Serial Uncut - J. A. Konrath [9]
After the last panel of the day let out, the hotel emptied for an hour, and then slowly refilled again, everyone dressed to the nines now, lots of sports jackets and evening dresses, the book bags exchanged for stylish handbags.
She’d been sitting in the same chair for almost four hours, and her legs felt wobbly and faint when she finally stood.
The hotel bar was packed. All the writers seemed to be there.
She strolled over and wandered through the bar which was becoming more crowded by the minute, searching the faces for Andrew Thomas, but he wasn’t there.
Back upstairs, she ordered room service. Stayed in watching television and eating a lavish meal on Darling’s tab. A few minutes past midnight, she climbed out of bed and dressed and wandered down to the lobby.
The bar was even more crowded than before, and she scanned the faces in the smoky lowlight, eyes passing over countless groups that constantly shifted and changed, the occasional loner who spoke to no one, the softer, restrained groups huddled on the perimeter.
At the furthest corner of the bar, she finally spotted the man she’d come to meet, and her stomach fluttered.
He sat on a stool, surrounded by a dozen attentive, smiling faces, all listening as he told some story whose words she couldn’t begin to pick out from the impressive noise of all those conversations.
She stumbled forward into the outskirts of the crowd, then elbowed and squeezed her way through the heart of it, until she stood just outside the group of people orbiting Andrew Thomas.
His face was fuller than the author photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days’ stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably…Andrew.
She’d never heard his voice, and it didn’t sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he had an accent. A southern accent. He was talking to a man seated to the right of him, but there were countless people eavesdropping.
“…so they show me the mock-up for the book cover, and I say, ‘Guys, I know you’ve been really working on this thing, and I appreciate that, but you’ve just put a penis on the cover of my book.”
The hovering crowd broke into laughter.
“They said, ‘It’s not a penis, Andy, it’s a minaret.’ I said, ‘It’s flesh colored, it has a shaft, and a bulbous head that appears to be ejaculating the title of my book! Could I please have a new fucking cover without a cock on it?”
While everyone laughed, Andrew tossed back a shot of something.
The man standing behind him said, “Another shot, Andrew?”
“I buy you shots, Billy. Everyone in for a shot of tequila? Bartender! We need…” Andy counted the people around him. “…thirteen shots of Patron Silver.”
Lucy stood watching him, mesmerized, trying to wrap her brain around the idea that the man whose words and stories she’d fallen in love with at twelve was sitting ten feet away from her, under the same roof, breathing the same air. She’d suspected it before, but last night with Mark Darling confirmed it: Andrew could read her thoughts. She knew he must have killed before because the way he described what it felt like for the killers in his books had been her experience exactly. She wanted to be closer to him, but his crowd had effectively cloistered him off from the rest of the bar.
Something was coming apart inside of her, this dark, mad need to connect with him, and for a moment the sound of the crowd dropped away. She stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers, willing them to give her just a single slash of attention as the bartender lined up thirteen shotglasses and began to fill them from two bottles of Patron.
Andrew never looked at her. She watched the bartender bring the tray of shots, watched Andrew pass them around, heard the shotglasses clinking, heard the “cheers.”
And she was crying, invisible again.
She pushed her way back through the crowd into the lobby, moving quickly toward the elevators at the other end and telling herself there was still tomorrow. Andrew’s book signing. Anything could happen.
When she walked into her