Pasta Imperfect (6 page)

“We’ll be making a comfort stop at an Autogrill about seventy kilometers up the road,” Duncan continued. “Their dining facilities are excellent, so we’ll plan to eat dinner there this evening instead of Florence. In the meantime, if anyone’s thirsty, I have bottled water and soft drinks in a cooler up here beside me. On the house. And please, don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your trip more enjoyable.”

“Such a polite young man,” Nana cooed.

The aisle suddenly filled with guests making a mad dash to the front of the bus. Apparently, watching a hotel burn to the ground made people really thirsty. I turned in my seat, spying my mother several seats behind me sitting with Alice Tjarks. “How did you convince Mom to sit with Alice instead of you?” I asked Nana.

“It didn’t take no convincin’. She volunteered. I let it slip that Alice was packin’ the deluxe travel edition a Scrabble. Every letter of the alphabet. Magnetized. It was too big a temptation to resist.”

I shook my head. “You’re bad, Nana. Tell me, were you able to avoid her in St. Peter’s?”

“Barely. I seen her bearin’ down on us, so I grabbed George and pulled him into a confessional. Woulda made my monthly confession while I was waitin’ there, too, but the priest couldn’t understand me.”

Okay, so maybe Nana had a
teensy
problem with double negatives, verb agreement, subordinate clauses, and tense formation. She was still perfectly understandable, wasn’t she? “What couldn’t he understand?” I asked gently.

“English. Turned out to be a Polish confessional.”

I smiled. “How did George feel about being inside a confessional? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a Lutheran.”

“He didn’t seem real impressed, dear. He thought it was a phone booth.”

I heard the loud report of snapping gum beside me and groaned inwardly as I looked up.

“Hi again!” said Keely as she passed. “Remember me? From the basilica? Say, weren’t you the one who missed the bus back at St. Peter’s? Where were you anyway? Seems we waited at that bus terminal for you forever.”

“You waited for me? That was so sweet!” I narrowed my eyes. “What terminal?”

“The underground bus terminal. You know, down the pedestrian walkway and left at the tunnel that intersected it halfway down.”

“There was a tunnel?”

“A real nice one,” said Nana.

My mouth sagged open. “How was I supposed to find a bus that was underground?”

Keely gave me a squinty look. “It might have helped if you’d stuck with the group. Hey, this is my roommate.” She grabbed the arm of a young woman with short spiked hair and a bolt through her nose.

“Amanda Morning,” the girl said, shoving a piece of glossy paper shaped like a flame at each of us. “I’m handing out my bookmark to everyone. It won first prize at the Southwest Regional Romance Lovers Festival.”

I read the print copy aloud. “ ‘
Passion’s Flame.
The sweeping romantic saga of a lovely young woman thrust into a vortex of danger and desire…and the one man who could awaken in her a sweet fire that would not stop burning. On sale soon wherever books are sold.’ ”

“This is the sixth time I’ve won the contest for best bookmark.”

“Six books?” I marveled. “Wow. You must have your own section in Borders.”

“Well, I haven’t actually written anything yet, but I bought a really expensive computer system so I can begin. And Keely’s promised to help me.”

Which was bound to assure her of at least one chapter of award-winning prose. “But shouldn’t it go the other way around?” I quibbled. “You write the book,
then
you design the bookmark? Kinda like, pillage then burn?”

Amanda quirked her mouth to the side and glared at me, her nostrils flaring around the silver bolt in her nose. She looked angry enough to do something really menacing — like sneeze. “I can tell you’re not one of us. You nonwriters just don’t get it. There was a contest! If you want to be a writer, you have to enter contests.”

Nana stared up at her with curiosity. “Do you ever get sinus infections, dear? They must be a real nuisance for you.”

Amanda kept talking. “Saying I’ve won six
consecutive
contests is going to look really impressive on a cover letter to some publisher.”

I didn’t want to appear naive, but I wondered if actually writing the book would appear even more impressive.

Keely elbowed Amanda out of the way and directed her to Duncan’s cooler at the front of the bus. “Publishing’s changed a lot since I won my first contest. It’s not about the manuscript anymore; it’s about who you know. And I’m going to know a lot of people by the end of this trip.” She blew a bubble the size of a grapefruit and sucked it back into her mouth with a pop. “Hey, look who else is in line. Fred!”

She clapped the shoulder of the man standing next to her and swung him around to face us. “Fred published a biography of his cat two years ago through a vanity press, so he’s an honest-to-gosh author, aren’t you, Fred?”

Fred was small and stooped and looked like an advertisement for J. Peterman in his safari shirt and pants. On his head he wore a matching cloth hat with a floppy sunblock brim that he was making no attempt to remove. Either he didn’t want to ruin the look of his ensemble, or he was afraid some ornery ultraviolet ray would eat through the solid steel of the bus’s roof and zap him. Considering all the holes in the ozone layer, I guess you couldn’t be too careful these days.

“Some author,” Fred said in a timid voice. “They told me I was going to make a bundle. They said the demographics indicated that elderly women
love
to read feline biographies. But what I ended up with was a storage shed full of books I can’t distribute and a big fat debit in my checking account. I’ve gotta hand it to the little jeezers. They delivered the books just like they promised, but they didn’t tell me that bookstore people refuse to handle the self-published stuff. You gotta do it yourself. Out of the trunk of your car!”

I suspected that could be pretty dicey, especially if you were stuck having to drive a subcompact. “Were you able to sell any?”

“Four. To my mother. She said they were a huge hit in her assisted living facility. People were clamoring for them in their little library there. But I’m not letting the hype influence me. I’m switching to romances. According to what I’ve read in
Publishers Weekly,
they’re the backbone of the whole industry. That’s where the money is, so that’s where I’m headed.”

“And here’s another one of the gang,” Keely interrupted, shooing Fred along and latching on to the arm of a sun-baked blonde with muscles like Popeye and a complexion that reminded me of dried tobacco. “Brandy Ann Frounfelker. She’s from California. A professional body builder. Can you tell? But she actually wrote a romance and got it published online.”

“I thought the e-publishing phenomenon would take off like gangbusters,” Brandy Ann said in a soft, wonderfully refined voice. “It hasn’t happened though. I’ve been soliciting more traditional publishing houses, but once I tell them I was published electronically, they don’t want to have anything to do with me. It’s as if e-publishing is a dirty word. And let me tell you…” She slowly clenched her hand into a fist that was the size of a car engine. Ropes of muscle bulged beneath her skin. “…it’s starting to piss me off.”

Keely’s face disappeared behind a bubble that grew bigger…and bigger…and —

Brandy Ann turned suddenly and caught the bubble in her fist. “That’s very rude.” She yanked the wad out of Keely’s mouth and crushed it in her hand.

Oh, yeah. I liked this woman.

KREOOOOO! Feedback screeched out over the loudspeaker system at a pitch that could cause eardrums to pop. KREOOOOO! “I —”
kreooooo
“— I hate when that happens,” asserted a voice that wasn’t Duncan’s. “If you would all return to your seats, I have an announcement I’d like to make.”

Keely and Brandy Ann grunted with frustration and headed back to their seats. I boosted myself high enough to see a man in a rose-colored polo shirt with silver hair and a George Hamilton tan standing in the aisle at the front of the bus. Ah, yes. The bigwig Jackie had pointed out in the basilica.

“For those of you who don’t know me, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Philip Blackmore, and I’m the executive vice president and associate publisher of Hightower Books, the company sponsoring this tour. Please accept my apologies for this unfortunate calamity that has befallen us. One never expects disaster to strike while on holiday.”

“He’s never traveled with us before, has he, dear?” whispered Nana.

“I understand the inconvenience of having to travel without any of your belongings,” he continued in a sympathetic tone. “I know this is the kind of event that can ruin a vacation, but I want you to know that Hightower Books is committed to doing everything possible to salvage this tour and make it the most memorable trip of your lifetime. To that end, I’ve been in contact with our company president, who has authorized me to make amends for this catastrophe in a way that is sure to delight all of you who have ever imagined your name in print.”

Nana leaned close to my ear. “That means, he don’t wanna get sued.”

“Drumroll, please,” Blackmore said, grinning at his own cleverness. “Ladies and gentlemen, Hightower Books is proud to announce an opportunity for all aspiring writers on our tour. A contest!”

Squeals from the front. Squeals from the back. There was no denying it. The word “contest” created as much pandemonium among romance writers as the word “embargo” created among Iowa grain farmers.

“To the person who submits the most marketable synopsis of a book-length romantic novel, including the first five pages of a proposed first chapter, we are offering a single book contract for publication of said book,
and
” — he paused for dramatic effect — “a cash advance of ten thousand dollars.”

Screaming. Yelling. Cheering. The woman in the seat in front of me leaped into the aisle and began to boogie.

KREOOOOOO! “I knew you’d be excited,” Blackmore said pleasantly.

“Who’s going to judge the contest?” someone yelled out. “You?”

“I’ll leave the all-important task of judging to a panel of three people, two of whom have devoted more years to the publishing industry than they’d care to admit. Sylvia, would you stand up so people can see you?”

Three seats down from me on the left, a fiftyish woman with puffy features, mousy hair, and a gray jacket that bagged around her like an off - the - rack elephant leg stood up and waved to the passengers. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with the name Sylvia Root,” Blackmore enthused, “founder and president of the acclaimed Sylvia Root Literary Agency. Please observe her nose, because it’s reputed to be the best one in the business for sniffing out best sellers. If Sylvia takes you on, you can be assured of literary stardom. And who knows? The next sensation of the publishing world could be seated right on this very bus.”

Oohs. Aahs. Sporadic clapping.

A nod of Blackmore’s head, and Sylvia slumped back into her seat. “Our second judge is a senior editor at Hightower Books and present editor of both Marla Michaels and Gillian Jones. You probably don’t know him by name, but the publishing industry wouldn’t be the institution it is today without his scrupulous knowledge and talent. A touch of his red pen, and he can turn any writer’s work into a literary masterpiece. Gabriel Fox.”

The man from the basilica with the spit-polished appearance and beard stepped into the aisle close to where Blackmore stood, sketched a bow, then sat back down. From this short second glimpse I caught of him, I judged him to be in his mid-forties with the kind of wiry body that smacked of either good genetics, long-distance running, or the Atkins diet.

“I’ve not appointed our third and final judge,” Blackmore confessed, “but to ensure a fair mix on the panel, I’d like to open the position to someone whose interests are as far removed from the publishing industry as humanly possible. I know we have some tour guests from America’s heartland traveling with us. A group of seniors from Iowa, is that right?”

“You bet!” shouted Dick Teig. Hoots. Whistles. Scattered applause. “The only one of us not old enough to join AARP is Emily!”

“Would any of you be willing to act as the third judge on our panel? I realize you didn’t sign on to the tour to participate in our program, but let’s face it, Midwesterners like you, and Jane Pauley, and —” He stirred the air with his hand, struggling to produce another name. “— and Jesse ‘the body’ Ventura are known for their forthrightness and homespun values, and I need the input of a person whose opinion I can trust to be fair and unbiased. I’m not being overly dramatic when I tell you that your participation could change someone on this bus’s life forever. Do I have any volunteers?”

Hands shot into the air all over the place. The Teigs. The Stolees. Osmond Chelsvig. I scanned the bus.
All
my group was volunteering. Even Nana. Whoa! This was a switch. Normally, they were so preoccupied with being punctual that they devoted most of their vacation time to checking their watches and queuing up at the bus a half a day ahead of time. Philip Blackmore had read them like books. They might have homespun values, but that didn’t mean they were immune to a little well-placed flattery.

“Well, this is wonderfully encouraging,” Philip said, obviously delighted with the number of hands inviting him to
pick me, pick me.
“I didn’t expect so many volunteers. But your willingness creates something of a dilemma for me.”

“No dilemma about it,” insisted Osmond Chelsvig, who slowly unfolded himself from his seat and stepped into the aisle to issue instructions. Osmond was still president of Windsor City’s electoral board despite advancing age, arthritis, double hearing aids, and the fact that he was the only person outside of Massachusetts who’d voted for George McGovern back in ’72. “We gotta be democratic and do this by secret ballot. Listen up now. Remove your name tags from their plastic casings.” He extracted his and held it in the air. “Then maybe that fella back there who’s dressed in the Jungle Jim getup will be good enough to collect them in that hat of his and bring them up to the front of the bus.”