The office is surprisingly quiet when I enter, but Angie pops to her feet, red up to her ears the second I enter and asks quickly.

“Ms. Walker, Erika, I mean, Ms. Meng showed up a little early. That doesn’t mean that the meeting starts early, right? I told her she could wait in the lobby because I didn’t know…”

“It will still start at the usual time,” I head straight to the coffee machine and sort through the available brews for anything simple. Why is everything vanilla or hazelnut flavored? I just need coffee.

“Okay, because I wasn’t sure about the protocol…,” she continues, and I try to look reassuring.

Should I put my hand on her shoulder or something? 

“Most people show up at least a little bit early. You can call her up now. Mrs. Green says we’ll have to meet out here because Avis is working with someone in the meeting room.”

Angie hurries off, and I find the coffee I was looking for and wait for it to brew as I lean back against the wall beside the poster from last year's “Sugar Coated Days” summer showcase, beside the year before last’s poster, which we also haven’t taken down yet.

We need more space. 

Scarlet looks up and gives me a thumbs-up sign, and I smile slightly back at her, wishing we didn’t always have to have these author meetings in the main area, disturbing the other editors or being disturbed, respectively, albeit accidentally.

Angie returns in five minutes with a woman who could be her double, accepting a high ponytail and a slightly more uncomfortable smile that appears on the author’s face the second she lays eyes on me.

I should have worn lower heels.

I must look like a giantess to this Lilliputian. 

Angie arranges our seats at the furthest possible end of the room, away from where the others are working, and slides one of the lunch tables into the space in between. Erika and I both watch this process without offering to help for whatever reason. Or rather, I watch, I can tell Erika is watching me.

“Sit here Ms. Meng,” Angie motions, trying with everything in her to keep from exploding with excitement as her sister sits stiffly in the seat offered. “Ms. Walker.”

I accept the chair Angie offers me, and open my laptop on the table which has the draft of Erika’s novel pulled up on the screen. 

“So, tell me about this story Ms. Meng,” I say with my business smile. 

That’s Book Bug standard. When Avis was training me, she told me to let every author describe their vision before we start talking business to help them feel more ‘at home.’ Avis is a genius, I know, because every author seems more than willing to go on indefinitely about every little detail of their stories. Erika’s face lights up brilliantly at that one sentence, and I can see her posture change as she fidgets with her pants legs between her fingertips.

“Well, this novel is a modern spin on the myth of Pygmalion. You’ve probably heard of it…” 

I don’t say yes or no, but raise my eyebrows to tell her to explain, which she does, without needing much prodding.

“It’s about a sculptor who makes a beautiful statue named Galatea, and he falls madly in love with her, but she obviously can’t love him back, because she’s a statue. In my story, the statue comes to life, and the sculptor tries a bunch of things to try to woo her and get her to have feelings for him too, but he can’t get her to fall in love with him. The thing is, though she’s now alive, only the parts of her being that he had built for her could be brought to life. Obviously, he couldn’t carve her feelings or craft love into her stone body, so she had no love in the first place to be animated.”

Is she going for tragedy?

“So basically over the course of the story, Thea, that’s the statue’s name in my book, starts to feel sympathy for the sculptor, and feels bad that she can’t love him back. But she can’t change her nature.”

How could she feel bad for him if she has no emotions?

My mind is already drifting into correction mode, but I bite my lip and remember what Avis told me about mentioning any errors I might notice at this stage. I try to smile again but I don't think I do very well. 

Erika is still talking about the setting and the characters’ appearances, as I repeat to myself again and again ‘a note on emotions’ so that I don’t forget to mention it later.

Write down the note about Thea’s emotions. Do the first read-over of Erika’s novel. I can do that tonight when I get home from the date…

“I thought I’d give him the sort of ‘chiseled from stone’ look as a sort of parallel to the fact that he himself is a sculptor,” she laughs, “plus working with stone would have to make you pretty diesel.” 

…Another romance, another something that will probably prove to be more a waste of time for everyone involved than anything else. But at least it probably won’t take that long.

I should try to have nice things to say on stand-by, so I can pretend to be impressed.

My head is hurting worse now. 

I think I should have gotten myself some water instead of coffee.

“Since the statue’s name in the myth, means ‘she who is milk-white’ I thought I’d give her a kind of Snow White type appearance, with hair and complexion, and she’s also really tall with a sort of Junoesque build to keep with the idea, since the statue was supposed to breathtakingly beautiful.”

Of course.

Erika’s chatter seems to halt for a second, and I smile professionally so she’ll know it’s alright to continue, but she still falters twice before she goes on.

“W…so I planned a lot of cute moments around their height gap since Galatea is so much taller than the sculptor. I…I named him Maximilian.”

Suddenly she’s silent, folding her hands in her lap.

“That was it…for…the vision I guess. You’ll see the rest of it when you read it.”

That seems abrupt.

Angie looks at her sister, and then at me, with an indescribable expression. Maybe baffled?

“Alright, let’s look over the schedule,” I say with as much ‘Avis-ness’ as I can. “Mrs. Green likes to try to keep the process streamlined. We generally dedicate up to 6 months to the whole process of one book, since we have two main showcase windows, those being the winter and summer showcases.”

Angie is still looking at me strangely. Then she looks down at the table and bites the end of her thumb. Erika is watching my face the whole time, but her own is taking on an odd expression.

Better not to comment on it right?

“Around 4 months in, we generally expect any plot reorganization to be done, then we’re just on line edits, which Ms. Meng will be doing for you, and polishing up details and covers-”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Erika says suddenly, getting to her feet with a grave expression.

“Al…right?” I reply slowly, unsure what to say to that declaration. Angie looks from me to her sister again and then says quickly:

“Um, yeah. I’ve gotta go too.”

That’s not normal, right?

As the girls hurry off toward the bathroom, Angie whispers something, her hand on her sister’s arm, and I see Tiff glance over at me shaking her head with abject indignation and disgust.

“Ess, way to be a wet blanket for the new author,” she frowns, “You could have tried to look a little bit interested in what she was saying.”

What?

Scarlett glances over at Tiffany with a sort of chiding expression, and then smiling at me over her shoulder pantomimes with both hands for me to smile, as if I haven’t been smiling.

At what point will I be good enough for them?

I lean my head on my hand as the girls go back to typing, and stare at my other empty palm for I don’t know how long. 

My head spins and everything around me echoes but still falls on deaf ears, again and again.

I am smiling. I’m always smiling. What more do they want from me?

It’s been this same futile argument for decades now, any time I had my photo taken, not that I did that often if I could help it, any time Aunt Pat told me to greet someone: ‘Give them a smile. Not like that. A real smile.’

As if adding another word in front of it could change the meaning of a meaningless action. If I smile isn’t it a ‘real’ smile? An upturn of the mouth at the corners, typically showing the teeth…

If I laugh, isn’t it a ‘real laugh?’ If I kiss you, isn’t it a ‘real kiss?’ If I love you, isn’t it ‘real love’ even if it doesn’t look anything like what you wanted or imagined it would be?

Even if I never look or feel or seem…

Like anyone who could or should be real. Maybe I’m not. Maybe it’s impossible to demand something genuine and receive anything but fraud and counterfeit. 

Whether we like it or not things are what they are.

I used to wish for a ‘real life,’ a ‘real family,’ a ‘real mother,’ a ‘real home,’ and ‘real’ peace. But that grouchy woman with the slurred speech, that little box with the slurred colors on the misprinted wallpaper, that cluster of colored bodies with slurs at the end of their tongues, this slurry of light places and heavy, of waking and sleeping, of dulled feeling and dulled senses and dulled want blurring together and smudging out my hand into something I can’t even bring into focus IS real.

Just objectively ugly.