Free Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

conversation on the other side of Rima, the one about unconditional love, but Rima couldn’t hear it, so it probably was about something else by now. Someone at the table on the left was being told to fuck himself, but in an affectionate way.
    When Martin saw that Rima was watching, the music fading, he raised his head and his voice. “It takes money to make money, is what I’m saying,” he told her. “Fact of life. Sad fact of life. You’ve got to have some kind of stake to start with. Maybe it doesn’t have to be money. Something. Take Addison. With a little initiative she wouldn’t even have to write her own books anymore. She could get someone else to write them, share the profits, cash the checks. All because she’s got the stake to begin with.”
    Scorch shook her head so that some of her hair landed on Martin’s shoulder. In the bar light, her red hair was black and her pink hair silver. “She’s very fussy about Maxwell Lane,” Scorch said. “She’d never let anyone else have him,” and then there was another song, a song in which someone Rima was never able to identify killed himself with car exhaust, which you would think would be a quiet song, but wasn’t, and when it ended, Scorch picked the conversation right back up as if there’d been no interruption. “Like she’s always going nuts about the fanfic. Especially the sex stuff.”
    It was the evening’s first mention of sex, and it came in a shout and it came from a sexy young woman. Those men close enough to hear stopped their own conversations. The air thickened. “What sex stuff ?” Rima asked.
    â€œOh my god!” Scorch said. As she’d drunk and danced and drunk some more, she’d been shedding clothes. There was a small pile of them now under Rima’s stool, and Scorch was down to a backless tank top, her shoulders and the tops of her breasts sparkling. She was dressed for ice dancing, except for the shoes. “You haven’t read it? Maxwell Lane sex fantasies. Written by fans and posted like all over the Internet. Tons of them. Very explicit, but sort of soft-focus too.”
    Rima had never heard of fanfic, but she could see how Maxwell would prompt fantasies. As a young man, he’d been an FBI informant and done some things that haunted him; betrayal and bad faith were his particular issues. There he was, all alone, so tortured by his past. Addison was practically begging for it.
    â€œI hear it’s all written by women,” Martin said. “So I don’t get why so much of it is man on man.”
    â€œI think it’s often written by gay women,” Scorch said.
    â€œBut see, that doesn’t clarify things.”
    â€œA ton of it is Maxwell and Bim,” Scorch said.
    It was the evening’s first mention of sex with Rima’s father. Rima’s glass was empty. She waved the bartender over, but it took too long, so when Martin wasn’t looking, she helped herself to his beer, just until her own drink came.
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    S econd set, three drinks down:
    â€œUntil the cat walks in,” the vocalist sang, or maybe, “Only the fat wax on.” Followed by, “You love you love you love you.” Scorch was talking to Martin, fast, the way she usually talked, but with an excess of enunciation clearly aimed at Cody. “So he’s taking this class in primate behavior,” she said, “and suddenly we’re all laid bare, you know, everything we do, he knows what it means. What it really means, not what we think we’re doing, not what we mean to do, god no, it’s all status and display or alliance or intimidation or accommodation. And I’m sorry, but it’s fucking annoying, is what it is. So tonight, I’m getting dressed, and I ask him, Am I a high-status female? He’s been going on about high-status females, so I ask, Am I one of those? Of course, it’s not