Thick as a Brick: The Fatkini Chronicles

PART 1

1

DREW

"Drew, it’s Sue. Help! I’m desperate. Penelope Franks went to the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery this morning and now I need a keynote speaker for Saturday in L.A. Please tell me you’re available. The IAA needs you. Hell, I need you! Call me back!"

That was Sue Goldman’s voicemail yesterday. It was why Drew was taking the west elevator to the twelfth floor of the Regency Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles today, key card in hand. For anyone else, his answer would’ve been no, but Sue wouldn’t’ve asked unless she truly was desperate, and he couldn’t leave her hanging. Sue had believed in him when a lot of other people were turning their backs and looking down their noses. For her, Drew Katterman would hop on a last-minute flight from New York and pull a keynote speech out of his ass somewhere over the Rust Belt.

The elevator deposited him on the twelfth floor and he found room 1212 at the end of the hall. Drew was pretty sure he’d stayed in this room before. He opened the door and flipped on the lights.

Yup. Been here. Done this.

Beige walls, dark blue carpet, patterned blackout curtains. A bed, a desk, bedside table, armoire hiding a TV, and a mini-fridge. A wall of windows offering a view of L.A.’s nighttime neon sprawl was the only outstanding feature. There was nothing unexpected or offensive about the space; it just wouldn’t be his first choice for accommodations.

Drew Katterman wasn’t what most people thought of when they pictured a romance author. Nope. He was a tattooed, hetero, White guy in his mid-thirties who hadn’t even graduated from high school and who had a faulty filter between his brain and his mouth.

He dropped his overnight bag on the floor beside the bed, opened his messenger bag, and pulled out his computer. Drew yanked the navy-blue duvet down to the bottom of the bed and let it pool on the floor. Hotels didn’t wash those things between guests and they always gave him the heebie-jeebies no matter how nice the place was. He flopped onto the exposed beige blanket and opened his laptop. While it powered up, he grabbed his phone, snapped a picture of the room, and texted it to his girlfriend Livi.

Made it to the hotel in L.A. You should’ve come along. Rodeo Drive is nearby.

The message went from DELIVERED to READ.

Livi responded:

God, what a fkng dump. Not enuf shopping in Beverly Hills 2 make that shithole OK. Hard pass. Partying w/Magnus 2nite.

Her haughty response didn’t surprise Drew. It was typical.

Not like I chose it, but the hotel’s clean & I’ll hardly be in the room. Anyway, enjoy the party.

Always do. Will b gone when u get home. Singapore w/ Sandee next wk.

He frowned.

U just got back from Monaco.

She traveled to party, gamble, and shop. Theirs was an open relationship, but Livi acted like open referred to Drew’s credit line and her own hedonistic pursuits more than anything else. She was twenty-three and had a marketing degree from NYU that she didn’t use. They’d been a couple for four years, but he felt like she was always going places just to avoid him. He stayed with her because she was great in bed, she didn’t ask questions about his past, and it was easier to tolerate his girlfriend’s selfishness than it was to be alone or to trust someone new.

Livi responded:

So?

So it’d be nice to spend time w/ my gf.

Come w/ us.

U know I can’t. I’m losing 4 writing days @ this conf. Gotta earn the $$ u luv to spend.

LOL I won’t stop u from making $$$. We’ll hang when I’m back. Ciao

Drew considered his reflection in the black face of his phone, then pocketed the device. Turning to his laptop, he pulled up the Independent Audiobooks Association’s conference website even as he opened his social media manager and posted a note for his followers:

In L.A. until Monday. Who wants to go dancing tomorrow night? I’ll reserve a party bus, you guys find the clubs. Go!

Immediately, messages and smiley emojis popped up, and a group of local readers started kicking around ideas. Drew’s readers were loyal and fun to hang out with. He could count on them to fill his evening and more or less keep him out of trouble.

Wherever he traveled, he reached out to local fans. It was something he’d started doing a decade ago, when he was a bright-eyed, snot-nosed newbie author. Back then, he’d been lucky to get two readers to show up, but those fans were still with him, still coming through when he posted. Some of them were almost friends, or as close to friends as Drew allowed himself to have.

That done, he turned to the conference website to see who else was presenting and if there were any interesting sessions he could attend between the workshops and panels he was covering.

He scrolled through the speakers. Lots of familiar faces, a few he was happy to reconnect with, a few he hoped to avoid like the plague. There was no rhyme or reason to how they’d organized the list of presenters and he was about to go back to the menu when he scrolled down to one more speaker and stopped.

Drew stared at the beautiful, unfamiliar young woman and wanted to smack whoever had used black and white photos for all the speakers. This was a face he wanted to see in full color.

Zelda Gordon (aka Fannie Gordon) is an award-winning romance and erotica audiobook narrator….

He knew her name but not much about her, and they’d never crossed paths. She had large, intelligent eyes and her bow lips parted in an almost-smile/almost-smirk. Drew smiled back at her and skimmed her profile. At only twenty-one, she was relatively new to voiceover, but in the three years she’d been narrating, she’d collected an impressive list of clients and a handful of awards in multiple romance subgenres. She was part of the Let’s Talk Sex panel, as well as a voiceover technique workshop someone had titled Careless Whispers with another narrator and a producer.

Drew followed the link to Zelda’s website and scanned the audio samples she’d posted. One was labeled, Sticky Fingers. He plugged his headphones into his laptop and pressed PLAY.

A sultry voice filled his ears and shot excitement straight to his balls. She was describing a hotel room, nondescript like the one he sat in. A woman splayed out on the bed as a man clung to the outside of the building and watched her through the window.

Are you alone? Seth asked into his headset.

Yes.

Yes, what?

The sharpness in his deep, masculine voice made me hotter and wetter and hornier. Yes, sir. Who the fuck was this guy? How did he get my number? And why wasn’t I hanging up the phone and calling the cops?

Are you dressed?

Yes, sir.

Are you touching yourself?

No, sir.

Do it. Put your fingers on your clit.

Seth clung to the wall outside Nancy’s tenth-story window, staring while she did as he ordered. She spread her legs, pulled up her skirt, and slipped her hand beneath the band of her black panties. He licked his lips, shifted his molecules from gecko form to human, and pulled his hand free from the stone. Watching her fingers move beneath her lacy underwear was almost too distracting, and the magic shifting beneath his skin responded wildly to the spell of her desire. How does that feel? he asked.

Wet, sir.

Good? Seth put his hand down his pants. His cock was stiff as a board. He wrapped his fingers around it, squeezed and stroked.

God, yes. Sir. Why was I doing what he ordered? And why did I like it? Why did I like obeying this stranger?

This was dangerous. If Seth’s magic got too depleted, he could end up with an uncontrolled shift and his fingers could stick to his dick for hours. But, shit, it’d be worth it.

Jeezus, narrative head-hopping and wandering points of view for an entire novel would give Drew a headache. Plus, the gecko shifter idea was goofy as fuck. But Zelda’s acting sold the scene. No, more than that; she put him in the room with that woman, she hung him outside the tenth-floor window with that man. Zelda built their sexual excitement inside the listener. Her narration was equal parts raw and intimate. Drew’s cock sat up straight and begged for more, and just like the man staring through the window, Drew put his hand down his pants and felt the same pleasure that coursed through the characters as they stroked themselves. They came — Nancy on the bed, Seth outside the building, and Drew in his hotel room — all because Zelda Gordon’s voice was pure sensuality.

Fuuuck. He grabbed a tissue and promised himself that he’d find Zelda and beg her to narrate every damned book he wrote from that day forward.

His stomach grumbled, clearly less impressed with the woman’s narration than his dick was. He’d missed dinner. Laughing at himself, Drew changed his shirt and headed down to the bar. The hotel offered limited late-night meal options, but the people-watching could be worth the effort of leaving his room.

He slipped into the dim bar, found a table in a corner, and surveyed the crowd. A group of early conference arrivals lorded over several tables in the middle of the room. Their volume and enthusiasm attested to their high blood alcohol levels. A trio of editors occupied the bar with a pair of agents, all with their heads together in front of an open laptop.

A server placed a napkin and a glass of ice water on the table before Drew. What can I get you?

The kitchen’s still open, right?

Yes, sir, with a limited menu. You want to see what’s available?

Can they do a cheeseburger and fries?

Sure. That’s easy. How d’you want that cooked?

Medium rare, please, with cheddar, tomato, lettuce, mustard, ketchup. Grilled onions possible?

We can do that. And to drink?

Coffee. Black, please, and charge the meal to room 1212.

You got it. The food will take about fifteen minutes, but I’ll be right back with your coffee.

Drew relaxed and stretched his legs under the table. The flight had taken almost seven hours and his muscles were tight.

Zelda Gordon. Goddamn, the woman had talent with a capital T. He definitely needed to thank Sue for calling him in a panic. She’d saved him a lot of time and effort, and she didn’t even know it.

He rolled his head on his shoulders and watched the drunk conferees. Most were strangers, but there were a couple familiar faces among the group, including two narrators he really fucking hoped hadn’t noticed his arrival: Kitty Raymond and Margo Keller.

Shit and a half.

He didn’t want to chat with Kitty because he hated the woman’s voice, and she’d been trying to get him to hire her for two years. Drew wished she’d get the message without him coming out and telling her that her high-pitched whine annoyed the shit outta him. She worked, so there were lots of authors who liked it, especially for young adult fiction. It just wasn’t his cup of tea. He preferred silky, with an underpinning of steel. Sultry. Smoky. Like aged whiskey. Hell, one hundred percent like Zelda Gordon’s full-throated purr.

The other narrator, Margo, he wanted to avoid for a completely different and altogether more unpleasant reason. He was a huge fan of her voice, so much so