70.

Once we get to the strippers, I moderate my drinking so I retain a better sense of self – I used to be good at this when I was younger. While everybody else was getting insensibly drunk, I’d take it easy, or even pour the beer out when people weren’t looking. It probably comes from a lifetime of anxiety – while drinking gives me a buzz and relaxes me, I don’t want to lose control.

Stan pays for several lap dances – I can’t remember if it’s in the same order he did last time. But there’re a lot of different dances, like he’s determined to sample as many different strippers and their lap dances, and to fuck with what it costs him.

Then I spot Rachel across the stage, talking to a two twenty-somethings at one of the small tables that populate the place. I get jealous. Or possessive. Or maybe they’re the same thing. She looks at me. I feel like there’s some connection, or maybe it’s not even that, but some familiarity, as if she’s reached across my lifetime to tell me, Here I am again.

She continues to talk to the two twenty-somethings, but I can tell by the way they sit, by how stiff they are, by the way they lean back, like they’re trying to gain distance from her, that they’re not going to accept her entreaties. Finally, she smiles, and struts over.

Let me stop to consider what I feel.

Panic?

No, that’s silly. Because I wanted to test myself.

Excitement.

There’s that, but I don’t know how to handle it. This is so foreign to me, some beautiful woman coming over like I might mean something, although I’ve been to other strip clubs and had strippers approach me, but I’ve already assigned an importance to this.

Then I feel a peculiar faithlessness to Autumn, because when she sat next to me in the last cycle, she did it with some motivation that was deep and … I don’t know if wholesome is the right word, but it’s the only one I can think of. Something true. That’s better. True. And I don’t know what that is, because I’m sure I’ve never experienced it before. I thought once it existed with Lana, but that was some shitty facsimile made somewhere that knockoffs are made.

Rachel sits opposite me.

I’m back to panic.

“You interested in a dance?” she asks.

It’s her business voice. This is not the way she spoke to me at the speed dating. This is the voice she’d put on when she has to call up a utility company and inquire about some bill, or when she’s buying a coffee from a barista, or any of those meaningless exchanges we have where we inexplicably model ourselves like politicians trying to put on our best face for the public.

“Not really,” I say.

“Then why’re you here?”

“The ambience.”

“It’s not to have pretty women approach you?”

“It’s not like I’m speed dating.”

Something flickers across her face – it’s so minute, just a millimeter of one eyebrow lifting, that same eye narrowing, because she’s no doubt thinking I’ve mentioned something she’s either considering, or already booked, and she’s trying to process whether it’s a coincidence, or I’ve stalked her to gain this information.

“So what’s the dream?” I say. “Just to dance?”

“You want the fantasy that I’m stripping to the pay tuition to become a surgeon.”

“Are you?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m a writer.”

“Live with your mum?”

“No. No. She, um, died today.”

“And you’re here tonight?”

“I needed to get out.”

Rachel eases herself up from her stool. “I gotta get to work,” she says, and now I do read something in her voice: dismissiveness. “Good luck to you.”

And that’s it – she walks away, and as clueless as I am, the one certainty is that this is it: I fucked this up. I don’t know what exactly. Reporting that my mum died today and now I’m in a strip club might’ve been the kicker, but she was already retreating.

I want to try again, and fix my attention on her, willing her to turn and so we can connect again. She doesn’t, though. When it becomes evident to her that nobody in this new group she’s speaking to will pay for a dance, she moves on, and doesn’t look back at me.

But idiot me, I keep trying to recapture some bit of intrigue. A few times she glances at me, but it’s obvious that I’m now making her uncomfortable. This would’ve seemed cool to me – the mysterious man sitting here like a loner while the rest of the patrons enjoy what’s going on.

It’s maybe an hour or more later when this behemoth of a bouncer, this big man with a shaved head trundles over from the door and leans on the table. He’s even bigger close up, his head like a watermelon that fuses into this muscly neck that’s wider than his jawline. I’m sure he’s wearing all black because it’s the bouncer dress code, and black can be menacing, but it’s the disdain that rolls off him that makes him scary – at his size, I’m insignificant to him.

“Quit staring,” he tells me. “You’re not cool. You’re a fucking lech. And you’re making the woman uncomfortable. If you can’t stop, leave. If you don’t want to leave, I’m happy to throw you out. What’s it going to be?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Please convey an apology to her, too.”

He straightens, and claps one hand on my shoulder, like I’m a nail he’s trying to hammer into the stool. “That’s okay,” he says. “Don’t be a recidivist.”

It’s such a weird thing to say that I almost laugh, but prudence cuts me off.

I nod.

He returns to his position at the door.

I want to look one last time at Rachel – just to orient myself – but decide there’s no need.

That’s it.

We’re done.

71.

Once Stan returns from his latest lap dance, I tell him I’m done, that I think I’ve drank too much and need to go.

“You okay?” he says. “Something happen?”

“Tired, you know?”

He clasps my shoulder. “Tell me you’re okay.”

I want to tell him that I’m okay with what happened with Rachel, but he won’t understand the context. What he will understand, I think, is if I tell him about the futility of these cycles, of always coming back to some …

Disaster.

That’s my immediate response, the automatic response, the response that always pops up, because that’s my outlook on the world: disaster. But the Rachel thing wasn’t a disaster. It’s just instructive that I should’ve taken my chance when I first had it, when she was amenable. Fuck, I even had a second chance with her. Those things happened naturally. I couldn’t manufacture a third.

Now I just need to be out of here, because what I’m learning even as I think it through is I just need to live life, and to fuck with how it goes or where it goes. I can’t control outcomes. All I can do is try. And if it doesn’t work out, all I can do is pick myself up and keep trying.

“Yeah,” I say. “You be okay here?”

Stan holds his hands out, as if to suggest being in a club with scantily women could never be anything but okay, but I see it as pathetic now, chasing a thrill that I know’s an illusion, but chasing it nonetheless because it’s better than dealing with the reality.

“I’ll text you tomorrow,” I say.

“Sure.”

I find my way out into the night, inebriated but not drunk, but still in control and just eager to be home and back in my own warm bed.

If I was writing this, there’d be some ironic disaster – just after I’ve had this epiphany, somebody would mug me and stab me, or a car would veer out of control and squash me against the wall of the strip club, but no such thing happens.

I summon an Uber, thankfully get a non-chatty driver, and enjoy an uneventful drive home.

It’s just after midnight, but I shower, like I can wash clean the day, and get into bed.

It’s the first time in a long time I fall asleep quickly.

72.

I wake several times through the night, sure I’ve lost something, but fall back asleep quickly, until I wake early morning, still exhausted, but unable to settle back into a deep sleep.

When I do wake, I stay in bed, reveling right now in the nothing of the day. There’s my washing to do, and my shopping, but they’re not pressing. I don’t have to worry about Lana gobbling up time, or energy, and I’m comfortable that I just need to let my life unfold as it will.

That changes when I grab my phone from the bedside drawers, and idly scroll through it, first checking social media, then going to my emails.

My eyes are drawn immediately to the email from Veracity Publishing – in the first cycle it was a rejection, and in the second an acceptance; I didn’t bother checking it the third time, but do so no with no expectation, only to find this:

Thank you for your submission. We cannot tell you how much we loved it! Such an amazing story with lots of twists and turns, and this weird dissonant atmosphere. We’d love to get together to discuss making an offer of publication.

I want to tell somebody, and think immediately of Autumn. But this isn’t something to text. And I probably shouldn’t talk about it until I have more details. I’d like to ring Autum, but our friendship isn’t comfortable in that place anymore.

Then there’s Lana. But it’s not Lana who I want to talk to, but the role she represents – somebody to share this with.

None of my friends count – not in this way. I’m sure they’d be happy for me, but they’re friends. That’s when the loneliness hits, but it’s always been there. Even when I was with Lana. Just this acknowledgement of being so alone. I’m unsure how I managed that.

I email Veracity back:

Oh wow. Awesome! Let me know when you want to chat.

I roll out of bed, eager to get on with the day, to get to Monday, and then I can see Autumn and tell her about this. Maybe I’ll go in earlier.

But as I’m peeing, my phone signals to alert me that I have an email – Veracity.

I’m free right now. How about a phone call?

Now I feel anxiousness, but it’s a different anxiousness – excited, if not unbridled, and it makes me feel like maybe everything that hasn’t worked out in my life has pointed at this moment, to produce this outcome.

I did think that when my first book was published, and that unraveled so gradually, so imperceptibly, that I could only recognize the clusterfuck retrospectively. That would actually be a good title for a book: Clusterfuck Retrospectively.

My phone rings – an international number.

I hurry from the toilet, wash my hands, then answer the phone, hearing a very British accent introducing himself as Roger Telford, publisher for Veracity Publishing.

“Am I speaking to the wonderful, wonderful author of Wunderland?” he asks.

“You are,” I say.

“I love your book,” he says. “It’s madness. Literally. One woman’s descent into madness to find her own truth. And all those surreal elements, the ambiguity behind how they function – how the hell did you come up with this?”

I could try the truth, and tell him the initial idea was born from a masturbation fantasy about a woman meeting an incubi, but figure that’s probably not the best way for Roger to get to know me.

“You know,” I say, “I’m not sure – it was sort of a lot of little ideas that coalesced into a bigger idea.”

“It still needs work,” Roger said. “Maybe increase the ambiguity. There’s actually been, well, let’s say a heated discussion in our office about the fantastical elements. Alexandra thought maybe it was too straightforward.”

“Alexandra?”

“She’s our publicist,” Roger says. “She was worried about whether she could sell the story, and she argued a strong case but I thought, What the hell? Let’s take the chance.”

I can picture Roger, Alexandra, and whoever else works at Veracity discussing the novel, its fate so precariously balanced that in one cycle it tipped in my favour, and in another, it didn’t, and here it has again – why, I don’t know, because obviously while I can impact things immediately around me, I have no control over what happens over there. Maybe it’s some butterfly effect type thing.

“I’m telling you this,” Roger says, “because you’re going to have put some work into it to get it to a place that satisfies Alexandra. She knows her stuff. You’re okay with that?”

“It’s a good thing,” I say. “Anything that makes the book better is better for all of us.”

Roger chuckles. “I knew I was dealing with a pro. In fact, and maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, after I read Wunderland, I looked up your other two books. They’re a bit more straightforward with the story, but I enjoyed your writing. I’m surprised they didn’t make a bigger impact.”

“That’s this industry, though, huh?”

“You talk like you know it well.”

“I work in it.”

“Oh?”

So I tell him about working as an editor for Gainsboro, although as I talk I begin to worry this isn’t a good idea – I want him to see me solely as an author, rather than as an editor with writing aspirations. But my fears are groundless. We talk even more effusively, and he makes me feel like, fuck, yeah, I am a good author, and there’s a chance here – especially when he suggests some basic marketing strategies that Alexandra’s already posed. They all sound great, too, a way of building a core audience. How’s that? She’s the one naysayer there, but she’s doing her best regardless. I never felt that with Regina. She inherited me at Leopardus Press, and I always felt she would’ve preferred if she could get me off her books and find more authors like Melody.

Once Roger and I are done – with his promise to send contracts over mid-week – I shower, and feel a buoyancy I haven’t since … well, I don’t know when. But maybe this is all part of getting it right: breaking up with Lana, my mother passing, and even my failure with Rachel (it was a failure, but at least it was an attempt) – maybe this is where my life starts.

It makes everything cruisier: washing and hanging the clothes isn’t some time-consuming tedium; dealing with traffic on the way shopping is inconsequential; navigating people at the supermarket might as well be a game that I’m playing; and coming home feels like something I’ve never experienced at this place.

It feels like I’m coming into my own.