It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 2: The Author (Cont'd)

Some coarse language. Reader Discretion Advised.

'Darling!' came the histrionically hoarse voice of the editor. Ms. Emmaline Blanchet, an aggressively petite woman, sat at her sturdy oak desk in front of the shadeless windows, sun rolling off her frame so that she looked more like a stately silhouette on a throne than an actual human being. She didn't even bother to raise her head as the Author entered, but called once more, 'Darling! Shoes off, please. I've just had the floors waxed.' The Author glanced down at the gleaming, wooden floors, and saw her own expression scowling back up at her.

Ms. Emmaline Blanchet—just Ms. Blanchet to her underlings—was a woman of habits, the least of which was waxing her office floor every third Tuesday, barring bank holidays, of course. She woke up every morning at 4:30, and arrived at the office precisely at 7. Three cigarettes were spaced out during working hours. One at 9:20, the next at 3:35, and the final, for the close of business, at 8:50. She always ate her dinner out, either with friends or rivals, practically the same thing to her, at variously chic, Midtown establishments before settling to bed by 11:45. Her life was prompt and to the minute, and she was all the happier for it. In the imprecise domain of entertainment that she inhabited, that of the flakes and loo-loos, she kept her life in order with a  militaristic precision. She was, however, not a bombastically unkind person. In fact, Ms. Blanchet could be very warm and obliging when the mood suited her. She just had a definite world view. A narrow one. It was an outlook that consisted only of her pride and joy, the culture magazine, Lumières, which she'd founded all the way back in the 1980s, and had nurtured into a force that was as necessary to the American middle-class as baseball or Betty Crocker.

The magazine graced every supermarket shelf, every salon table and bathroom nook, not to mention the various and infinite corners of the internet. It was a salvation to the millions of trashy and haggard readers, who, at consumption of the publication, with all its modishly provocative photographs and self-professed 'in-depth' articles on the life and times of celebrities, somehow believed that they too were in the inner-circle of culture. Keeping the American populace's deficient attention was not a task for the faint of heart, and being the Empress of such a juggernaut, was not one to be sneered at, although the Author had done plenty of sneering where Ms. Blanchet was concerned. Yet even the Author, with her erudite opinions, could not deny that it meant something in this day and age, where stupid was considered an art form and ignorance an occupation, to create a magazine of pithy information, and market it as must-see, must-need enlightenment. Having been born Emily Blank in some portly, Indiana hovel, the editor possessed a keen understanding of her clientele. The trick wasn't to market to them as they were, but to them as they wished they could be.

This was not a world, crass as it was, that the Author ever imagined herself ingratiated in. Indeed, when she'd just been starting out, fresh from college and eager to change the world with her great American novel—she never did finish it—she'd taken ample amounts of time with friends to degrade such a bourgeois, classless publication.

Those were good times.

If only they'd gone on.

As it was, one by one, her friends fell away, onto bigger and better things. Doctors and lawyers and financial advisors, and, though she remained true to her goals and talent, the Author quickly found herself in desperate need of work. Soon after the realization that art alone does not always feed, she found herself here, in the Manhattan offices of Lumières, in the belly of the beast, and for the past fifteen years, the Author had been nothing but a rat faced hack, writing about, and living vicariously through, the success of others.

'Darling! Where have you been hiding?' asked Ms. Blanchet as the Author left her shoes by the door and took her seat before the desk, squinting and shielding her eyes from the bright sun.

'I've been—'

'Well, never mind that, you're here now, and don't I have the most delicious assignment for you?' The Author fidgeted uneasily. The last time Ms. Blanchet had referred to an assignment as 'delicious', she'd spent six weeks embedded with a paranoid schizophrenic, who moonlighted as a movie mogul. 'Good God, girl! Aren't you going to have the decency to ask me what I'm talking about?'

'Yes, Ms. Blanchet. I was just—'

'Ask faster!'

The Author sniffed. 'What is it?'

'Something you'll love. The second I heard, I immediately thought of you.'

The Author shifted her weight from side to side, trying to find a position that the sun wouldn't scorch her irises. 'That's very kind, Ms. Blanchet,' but the editor impatiently waved a skeletal hand.

'It's not kindness, Darling. You were the first one to pick up the phone, which is important. Time is of the essence!'

'What is it?!' asked the Author with just the right hint of desperate eagerness. It was best to play along when Ms. Blanchet was excitable.

'I've got him,' whispered the editor, and then she slammed her hand down on the desk so hard that the Author jumped a good half inch out of her chair. 'I'VE GOT THE SON OF A BITCH!'

Jesus, thought the Author, she finally did it. She finally killed someone.

'Got whom?!'

'Him!' hissed the elder woman. 'Years he's been avoiding me. The arrogant prick. Years! But I've waited. If you want to succeed in this life, Darling, you must learn patience. I knew at some point he'd come slinking back to me. I knew it. People like him, snakes—SNAKES!—they can't resist for too long. They need my acknowledgement.'

'I'm sorry, Ms. Blanchet, I'm not following.'

The editor's head cocked to the side in surprise at the the interruption, and she leaned so far back in her chair that her entire head disappeared into the sun. 'Carr!' responded her now disembodied voice. 'Alan-fucking-Carr!'