“Can’t wait.”
Abner heard the sarcasm in my voice and, if anything, it made him even more smug. “Look … there’s nothing wrong with doing what you’re doing. We all need to eat.”
“Some more than others,” I blurted out. I knew the remark was beneath me, but I didn’t care. I realized that I was gripping the baguette—onion sourdough, I think—like a club.
“Hey, street life!” Annabelle yelled over at me now. “Quit flirting, and make that sale!”
The furious look in my eye made Abner cancel his order. With a muttered, “Good to see you, Milano,” he walked away as fast as his giant legs could take him.
There was a brief, embarrassing pause. Then Annabelle, smelling of bread dust and denim, was suddenly at my side again.
“That’s not exactly what I’d call good salesmanship,” she said.
“Look,” I answered, just about at patience’s end, “I thought I was only supposed to look pretty.”
“Oh,” Annabelle said, “I say that to all the girls.”
Then, with a sunburned little smile, she walked behind her booth again.
I stared after her. Despite her disdain for me, in her cruel, craggy, cowgirl way, Annabelle was growing more attractive by the minute. I noted with approval how she filled out her jeans. This job might not be so bad, after all.
When I turned back, I was staring at Abner’s big face again.
“Look, Milano,” he said, breathless now. “How’d you like to come work for me?”
The twist of personality had come so fast, I shook my head to clear it. “What?”
“There’s something I forgot to tell you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Someone,” he panted, “is trying to kill me.”
ON A BREAK—FOR WHICH I HAD TO BEG ANNABELLE—I HEARD ABNER’S story.
We sat in a diner on Park Avenue South at Seventeenth Street, which was cheaper than anything he could now afford. And even though Abner spoke with a new beseeching neediness, he still insisted on separate checks.
Before he started, he looked around for eavesdroppers. “Here’s the thing. The Quelman gig isn’t exactly the joyride I’d been expecting.”
I listened with reluctant sympathy. My tolerance for Abner was already limited and today he was adding a new unpleasant color to his palette: self-pity. Still, it was new.
“You know Prince Corno?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Prince Corno, from the first three volumes?”
I vaguely had some memory of a character named this from my brief time spent skimming the Quelman fantasies. “What about him?”
“Remember that he’s called ‘The Great Lonely One’?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Well, that’s not how the suits in Cali want him to remain.”
I cringed at Abner’s new jargon. “Speak English.”
“Corno’s a warrior. A leader of men. His only companion is his little omniscient owl, Shaba. Generations of readers know this and love him for it. And the executives want—get this—for him to have a girlfriend.”
I broke off a piece of my bagel, waiting for Abner to get to the point.
“And not just any girlfriend. They want him to get it on with Lady Baluga. Queen of the Second Peninsula? They want me to add a love story between Prince Corno and Lady Baluga!”
Abner was so distressed that he was hardly touching his butter-slathered pancakes. Then he pushed the plate away altogether.
“Hey,” I said, torturing him, “you signed on for this. That’s the outside world.”
“I don’t—” he checked around again, lowering his voice. “I don’t blame them. They’ve made a huge investment, and they need everyone on earth to show up. Canoodling between Corno and Baluga will add more of the fifteen- to thirty-five-year-old-female demographic, which is the only sector that’s lagging in their focus group testing. I understand that.”
I knew what he meant, but hassled him again anyway. “It’s like you’re speaking in a foreign tongue.”
“In other words, Milano, it wouldn’t be that big an issue. Except that … it’s gotten out. And the information’s fallen into the worst possible hands.”
I nodded, slowly perceiving where he was going.
“You mean …”
“Exactly. The fans. Someone working in the movie studio—some secretary, some nobody!—leaked the information to the fan Web sites. Now it’s all over the Net. And so is my face!”
