What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? In looking through my past drafts, I see I began developing the story in December of 2018, so it’s been a little over three years.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I do most of my work in either my home office or at Starbucks on the corner of Florin and Greenhaven in Sacramento (my little plug for their great staff). That Starbucks, less than a mile from my home, is as about as far as I’ve ventured since the start of the pandemic.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I always have to have something to drink when I’m writing, usually water or coffee, nothing alcoholic as while some people might write better under the influence, I would just fall asleep. I compose directly on the lap top each day. I save a new draft and date it each time I work on the manuscript so that if something disastrous happens to that draft of the story, I will have just lost one day’s work. I always save to my Dropbox account so that the writing is secure online in the event my computer is stolen or damaged—and in fact, it did stop working last month. I just bought a new one and downloaded my novel drafts to the new computer.
I know I work better in the morning and am more productive then—I suspect most people are—but I usually am not able to write until the afternoon.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
Sunday, November 2, 2014, Noon
I didn’t want to meet my mother. But Rachael had insisted, and I had caved, and was now in this tea shop, for God’s sake, on Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento, down the street from the synagogue, up from Vic’s Ice Cream. Filled with frilly hats and cups.
The waitress—or owner—sailed over in her long white apron stretched across her ample breasts. She wore a long gray dress with the apron, like she was a servant in a Victorian drama.
“Would you like to pick out your cup?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.” I surveyed the rows of china— cups big, small, plain, floral, gilt-rimmed, or not. How the hell could I choose? I finally settled on plain white cup and plate.
“You can pick out a hat, too.”
I thought of how that would look with my jeans and turtleneck. “Maybe later.”
Then Rachael was there, dark hair swirled up, in gray slacks with a matching cardigan. She looked more like my sister than mother.
“Sharona.” She took my hands. “Don’t you love it?”
I stood still as she kissed my cheeks. “Yes, I just love Victorian.”
“It’s actually early Edwardian.”
“Shall we sit down, Rachael?”
“I wish you would call me ‘Mom.’”
“We all wish a lot of things, Rachael.”
Since she wasn’t moving, I led the way to a table by the door for a quick exit as needed. Outside moms and nannies were out pushing kids’ strollers and holding their hands as they led them to or from William Land Park or the zoo. Nice fall day out, too nice to be here.
We sat down at the cramped and lacy little table. Our legs touched underneath, and I swung mine to the side. Because I’m tall and long-legged, I’ve always had issues cramming under little tables or benches. And Rachael had the same body type, but a little bigger and more muscular. She looked more like the cop, something she distracted from with the uber-feminine clothes, jewelry, and hairstyle.
The waitress/owner strode over with the menus. “It’s prix-fixe,” she explained. “What kind of tea would you like?”
French terms and different kinds of tea. Wow. For a former party girl, Rachael had gone admirably upscale. “What kind do you have?”
“Black, white, green, herbal, Earl Grey…”
“Black.” Maybe it would taste like coffee. “I’ll take mine black. Rachael?”
“I’ll take peppermint,” she said. “With a touch a of spearmint, please, Elizabeth.”
“Will do.” The owner noted it on her pad although we were the only customers here. “Is this your lovely daughter, Rachael?”
Oh, on a first name basis with the owner of a restaurant with a prix-fixe menu. Yes, Rachael had been busy climbing the social ladder.
“She is.” Rachael smiled.
“Couldn’t be anyone else’s.” Elizabeth snapped the pad closed. “I’ll let you look at the menu.”
I glanced at it, saw the list of little sandwiches and cakes listed.
“We’ll just take the prix fixe thing,” I said. “Rachael, is that okay?”
“If it’s what you want, darling.” She fiddled with one of her purple—amethyst? —earrings.
What I wanted was a corned beef and a beer, but that wasn’t happening either. “The prix fixe then.” I handed the menu back to Elizabeth, and she took it along with Rachael’s and rushed off to the kitchen again.
“So you’re a police officer, now.” Rachael smiled brightly.
“Yes. And still partying?” She’d supported us after my father took off by catering parties. And partied recreationally, too.
“No, I’m a business owner, now.”
“Well, you were before.” The catering business. Rachael had thrown parties for a living after my father took off. “Is it some different business now?” I took out Jennifer Silva’s card. “Is it related to this business? Is that the logo?” Again, there were no real coincidences in an investigation.
“Yes, that’s the logo.” We both paused as Elizabeth’s assistant, or own daughter, brought our tea service out to us and went through an elaborate procedure of laying it out and pouring it.
“Anything else for you ladies?” She was snapping gum. She wore jeans, and there were purple streaks in her hair. Not very tea shop-like. Apparently, Elizabeth was not big in the establishing standards arena, but which of us were?
“No thanks,” I said. She nodded and took off to the kitchen.
I regarded Rachael over my teacup as I drank and noted for the first time how her hand trembled as she clutched her cup a little too tightly. Weird. How sarcastic and mean was I that she’d be this nervous about meeting me?
“Do you know Jennifer Silva?” I asked. “Is she a member of ‘Women Helping Women’?”
“Yes. But I haven’t seen her in a long time.” She looked down at her tea as if trying to read the leaves then looked up. “Why?”
“She was at the Sheraton last night and called 9-1-1. Any idea why she would have done that?”
“No.” Rachael’s response came too loud and quick as she shook her head.
I sighed. I could tell she was lying but pressing her would just bring more denials. “So what is this all about, Rachael?”
“Does it have to be about something?” She sipped her tea.
“Well of course it’s about something, but I’m thinking you didn’t drag me out to a tea shop on a Sunday afternoon just to see me even if that were part of it.”
We paused again as the daughter/assistant brought out a tiered lazy susan loaded with little sandwiches and cakes and set it on the table between us.
I took a couple of sandwiches, salmon spread and cucumber, and a heart-shaped chocolate cake. I was starved, I realized. I often got so busy with work that I forgot to eat and only noticed when my blood sugar dropped.
Rachael didn’t take anything and folded her napkin in little triangles.
Well, curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland would say, an appropriate enough quote for a tea shop. I tried a different approach.
“So what have you been up to all of these years?” I asked. “I’ve tried to look you up a few times, couldn’t find anything. I assumed you were dead.”
She laughed gaily as if it were all a big joke. “Oh, I’ve gone back to using my maiden name.”
“‘Jacobowitz’? I searched that.”
“No, I’m using a shortened form now. ‘Jacobs.’”
“Ahhh.” That would explain why she had seemed to drop off the planet or was six feet under, which was something else I had considered. “So where have you been all of these years? Not Sacramento?” Wouldn’t that be a joke on me, that she’d been settled in the Land Park or Midtown area or something all these years.
“No.” Serious again, as if the laughter had all been forced, as it was, of course, she shrugged and took another sip of tea. “I’ve been—around. Different cities.”
Different cities, different men, probably.
“I see.” When she didn’t respond, I began to lose patience. “You said you have this new business. ‘Women Helping Women’? Is that what brought you here?” Or maybe to be close to me, to make contact? I dismissed the thought. “What’s the business? What does it, do you, do?”
“Oh, I sell things.”
“Things.” My antennae went up. “What kind of things?” God, I hoped she wasn’t reduced to dealing drugs or at least wasn’t dumb enough to tell me about it. I didn’t want to have to read her rights in a tea shop. On a Sunday.
“It’s just—women’s stuff.”
“Women’s stuff? Like feminine hygiene products?”
“No, of course not.” A faint smile crossed her lips. Her lipstick was bright pink, I noticed for the first time. A little too bright against her fair skin in this natural light and slightly smeared by the teacup. “It’s—makeup, colognes, flowers, things like that. In baskets.”
“Oh.” Now I was a little disappointed. A drug bust would have been a lot more interesting.
I thought of something then. “Do you design these baskets yourself?” She could do that, with her catering background.
She shook her head. “The company does.”
“But you said you’re the business owner? So wouldn’t it be your company?”
“No. ‘Women Helping Women’ has a number of shareholders.”
My other antenna went up. “So you’re not really a business owner then,” I said. “It’s someone else’s business. You work for it. You’re a salesperson.”
“No.” A firm shake of her head. “As I said, I’m a shareholder.”
“A shareholder.” Now the antennae were in full vibrate mode. “How many shares do you own, then?”
“Well, I invested twenty thousand.” She looked at me without blinking.
Oh, shit, shit. “Do you have paperwork on your shares?”
“No.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Should I?”
“Well, yes, Rachael. Like when you buy a car or house or something? Or even a washing machine. You receive a deed or at least a receipt.”
“I do have a receipt.” Some hope rose in her eyes.
Well, that part at least was good because it was looking like she’d need it. “Okay, great. But Rachael.” This next part was hard, but she probably sensed it already, which was why she called me. “I’m afraid you’re not a shareholder in this company.” I struggled not to put verbal quotation marks around “company.” “Otherwise, you would have received documentation. And you’d be invited to shareholder meetings, at least quarterly. And receive regular updates on the state of the business, again quarterly reports, or something. And I take it that’s not true?”
She shook her head after a moment.
“Okay.” I struggled not to sigh. “So what you really are is a salesperson.” Who’d invested thousands of her own money in the product. I hoped it wasn’t her life savings, but if so—oh, well. “Tell me about that. Who do you sell to? What’s your target market?”
“I’m sorry—I don’t understand?”
Oh, great. Could it get any worse? “The group of people who’d be most interested in your product,” I said. “Who the company has in mind who’d be your buyers. Didn’t anyone with the company talk to you about that when you—invested in the company?”
“Oh. Yes. The—target market is the new stockholders. I sell the product to them. So they can get started with their own business.”
And it was worse. “I see. And who do the new salespeople sell to? Even newer ‘members’?”
She nodded.
“So just so I have this straight,” I said. “You spent twenty thousand on the company’s product and you’re supposed to sell it to newer members, who in turn will sell it to even newer members. And the product, to your knowledge, does not get sold to anyone outside the company?”
“No, it stays within the ‘Women Helping Women’ family.”
Oh, now they were a family helping each other. The irony. Or just deliberately flipping off their victims.
“Why?” Her eyes searched mine. “Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Yes.” Again, I suspected she knew the answer. Why else would she’d suddenly want to meet with her cop daughter after years of no contact? “All kinds of wrong. Rachael, this is no kind of legitimate business.”
“How do you know?” For the first time a sign of anger, with her sharp voice and hard jaw. Well, good, but the anger was misdirected, at me rather than the company owners.
“Let me show you something.” I took out my phone and pulled up the internet app. “You say this business is called ‘Women Helping Women’?” I typed that in the browser. Some hits, but nothing connected to a business website. “Odd. They don’t seem to have a website or Facebook page. Did I get the name right—’Women Helping Women’?”
“I could have told you that.” She sounded offended. “The business is kept small and intimate, within the ‘Women Helping Women’ family. We don’t actively seek outside customers.”
“That never struck you as strange?” I couldn’t believe I had these stupid genes. Although in fairness she was probably just in equal parts self-deluded and willfully ignoring the obvious. “Legitimate businesses these days hire people to boost their online presence all over the internet. And legitimate businesses universally seek outside customers. That’s their whole goal. They don’t hide from the public.”
“I know that.” Again she closed her eyes.
Yes, she probably had known in some way all along. “Since the business is such a big secret, all within the ‘Women Helping Women’ family, how did you find out about it?”
“From a friend.”
As I thought. Some friend.
“So I assume that was ‘Women Helping Women’ at the Sheraton Friday night?”
“Oh, no.” She looked a little taken aback. “That was just another group I belong to, The Gold Rush Girls.”
“Yes, so you said. So it’s a completely different group? No shared membership?”
“No, except me. And—” she looked down, fiddled with her watch.
“And what?” I prompted. “Anyone you can recruit from The Gold Rush Girls to join Women Helping Women, you mean?”
She looked up. “You say that as if it’s something to be ashamed of.”
Well, isn’t it? I wanted to say but didn’t.
“Jenny Silva was there at the Sheraton last night,” I said. “So would she have been recruiting new members, too?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”
The denial came a little too fast.
Strange how no one had seen Jenny Silva. She just showed up long enough to leave her card and call 9-1-1.
“Okay.” I glanced at the time on my phone before I put it away. “I need to go because I have another commitment, but I’m getting the feeling you want me to help you out in some way with this.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, really, Rachael. You contact me right after I give you my card? Because I’m a cop now?”
After a moment she nodded.
“That’s okay. This is what I do. Investigate crime.”
“But what is the crime? I still don’t understand.”
She probably didn’t even if she sensed something was not right, which was why she called. “Okay, I’ve got to go, but briefly, what this ‘business,’ or ‘family,’ is, from what you’re telling me, called a pyramid scheme, with the older members profiting off of the new members they bring in and not selling outside of the company.”
“But what’s wrong with that? Can’t we sell the product to anyone?”
“No. Or rather, not just to new members coming in. It’s not going to work, Rachael. It’s going to collapse, sooner rather than later. It just can’t sustain itself. You won’t be able to bring in enough new members, eventually, to pay off the older members. Pyramid schemes always collapse. That’s why they’re illegal.”
“I see.” She probably didn’t and was still taking it in, from the stunned and distant look in her eyes. Hard to be told you’ve been rooked by your “family.”
Without thinking, I covered her hand with mine before I got up. “Don’t worry,” I said, although she should be very worried. She was probably never going to see that twenty thousand again. “I’m going to go after these people and do my best to get your money back.”
She nodded but didn’t look any less miserable. Probably the loss of the money was the least of it. It was the loss of friends, “family,” her sense of pride as a “business owner” and “stockholder,” et cetera.
“Please do this for me.” I placed a couple of twenties on the table for the meal because I assumed she sure didn’t have any money. “I’ve really got to go now, but you have my number. Please go home and gather up all the information you have on the company, any brochures, receipts, business cards, like of the person who recruited you, and so forth and then call me. And I assume there are regular recruitment meetings?”
“Welcome meetings,” she said. “To introduce potential new members to the company.”
“Okay. And you’re sure there’s no overlap in membership at this time of ‘Women Helping Women’ and ‘The Gold Rush Girls’? Other than yourself? That is, no one who saw me at The Gold Rush Girls Meeting will likely recognize me at a ‘Women Helping Women’ event? Except yourself?”
“No.” She spoke after a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” I wanted to be sure on this.
“No, no one else would remember you.” She seemed to make up her mind. “Why?”
“Find out when the next meeting is. I’m going to go. Take me as a new member you’re recruiting.”
“Like undercover?” She sounded hopeful.
“Yes, something like that.” God help us.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This excerpt, occurring at the beginning of the novel, exposes the details of the pyramid scheme central to the novel. I find pyramid schemes fascinating in their ability to pull in victims by playing on their insecurities and dreams. As the protagonist notes, the basic way a pyramid works is so obvious that it shouldn’t fool a child, but otherwise capable adults are fooled because pyramids disguise their function behind the smoke and mirrors of appeals to emotions rather than logic.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I start a new draft every day, so I don’t use mark up. What I’ve shared below is an earlier daft of this same scene. This scene came out of a writer’s workshop in which participants were asked to write about a specific place, and I wrote about the teashop. You can see how the scene moves beyond just being about the setting, the teashop, to much more in terms of character, plot, and the relationship between the mother and daughter. Due to plotting decisions, the time of the scene also changed from a weekday to weekend in later drafts.
I didn’t want to meet my mother. But Rachael had insisted, and I had caved, and was now in this teashop, for God’s sake, on Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento, down the street from the synagogue, up from Vic’s Ice Cream. Filled with frilly hats and cups.
The waitress bustled over in her long white apron stretched across her ample breasts.
“Would you like to pick out your cup?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.” I surveyed the rows of china. How the hell could I choose?
“You can pick out a hat, too.”
I thought of how that would look with my police uniform. “Maybe later.”
Then Rachael was there, dark hair swirled up, looking more like my sister than mother.
“Sharona.” She took my hands. “Don’t you love it?”
I stood still as she kissed my cheeks. “Yes, I just love Victorian.”
“It’s actually early Edwardian.”
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html