Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler Page A

Republican; no one would ever know.
    And once again, Rima seemed to be the only one to see him. Perhaps he was a hallucination. A visitation. Her own private clown.
    A woman came toward Rima. She had wild wiry red hair and was carrying a string bag with groceries in it—loose carrots, soup cans, dinner rolls. For a moment Rima thought she was the woman from the beach. The nose seemed right, and the red-rimmed eyes, but Rima’s suspicions were roused mostly by the way she stared at Addison. Rima almost said something, but then she saw another woman who could have been the woman from the beach. This one had black hair, sticking up from her forehead in spikes. Obviously Rima had no idea what the woman from the beach had looked like, beyond the fact that she was white.
    And there were many people staring at Addison. Rima had forgotten how famous Addison was. Now she remembered. A famous writer going into a bookstore in her own hometown was likely to be stared at.
    People came out from the stacks and behind their counters to say hello. The quick stop-in stretched to half an hour, then forty minutes, as there were remainders to be found and signed, and these were immediately bought, so they had to be re-signed, but personalized. There was the election to be exulted over, the California results discussed (schizophrenic, they all agreed), and a great many new books to be pointed out and recommended. Plus Rima had to be introduced to everyone. “My goddaughter from Cleveland,” Addison said.
    Well, Ohio hadn’t delivered the complete Democratic rout that had been predicted. Still—a clear winner in the “most improved” category. People in the bookstore were letting bygones be bygones.
    By the time Addison finally made it to checkout, she was buying three novels and the selected letters of Martha Gellhorn. There was a small book, more like a pamphlet, faceup on her pile. The clerk, a young woman with two short ponytails on top of her head like teddy-bear ears, picked it up to scan it. Addison stopped her. “I have that one at home,” she told Rima, and the clerk set it aside on the counter by Rima’s arm.
    Rima looked at the cover. Holy City: Riker’s Roadside Attraction in the Santa Cruz Mountains: A Nostalgic History, by Betty Lewis. How weird! Rima hadn’t even known there was a Holy City until a few days before. And now she’d sent a letter there. She’d had no idea it was a roadside attraction. And now she had no idea what kind of roadside attraction. She pictured a small storefront. A pin-ball machine. A curtained doorway with a sign to the side. “Fifty cents admission. See the Horrible Thing!” She picked the book up, flipped through it while Addison paid. The Horrible Thing turned out to be a white supremacist cult.

(2)
    They walked a couple of blocks to the sushi restaurant and sat at the bar. Here again, Addison seemed to know everyone. A martini appeared without having been ordered. To the list of things her friends had failed to warn her about Santa Cruz, Rima added the fact that the sushi contained crushed nuts. Even more surprising was what a good idea that was. “How about that election,” the sushi chef said. He looked more like a surfer than a sushi chef.
    There was a ceramic cat on the bar, mostly white, with calico patches and a raised paw. Maneki neko. A good-luck charm to bring in customers. This one was Americanized, beckoning with the back of its paw outward instead of the front, which was traditional. Or so Rima had read somewhere or other.
    â€œI’d be happy to tell you about Holy City,” Addison said, “if there’s anything particular you want to know.” She was stirring her drink with the olive in a careless, fiddle-dee-dee way, as if she knew nothing about the letter Rima had sent. But why else would she keep bringing up Holy City? Kenny Sullivan, postman to the rich and famous, must have sung like a