Manhattan Is My Beat (Rune 1)

"So why're you the expert on reality? You write novels."

He sighed, looked away from her. "I don't write novels. I was trying to impress you. I don't even read novels. I write audiovisual scripts for companies. 'Hello, I'm John Jones, your CEO, welcome to Sales-Fest '88....' It's not weird. It's not fun. But it pays the bills."

"But you ... you're just like me. The clubs, the dancing, the magic ... we like the same things."

"It's an act, Rune. Just like it is for everybody who lives that way. Except for you. Nobody can sustain your kind of weirdness. When you're frivolous, when you're irresponsible, you miss trains and buses and dinner dates. You--"

"But," she interrupted, "there'll always be a next train." She wiped her eyes and saw the mascara had run. Shit. She must look pathetic. She said softly, "You lied to me."

The elevator arrived. She pulled away from him and stepped into the car.

"Rune ..."

They stood three feet away, she inside, he out. It seemed to take forever before the doors started to close. As they slowly did she thought that Diarmuid, or any knight, wouldn't let her get away like this. He'd push in after her, shove the doors aside, hold her.

Tell her they could work out these differences.

But Richard just turned and walked down the corridor.

"There'll always be another train," she whispered as the doors closed.

"'Your stepsisters keep you in tatters like this? No, no, no, dear, that will never do. How can you be the fairest one at the ball in these rags? Now, let me see what I can do. Yes, oh, my, that should be just right....'

"And closing her eyes, she waved her magic wand three times. There appeared as if from thin air a gown of silk and lace, stitched with golden and silver thread. And for her feet ..."

Rune recited this from memory as she walked along University Place. She paused, crumpled up the New School application, and three-pointed it into a trash basket.

She glanced at herself in a mirror hanging in a wig shop. The lipstick was fine and the blusher on the cheekbones was fun to do and easy. Thank you, Stephanie. The eyes had been okay--at least before the tears'd turned her into a raccoon.

Rune took another sip of Miller--from her third can--wrapped in a paper bag. She'd bought a six-pack at a deli up the street but had somehow managed to drop three cans within the past two blocks.

A couple holding hands walked past.

Rune couldn't help staring at them. They didn't notice. They were in love.

"'Oh, dear,' Cinderella's fairy godmother said, 'coachmen. What's the good of turning a pumpkin into a coach if you have no coachmen to drive you? Ah-ha, mice...

Rune turned back to the mirror, teased her hair with her fingers, and stepped back to look at the results.

She thought: I don't look like Cinderella at all. I look like a short whore.

Her shoulders sagged and she dug into her bag. Found a Kleenex and scrubbed the rest of the makeup off her face, combed her hair back into place.

She pulled off the orange earrings, which Karen the girls' basketball champ had loved so much, and dropped them into her purse.

What was wrong? Why was it so hard to get men interested in her?

She considered everything.

I'm not tall and blond, true.

I'm not beautiful. But I'm not dog-ugly either.

Maybe she was a lesbian.

Rune considered this.

It seemed possible. And it explained a lot. Like why she got hit on by men but never proposed to--they could sense her orientation probably. (Not that she wanted to get married necessarily--but she did want the chance to say, "Lemme think about it.") No, she just wasn't the sort men went for. That was probably all part of it, maybe the way the Gods made you the way you were. They might make you short and cute, a little like Audrey Hepburn, but not enough to make men--real men, chivalrous men, Cary Grant men, knights errant--fall for you. The Gods are just letting you down easy. Saying: if they'd meant you to have somebody like Richard, they'd have made you four inches taller and a thirty-six C, or B at least, and given you blond hair.