Pimp by Ken Bruen

fucking memorized that rave even though she’d said in the
Times Mag
story, “I never read my reviews.” The moral? Don’t believe anything you read in the
Times
even if it isn’t by Jayson Blair.
    “Yes, and it was a good one too,” Kat said. “I think I’ve seen that book on the front page of Amazon.”
    “You probably have,” Paula said pseudo-modestly.
    “And you wrote it? Are you serious?” Kat’s face was glowing. “Wow, it looks like I’m the starfucker, not you. I just
have
a name, but you
are
a name.”
    “No, you are the name, hon,” Paula said, as it hit her that this was it—the final piece of her puzzle of literary domination.
    If anybody wanted to make it to the top these days, if you wanted that extra jolt of cachet, you needed to have a relationship with a Kardashian on your resume. Even if you break up, a Kardashian in your past could help catapult you, or at least get you a reservation at a hot restaurant, sipping the wine right alongside Donna Tartt and Jay McInerny. And not just literary fame—fame fame. Move over Ellen and Rachel, the world of gay women was going to have a new spokeswoman. Hell, it was only a matter of time till Paula had her own TV show. Hello, red carpet. She’d call her show
Paula
and it would become the new
Oprah
.
    She turned Kat onto her back and was on top, pinning her down.
    “What’re you doing?” Kat asked.
    Paula kissed her hard, went, “Sealing the deal, you naughty kitty Kat, you.”
    * * *
    A few days later Paula arrived arm in arm with Kat at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square for the big reading/signing/discussion of
Bust
.
    Here she was, back at the store she had been tossed out of when she’d sort of, well, assaulted Laura Lippman, but now she was returning, as a literary star herself. She’d have to put this in the next book.
    Of course Paula was dressed to impress. Hot pants were back, where had they gone? A tight two-sizes-too-small T-shirt that would look like she and Jennifer Aniston hung out and swapped clothes.
    The store was crowded. Didn’t they say reading was dead? The news hadn’t filtered down to these yuppies. Mind you, they were reading but not fucking buying, unless it was a triple grande light decaffeinated vanilla latte. But they were reading, and they were here in the store. What Paula didn’t get was why people weren’t swarming her. Didn’t they read
Penthouse
? It was hard to believe that everyone was like her and just looked at the pictures. Where were the cameras? With a Kardashian in tow the masses were just letting her, like, pass by?
    For a fleeting moment it occurred to her that she was behaving a lot like Max Fisher. Was it possible that, like many authors, she’d become too close to her subject? She’d come to know Max so well—his delusional thoughts, his megalomania, his addictions. It was why she’d been able to pull off writing Max as a character, getting in his head, making him seem so real. But had she gone too far? Had she crossed the proverbial line and actually
become
him?
    But like Max would, she shrugged off these concerns with, “Ah, fuck it,” and continued through the store.
    Heading up the escalator, it was hard for Paula not to get sentimental, but she couldn’t cry in front of the public and photographers—there had to be photographers around somewhere, right? She went up to the top floor to get a peek of her adoring fans. Would she have more than Hillary Clinton?
    Whoa, what the fuck, she had maybe fifty people here, and some were in chairs, drinking coffee and reading magazines, and may not have come for the reading. While fifty people was forty-nine more people than she’d had at the last reading she’d done when the publicist at St. Martin’s Press was setting up her events—and the one attendee was the publicist herself—for a bestselling author of her caliber it was a disgrace.
    “This is a disgrace!” she shouted.
    “Calm down, baby,” Kat said. “All will be well.