Cosette getting so drunk, her getting sick on Rosalind’s lap.
“We are who we are,” Rosalind said, smiling. “And I think Cosette and I are going to get along just fine.”
They both returned their attention to the occupant of the recamier. Cosette nodded her head slightly in agreement. She sat up a little and tried to smile, but then had to put her hand to her mouth, her eyes going wide. Izzy ran to get the pail again.
By the time Alan published Kathy’s first collection he already had two books under his belt and had worked out most of the kinks involved to make a successful promotion for a book. He sent out a mass of review copies, not just to the regional papers, but to selected reviewers across the country. For the launch, he booked Feeney’s Kitchen, one of the folk clubs that they all used to hang out at when they were going to Butler U., and hired Amy Scallan’s band Marrow-bones to handle the musical honors. By the time Izzy arrived, the little club was full of Kathy’s friends, the press and all sorts of various hangers-on who’d managed to get in. Marrowbones was playing a rollicking set of Irish reels and the free bar was doing a booming business.
Izzy paused in the doorway of the club, a little taken aback at the bombardment of sound and people. Finishing up the last few pieces for a new show that was due to be hung in a couple of weeks, she’d been spending sixteen-hour days at the studio, even sleeping there a couple of nights. The noise and bustle had her blinking like a mole, and she almost left. But then she spotted Kathy looking oddly wistful at the far end of the long room and slowly made her way through the crowd.
“You’re supposed to be happy,” she told Kathy when she finally had her to herself for a moment.
“I know. But I can’t help but feel as though I’ve lost my innocence now. Every time I sat down to write up to this point, I wrote for me. It was me telling stories to myself on paper and publication was secondary. But now ... now I can’t help but feel that whenever I start to write I’ll have this invisible audience in my mind, hanging on to my every word. Weighing them, judging them, looking for hidden meanings.”
“Welcome to the world of criticism.”
“That’s not it,” Kathy said. “I’m used to being criticized. It’s not like I haven’t had stories appear in magazines and anthologies and been the brunt of one or two attacks by someone who’s not even interested in my work—they just have an axe to grind. But this is going to be different. It’s the
Izzy smiled. “I don’t mean to bring you down, Kathy, but Alan’s only published three thousand copies of the book.”
“You know what I mean.”
Izzy thought about her own shows and slowly nodded. Success, even on the small scale that she was having, had already made her more self-conscious when she approached her easel. She tried to ignore it, and she certainly didn’t work for that invisible audience, but she was still aware of its existence. She still knew that, so long as she kept doing shows, her paintings didn’t only belong to her anymore—they also belonged to whoever happened to come to the show. Whoever saw a reproduction of one. Whoever bought an original.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I do.”
“Alan told me tonight that there’s all this interest in the paperback rights for the book,” Kathy went on. “And we’re not talking chicken feed,
Izzy’s eyes went wide. “Wow. But that’s good, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. I know just what I’d do with the money, too.”
Kathy didn’t have to explain. They’d had any number of late-night conversations about Kathy’s dream to found an organization devoted to troubled kids—a place that didn’t feed them religion in exchange for its help, or try to force the kids back into the same awful family situations that had driven them out onto the street in the first place. “We should be able to choose our families,” Kathy often said,
“the same way we choose our friends. The round peg is never going to fit in the square hole—it doesn’t matter how much you try to force it.”
“You’re just going to have to teach yourself to ignore that invisible audience,” Izzy said. “Just remember this: it doesn’t matter how big it gets, they still don’t get to see what you’re working on until you’re ready to show it to them.”
“But I’m afraid that I’ll start to try to second-guess them,” Kathy said. “That I’ll tell the kind of stories that I think they want to hear, instead of what I want to tell.”
“That,” Izzy assured her, “is the one thing I don’t think you ever have to be afraid of “
“Money changes people,” Kathy said in response, “and big money changes people in a big way. I don’t want to have this deal of Alan’s go through and then find myself looking in a mirror five years from now and not recognizing the person who’s looking back at me.”
“That’s going to happen anyway,” Izzy said. “Think about what we were like five years ago.”
Kathy gave her a look of mock horror. “Oh god. Don’t remind me.”
“So maybe change isn’t always so bad. We just have to make sure that we pay attention to it as it’s happening to us.”
“Too true,” Kathy said. “But this conversation is getting far too earnest for the occasion. Any more of it and I’m going to become seriously depressed.” She looked down at her empty beer mug, then at Izzy, who wasn’t holding a mug at all. “Can I buy you a drink?” she asked.
“I thought there was supposed to be a free bar.”
“There is, there is.” Putting her arm around Izzy’s shoulders, she steered them toward the bar, where Alan was drawing ale from the three kegs he’d provided for the launch. “But I’m in the mood for some Jameson’s, and that,
“And here you are, about to make him all sorts of money.”
“I know,” Kathy said. “It’s a bloody crime, isn’t it? Let’s go give that capitalist pig a piece of our minds.”
“They’re paying you
She’d gotten home from the studio early for a change, so she happened to be at the apartment when Kathy came bursting in with the news of the paperback sale Alan had negotiated for
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” Kathy repeated.
“Oh, my god. You’re rich!”
Kathy laughed. “Well, not exactly. The East Street Press gets fifty percent of that.”
“I can’t believe Alan’s taking such advantage of you.”
“He’s not. That’s the standard cut for a hardcover house when it sells off the paperback rights.”
“Oh. Well, a hundred thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at.”
Kathy nodded. “Mind you, I don’t get it all at once. Half on signing, half on publication. Alan figures I’ll see a check for fifty thousand in about a month and a half “
“It seems like all the money in the world, doesn’t it?”
“More than we’ve ever seen in one place before, that’s for bloody sure. Mind you, if Albina keeps doing as well by you, who knows? You could be selling paintings for that kind of money in a year or so.”
Izzy laughed. “Oh, right.”
“You got nine thousand for that last one.”
“Fifty-four hundred after the gallery’s commission.”
“And you’re complaining about Alan’s cut,” Kathy said.
“I never thought of it like that,” Izzy said. She considered it for a moment, then added, “Maybe Tom’s right— you know, the way he’s always going on about how middlemen are feeding off the artists that they represent. They don’t do the work, but they get almost as much money for it.”
“Where would we be without Albina and Alan?” Kathy wanted to know. “It’s all very well to complain about
