warhol print hanging over the sink?

Fumbling through shelves that lined the entirety of one peach-painted wall, P.C. paused long enough to cast his gaze around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. "This is my brother Taylor’s apartment. He’s not gay. Just nests like he is."

"Right. I bet he was the one with the pink poem book, too." I eyed a very cushy looking pair of stools at the edge of the room, doing my best to send subtle "invite me to sit down" vibes. Soon I’d be upping my swooning-to-a-dramatic-heap-on-the-floor count for the day, what with the dizziness left behind in place of my rapidly depleting adrenaline.

"God no. That was my other brother. The perpetually lovesick one. The one that would sooner die than live in the city, even though he’s supposed to be representing the people who do in like Congress."

"I’m going to sit down, if that’s okay?"

Finally pausing in his phone book quest, P.C. looked at me with the same cool curiosity with which he had so recently regarded the room at large. Everything about him began to soften, though, as I found myself slumping limply onto one of the stools. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah. I really am. After all, it was just a career. Not such a big deal." Maybe I was the only one who heard the rapidly approaching crescendo of hysteria in my voice?

"The living room is through that door." The muscles of his chest rippled like the ocean beneath his wrinkled white button down. As soon as I thought such a thing, I couldn’t decide what made me hate myself more: noticing in the first place, or mentally comparing the sinewy wave to the ocean. Even Harlequin wouldn’t take that description, Gabby.

"The couch is really comfortable," he continued, "and I’m an experienced enough couch-surfer to know of which I speak. I’ll be in as soon as I find the phone book so we can start the process of hotel elimination."

***

P.C. was right. The couch was insanely wonderful, a cloudy puff of cream upolstrey that seemed to swallow me up as I threw myself facedown onto it, silently praying for death. It would come soon enough; Timothy was probably planting a pipe bomb in my apartment.

The warm, late afternoon sunlight that seeped through the big picture windows of the living room felt sinfully nice on my skin, and before long I could feel myself slipping toward sleep.

Just as my eyes flowed shut for a nice little cat nap, Prince Charming’s voice cut through my pleasant haze: "If you drool on that God-only-knows-how-expensive couch, Taylor will kill us both and make slip covers out of our tanned hides."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you’re not much good at this night-in-shining-armor thing?" I stayed where I was, just turning my head to the side enough to stick my tongue out at him.

"Go figure, but yes. Several people, even, which is why I don’t even bother doing much saving of princesses. Just swooning authoresses of my niece and nephews’ favorite books." Zachary sat on the coffee table in front of me, leaning forward and peering at the Russian-novel-thick New York City phonebook that he rested on his knees.

"Where you at Letterman with them?"

"Contrary to popular opinion these days, the world doesn’t revolve around you. I was at Letterman to talk to Mark Ovitz, one of the producers. We’re working on getting my cartoons into prime time."

"Good to know that one of us still has a career." My eyes were closed, so I didn’t have time to prepare for the soft touch of P.C.’s hand on my lower back. He rubbed absent-mindedly, flipping through the yellow pages and setting a steady, slow rhythm that my heartbeat quickly calmed to match.

"If I read off some names, you’ll be able to identify your hotel?"

"If you don’t take your hands off me, I won’t be able to identify my name in about four seconds." I said to myself. Thank God.

Taking my silence for embarrassment, Charming kept talking. "Don’t even worry about this. I remember what it was like to tour—I spent months of my teenage years not even knowing what city I was in, let alone being able to name the hotel I was staying at."

"Bet you never locked yourself into a bathroom to avoid doing something you couldn’t face."

"You’d loose that bet. A lot."

4

Nestled on the dreamy-soft couch that was far too cool for any straight man to own, I listlessly tracked Prince Charming’s progress through the impossibly thick hotel section of the yellow pages.

"No…T—H—A—C—K—E—R—Y!" He was screaming into the handset, as if there was a possibility that the universal language of Loud might succeed where our sorely limited little English dialect had failed.

All I could think about was getting my bag, getting my credit card, and getting the hell out of dodge. Maybe not even in that order. There’s no way I’m ever living this whole mess down, short of changing my name and moving to some obscure tropical island where strawberry daiquiris flow like water. And with each passing second, this sounds more and more like a sacrifice I’d be willing to make.

"She is? You do?" Score!

"Oh. Was?" My enthusiastic mental touchdown dance came to a crashing halt with Prince Charming’s uncertain inquiry.

"This is not happening to me." I moaned, watching the perplexed twist of P.C.’s face as he shifted to cradle the phone on his shoulder, pantomiming a request for a writing utensil. Or maybe for a psychiatric evaluation. I can’t really be sure. "There’s no way I did anything in a past life bad enough to deserve this. I can’t even be Hitler reincarnated—Ellunar’s head publicist beat me to it!"

Covering the handset with one hand, Zachary rolled his frustration-deepened brown eyes. "Mellordrama never helped anybody, Gabby."

"Yes it totally did. Me. Right now, for example, notice how I’m not throwing myself out that window. Melodrama in action."

"There should be a pen in that drawer over there," from his position on the coffee table, P.C. gestured at the smallest and daintiest of the profusion of end tables that littered the designed-to-death room.

Following his impatient instructions, I finally managed to excavate a pen from its position buried beneath a much-dog-eared stack of Billboard magazines.

"He made a bellhop cry?" Hearing only half of this conversation was a painful thing, but I’m pretty sure hearing the whole thing would have been decidedly worse. "Right. Thanks."

Hanging up with an exasperated sigh, P.C. couldn’t seem to quite bring himself to meet my eyes.

"Timothy Indigo checked you out of your room half an hour ago. He took your stuff and left a phone number where he can be reached."

"And he made a bellhop cry?" I inserted numbly.

"It seems so."

"Do you know of anyone who forges passports? I always thought I looked like a Rachel, you know." Quiet desperation be damned.

"If you don’t want to call him, I’ll give you the money to get home. It’s the least I can do, because this entire thing is my fault." P.C. is cute when he’s guilty, I decided to myself as he shuffled his beat-up docs across the hardwood floor, apparently absorbed by the activity. The last tendrils of sullen New York City daylight—watery yellow like the snow you’re not supposed to eat—were steaming in the plate glass window that constituted the western wall of the living room, seeming to hover around him and cast a saintly gold glimmer across his unkempt hair.

"The longer I put it off, the more likely it is that I’ll actually find someone who really does forge passports. And then I’d never call him."

P.C. finally tore his attention away from his shoes, resting his sympathetic gaze on me a heartbeat longer than strictly necessary, comforting in its tentative weight. "There’s a phone in the kitchen. If you want some privacy."

I’ve always maintained a small mental list of things that will never happen to me, pretty much the standard stuff: the cover of the swimsuit issue; Publisher’s Clearing House Prize Patrol; True love. You know the drill. Prince Charming turned on the TV as I made my way out of the room, inadvertently reducing the grand total of said list by one.

"He just picked her up like she was a toy! And if you’ve seen pictures of her, she’s no Twiggy, either." Gushed the television, a hysterical voice-over of Springer caliber. Before I even turned around, I knew what I’d see on the screen. My bottom. Big as life. Bigger, I amended, realizing that Zachary’s brother had gone all out with his entertainment system: In stereo, crisp as day, there was 42 inches of my ass.

"Damn." P.C. looked torn between turning off the television and figuring out how to run the VCR as the camera angle changed, panning upward to focus on his broad shoulders, flowing hair, and expression of sharp-lipped intensity. He looked like John Wayne, protecting the virtue of some vapor-suffering grandmother.

And I looked like some vapor-suffering grandmother.

The cameraperson, a curse on seven generations of their family, must have been taping in the green room and caught the very end of the drama. The film, jerking wildly, followed us through several dim corridors in the NBC studio and into the main lobby, skittering from the spectacle of my swooning form in P.C’s arms to the stunned expressions of the people whose paths we crossed.

"In this footage, taken by an E! correspondent this afternoon, it’s plain to see that Thackery is unconscious." A plastic-y perfect red-haired anchor with muscle tone to make Barbie jealous was suddenly splashed across the screen, her expression an unwavering imitation of Walter Cronkite announcing "the president is dead."

"What we don’t know is the course of events led to this state—an injury? Some sort of accident? And is Hanson, long known for his unpredictable behavior, somehow responsible?

"Thackery, author of BeSpelled, a young adult fiction title that has been through 35 press runs and sold over 10 million copies in the past year, is scheduled to appear on David Letterman tonight.

No involved parties have been available for comment, but stay tuned to E! for further updates."

"So." I began conversationally, "do you suppose the fall from up here would kill or just maim?"