Page 3 of On the Run
“What’s done is done,” Aron the punk-ass philosopher reasoned. “You can’t change it now, so you might as well tell your side of things on the record. Control the narrative, Tommy. Don’t be the victim in your own story. I read that the other day.”
“Yeah? Truly inspirational,” I muttered. “Thanks oodles.”
“Don’t thank me, thank the advice lady. What’s her name? Aunt Something.”
Don’t say it, Aron.
“Aunt Aggie?”
Don’t you do it, boo.
“Aunt Agatha!” he said triumphantly.
“You mean Hagatha,” I corrected flatly.
“You sure?”
“Very.”
“Huh. Well, that bitch is fierce, whatever her name is, and she knows what the fuck she’s talking about, so you should listen to her.”
I rolled my eyes. Little did Aron or the rest of America know, America’s favorite advice columnist, Aunt Hagatha, was a total fraud who didn’t know shit about shit, and she was only able to comment on other people’s poor choices because she’d made one or two of her own.
Life advice for you, precious: should you find yourself in a competitive job market looking to put your state school communications degree to use, and you accept a part-time gig answering advice letters at minimum wage for a silly tabloid, and your boss, Jeanette, is so blown away by the public response to the silly, snarky, Twizzler-loving, romance-reading, middle-aged agony aunt you created that she offers you a full-time job with benefits and a salary so extremely cushy you’ll be able to afford the mortgage on an Upper West Side one-bed with a gorgeous view of the park, it’s important to ask questions.
For example, “Will my identity be more closely guarded than most CIA operatives’?”
And, “How will I show my judgy, homophobic parents back in Ohio that I’ve made it if I can’t tell them about my column?” along with the slightly more positive but no less crucial, “Wait, what will I tell my best friend I do for a living?”
Then I’d suggest you follow it up with a humdinger like, “How can HiWire Entertainment News be both entertainmentandnews, anyway?” Because that might be illuminating.
Alas, I hadn’t had an Aunt Hagatha to consult about becoming Aunt Hagatha, so after agreeing to take the job Jeanette offered at America’s most-read tabloid, HiWire News, I’d signed contracts.
Reams of them.
Entire ironclad forests of them.
Which was part of the reason my fleeing from Manhattan had been so perilous.
I didn’t only care about the inconvenience and embarrassment of being found by the paparazzi (though no one dreams of being famous for a blow job), and I wasn’tjusttrying to help Jayd by refusing to confirm his identity and his presence at the club (though there were lines I wouldn’t cross, and outing someone who deserved the right to tell his family, friends, and fans whatever he wanted to tell them, whenever he wanted to tell them, even if heneverwanted to tell them, was one).
No, my fear of being found out could best be summed up in just three tiny letters: N. D. A. As in, the one I’d signed that showed I’d be responsible for damages—likely equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small nation—should my identity as Aunt Hagatha be divulged,even if it was an accident.
If I left documentation lying around for my apartment cleaners to find, that was my fault. If a coffee shop patron looked over my shoulder and saw me working on Hagatha business whilst drinking a latte, that was on me. And if some soulless paparazzo who wanted to make a quick buck was able to connect Tattoo Guy to Mr. Toby Elford—not unlikely, given that my existence was hardly one of monklike abstinence and I was quite prone to removing my shirt at clubs—and that paparazzo started digging into my life? Honey, you’d best believe HiWire would make thatmyproblem.
Jeanette and HiWire’s stars had risen along with Aunt Hagatha’s rise to popularity, and they were devoted to keeping up Hagatha’s persona as a harmless, eccentricwoman.
As for myself, I was growing more ambivalent to Hagatha by the day. The secrecy was annoying, the responsibility of advice-giving was surprisingly heavy, and I was pretty sure no one read my columns for anything but a laugh.
I was not ambivalent enough to give up the salary, though. That was the mercenary truth. And I was sure as fuck not ambivalent enough to pay HiWire a bajillion dollars for breach of contract—I was slightly bored, not criminally insane—hence my panic.
If I were thinking logically, I might have reasoned that it was just as easy for an industrious reporter to suss out my identity while I was in Florida, and this whole mad dash had approximately the same coherence as an ostrich burying his head and thinking no one could see him…
But logic was not my strong suit in times like these.
Quirky, remember?
“Alright, Aron. Well, fun as it’s been to catch up—”
