Page 5 of The Dirty Version

Janelle barreled into Tash’s modern duplex the next morning.

“This cannot be real!” Janelle spoke too loudly—both for the hour and for Tash’s aching head.

“You’re sure he’s not in subtitles? You’re sure it was the same ‘You will meet a tall, dark stranger’ hottie you chased away before I went home?

” Janelle put a sack of hangover sandwiches from the deli next to her kids’ daycare into Tash’s hands.

Tash’s eau-de-previous-evening sagged onto a barstool at her kitchen island.

“I’m sure.” She opened the paper bag gratefully, inhaling a fog of bacon, egg, and cheese.

“Thanks for this. I swear, I’m not really that hungover.

” Her frontal lobe hurt from last night’s confrontation, and in anticipation of the road ahead.

“ Yet —you’re not hungover yet , you mean.

” From her tote, as if she had not imbibed an excess of Old-Fashioneds just a heap of hours earlier, Janelle unsheathed their favorite tequila.

Nimbly, she unpacked tomato juice, pepperoncini, hot sauce, and lemons from the tree in her yard.

A head of celery went onto a cutting board pulled from Tash’s cabinet.

“It’s just so crazy!” Janelle gestured with a long knife.

“I’ll make drinks while you call Denise.

Then you have to tell me everything from the beginning. Again.”

Through her brain throb, Tash understood this whirlwind of grease and alcohol as an offering: Janelle felt guilty about her wife’s no-show. Booze was Janelle’s love language. Breakfast sandwiches were her apology.

Even if Tash had already told her it wasn’t necessary—the dinner wasn’t Janelle’s responsibility, and the rumble with Braverman probably would have still happened even if Denise had been there.

Still, Tash unwrapped a sandwich and bit into buttered sourdough, watching as Janelle sliced a lemon. “Don’t make mine too strong. I have to go to campus and turn in grades.”

Biscayne Coastal’s fame and funds came from its marine biology program—and, not coincidentally, its ocean laboratory’s proximity to perfect, gnarly South Florida waves.

The non-ocean-science disciplines were often overlooked, and in keeping with that fond neglect, the English department’s records engine ran on a backbone of 1960s vacuum tubes.

Tash had to manually submit her end-of-semester marks.

Janelle halved a head of celery. “Me, too. Let’s go in together.”

“Okay.” Tash observed Janelle’s knife skills. Bloody Maria highballs had always gone hand in hand with The Colony ; five years earlier, Tash and Janelle had devised the blueprint for the novel amid an endless pour of this very drink.

“Are those the contracts?” Janelle pointed with her chin.

Tash nodded. The reclaimed-driftwood surface of her dining table bristled with a hard-copy history of The Colony ’s literary legalese—from its initial small-press publication to the contracts dominoing from its rights’ sales.

Tash had woken early to unearth them from a packing container in her utility closet, shoved there when she’d moved back into the duplex after Zachary, her ex, called off their wedding.

At the time, Tash had resolved to let her space reflect her truth—and the truth was, she sucked at paperwork and organization. Administratively, she resembled a dumpster fire. The only thing alphabetized in her apartment were her running shoes.

Also, Zach had managed to make the publication of The Colony feel villainous, always the thing she’d chosen over him.

And Tash would choose it again. She had no regrets in that department. She was done with machismo cloaked in a sensitive veneer.

“You know what else I found in my highly organized paperwork?” Tash started in on the second half of her sandwich, buying herself time—anxious to speak to Denise, but also scared of her verdict.

“Letters my mom wrote to me when I was twelve and thirteen. She sent them when I got homesick during those summers at my aunt’s house. ”

Janelle raised an amused eyebrow. “The Nice Indian Girl immersions?” Tash’s adolescent roti-rolling failures were an eternal source of Janelle’s glee.

Tash smirked back. Decades later, her rotis still were never round, she minced onions unevenly, and her Hindi broke.

Tash’s Caucasian mother meant well when she sent the Grover siblings to their father’s sister to absorb Indian traditions she couldn’t provide, but Tash always felt inadequate during those long weeks.

“The weird thing is, I don’t remember if I ever wrote her back.” Tash glanced to where she’d stacked the envelopes on an end table near her couch. “I didn’t even realize I saved her letters.”

Mary Grover had apparently written every day. In square, neat, high-school-math-teacher handwriting, on gridded paper. The letters chronicled the ordinary details of Florida summer household chores. They were actually kind of boring, but they evidenced an effort.

“That’s interesting.” Janelle rimmed two tumblers with several twists of coarse black pepper grind. “Stop stalling. Call Denise.”

Tash gave in. She retrieved her phone from a low console beside her living room’s sliding glass doors, stepping out to the best part of the duplex—the balcony that rested in the tangled shade of thatch and foxtail palms. Beyond it, down a soft-paved bike lane, through a rickety gate overrun by the gauche magenta of crepe myrtle, the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean surged and foamed.

It swelled out of sight but sounded close enough to soothe an insomniac through an open window; close enough to accidentally fill a driveway with wayward sea turtles, or curl an expensive salon cut with its thick air and its salt.

“Hey, Tash.” Denise answered the call on her car’s Bluetooth, on the highway, probably in a designer blouse. Her voice rang no-nonsense, just like the razored angles of her ash-blond bob. “I heard you two were in rare form last night. I’m sorry I missed it.”

Tash sat at attention. She knew the available window for Denise to ponder non-billable literary clusterfucks would be small and short. Corporate ladder dreams swamped Denise constantly with clients and closings.

Denise plunged in. “I read the hate mail from your agency. From what I can tell, they have a solid argument—the right of first refusal doesn’t mean you can block the adaptation’s script changes forever.

There’s a time frame, and after a period of your inaction, a failure to respond to Braverman defaults to a no. ”

Tash stung from the swiftness of Denise’s judgment.

“If that happens and the studio registers your contractual decline, you have no further recourse—especially since the series’ scripts were created by other writers.

The studio would be able to alter the written film property without repercussion.

Then you’re watching The Colony from your couch, just like everybody else.

” A horn screeched in Denise’s background.

“Unless the series spawns a sequel—in your case a Season Two. Then Braverman is required to come back to you and start the whole negotiation over.”

Feeling ill, Tash reached across her outdoor furniture to open the balcony slider for Janelle. “Well, forget that. Season Two is moot.”

“Put her on speaker.” Janelle settled on the wicker couch opposite Tash, delivering a scarlet highball stilted tall with garnish. She listed toward the phone. “Babe, can you repeat whatever Season Two thing you just said? Natasha needs the money. I had to pay for drinks last night.”

“What? I paid for those drinks!” Tash glared as Janelle winked.

“And I don’t need the money.” Not entirely true—adjuncts earned next to nothing, and the book’s modest proceeds were a nest egg Tash had vowed from the beginning not to touch.

“Not enough to change the end, anyway—and that’s their price, Jan.

That’s how they’d push us into another season. ”

Janelle furrowed. “I don’t get it.”

Tash point-blanked across the coffee table and the propped-up phone: “Braverman wants to save the baby. Last night he told me he thinks Hewett should do it.”

Janelle coughed through her cocktail, bugging eyes at Tash as if she’d incorrectly heard.

Clearing her throat, gaze tearing tequila: “Does he know the baby dies?” Janelle had read so many drafts of the novel, she could recite it in her sleep.

Plus, the principles of the island’s Lore were cribbed from her class notes. “That’s the whole point of the book.”

Denise crackled over the speaker. “Wow. Dead-baby talk is so great first thing in the morning.”

Janelle shot an outraged look at the phone. “Denise! The ending is essential!”

Tash could have disintegrated into fury also—but the clock was ticking on her time with Denise.

Instead, she recentered the conversation.

“Denise, what about that moral clause? The right of integrity? The one you said only ever gets enforced in France?” Tash read from a page she’d pulled out from her contract: “‘... any act in relation to the work that is harmful to the author’s honor or reputation.’”

Denise boomed drolly. “It still only ever gets enforced in France. And I’m not an IP expert, but I think a plot change isn’t ‘derogatory treatment of the published work.’ Especially if it saves a baby instead of throwing it off a cliff.”

Tash searched the mental list of escape routes she’d calculated before the call. “What about the sex scenes Braverman wants? Does the moral clause apply there?”

“Do they constitute ‘derogatory treatment’? I doubt it, unless they tried to force you to write something outrageously freaky, which they probably won’t do.

Braverman’s movies maybe aren’t intellectual, but they’re also not fetish films.” Denise’s serrated humor bounced through the speaker.

“Plus, the sex is in the book, Tash. It’s feminist-lens or implied, I know”—before anyone could protest—“but still. You’d be splitting hairs. ”