“Thank you,” Sewanee muttered.
“Welcome,” she replied.
SEWANEE:
Mark, I said I get it. Big! Yuge! You get a book and you get a book and you get a book!
MARK:
And don’t forget to enjoy yourself, Oprah. Vegas, Baby! LOL.
Sewanee pulled up her e-mail and rechecked the overwhelming number of BiblioCon events. She narrowed it down to Romance programming and shuffled through author talks, signings, cocktail hours, and a silent auction for charity. She laughed out loud at one highlighted item: dinner with a male cover model. She then perused the plethora of panels on offer: Crossed Swords: Writing M/M Romance When You Don’t Have a Sword of Your Own; How to Write Period Clothing and How to Take It Off; and, of course, her own panel on audiobook production that Mark–her mentor, boss, and landlord–would have been moderating himself if he hadn’t run over his foot with his own car two days ago. That red Karmann Ghia, Sal, was the closest thing Mark had had to a long-term relationship since he’d fled San Francisco in it fifteen years ago. After his partner, Julio, died.
She’d been happy to help him out with BiblioCon, but there were two problems. Maybe three. While she was essentially Mark’s Girl Friday, helping him run the recording studio he operated out of his home in the Hollywood Hills in exchange for living in its hillside guesthouse, she wasn’t an audiobook producer like Mark; she was a narrator. The second problem was she was a narrator who didn’t narrate Romance. She’d done it in the beginning when she was cutting her teeth, recorded it under a pseudonym as many narrators did, but once her career took off, she’d retired her alias, quit Romance, and never looked back. Lastly, she wasn’t even a fan of the genre.
She didn’t belong in the Romance pavilion.
She double-checked the info Mark had forwarded her. She had nothing until tomorrow. The panel in the morning, then booth duty on the general convention floor for the rest of the day, answering authors’ questions about audiobook production. A quick flight back on Sunday afternoon. An easy forty-eight hours of her life. Plus, she got to be in Vegas at the same time as her best friend, who had also been roped into attending the conference. But for very different reasons.
“Are you a pirate?”
Sewanee startled, turned to the little girl, and found her staring.
The mother startled, too. “Hannah!”
“She looks like a pirate.”
The mother took her child into a hug, conveniently muzzling her. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s four.”
“I’m almost gonna be five!” Hannah sounded like she was arguing into a pillow.
“It’s okay.” Sewanee gave her an indulgent smile. “No, I’m not a pirate.”
Hannah wriggled out of her mother’s chokehold and turned fully to Sewanee. “But you have a patch on your eye.”
“Hannah.” Sharper this time. By Los Angeles parenting standards, it might have been considered stern. She pivoted toward her daughter, scooting to the edge of her seat, loosening her seat belt, getting directly in front of her child and on her level, as she’d probably been coached to do. A teaching moment was upon them. “We don’t ask strangers personal questions, sweetness. You’re so, so, so smart, and I cherish your curiosity, but we respect people’s privacy, mmkay?” The high-pitched pet voice was back.
Hannah turned toward Sewanee again. “But why do you have it?”
Her mother turned her back around. “Now, see, Banana Bread, that’s a personal question, isn’t it?”
“Don’t call me Banana Bread, I told you. I hate it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hannah wriggled back to Sewanee. “Are you hurt?”
One more Hail Mary, “Hannah!” But Sewanee was used to this line of questioning. She supposed it was refreshing that, at the moment, it wasn’t coming from a drunk guy in a bar.
“Nope. Not anymore.”
“But, but, if you’re not hurt, why is it got–”
That said, Sewanee’s patience extended only so far. “I’d love to keep talking to you,” she said, tapping the Bluetooth headphones around her neck, “but I need to finish my work.” She glanced at the mother for parental assistance.
“Oh, of course! Four is just such a curious age–”
“Five!”
Sewanee shook her head. “It’s totally fine. I’m just on deadline and if I don’t finish listening to this, I could end up looking for a new job.”