Chapter Text
Carol stares at herself in the bathroom mirror and wonders why she's even bothering. She can't pluck out undesirable parts of her personality like she can stray eyebrow hairs, and nothing she does with her face is ever going to cover up the fact she is herself.
She examines her right eyebrow and carefully, judiciously removes a hair that was hanging out maybe two millimeters above the rest.
It's just a movie. She's not expected to talk for the duration, which means that there are two hours she can spend with Helen without causing her to realize what a mistake she's making.
But then there will be the car rides to contend with… What do normal people talk about, anyway? Clothes? Too basic. Current events? Right out. She doesn't follow them, but senses Helen might. Cheese? Possibly weird.
Her roommate bangs on the bathroom door, again.
"Carol, writer dearest, do you know what the words I, have, to, and pee mean when put in that order?"
"No. Is it something like I don't care, shut up and go away?"
"I've had the patience of a saint—I'm thinking Sebastian—but even martyrdom has its limits. You have ninety seconds before I avail myself of the kitchen sink."
"You're not tall enough for that, Roy," she says, though she doesn't know if it's true. She supposes he could stand on the counter if nothing else.
"I'll make it arc if I have to," he replies. "If you don't want to risk me missing, you're going to have to give it up."
She drops the tweezers and abandons the bathroom to check her work e-mail, which is mostly full of messages about a book tour they really think she's going to do for the second Wycaro. She ignores them in favor of one from Helen.
💕
[email protected] to [email protected]:
I got word they're designing the cover this week. Regarding the title, how do you feel that "Dawncurse" fits the plot of the book, which does not have a curse or a plot-relevant dawn? Were there alternatives you considered?
[email protected] to [email protected]:
REally? You people have had this manuscript since September and you just decide all of a sudden the title's not good enough?
[email protected] to [email protected]:
Nobody said anything about good enough or not good enough. I just want you to brainstorm alternate ideas and get them over to me by 5.
[email protected] to [email protected]:
That's not how it works.
[email protected] to [email protected]:
It's how I do. See you at 7.
💕
Never mind all that date stuff; Carol is going to lure Helen to an isolated parking garage and shove her off the uppermost level. She'll spend the entire way down critiquing the quality of the trap and the trajectory of the push, but at least that will only last a few seconds and then Carol won't ever have to hear from her ever again.
Once she's done seething, she does come up with a list of ten titles, the dumbest shit she can think of off the top of her head, and decides she won't send it until 4:58. In the meantime, she picks at a draft of Wycaro 3. There's no good place to start, and she doesn't have a damn clue what the plot will be about, but writing every day is a rule she's set for herself—even if she does go back and delete it all the next day.
She goes for the notepad she uses to hold her ideas. Penelope?! she scribbles.
Honestly, she doesn't know how that will work. Lucasia is too martial-minded to be pressured the same way Penelope was. Maybe she can work something in with Peregrina… Or maybe she can just drop it entirely. Helen shot down her last Odyssey reference. She crosses out the word and returns to her laptop.
The afternoon eventually inches by, she sends the e-mail just before five, and then she spends the next two hours agonizing over her makeup and clothes. Not that Helen deserves the effort.
No. She does. And that's the problem, isn't it? No effort she puts in is going to be good enough because no amount of effort is going to make her not Carol Sturka. She digs into the freezer, where she keeps her vodka, and tries to calm her nerves. Then she goes and changes from a black sweater into a tan blouse, paces around the living room where Roy is trying to watch a baseball game, and returns to her bedroom to put the sweater back on.
"Stop it," Roy says the third time she comes into the living room. "You're going to see Hot Fuzz, not the opera. It's a comedy. You'll like it."
"Don't spoil it."
"Wouldn't dream of it. Carol, stop. Do not go back to your bedroom and do not change again. Carol—Carol!"
Carol goes back to her room and changes again. She changes her mind again and just as she's going for a blue buttondown, the doorbell rings and she's out of time and then she's in Helen's car and all she can think of is the e-mail about how her title sucks.
"I knew you'd be a pill about this," Helen says after a few minutes.
Carol doesn't say anything.
"I mean, you're a pill about everything. So it was predictable. But, you know, I had to gird my loins before I sent that e-mail in particular."
"I like the title the way it is. It sounds right."
"Kill your darlings."
"If I killed my darlings, I'd also kill your boss's sales."
"Didn't you already kill off Raban? In a way, I mean."
Carol turns her head and stares out the window. She's counted eight red cars before Helen speaks again, saying she likes Mistdream of Wycaro for the title.
"You got my e-mail," Carol says. She had meant for Helen to be gone by the time it arrived.
"Yeah. Did you think I wouldn't, or did you not want me to?"
Carol dodges the question. "You told me to send it before five. I sent it before five."
"I usually stay past five. Waiting an extra forty or fifty minutes helps with avoiding traffic. Also my boss leaves at five and I get so much done when he's not around."
Carol could continue the conversation and say she's never spent a minute longer at a job than was strictly mandatory, but she reverts to silence.
Helen looks over at her, her expression inscrutable. "You're not going to be able to separate work from everything else, are you?"
"The light's green," Carol says.
Someone behind them honks, emphasizing the point, and Helen proceeds forward.
💕
helenahandbasket: Did you like the movie?
lunaeviridi72: Yeah.
lunaeviridi72: Grew up around people like that.
helenahandbasket: Rabid HOA?
lunaeviridi72: People who really would rather commit murder than let someone disrupt their perfect facade.
helenahandbasket: Oh? Where'd you grow up?
This is something Carol doesn't want to address. She doesn't ever want to remember she didn't just emerge from college fully formed, and she doesn't think that Helen will be impressed by anything she has to say about her childhood. But Helen has been gently probing at her background for months, and every time Carol rebuffs her, she just regroups and tries again later.
helenahandbasket: You still there?
lunaeviridi72: Virginia.
helenahandbasket. Never been. What's it like?
lunaeviridi72: Soulless. Sterile.
helenahandbasket: So… DC area?
lunaeviridi72: Got it in one.
lunaeviridi72: Everyone was a bureaucrat or a military contractor or a lobbyist.
lunaeviridi72: The country club was overrun by schmoozers. Used to drive my dad nuts.
helenahandbasket: Country club? Is that where you learned to golf?
lunaeviridi72: Yeah.
lunaeviridi72: My dad taught me.
helenahandbasket: What's he do? Government, contractor, or lobbyist?
lunaeviridi72: He's dead.
helenahandbasket: Sorry to hear that.
lunaeviridi72: Don't be. He got away from my mother.
lunaeviridi72: That was fucke dup
lunaeviridi72: I shouldn't have said that.
lunaeviridi72: Sorry.
helenahandbasket: I laughed.
lunaeviridi72: Weirdo.
lunaeviridi72: Where are you from?
helenahandbasket: Denver. Or Golden, which is the same thing.
lunaeviridi72: I drove through Denver on my way to Alberquerque. It was pretty.
lunaeviridi72: Jesus Christ. That was in 1990.
helenahandbasket: When you were eighteen? Was this for school?
lunaeviridi72: Yeah.
helenahandbasket: Lobo?
lunaeviridi72: Yeah.
helenahandbasket: Same, but for grad school.
lunaeviridi72: I know. You said. Undergrad?
helenahandbasket: CU Boulder. Didn't want to get too far from home.
Carol had been the opposite. Her mom had wanted—expected—her to stay and attend one of the name brand colleges in the area. Georgetown, George Mason, George Washington, not American, good God Almighty, Carol, why would you even bring that up? When things had gone south, she'd applied to a bunch of public schools on the other side of the country in secret and left for UNM the week she both turned eighteen and graduated high school.
helenahandbasket: What brought you out west?
lunaeviridi72: Thought moving would be less drastic than dying.
helenahandbasket: You've mentioned you hike. Do you like it?
lunaeviridi72: Sometimes.
helenahandbasket: I'd like to take you hiking up around where I grew up.
helenahandbasket: It's gorgeous. I miss it.
helenahandbasket: Not that the Sandias aren't great too.
helenahandbasket: And you could meet my parents and siblings!
lunaeviridi72: Siblings plural?
helenahandbasket: Two older brothers, two little sisters.
lunaeviridi72: I would have guessed you were the oldest.
helenahandbasket: Because I'm bossy?
lunaeviridi72: Because you're
lunaeviridi72: Yeah. That.
helenahandbasket: You are so obvious.
lunaeviridi72: I am not.
helenahandbasket: You are and it's because you never engaged in sibling warfare, which would have taught you to be wily and unpredictable.
lunaeviridi72: How do you know I don't have siblings?
helenahandbasket: Am I wrong?
lunaeviridi72: No, but I don't see how you could have known.
helenahandbasket: Never met a more aggressively only child in my life.
lunaeviridi72: wtf
lunaeviridi72: I'm going to bed
helenahandbasket: See what I mean?
helenahandbasket: Helloooooooo?
helenahandbasket: You're only proving my point you sulky sulker
helenahandbasket: OMG Carol why