Wake Up, Wanda Wiley Read online

  All this was running through her mind as Wanda sat at her desk to begin the day’s work. The monitor flickered on to a work in progress. She scrolled up though pages she didn’t remember writing.

  Why is Trevor in the house with Hannah, she wondered. Oh my god. This is way off script. This doesn’t even make sense. She looked again at the outline of the book she was supposed to be ghostwriting.

  In chapter eight of The President Has Been Stolen, the chapter she thought she had written yesterday, Trevor was supposed to be interviewing the president’s mistress, Anna, at her house.

  Anna.

  Hannah.

  God, how much pot did I smoke yesterday?

  Wanda deleted the file and thought that was the end of it.

  3

  “OK, so let me get this straight. We’re characters in a book, is that right?”

  Hannah shook her head. “We’re characters in the author’s mind. Right now, we’re parked, because the author doesn’t know what to do with us.”

  “And this author is Wanda?”

  “Yes. And I think she’s starting to lose it. I think it’s a combination of a bad relationship, too much pot, and too much isolation. Writers, you know, alone at their keyboards all day, living in their fantasy worlds.”

  “OK, but what happens in chapter sixteen?”

  Hannah noticed Trevor’s left hand was gripping his crotch tightly. She didn’t remember it having moved since their conversation started, so he must have had it there the whole time.

  “In chapter sixteen, you find the president.”

  Trevor grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “You know then! You know where he is!”

  “I know where he is.”

  “Tell me!”

  “Stop shaking me!”

  “Sorry.” He let her go. “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “It would ruin the suspense. Plus, you’re only… Wait, where are you now?”

  Trevor looked around at the elegant but aged furniture of the Victorian farmhouse, the thick fog licking at the windows. “In this godforsaken place.”

  “I mean, where in the book?”

  “Come again?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember doing before you came here?”

  Trevor turned and paced. “Let’s see, um. Second floor of the East Wing. The president’s wife tearfully confessed that he was having an affair—”

  “With a woman named Anna.”

  “Yes,” said Trevor, spinning on his heel to face her. “How did you know?”

  “I told you, Wanda has the outline. I think that’s how you wound up here. Wanda got high and her thoughts started skipping around. Anna to Hannah. You were supposed to go to Anna’s house to interview her, but you came here instead.”

  Trevor looked up at the ceiling. Hannah could see he was thinking.

  “If I could only remember how I got here,” he muttered, “then I could get back.”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Have you ever tried to retrace a train of thought you had when you were stoned? I mean a long, rambling, irrational train of thought? You can’t do it.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t use drugs. Where is the president?”

  “You’ll have to find him on your own.”

  Trevor strode quickly to her and grabbed her by the shoulders again. “Damnit, the future of the free world is at stake!”

  “No, he’s a bad president.”

  A look of murder crept into Trevor’s eyes. “He’s the best damn president we’ve ever had. And you’re a traitor for letting him die!”

  “I think you’re being a little dramatic. Take your hands off me.” She pulled herself away. Then she explained it to him.

  “Look, Trevor, if I tell you where the president is, you’ll go straight to him—”

  “You’re damn right I will!”

  “—and that won’t make any sense to the reader. The reader will flip back through the pages looking for clues that he missed, and he’ll never find them.”

  “What reader?”

  “The reader who’s following you on your adventure.”

  Trevor went to the window and peered into the fog. “Who’s following me? And how would you know about it?”

  “God, you’re dense! How do all those women fall for you?”

  “What women?” Trevor asked absently.

  “The flight attendants and the women in nightclubs, the foreign spies, the forensics experts. How do they all end up in bed with you?”

  “I’m Trevor Dunwoody,” he said. “The man who saves the world.”

  “Five times now,” Hannah added. “And the only thing higher than your body count is your booty count. Let me tell you something, you’ve been living in a fantasy world.”

  “Excuse me? Haven’t we both? You’ve been telling me this whole time we’re in some author’s imagination.”

  “You’ve been living in a world of male fantasy,” Hannah said. “In the real world, not every woman is a hot babe. In the real world, the forensic scientist earns her position through brains and hard work. And not every woman falls into bed with a man just because he… he has a big pistol and is good at shooting it off.”

  “OK, that’s enough lecturing,” Trevor snapped. “This is the last time I’m going to ask. Where. Is. The. President?”

  Hannah eyed him angrily. “You’ll find him in chapter sixteen.”

  “Chapter sixteen?”

  “Shh!” said Hannah. Then in a whisper. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  A soft, staccato tapping sound drifted faintly from above.

  “There’s someone upstairs,” Trevor said.

  “No,” Hannah whispered. “That’s the keyboard. She’s writing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, this is not good. She shouldn’t write when she’s stoned. She really shouldn’t.”

  “Tell me about chapter sixteen,” Trevor said. The sound of the typing was getting louder.

  “Not now. You’re going to disappear in a few seconds.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They all do. Everyone who comes here. They show up when she’s stuck. They disappear again when she writes.”

  “Wait,” said Trevor. “You have to tell me about chapter sixteen.”

  “I told you, I can’t tell you where the president is. It’ll ruin the story.”

  “No, the other thing.” Trevor’s hand went back to his crotch and held on tightly. “What you said before. Just tell me this. Do I have a penis at the beginning of chapter sixteen?”

  “Yes,” Hannah whispered.

  “And at the end?”

  Hannah shook her head gravely.

  “Oh, God.” Trevor’s face was white as a ghost.

  “Goodbye, Trevor.”

  He faded to nothing, but Hannah knew from the strong marijuana smell of the fog and the erratic tapping of the keys that Wanda’s mind was not firing on all cylinders. Trevor would be back. A little wiser next time, she hoped.

  4

  At 6:18 p.m., Dirk flung himself through the front door and yelled “I’m home!” His voice had the unnecessary forcefulness of a four-year-old announcing itself to the mother whose life (he was sure) came to a screeching halt whenever he wasn’t around. When Wanda first met him, she thought this was simply his dramatic way of entering the lecture hall, a way of grabbing the students’ attention. But in the early days of their affair, she learned that he passed through every door as if an expectant audience awaited him on the other side. She suspected that in his mind he heard the crowd burst into applause at his appearance, the way theatergoers do when the star of the show first struts onto the stage. He even walked into the bathroom that way in the morning, as if the towels had spent the night in trembling expectation of his return.

  He was supposed to have been hom
e at 5:30. He hadn’t called or texted to say he’d be late, so Wanda went ahead and made dinner—a special dinner that she was suddenly self-conscious about. What if he didn’t like it? She felt the urge to explain her strange choice of food.

  I was in the grocery store (all this went through her mind in a flash). And we always eat the same things. Chicken and fish and steak and pasta. And there were live lobsters in the tank, and that’s something different, isn’t it? They taste good with butter, and my mouth was so dry from the joint I’d just smoked… But I couldn’t cook a live lobster. It seems so cruel. So I got two tails. They were frozen. The biggest ones in the store and…

  She had broiled the lobster tails, timing them to be ready for Dirk’s arrival at 5:30. She’d spent the past forty-eight minutes trying to keep them warm without having them dry out. She texted once to ask when he’d be back, but he didn’t respond. She knew not to text again because that would be nagging. Better to languish in uncertainty than face one of his angry outbursts.

  She had spent the empty time scrolling through Facebook, looking at the perfect beach photos of stupid Louise Pennypacker and her stupid boring husband who—surprise!—were going to have a baby! And oh my God, everyone, isn’t it fucking wonderful? Isn’t it 95 likes and 380 hearts and 66 gushing comments worth of WONDERFUL?

  Just for the thrill of it, Wanda, stoned and angry, typed a nasty comment that she didn’t intend to send.

  Congratulations! Any idea who the father is?

  Her finger had been hovering over the screen, ready to delete the message, when Dirk’s sudden entrance startled her into tapping the Send button.

  Oops.

  “What’s for dinner?” Dirk yelled as he banged around in the front hall.

  “Can’t you smell it?”

  “Fish?”

  Wanda stepped into the hall. “Lobster. What took you so long?”

  “I didn’t take long,” Dirk said, brushing past her without a kiss or even a look. “Took me ten minutes to walk home, just like always. Did you do the laundry?”

  “You said you’d be home at five thirty.”

  Dashing up the stairs, Dirk called, “What am I, a clock?” Judging from the sound of his footsteps on the bedroom floor, she calculated that he had stopped at the foot of the bed.

  The laundry was still there, she thought. All folded, but—should she have put it away? Would he be annoyed? He paused there a moment, then his steps came quick and loud across the floor and down the stairs.

  “If you wanted a predictable man”—his pronunciation of the word predictable was dripping with scorn—“you should have married Peter Pennypacker. What’s for dinner?” He had already blown through the hall and into the kitchen.

  “I just told you. Lobster.”

  She walked into the kitchen to see him plunging a fork into the larger of the two tails in the open oven. He tried to cram the tail into his mouth, but quickly yanked it out.

  “Why’s it so hot?”

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to advise a student on his senior thesis. Four years into college and the kid doesn’t know the difference between to, too, and two.”

  Dirk shook his head and continued, his mouth going smack-smack-smack as he worked through the piece he had just bitten off. “That’s why the university has a grammar and punctuation department. Without me, books would look like texts. Three hundred pages”— smack, smack, smack—“all one paragraph. No capitalization.” Nom nom nom. “Poo emojis.”

  “Austin called.”

  “That loser?” Dirk bit off another chunk of meat, which he swallowed after only three chews. “What does he want?”

  “He wants to talk to you, I guess. They’re letting him go.”

  “No surprise,” Dirk said, filling a glass of water at the kitchen sink. “He was adjunct. They hang on like convicts in a noose. They think getting fired is the end of the world, but it’s a mercy killing. What’s he going to do next?”

  “I don’t know. He’s stopping by around nine.”

  Dirk chugged down the glass of water he had just filled, then said, “Won’t be here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you. I have to advise a student.”

  “But it’s not even six thirty. He can’t need three hours of advice.”

  “The kid’s really confused.” Dirk grunted. “And you know how I feel about homonyms.”

  He swept past her as she stood by the fridge with her arms folded across her chest. He flung open the pantry door and blurted, “Where’s the bread?”

  “It’s right in front of you, Dirk. What am I supposed to tell Austin?”

  “Tell him what I told him years ago.” Dirk blew past her again and slapped the loaf on the counter beside the oven. “Biochemistry is a loser discipline. It’s got nothing going for it. If he wanted a career in academia, he should have taken my idea.”

  For the first time since he’d come home, Dirk faced her directly. Wanda knew the look. It wasn’t the one she wanted. Not the nice to see you, how was your day look. He was checking to see if he had his audience’s full attention because he was about to deliver a lecture.

  “He has that useless scientific mind,” Dirk said. “I told him, you want a long-term career, here’s an idea: the politics of integers. No one’s tackled that one yet. I mean, people don’t even ask why one always comes first. They take it for granted. It’s a totally unexamined assumption, and he could have blown it wide open. How do you think the number two feels, always having to play second fiddle? Talk about oppression! And don’t even get me started on the marginalization of seven, eight, and nine. I mean, it’s fucking arbitrary. Why can’t people decide for themselves what order the numbers should go in? Do we have any mayonnaise?”

  Wanda was so caught up in the fervor of his oration that she opened the fridge and handed him the mayonnaise without thinking.

  Dirk laid two slices of bread on the counter and slathered them with mayo.

  “I mean, I gave him that idea. Said he could take credit for it. Own it. Stamp his name all over it until his name was synonymous with the discipline, like Derrida and deconstruction. Instead he decides to study molecules.”

  Dirk turned and looked her in the eye to drive home his point. “Seriously! Molecules!” He shook his head in dismay. “Like they ever mattered on any level, anywhere in the universe. You gonna eat that other lobster tail?”

  “I was planning on it.”

  “You don’t want it,” Dirk said. “It’s dry. You cooked it too long.”

  Wanda felt her face flush and could hear the blood rushing through her ears. The slow-burning rage that had been building since she examined the laundry that morning was about to explode as she watched Dirk lay the second tail on the bread. He slapped the second slice of bread on top, then wrapped the sandwich in a paper towel.

  Before she could speak, he had flown past her into the hallway with long, full strides.

  “What am I supposed to eat?” Wanda yelled.

  “Salad,” Dirk called. “The fiber will help flush out the cupcakes you’ve been eating all day.”

  Wanda chased him through the hall and caught his sleeve before he could open the door.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “I told you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t be shrill.”

  “I’m not being shrill!” she pleaded. In her attempt to suppress the shrillness of her tone, the words came out sounding pathetic.

  Dirk’s whole manner changed as he looked her in the eye. His air of hurry melted away. His posture relaxed, his shoulders went down, his face softened, and his eyes filled with warmth.

  “Look, I know I’ve been busy lately. I know you’ve been alone a lot, and you’ve been struggling with your writing. I want to take you out tomorrow night. It’ll do yo
u good to be around other people. Get out of your own head for a while. I was thinking that new place on eighth. The French restaurant.”

  “It’s expensive.”

  “Who better to share it with, then? I mean, who else in this world is really worth it?”

  She melted in the warmth of his gaze. It was like a sun that shone for her alone. His kiss bestowed the enveloping warmth she had tried to recapture again and again in the joints she smoked after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  She kept her eyes closed, wanting to hold on to him, but he slipped away, whispering playfully, “Off to enlighten the world.” And then he was out the door. She watched him go down the walk. When he reached the sidewalk, she quietly opened the door and snuck out onto the porch. Her eyes would follow him until he turned the corner and disappeared.

  But halfway to the corner, leaning against the hood of a neighbor’s car, was a young brown-haired girl she had never seen before. She smiled as Dirk approached, uncrossed her arms, and pushed her slim hips away from the car. Wanda recognized the admiring upward tilt of the girl’s face as he handed her the sandwich. She could see the beaming smile from half a block away, and though she couldn’t see the expression in the girl’s eyes, she knew it was the same starstruck look she herself had worn in the early days of his seduction.

  At twenty-one, Wanda had been shy, inexperienced, and hopelessly romantic. Love, she imagined, would be the answer to everything, the magic power that would cure her shyness, unlocking her rich inner world to blossom into the light of day.

  The magnificent professor, the wise and charismatic one, was the first person who had been perceptive enough to see inside her, to know her thoughts and feelings. She felt blessed, flattered beyond words, that this man of seemingly infinite confidence had chosen her, Wanda Wiley, above all other women.