Run Catch Kiss: A Novel - Softcover

Sohn, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684867532 ISBN 13: 9780684867533

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

I was only twenty-two and already I was infamous... So begins Amy Sohn's hilarious and wise debut novel, Run Catch Kiss.
When the saucy Ariel Steiner returns home to New York City to be an actress, she is buoyed by daydreams of becoming Hollywood's hottest ingenue. Nothing can stand in her way -- nothing, that is, but her freshman-fifteen pounds, a senile talent agent, and the fact that she's living back home with her parents in Brooklyn.
While waiting for the ever-elusive big break, Ariel discovers a hidden talent for channeling her erotic fantasies and becomes a sex columnist at New York's hottest downtown weekly. Soon, art and life are imitating one another, and the junkies, commitmentphobes, and other subjects of Ariel's columns are wreaking havoc on her life. But when she finally falls in love, the real Ariel must stand up. Is she a nice Jewish girl who wants to settle down or a brazen sex kitten who'd rather meet a deadline than the man of her dreams?
Sharp, savvy, and irresistible, Run Catch Kiss is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on that dangerous turn-of-the-century phenomenon: the single girl who wants it all.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Sohn’s novels include Prospect Park West, Motherland, The Actress, and The Man Who Hated Women. Her articles have appeared in New York, Harper’s Bazaar, Playboy, and The Nation. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

I was only twenty-two and already I was infamous. I read the gossip pages with terror in my heart, certain I would find some humiliating detail about my recent downfall. I walked the streets with my eyes peeled, ever on the lookout for hidden paparazzi. I entered my local café with my sphincter tight, counting the seconds until a stranger recognized me, shouted my name, and mocked me for my crime, a crime no one understood, because of my adamant and prolonged silence on the matter.

I was the Hester Prynne of downtown. A public laughing-stock at an age when my biggest worry should have been my lack of health insurance. Shamed before my time, defamed without good cause, a huge red letter branded on my (sizable) chest.

Yet somehow it all made sense. I had always wanted to become someone who could walk into a room and have her reputation precede her. That's what I got. In the worst way.

I didn't move back to New York to be a sex columnist. I wanted to be an actress. The day after graduation, I moved into my parents' apartment in Brooklyn Heights and called my agent, Faye Glass. She had represented me since I was fourteen, and helped me book a few off-off-Broadway plays and an anticrack commercial during high school, but by senior year my career wasn't exactly promising enough to make it worth postponing college. So I let my contract expire, went off to Brown, and told Faye I'd be in touch in four years.

I don't think she realized I meant it literally, because when I got her on the phone that day in May and told her my name, she said, "Who?"

"Ariel Steiner," I repeated insistently. "You represented me when I was a kid. I finished college, I'm back in the city, and I want to start auditioning again."

"Oh," she said like she still wasn't sure who I was. "Come into my office sometime tomorrow and we can get reacquainted."

She seemed to recognize me when I walked in the door, which at first was a huge relief. Maybe her early-onset dementia wasn't as advanced as I had thought. She sat me down opposite her desk and I said, "How's the business changed since I've been away?"

"I'll tell you how you've changed," she said. "You're heavier. A lot heavier. I hate to say it, but looks are seventy-five percent of this business, and it's always going to be that way. I can't send you out for any ingenue parts until you lose fifteen pounds. Come back and see me when you've slimmed down. In the meantime, I'll submit you for fat character roles."

I nodded mutely, but as soon as I got out on the street, I started bawling. It came as something of a shock to have to put my life dream on hold all because I never got rid of my freshman fifteen. And it didn't help that I was being asked to diet when I had just graduated a college where you spend four years learning not to buy into the warped value system of the patriarchal hegemony.

The reason Faye's words were so surprising was that I'd never considered myself fat before. I was five five, 142 pounds -- no slim chicken, but by no means a total porker. Guys had always considered my body more of an asset than a liability. I'm what they call zaftig: all butt, boobs, and hips. I was a late bloomer, but once I bloomed, I bloomed big. I didn't understand how the same figure that had served me so well horizontally could serve me so poorly professionally. But it didn't matter how I felt about my body. If Faye said I was fat, then I was. I had to lose the weight or choose another career, and I wasn't going to choose another career.

I'd known acting was my calling since November 1976, when I was two. My parents had taken me to my grandparents' house in Philadelphia for Thanksgiving, and after dinner the whole family gathered in the living room for the entertainment segment, where all the kids showed off their latest accomplishments. As my three-year-old cousin Eddie belted "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" into a microphone, I sat in the corner, watching them all watch him, and was seized by a jealous rage. I couldn't stand the sight of so many people paying so much attention to someone who wasn't me.

Then I got a brilliant idea. As Eddie continued to sing, I slowly and quietly began to strip off all my clothes. Everyone was so focused on him they didn't notice what I was doing. As soon as I was in the buff, I jumped in front of him with a loud "Ta-da!" and the entire room burst into fits of hysterical laughter. Eddie had been totally forgotten. They were all watching me. I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for stealing his limelight. I just felt like justice had been served.

But now justice would have to be delayed until I lost my extra poundage. I wiped the tears off my face, bought a Slim-Fast at a Korean deli, and got on the subway home.

Brooklyn Heights is a quaint, old-fashioned neighborhood known for its tree-lined streets and elegant turn-of-the-century brownstones. I didn't grow up in one of those brownstones. I grew up in a three-bedroom apartment on the thirty-fifth floor of a middle-income apartment building, Silver Tower, that was built in August 1973. I once looked up Silver Tower in a Brooklyn history book and it was described as "a blot on the otherwise attractive landscape of the neighborhood."

Sad to say, that's pretty accurate. The railings on the terraces look like prison bars, the concrete is gray-brown and ribbed like a condom, and the entire phallic palace is the biggest eyesore in a twenty-block radius. The only thing that makes the apartment halfway worthwhile is the view. The terrace faces Queens, but if you lean all the way out and look toward the left, you can see the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and from my bedroom you can spot the Statue of Liberty.

When I got home, my mom was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and listening to All Things Considered. "How was Faye's?" she said.

"She can't send me out on any ingenue parts till I lose fifteen pounds."

"She really said you have to lose fifteen pounds?" said my mom, horrified.

"Yeah."

"Because I think ten would be more than enough."

"Thanks," I said, went into my room, and shut the door. I lay down on the bed, closed my eyes, and fantasized about the day my skinny, perfect ass would be on the cover of Rolling Stone. It wouldn't take long. Once I lost the weight, Faye would send me on an audition for a murderous, conniving bitch part on the New York cop show Book 'Em. The casting director would be so blown away by my venomous appeal that she'd hire me on the spot. As soon as we shot the episode, every casting office in town would start buzzing about me, and before the show even aired, George C. Wolfe of the Public Theater would cast me in his next star-studded production -- as Lady Macbeth to Will Smith's Macbeth. Once we opened, Ben Brantley would cream all over me in the New York Times, and Hollywood would start calling.

I'd get a walk-on in the new George Clooney vehicle shooting in New York, and then Woody would cast me as his mute fourteen-year-old mail-order bride in his Untitled Winter Project. Although I wouldn't have any actual lines, my face and body would be so expressive that I'd get nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. I'd bring my father as my date, and when Jack Palance opened the envelope and announced me as the winner, I'd run up to the stage in strapless Chanel and they'd cut to a shot of my dad drowning in a sea of his own mucus.

I'd follow my Oscar-winning role with the girl roles in Speeds 4 and 5 and Insanely Indecent Proposals. Julia would become a has-been, Julianne a nobody, Juliette yesterday's news. Winona and Gwyneth would become my best buddies. I'd help Gwyn with her eating disorder and convince Winona to change her last name back to Horowitz, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0684867532
• ISBN 13: 9780684867533
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande