Wake Up, Wanda Wiley Read online

  “Psst!”

  The hissing call came from the base of the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette just ahead. Trevor ignored it and trudged on.

  “Psst!” The figure was eight feet in front of him now, wrapped in a dark tattered overcoat stuffed with newspaper to keep out the damp of the autumn night. The man’s bearded face was smeared with filth, and he smelled of malt liquor.

  “Fuck off,” Trevor said. “I haven’t got any money.”

  As he passed, the slouching lump of humanity whispered, “Trevor!”

  Trevor stopped abruptly and turned in astonishment.

  “Gary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mr. President? What are you doing here?”

  “I hate my fucking job.” From the tatters of his overcoat, the president withdrew a giant .50 caliber Desert Eagle pistol and pointed it at Trevor’s crotch.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Trevor asked, breaking into a cold sweat.

  “I don’t know. What’s that sticking out of your pants?”

  “Nothing!” Trevor blurted defensively.

  “It looks like a giant phallus.”

  “Please don’t shoot it.”

  The president racked the giant pistol, whose massive slugs could easily penetrate three-quarters of an inch of iron. Trevor began to shake uncontrollably.

  “Why do you want to shoot me?” he asked.

  “Because you screw every woman you meet.”

  “So do you.”

  “I know,” said the president. “Makes no sense, does it? What was the name of the last woman you had sex with?”

  “Um…”

  “Think, Trevor, think!” The president whistled the theme to Jeopardy as Trevor stood trembling.

  “I um…” Trevor felt his arms weakening. “I can’t…”

  “You can’t remember?”

  “Maybe if you pointed that gun away from me,” he said. “It’s kind of a high-pressure situation with the gun and the Jeopardy theme.”

  “But you’re Trevor Dunwoody. The man who thrives on pressure. The man who never caves.”

  “But I love my winkie!” Trevor blurted.

  “Who doesn’t love their winkie?” asked the president. “But you have to use it responsibly. You have to earn the privilege to keep it.”

  Trevor’s arms gave out, and the heavy handle slid down the left leg of his trousers, banging his kneecap before getting jammed in the narrow lower section of the pants.

  “Trevor?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Are you crying?”

  Trevor nodded.

  “I’m really sorry to do this to you,” said the president. “I mean, don’t think I don’t sympathize. But… I don’t know. I feel like the world’s gone crazy lately. Like the laws of the universe have changed. Like God walked away and left everything in the charge of some new spirit who might be slightly unhinged. You ever feel that way?”

  At the mention of God, Trevor remembered Hannah’s words. He dropped awkwardly to his knees, the pump handle hindering his movement. Then he turned his tearful eyes to heaven and said, “Lord, if you let me out of this one, I swear to you that from now on Little Willy will be the last part of me that ever meets a woman. The first part will be my ears, and then my mind, and then my heart. I solemnly vow.”

  He heard a click and saw the president slide the firearm back into his coat.

  “That was a lovely prayer, Trevor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can take that thing out of your pants now.”

  Those were the magic words he once was able to draw from the lips of every woman he met. Now they had an entirely different meaning. He unzipped his pants, withdrew the large handle, and laid it on the bricks near the base of the statue.

  Zipping his pants, he said, “Come on, Mr. President. You need to go back to the White House.”

  Gary shook his head. “No way, man. That’s the worst job ever. You have no idea.”

  “Who stole you?” Trevor asked.

  “No one. I made it look like a burglary. You know, open window, dresser drawers dumped out, wallet and cell phone missing, a couple expensive watches gone from the closet. Oh, and me. Classic in-and-out theft. Swipe the good stuff and scram.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “That’s my secret and I’m not telling. Want some malt liquor? I have a forty of Olde English 800 under my coat.”

  “I could use a drink,” Trevor said. “My nerves are shot.”

  The president handed him the bottle. Trevor took a swig and spat it out at once. “That tastes like piss,” he said, wiping his mouth.

  “Sorry, wrong bottle. Try this one.”

  The second bottle contained malt liquor. Trevor drained off twelve ounces.

  “Have you been hiding here the whole time?” Trevor asked.

  “Not hiding,” said the president. “Sitting in plain view.”

  “And no one’s noticed?”

  “The homeless are invisible. At least, under my administration. You know, it’s funny seeing the world from this perspective. Everyone rushing around all stressed out, like their lives are so important. So important they don’t take time to live. You ever watch the sparrows hop around and pick at crumbs on the sidewalk?”

  “That would bore the shit out of me.”

  “That’s what I used to think. But an hour of that is bliss compared to an hour of national security briefings. Absolute bliss. I’m beginning to understand why the Buddha sat still to find enlightenment. I used to think it was something you had to go out and grab by the balls.”

  “What’ll happen if you don’t go back?” Trevor asked.

  The president shrugged. “Everything will proceed as usual. They’ll put someone new in the role. Politics is like genre fiction, the same old story over and over. The characters and the setting change, but the plot is the same.” He pointed up toward the clouds. “You hear that soft rhythmic tapping? That’s God typing out our fate.”

  “You can hear that?”

  “I never could until I had the time to sit here quietly and listen. Now I hear it on and off. It always kicks up when the world gets busy. That’s when he’s up there banging out the action.”

  “She,” Trevor said.

  “Huh?”

  “She. It’s a woman.”

  “Really?”

  “It didn’t used to be,” Trevor said. “It used to be a man’s world. The first five books, you could feel the testosterone coursing through every page. Now it’s a woman spinning the yarn.”

  “So that’s what changed. That’s why the world feels so different.”

  “Well, now we have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you don’t want to go back to the White House, then what’s my mission? Where does the book go from here? What’s the plot?”

  The president shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “It does to me. What good is Trevor Dunwoody if he has no one to beat up, no one to shoot, no one to screw?”

  “You got me,” said the president.

  9

  “What the hell is this?”

  Wanda didn’t recognize the voice of the angry, impatient woman coming through the phone. She wasn’t entirely sure what time it was. The call had startled her awake there at her desk.

  “I mean, seriously, what the fuck?”

  The monitor had gone black when the computer went to sleep, probably around the same time she did. The dark crumbs on the white dinner plate were a bad sign. She had eaten an entire cake. And now she was hungry again.

  “Who is this?” Wanda asked groggily.

  The woman gave a name she didn’t recognize, then after an impatient pause, she added, “Ed Parsippany’s editor. What the hell are you doing with Trevor Dunwoody?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t go shooting off the dick of our imprint’s
most profitable character.”

  “Oh God,” Wanda said. “Did I pull the trigger? I can’t remember.”

  “No, you didn’t pull the trigger, thank God, but you need to rewrite that entire chapter. I mean, why the hell does Trevor have an iron handle sticking out of his pants? Where did that come from? He just walked out of a White House meeting with that thing? Are you stoned?”

  “Well, yeah. Wait, I wrote that chapter just before I passed—before I took a nap. How did you read it?”

  “You back everything up to Dropbox, remember? And I see everything in the Trevor Dunwoody folder. You know it’s an honor to ghostwrite for Ed Parsippany. It’s the kind of work that can launch a career.”

  “I already have a career,” Wanda said as she scanned the desk nervously for evidence of what else she might have eaten.

  “Had,” said the editor. “You had a career. Your last three books sucked, and I’m only saying that because I care. And also because they sucked. You were just phoning it in. There’s no life in the series anymore. No passion.”

  “Ed Parsippany has been phoning it in for years,” Wanda said defensively. “Trevor Dunwoody is a tired character. I mean, seriously, how many times can someone save the world before it gets old and formulaic?”

  “Hundreds,” said the editor. “Thousands. Look at DC Comics. Look at Marvel. Entire companies built on story after story of the same handful of characters saving the world. People can’t get enough of it.”

  “But I don’t want to write comics.” It struck her suddenly that Trevor Dunwoody was just a comic book character for adults who didn’t want to admit they read comics. “You know,” said Wanda, “maybe readers need someone a little more nuanced than Trevor Dunwoody. Maybe the real problems in the world today don’t come from dramatic supervillains and can’t be solved with guns. Maybe the real problems come from people not understanding each other because they don’t take the time to listen. Imagine if people truly listened and empathized and understood. Imagine what the world would be like then.”

  “Look, Wanda, we publish thrillers, not fantasy. Put Trevor’s balls back on, stop making him cry, and get his trigger finger ready. He’s got ten more people to shoot before this caper is wrapped up, and I don’t want to catch him simpering or talking about feelings. Save that for your romances. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” said Wanda. “I got it.”

  She ended the call and laid her head on the desk. This is what I get, she thought. I slave away all day, all alone, for someone to tell me my work is shit. Then the voice of the editor rang through her mind. Your work is shit. Because you’re stoned. Just follow the outline. That’s all you have to do.

  That was the same advice Wanda was always giving to Hannah when Hannah refused to adhere to the story line.

  Wanda was surprised to feel Dirk’s hand on her back. She hadn’t heard him come in. He stroked the length of her spine, then began to knead her shoulders. Without taking her head off the desk, she asked, “Have you been in here the whole time?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  She relaxed at his touch.

  “We’re going out tonight,” he said. “Remember?”

  She wanted him to slide his hands down and press his thumbs into the muscles of her aching lower back. He did it without her saying a word, as if by instinct.

  “You’re tense down here,” he said.

  “I know.”

  And she knew they would get dressed up. And she knew he would be sweet and playful and charming, and the food would be good and he wouldn’t care how much it cost. And she knew they would have sex. And she knew that tomorrow or the day after that, she’d hate him again. But she was low now, and he could pull her out of it. She was low, and she had nothing else in her life that could make her feel good.

  She looked forward to dinner, and she didn’t have to tell herself not to think about tomorrow, because she was already practiced at shutting out awareness of the bad moments to come, so they wouldn’t ruin the good of the now.

  10

  She’s back with him, Hannah thought. The fog had thickened and pressed itself against the windows of the house. She could just make out the green of a flowerless rosebush outside the window, but beyond three feet, all was gray.

  She heard someone knocking about in the kitchen and knew Trevor had returned. The sound of the silverware drawer opening and closing, followed by the sound of a lid being unscrewed and dropped on the counter told her he was making a sandwich. Peanut butter. The only kind he knew how to make.

  Strange he’d be hungry, she thought, after having his manhood shot off.

  In a moment, he appeared in the doorway, leaning at ease against the frame as he chewed through a mouthful of food.

  She knew right away he was intact. Otherwise he’d be blubbering like a four-year-old who’d just lost his favorite toy.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  He gave a thumbs up as he chewed.

  “You seriously didn’t—” She glanced at his crotch and then decided it wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate. “You’re all good?”

  “All good,” Trevor said.

  That’s strange, she thought. No one escapes what is written, and she knew what Wanda was going to write.

  Hannah thought back to the state of the world just before Trevor disappeared. The fog had rolled back and the air was bright. When he left, the fog came back thick and dark. Wasn’t that Wanda’s anger? Wasn’t that the part of her that wanted to kill Dirk? If so, she should surely have blasted Trevor’s weenie off.

  Or had the fog come from Wanda getting high? Had she gotten stoned and lost her resolve? She was good at losing her resolve. It’s what kept her with Dirk through all those years of knowing better.

  “Where’s the handle?” Hannah asked.

  “Huh?” Trevor was licking his fingers while he chewed the last bite of sandwich.

  “The handle to pump the well?”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “We need it,” Hannah said. “Or we’ll have no water.”

  Trevor said, “What do normal people do?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, if you’re not out saving the world. If you have no mission, if there’s no glory to chase, what do you do?”

  “Well for starters, you have to eat and drink. And that’s a problem now that we can’t pump water from the well. I’d say your question is moot, because we’re both going to die of thirst.”

  “Can’t you ask Wanda for some soda or something?”

  “Wanda can’t hear me. She’s never been able to hear me. I’ve been stuck here for so long, I wonder if she’d even notice if I died.”

  “I’ll see if I can rig something up,” Trevor said. “Maybe there’s enough wood in the basement to make a new handle.”

  “Well that’s something right there,” Hannah said. “Something you can do instead of saving the world.”

  Trevor sighed, wondering if this was all normal people did, if life from now on would be this mundane.

  “You know, I might be stuck here too,” Trevor said.

  “How’s that?”

  “The whole plot of my novel fell apart.”

  “Oh,” said Hannah absently. The thought of company, his company, after her long isolation didn’t exactly thrill her. But something had changed about him. He seemed less charged, less consumed by his own self-importance.

  “Hey, uh, thanks for the words,” he said.

  “Huh?” Hannah wondered how long it would be before Wanda got his plot back on track. Did it matter? One day he would be here, and then one day he wouldn’t. And the world would go on that way forever, until Wanda died, or until Wanda figured out the plot of her own life, until she broke out of the cycle of fog, of hating Dirk and needing him.

  His hold on her is unbreakable, Hannah thought. She knows the situation she’s in. She knows what she’s doing, just as surely as a junkie knows she’s an addict. She j
ust can’t break out. And I can’t get through to her.

  “For telling me what to say to Wanda,” Trevor explained.

  “What? Did you say something to Wanda?” Hannah asked absently.

  “Just what you told me to say. I made a vow. And Trevor Dunwoody is a man of his word.” Then, with a touch of bitterness, he added under his breath, “Even if I have to live the rest of my life as a goddamn choirboy. Trevor Dunwoody is a man of his word.”

  The thoughts were moving quietly in her brain, the pieces coming together in slow motion.

  “Trevor?” Her tone told him she was coming to an important realization.

  “Huh?”

  “Tell me what happened. What happened there when you found the president?”

  “He had this big gun. He was going to blast me. I looked up and said the words you told me to say, and he put the gun away.”

  “You looked up? You said the words to Wanda?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she heard you?”

  “I guess so. I’m here, right? All in one piece.”

  She thought again. In the moments before Trevor last disappeared, the world had been bright. The fog had rolled back and the grass and trees were green because something had happened. Something in Wanda’s waking life had brightened this inner world and brought life back into it, and if Hannah could move her toward that thing…

  “Who did you say Wanda was speaking with before you last went away? It was Dallas or Houston or something like that.”

  “You mean dork boy? Dweebus?”

  “That’s not his name.”

  “You’re a swell gal, Wanda,” Trevor mocked. “Maybe someday we can hold hands.”

  “Oh shut up,” said Hannah. “Go work on a handle for the pump. I need some time to think.”

  As Trevor turned toward the basement stairs, Hannah said, “Do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “While you’re working, tell Wanda to go talk to Dallas. Just keep saying it over and over while you work.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  11

  Dirk had made bacon, eggs, pancakes, and fresh coffee. The intensity of his focus as he watched her over the table made Wanda uneasy. The fact that he had made her favorite breakfast made her feel warm and loved and worried all at once. A favor like this usually indicated the beginning of a charm campaign, the narcissist’s way of roping in his prey after having offended her, reeling her back and resecuring her admiration and dependence.