Wanna Get Ficced?

Previous links:

Part the First
Part the Second

I don't have much to say in the space before the cut except that the rest of the plot (which is hinted in this part) came to me in the shower. Long live the shower!


Character Assassination as Done by Professionals

“Marla!” I yelled.

“The door’s open!” She yelled in return.

I sighed, eyed the last bit of my sandwich, and pushed away the entire tray. “I’ve got Character X written up here.”

“Which one is Character X again?” Marla asked. “I can never remember.”

“That’s because remembering a star-shaped cookie cutter isn’t useful. Because every star-shaped cookie cutter looks like—”

“Smart, mouthy, and feisty?” She interrupted. “Or is X the smart, shy, and baking?”

“The second,” I confirmed. “Sit.” I gestured to the tiny loveseat we’d wedged in next to my desk. “I’ll tell you the tale of Alligator Girl.”

“It is not in my job description to listen to bad character sketches.”

I reached into my bottom desk drawer, pulled out a sack of cherry sour candies, and set them on the desk.

Marla eyed them, eyed me, and sat. “Cheater.” She declared, reaching for the candy.

“Allie Gurlson is a poor little rich girl,” I started, voice pitched for drama. “Her parents died—”

“Of course,” Marla interrupted.

“And she was left a lonely billionaire orphan,” I continued, grinning. “Allie wanted to be someone. She wanted to make her parents proud—”

“I don’t think her dead parents are overly concerned,” Marla drawled, eating a candy.

“So she—” I had to stop to laugh. “Oh, this is good.” I pitched my voice for drama again. “She decided to become a scientist!”

“Experiment gone wrong!” Marla yelled, throwing her hands in the air. A cherry sour candy flew out of her hand and bounced off the filing cabinet. “I love experiment gone wrong! Did she grow a tail?”

I looked at her over the top of the sheet. “This is distinctly less fun when you beat me to the punch line.”

Marla looked unrepentant. “Sorry.” She crossed her ankles, pressed her hands into her lap, and gave me a very innocent look. “Please, continue.”

“And then an experiment went horribly wrong!” I gasped, hand to mouth, and Marla looked properly terrified, widening her eyes and giving a very convincing pretend shiver.

“And then what happened?” Marla asked in falsetto.

“And then,” I paused for dramatic effect. Marla threw a cherry sour at my head. “She became Alligator Girl. Mild-mannered scientist by day, reptile vigilante by night.”

“Does she have a tail?” Marla asked again.

I skimmed the rest of the character bio. “Not yet, but I’m supposed to give her a boyfriend, and then kill him off in no more than twelve issues.”

“Do it right away. Have the meet, and then have him get hit by a bus.”

I snorted. “It’s about as much character development as they want, anyway.” I tossed the information on my desk and caught one of the cherry sours Marla threw at me. “Do you think…” I trailed off, tapped my fingers on my desk, and watched Marla eat another cherry sour.

“What?” Marla prompted.

I looked out my window, stared at the red brick building across the alley. “Nothing,” I said, tossing the cherry sour into my mouth. “Never mind.”

Marla watched me, head cocked. I wondered if she would ask. “It’s a new book,” she said. “You still have time to play with it.”

“This is my fourth dick-centric book in three years,” I told her. “And they’ve all been cancelled in under a year.”

“Not because of you,” Marla insisted. “You’re great at what you do.”

“I know.” I held out my hand, and she tossed me another cherry sour. “But I don’t think they care how good I am.”

Marla stood, straightened, her skirt, and gave me a long look. “You’re Julie Fucking Schwartz—”

“That’s not my middle name.”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “You’re not the best writer Perpetual’s got on staff, but you’re damned close, and if they stopped handing you dick-books because…” She waved her hand to encompass something in my general area. My too-long jeans, maybe. My slightly tangled hair. My bitten nails or my lack of properly drawn eyeliner. “They’d get a book out of you that would sell and keep selling.”

I blinked. I felt like standing up, straightening my shoulders, and hugging her. “Thanks,” I said instead. “Thanks, Marla.”

“You’re welcome.” She grabbed the rest of the cherry sours off my desk and walked back to her desk. “You’ve got an artist meeting in twenty minutes.”

“Got it,” I replied and straightened the papers on my desk.



1960 -- Brainstorming the First Book

“We need something with drama,” Sally said from the end of the table.

“Explosions,” Billie chimed in. “As many as we can fit.”

“We need someone smart,” Wendy announced. She sat at the head of the slightly dented metal table, chair leaned back on two legs. I kept waiting for her to fall over. It was a split back chair, and the bottom part of the split had fallen out the week before.

“Does she have powers?” I asked, scribbling notes onto a steno pad in short hand. Half the girls at college couldn’t read short hand, and it was rare to find a man in general who could read it. Their secretaries could, no question—I’d learned from my mother, who’d been a secretary before meting my father—but I figured there was a rare chance of any men who might find the book of reading it, and an even lesser chance of a woman finding it and knowing what it was. All the police who did raids were men, anyway.

“Does she need powers?” Billie asked. Her hair was back in a long braid. I couldn’t stop glancing at the line of her jaw, but I kept myself from touching.

“It’s not a good idea,” she’d said to me the week before. “Sally and Wendy are pretty okay, but this—” she’d gestured between the two of us, “it might freak them out.”

“But—” I had stopped myself before I could finish the thought. But they’re radical, I wanted to say. And our relationship isn’t, is it?

“Julie,” Sally said to me, “what kind of powers?” The way she asked, slightly exasperated, meant she’d had to ask more than once.

“Sorry,” I muttered and flipped back through my steno pad. “I was thinking some sort of super speed or flight or breathing underwater.”

Wendy shook her head. “We’ve done all that before.” She lifted her hand off the table to make a point and nearly lost her balance. “Shit.” She breathed, catching herself with her fingertips. She steadied herself again and looked at the three of us once she felt comfortable. “What about science?”

“Science?” Billie asked, skepticism in her voice. “What do any of us know about science?”

“I’m a Bio major,” Sally drawled. “I’m minoring in art so I can illustrate textbooks.”

“Your life is fascinating,” Billie shot back. “But you have to run the artists. You don’t have time to fact-check.”

“Why do we need to fact-check?” I asked. They all stared at me, obviously waiting for a punchline. “They’re comics. They’re fantasy. Why do we need a basis in real science?”

“Because that’ll make it better,” Wendy replied like I was stupid. “Because that’ll make it different. Everyone before us,” she said with a sneer, “they tried to make it good by making it weird. The crazier the better. We can do better than that. We can make it weird by starting with science—real, actual, provable science—and then making a logical guess. No aliens, no widgets, no sudden power manifestations. We’ll make everything make sense.”

“By guessing about science?” I asked.

“By researching and then guessing,” Wendy finished. “By doing the work they didn’t want to do.”

They, to Wendy, were the people who’d been in comics when comics had been banned. She felt they hadn’t worked hard enough to keep comics around, felt like they’d let them fall because it was easier to let their backbones shrivel. I agreed with her sometimes, but sometimes I wondered. She hated them now, the people who’d backed down, but she’d obviously idolized them before. She kept a copy of Action Comics #1 hidden in her underwear drawer, she’d told me. Superman lifting the car to save the woman, the green of the car nearly as bright as it had been in 1939, the blue eyes slightly smeared in the interior. She’d shown it to me once, when I’d stopped by under the guise of checking a homework assignment.

“No aliens,” I said, and wrote it down. We all got silent, trying to come up with something.

“Atomic power,” Billie said after a moment. “We could have someone fall into a vat, maybe. Or be near a bomb explosion.”

“We need to research,” Wendy said. “Julie.”

I looked up. “What?”

“Get your writers, spend some time in the library.”

“Okay,” I said. “What are we looking at, specifically?”

“Find out what radiation actually does to us. How we can use the mutations.”

Mutations, atomic, I wrote on my pad in regular script. “Got it.”

“How many writers do you have now?” Wendy asked Billie.

“Three, not counting Jules.”

“Anyone asks, you’re researching for a science class.”

I looked down so she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. Sometimes Wendy forgot that I understood the necessity for discretion. “Got it.”

“Sally, any artists meet Sidekick requirements, yet?” Wendy asked, sounding tired. Sally’s fights with her artists had already become a headache.

“Just nearly. I just lost one to general wimpiness. Apparently, when I said, ‘you may get arrested and thrown in the clink’, she didn’t associate it with meaning I was talking about her until two days ago.” Sally gave a deep sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “So now I’m down to two artists, one of whom still can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.”

“And you’re keeping her…” Wendy trailed off, let her tone fill in the rest of the question.

“She wants to play with panel format. I should have some roughs in another couple of days. I want to see what she’s thinking before I bounce her.”

“Let me see them before you make a decision,” Wendy insisted. She looked around the table, nodded like she was making a deal, and stood. “We’ve been here long enough. Clear out. We’ll be next week.”

“We need a name,” I said as everyone started gathering their things. “We’ve got a cause of power, but we need a name.”

Billie and Sally looked at Wendy. Wendy thought for a moment, her mouth moving from side to side. “Angie,” she said finally. “Atomic Angie.”

Atomic Angie, I wrote down. “All right,” I said. “I’ll get the writers to work. We’ll brainstorm. We’ll research.”

“Meet in a week,” Wendy said. “We’ll start working on storylines.”

“And art,” Sally added.

“And art,” Wendy agreed. “I have to go see a man about an abandoned building. Get lost.”

We left, Sally veering off to the left once we exited the Project Resource Center. “I’m supposed to be coming back from the library,” she told us. “It’ll be more convincing if I come from behind the building.”

“See you,” Billie said and waved her away. We went right, got on the elevator, and took it to the fifth floor. When we got off, we looked around quickly and made for the stairwell. On the third floor, we walked back into the hallway and walked to Billie’s room. We tried to never come straight up from the basement, concerned about who would draw what conclusions.

“The rumor mill’s started on it,” I told Billie quietly as she unlocked her door. “I’ve heard people say we’re here.”

“People say we’re everywhere,” Billie replied and gestured me inside. Her roommate was on her bed, the lace edge of her nightgown tucked under her feet. “Jules is just borrowing a book,” Billie told her.

“Okay,” Billie’s roommate said. She smiled at me. “I like your hair clip.”

My braid was hanging over my shoulder. My clip was mother of pearl, a college gift from my mother. “Thanks.”

“I like it, too,” Billie said, “I meant to tell you.” Her tone was friendly, but she shot me a quick look, warmth and our secret bright in her eyes.

“Thanks,” I said again and felt light-headed.

Billie handed me a book; I didn’t read the title. “You can get it back to me next week.”

“I will.” I wanted to say more, ask her to grab lunch, but I didn’t know if I could do it smoothly like she could; I was afraid it would come out sounding like I wanted to kiss her. “I’ll see you later, Billie.” I gave a quick smile to her roommate. “Bye.”

“Bye,” her roommate called. Billie walked me to the door, glanced around, and pressed her fingers against the end of my braid when she saw the hallway was empty. “Good night, Jules.”

“Good night, Billie.”

When I got back to my room, I finally thought to look at the book. Lady Chatterly’s Lover. I blushed a little and tucked it under my pillow, promised myself not to read it with my roommate in the room.



Pretty Little Pictures

The artists at Perpetual Comics get an entire floor to work. Originally, it was set up with cube walls separating individual artists and drafting boards, but over time the imposed organization fell to the general chaos of a bunch of doodling types in a room. The drafting boards were set up in a somewhat diagonal set up, with some people set at perpendicular to give themselves a better vantage point on natural light. Pointing out that natural light wasn’t a necessity for drawing comic books was met with a pretty mean glare. Someone snarled at me, once.

“Jules!” Sally called from across the floor. She winced before I could glare. “Sorry. Julie. Julie. What can I do for you, Julie?”

“Who’s on Alligator Girl?” I asked rather than harass her about my name. Sally was the only person on staff who got to get away with calling me “Jules” rather than “Julie.” She’d known me before I demanded the name change, before I’d glared down anyone who would refer to me as “Jules.” Before a lot of history got written down in disappointment and anger.

“I haven’t assigned Alligator Girl,” Sally replied, looking around the room. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

“Something slightly different,” I said. “The story I’ve got is pretty base. I’ll going to need art to punch it up properly, I think.”

“Bianche’s only on two books right now. She’s been looking for a third.”

I shook my head. “I think I want to go more noir or art deco. She’s more Van Gough.”

“That takes out Vatch as well, then.” Sally caught my grimace before I could hide it. “Yeah, yeah.” she groused.

“Sorry. But her work is never what I’m looking for. It looks like a bunch of pencil sketches gone wrong to me. I can’t follow my own story with her on the book.”

“Just watch your face,” Sally warned. She was shorter with her artists than I was with Dinick, but her protective streak came out if someone tried to knock them down in any way. There was a wall of art awards on the far wall that spoke to the combined talent in the room, and Sally had been known to read the titles when someone tried to bitch about the art in a book.

“I need someone clean,” I told her.

“Cassidy?”

I grimaced again. “When was the last time Cassidy got something in on deadline?” I asked.

Sally furrowed her eyebrows but ended up nodding along. “Fair.” She agreed. “Chen?”

I considered it. Chen’s work looked like paintings. I wondered what she’d look like through a whole book. “Maybe,” I said. “Put her on the short list for covers if she’s got space.”

“She’s got space,” Sally confirmed. “What about Ba, or is she too wild?”

“Little too wild,” I agreed. “She’s more deco than art in some of her panels, and I need more art than deco.”

“All right; we’re narrowing down.” Sally looked over the room. I watched her mentally choose and drop artists as she glanced at different people. She paused on Reis for a full five seconds before her eyes slid onward. “Sale?” She offered.

“Seriously?”

“She just finished up an arc for Jackie, and she’s only doing covers for Avenging American.”

“Hell, yes,” I said and just managed not to shout. “You’re sure she’s got time. This is Sale we’re talking about.”

“And this is a new book we’re talking about. One, I gather from the notes I’ve gotten, was entirely Bad Editor’s idea.”

“Withholding comment,” I remarked. Sally and I shared a grin.

“You got five?” Sally asked. “I know you want to meet with Sale, but she’s sketching right now. I don’t want to interrupt the work.”

I glanced at my watch. “I’m open for the rest of the afternoon. I should probably start on the script—”

“Come have a drink,” Sally interrupted. “We work in the same building, and I haven’t seen you in two weeks.”

There was something about the way she said it, something in the way she rolled her shoulders that made me realize it wasn’t a casual invitation. “Everything solid?” I asked.

“Have a drink with me,” she repeated, and the left corner of her mouth jerked a little. It was her tell, nearly cleared out of her system during the commie years, but it’d made a comeback when comics got legal again.

“All right,” I said slowly. “We’ll have a drink.” I followed her to her office—much more spacious than mine—and I sat on her overstuffed, dramatic antique fainting couch while she poured us both a tall shot of whiskey. “Whatever you’ve got, it’s bad,” I told her.

“Drink it first,” she ordered. She leaned against her desk, crossed her arms, and watched me until I downed the shot. “Billie’s been invited to join the staff.”

I’d swallowed my whiskey, but I choked anyway. Sally took a step forward, hand raised to smack me on the back. I held up a hand to stop her, choked once more, and managed to turn the next cough into a bit of throat clearing. “…the fuck.” I wheezed as I sat up straight. “I thought she was out.”

“She was.”

“No, Sally,” I snapped. “I thought she was fucking out. I thought she’d been listed for—”

“She’s in,” Sally interrupted me. “Good Editor and Bad Editor are hiring her to write, so she’s in.”

“She’s a fucking—”

“I know, Jules—”

“Julie.” I corrected, tone harsh, voice still ragged from my coughing fit. “It’s Julie.”

“Well, you let her know,” Sally said derisively. “I’m sure she’ll give a shit.”

I dropped my head into my hands, stared at the gray and blue pattern in Sally’s carpet. “Fuck.” I spat. “Fuckin’, Fuckity, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.”

“Eloquent,” Sally drawled. “You should be a writer.” I glared at her. She shrugged. “I warned you,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. She uncrossed her arms, leaned back on her desk, and crossed her ankles. “I tried to stop it. I told them—”

“Which is why no one told me,” I interrupted. “I could have probably shouted them down on it.” Sally snorted, and I couldn’t help but give her a rueful smile. “Fine. I could have totally shouted them down on it.” I ran a hand through my hair, caught my fingers in a tangle, and slowly worked the knot loose while I thought. “Shit.”

Sally walked over, flopped next to me on the couch, and batted my hands away to work on the tangle herself. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you.”

“Did they make you tell me?” I asked.

“I offered. I figured you’d rather hear it from someone who was there when—”

“I don’t need to be reminded,” I cut her off. “Goddamnit.” I twitched when she pulled a bit hard on my hair. “Watch it.”

“Sorry.” Sally dropped her hands to her lap, watched me for signs of breakdown. “You all right?”

I breathed out hard, breathed in harder. I looked out Sally’s window—not a pre-fab job—and stared at the skyline. “She’s probably still gorgeous.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sally said.

“Still lithe.”

“Shut up.” Sally ordered.

I looked at her, felt my lower lip shake, and pressed it between my teeth to stop it. “I should be over it,” I admitted. “It’s been years.”

“Betrayal has a way of hanging on.”

I leaned against the arm of the fainting couch, traced the pattern of a blue flower with one finger. “I don’t love her anymore.”

“No wonder,” Sally scoffed.

“But I forget sometimes,” I said to the flower. “Sometimes all I can remember is the way she’d smile at me, tease me, and what she did, it’s just not there anymore.”

“That’s because you’re a sappy idiot sometimes,” Sally told me. She stood up, shook out her skirt, and held out her hand. “Now knock it off, or I’ll smack you one.”

It made me smile, and I stood up, palm pressing against the blue flower. “I may have you smack me one anyway.”

“That’s why you have Marla.” Sally cocked her head at me. “Speaking of, you should probably warn her.”

I squinted in confusion. “Why?”

It took Sally a moment to answer. “Because you’re going to go on a massive rage attack, and your poor, bedraggled assistant should have the background so she can play interception like a good lackey.”

I thought about it. “Point,” I conceded. “When does she get here?”

“Next week. Tuesday.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tell me she didn’t negotiate a four-day work week.”

“Didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Play as nice as you can. There’s talk she’ll come in outranking you.”

My jaw dropped. “You are lying.”

“I’m not.”

“She’s a fucking tra—” Sally put up a hand; I snapped my mouth shut. “If she comes in over me, I’m leaving,” I said. “I’m fucking leaving.”

“I’ve already warned Good Editor and Bad Editor. They know the risk.”

“Fuck,” I muttered. I ran my hands through my hair again, gathered it at the nape of my neck, and twisted it into a knot. I secured it with a pencil. “I’ve got to go. Thanks, Sally. Sorry for the dramatics.”

“Eh,” Sally said with a shrug. “I do love a good show.”

We grinned at each other. I shook her hand, told her to send me Sale when she was done with her cover, and I headed back upstairs. Marla eyed me when I walked in the door. “You all right?”

I thought about telling her right then, spelling out the problems so she could be ready for them. “Bad news. Give me a few on it.”

Marla pressed her palm against her stomach, glanced over her shoulder at my closed office door. “Is your bad news a redhead?”

I blinked. I swallowed. I blinked again. “What?”

“There’s a redhead to see you. She wouldn’t give her name.” Marla held out her hand, and I realized I’d paled so considerably she thought I was going to fall.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It could be anybody.” I walked past Marla, felt her hand ghost my elbow. I opened my office door.

“Jules,” Billie greeted, smiling serenely from my loveseat. She wore a tailored green jacket and slacks, a white blouse with small, dark blue dots. Her hair was loose to the middle of her back, carefully sculpted curls framing her face. “I wanted to stop in—”

“I’ve got things to do,” I said as coolly as I could manage. “And you’re not on staff for another week. Get lost.” Behind me, I heard Marla drop a stack of papers at my tone.

“I thought—”

“I’m busy, Billie,” I said, my voice as flat as I could force it. “You want attention from me, come back when you work here.”

She stood, towering over me. “I was just saying hello.”

“You “just” did a lot of things,” I returned. Her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes sparked. I wanted to kiss her. Badly. “This one can wait.”

“Jules—”

“It’s Julie,” Marla said suddenly, voice pitched low but clear. “Ms. Schwartz prefers to be called Julie. Until she tells me otherwise, you’ll be calling her Ms. Schwartz where I can hear you.”

Billie glared at Marla. Marla raised an eyebrow, placed her stack of papers precisely on her desk, and walked to the outer door, swinging it open. “If you’d given me a name, I could address you by it, but since you didn’t bother—”

“Billie Fraction,” Billie snapped.

I saw Marla’s right hand glow briefly light purple. She recognized the name. It made her angry. “Well, then, Ms. Fraction,” Marla said, cool as fall, “we’ll see you Tuesday.”

There was a brief staredown. Billie glanced at me, tried to loom. I held my ground and jutted my chin. “Tuesday, then,” she hissed, and then she left, the cut of her suit jacket showing me the shape of her waist.

“Marla—” I started once she was out of sight.

“Don’t,” Marla interrupted. “Give me a minute.” She sat at her desk, flexed her right hand. After a moment, she pressed her fingernail just under her palm and a hatch opened. “I’ll need to make an appointment to see the doctor about my hand,” she said as she pulled a small screwdriver from her desk. “I’ve been having some small power surges.”

“Just let me know when,” I replied, feeling like a voyeur as she adjusted a screw in her wrist. “I’m going to lock myself away for the afternoon so you don’t have to put up with me.”

She looked up briefly, gave me a small smile. “Okay.”

I felt, for a moment, like we were on the verge of something, like I had something to say that would make the entire moment into something new. It faded quickly. I blinked. “Thank you, Marla,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” she said without looking up from her wrist.

I closed my office door as I stepped inside. Wondered on the feeling I’d had, then pushed it down and away, needing to concentrate on other problems. Needing to concentrate on work, on Bad Editor, on Allie Gurlson, the Alligator Girl. On anything. Something. Not Billie.