Page 32 of Man Hands
Ugh.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Ash says, patting my hand. “I would switch places with you if Icould.”
“Really?”
“Sure! It would probably be great for my real estate business.” She sits back as a dreamy look steals across her face. “I think I should claim to be a porn star. It doesn’t even have to be true. I could triple mylistings.”
I give her a little kick. “You’remockingme.”
“I’m not!” She looks up in alarm. “I’llproveit.”
She starts to turn the screen in my direction, but I look away. “Don’t show me mysexface!”
“Calm down. We’re looking at your blogstats.”
“I haven’t posted anything new in three days!” My whole life was going to hell, and I didn’t even have a carefully styled pastry to eat while Romeburns.
“They don’t care,Brynnie.Look.”
The graph of my daily unique visitors looks like a cliff in the Alps. A flattish line bumbles along from left to right and then leaps up. “What the hell? Is this thing broken? I can’t have forty thousand unique visitorstoday.”
“Au contraire, mon frère!” Ash cackles. “Scandal is good for web hits. Also, you have a really nice sex face. My sex face looks like I justfarted.”
“Holy cannoli,” I breathe, eyeing the stats, not responding to Ash’s sex-fart-face.
“You know what would really make you feel better? You could make us some cannoli. From scratch,” Ash suggests. “That sounds really good rightaboutnow.”
“I’m not your personal chef.” Lately it makes me touchy when people ask me to cookforthem.
Ash pokes me. “I’m not Steve, damn it. I’m just hungry, and we can’t go out for a boozy lunch because there are photographers camped out on the front walk. I’ll cook for you if you want me to, but we both know where that willleadus.”
She’s right. The ER. Ash can cause food poisoning while fixing up nothing but air. She’s magicthatway.
We do need food, damn it. “I’ll see what I can scare up. This popcorn isn’t going to last forever.” This kind of crisis requires frequent snacking. “Hey—look at my Amazon ranking, would you?” I heave myself off the couch and wander toward the kitchen. I’m not in the mood for sweet things. Stress calls for salty things, and since I can’t have sex right now, I’ll just make someartichokedip.
“Hey!” Ash calls out a minute later. “Yummy Ballsis ranked ninety-seven.”
I ponder the interior of my refrigerator as I try to make sense of that ranking. “Ninety-seven in appetizers and sidedishes?”
“Nope!”
“Um…” I pull out some mayonnaise, parmesan, a lemon, and artichokes. This is not a dip for the calorie-afraid. “It can’t be ranked ninety-seven in all of cookery,” I yell. I never rankthathigh.
“It’s ninety-seven in the entire Amazonstore.”
The mayonnaise and parmesan fall to the floor with a thunk. Luckily, I’m able to cling to the lemon and artichoke hearts. “Don’t tease me, Ash. I’m fragile.” Unless we’re talking about my hips. Those’re about as fragile as abulldozer.
“Yummy Ballsis a bestseller in three categories,” Ash says. “You got the little orange flag and everything!” The excitement in her voice is proof enough. She’s notbullshittingme.
“Screen shot!” I yell. “Quick!” This has never happened to me before. Still clinging to my lemon and artichoke hearts, I run for the living room. “Where isTastyDips?”
“That one is ranked at a hundred and twelve. Your dips are lagging your balls, youslacker.”
“Omigod. Omigod!” I flap my elbows, because of the ingredients in my hands. “I’m having amoment!”
She snaps my laptop shut. “See? There’s your silver lining. You’re going to earn thousands on your cookbooks thismonth.”
But then reality sets in again, and I shudder. “Why bother with the cookbooks at all? I could just do porn. It obviouslypayswell.”
