“You...” She whispered, almost lisping like a cornered little schoolgirl under his green gaze. “...you have something on your shirt.”

Confused, Mister Tang looked down to his spotless Brooks Brothers suit. The spell broken, Lucy took the opportunity to flee as fast as her sneakers would let her. She didn’t stop running until she’d covered three blocks and sucking in air and her top was basically glued to her back under her jacket. Fuck! Her characters were always in decent shape, but she sure as hell sure wasn’t.

She walked the rest of the way to Thrill, down the mean streets of downtown on a Thursday night. The coeds were out in force alongside their boytoys, underdressed and oversexed, but Lucy couldn’t tell if it was whatever was going on or just ...college coeds. At one point, she spotted a priest hurrying along the other side of the street who looked peculiarly bovine to her eyes, but then again, that might have been the dark. Finally, she reached Thrill, the once-hotspot that didn’t move with the rest of the bars when they migrated down the street. The coeds had followed the other bars, leaving Thrill to the professional crowd and the locals.

She slid inside, clutching her purse strap with one hand and her computer bag with the other, and furtively looked around.

Randy was tending bar tonight, rocking the silver fox look with that haircut and a shirt strategically unbuttoned to the top. A little overheated, but definitely in-character for the guy who’d hit on Lucy five times before she made it clear she was not interested. There were little clusters of Men’s Warehouse suits and thrift-shop dresses and starchy blouses and the occasional pantsuit. One of the thrift-shop dresses, a slimming Lincoln green number to conceal a case of the freshman fifteen that never left, adorned Scarlett, sitting in the corner and sipping a respectable-looking martini while her companion told an anecdote.

Scarlett waved to her. In the Spanx bra that somehow always wound up in Lucy’s laundry load, her chest went exactly nowhere.

Lucy let out a sigh of relief. Scarlett was okay, and not morphing into the oversexed parody that was Barbi Bimbeau. Lucy had not exactly been in a good place vis-à-vis her roommate when she’d written that...

“Lucy!” Scarlett beamed. “Glad you could join us. Antonio, this is Lucy Lee, one of my oldest friends. Lucy, this is Antonio Giovanni, of the Italia Fresci Literary Agency.”

Lucy stiffened up in the middle of shaking his hand. Antonio Giovanni? He’d been the sultry European agent that wound up taking Barbi Bimbeau’s anal virginity in the climax. But Giovanni was supposed to be a common Italian name, so maybe it was a coincidence?

Yeah, sure. And maybe Mel Chang had woke up this morning and decided to set back Asian women’s rights fifty years with the power of fake tits.

Antonio Giovanni, misinterpreting Lucy’s hesitance, brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckle. It sent a thrill through her, because a gorgeous Italian man had just kissed her knuckles and she was an American with a pulse.

“Pleased to meet you.” Oh God, Italian accent...

“Ch-charmed I’m sure!” Lucy squeaked, jerking her hand back awkwardly. She blushed. “I, uh, I’m meeting someone here.”

“Oh...” Scarlett’s voice could arch its delicate dirty blonde eyebrows, and Lucy had never figured out how. “...someone I know?”

“Just Jerome.”

“Hey hey hey!” Jerome waved from the door.

“Speak of the devil...” Lucy muttered.

He was big and Black as life, and no bigger, thank God. He was swaddled in his Navy pea coat and loose boot-cut jeans puddling around his hiking boots. He wasn’t huge or hulking, his bald pate made him look like a grinning black skull, and he wasn’t blinged out in sports gear or gold chains or even sneakers. In other words, normal, annoying, smug, History-major black guy, not some distasteful parody for getting off their mutual white-woman audience.

“Heya, Pintsize. Evening, Scarlett.” He nodded to her, turning on the honey-brown voice. He nodded briefly to the sharp-suited Sicilian. “Who’s your friend?”

“Antonio Giovanni, from an Italian agency.” Scarlett’s smile was thin and brittle as Lucy’s nerves.

Jerome exchanged a look with Lucy, but moved confidently forward. “Hope he’s not...”

That did it. Lucy snapped out and grabbed a fistful of his collar the moment the other writer was in range. He made a funny choking noise, more out of surprise than anything.

“Watch my computer bag? Thanks.” She spat to her seated friend and her ...um, friend. “Gotta have a discussion with this man. Writer shop talk. Not for agent or editor ears.”

She dragged him away from the table.

“Hey, hey!” He said. “At least drag me toward the bar! I promise I’ll buy!”

She took it into consideration, and let him go once they stood by the beer taps.

“What the hell is going on?!” She hissed, keeping her voice low. “One of my characters tried to pick me up at the Starbucks! And not one of the nice ones!”

“...who was it?” Jerome asked, with genuine curiosity.

“Mister Tang!”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath, attacked by a sudden dizzy spell. She prayed to Jesus it wasn’t the first symptom of one of the innumerable bimbo flus that they’d cooked up between them. “What happened with you? You mentioned a bottle of Doll.”

“Yeah, but nobody ordered it.” He thought for a moment, his brown fingers dangling together on the edge of the bar. “At least, I don’t think so. Around 1200 words I noticed a couple of coeds who probably couldn’t legally hang around the bar carrying on like they’d been drinking their forever, but I figured, y’know, this town’s not exactly eager to card anyone. Especially not anyone with racks like those.”

“Had you ever seen them before?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Jerome gave her a funny look, and cleared his throat.

“The one had flame-red hair flowing in ripples down marble-white skin, green eyes big and innocent as a fawn’s, with pearlescent lips that were always smirking like she knew exactly what you were packing in your pants...and she liked it. Her body agreed, rustling slender arms around impossibly round, full breasts on permanent display in that shapely wine-dark dress, the one that hinted at the kind of pleasures she could show you...if you had her X-ray vision, that is.”

He cleared his throat again, his hands dancing in hammy gestures.

“If she was the clever, classy lay, her friend was the easiest lay in the world. The sky-blue diaphanous robes matched her sky-blue eyes, and was just as airy and ephemeral as the brain behind them. The thick plaited crown of spun-gold blonde hair looked like the most substantial thing above her neck, not that you didn’t want to press yourself and your lips and your fingers and whatever you had against her to find out. The robes billowed off her curves, leaving nothing to the imagination but whether or not she trimmed, or just shaved it all completely off.”

Lucy smacked her forehead, tugging her face down.

“Jim Slate: Big Black Dick.”

Jerome suddenly got a very troubled look on his face.

“Goddamn. You’re right.”

“You didn’t know?” Lucy exclaimed. “You wrote it!”

“I write a lot of stuff!” He said defensively. “Especially descriptions of hot women! They all kind of run together. Besides, that doesn’t explain how you have it memorized.”

“Sh-shut up!” Lucy blushed. “That’s not important right now! Jerome, our stories are coming to life. Bimbos and himbos and mind control!”

“Oh myyyy.” Jerome said, considering the possibilities. “I’m normally a sapiosexual myself, but even I don’t see a problem with a few extra hot and willing nubile ladies running around.”

“And the Doll rosé?” Lucy popped fingers off. “The Book of Bimbo? The slut flu? The double-ended ancient Chinese princess pleasurer?”

“But—“

“The wishing cock?!” Oops. She’d been a little too loud. Lucy smiled to the bar and hoped she didn’t look psychotic while she did so.

But that had finally got through to Jerome.

“Okay.” He said. “I see what you mean. So what do we do?”

“I don’t know!” She dropped her elbows to the bar. She felt ready to cry. “I mean, what’s going on? I thought you might have some answers! What the hell brings poorly-written--“

“Hey!”

“--porn to life?” She looked up at him. “Shut up, you know it’s true.”

“No reason to rub it in.” Jerome groused.

“We have to stop writing porn.” Lucy concluded. “Whatever’s happening, it can’t happen without stories to draw from.”

“Nuh uh, no way, Pintsize.” Jerome spread his hands. “I just got out of the temp pool, I am not going back in! Besides, you wrote Mister Tang, what, six weeks ago? We both have plenty of backlog to draw from even if we quit right now.”

“We could take down our old stories?” Lucy offered.

“You don’t know if that’ll help or not.” He peered behind the bar. “Where the hell’s the bartender?”

Speak of the devil, she glided out of the backroom with that unmistakable look on her face that both Jerome and Lucy described as “fresh-fucked.” She smacked bee-stung lips and ran long tapering nails through big full chestnut curls, bouncing her cantaloupe-sized breasts under the thin cotton dress shirt for the whole bar to see. She sauntered up to the two porn writers exuding so much sex Lucy was honestly surprised there wasn’t a slick trail across the barroom tile.

Lucy had never met this woman before, but she was absolutely certain she hadn’t woken up that way this morning.

“Woo!” Giggled the bar...oh, what was the point of euphemism? The bar bimbo. “How can I...serve you?”

“Uh...” Jerome seemed to be suffering a temporary lapse in blood flow to his brain. “Two beers, please. Sam Adams.”

Lucy recovered first.

“Hey, uh, sorry, what was your name?”

“Oh, I’m Tammi! With an ‘i.’” Beamed Tammi. Because of course she was.

“Okay...Tammi...” Lucy plowed forward through her disbelief that all this was happening and she was seriously addressing someone named Tammi. “...think. Did you used to be different before? Maybe less...bubbly? Uh, smaller?”

Lucy gestured, but she needn’t have bothered. Tammi just giggled again, and Lucy finally heard in life what she’d always described on paper as ‘the air escaping with every laugh.’

“Oh yeah, hun!” She chirped. “Like, I was almost as tiny as you, no offense! And I wasn’t even lookin’ for a titty job! Can you imagine? I was a super sourpuss too. But then, I dunno what it was! I caught scent of this beautiful perfume and I just had to have it!”

Jerome and Lucy exchanged glances as the bimbo prattled on. As if by telepathy, they both thought “Scent of a Bimbo,” though Lucy started numbering them in her head and wondered which story this perfume had come from.

“...and she said it was free for girls! Can’t beat that, free. Free and easy, just like Tammi!” Tammi giggled again at her own wit. “Makes me feel like a whole new woman! And a little...bubbly, like you said. I was all bubbly when I got to work but Randy (he’s the other bartender) he was being a sourpuss about it, so I gave him a spritz, and long story short now she’s Randi (tee hee!) and all woman except in a real important place, if you know what I mean. I got some right here, could spruce up that chest of yours, and that attitude!”

“Oh, no thanks...” Lucy burbled, kicking herself for playing into the script.

“We’ll take two beers, please. Sam Adams.” Jerome insisted. Tammi giggled again.

“Whoopsie! I forgot. Sorry, blonde moment!” Tammi produced two bottles of Sam Adams, and even opened them. “Here ya go. First beer’s free, like Tammi!”

“Thanks.” Lucy clutched her beer to her chest and suddenly felt an urge to drink something a lot stronger, like maybe 151 rum, maybe an entire bottle. She couldn’t tell if that was a sign of impending bimbohood, or a perfectly rational response to her evening.

She turned away from Tammi, caught sight of Scarlett at the table. Antonio Giovanni had sidled up beside her, making gestures with his hands that looked ...if not lewd, certainly inappropriate in a professional context. And was Scarlett’s hair...blonder?

“Jerome, you’re a Black guy, help me cockblock this asshole!” She hissed.

“Mister Tang is running around with those crazy hypno-eyes, Tammi here lost fifty IQ points and most of her common sense on her way to work, and you want to jump in to stop some Euro guy from making Scarlett consensually?” Jerome asked.

“You know Scarlett.” Lucy said. “If this keeps playing out, she’s going to be bright blonde, down about a hundred IQ points, and taking it up the ass from that Euro guy!”

“...damn, Pintsize, you were pissed at her that week, weren’t you?” Jerome said. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Lucy took a pull off her beer as they marched back to the corner table. Antonio Giovanni looked up with a charming, disarming, olive-oil smile. For both of them. Shit, that’s right, she’d written him as bi. There was that hot foreplay where he jerked off Bambi Bimbeau’s assistant into Bambi’s mouth.

“Oh, perfect!” Scarlett smiled, snatching her purse. “Lucy, darling, won’t you escort me to the ladies’ room?”

Lucy sighed. “Sure. Jerome? Keep Mr. Giovanni company.”

“No problem.” He said, sitting down. His easy patter fell into place as Scarlett flounced for the ladies, Lucy in tow.

“Oh my.” She breathed. “I’ve never met such a stereotypical Italian, and I’m in charge of foreign acquisitions! Not that I’m complaining, mind you. On a local boy, that kind of forwardness would be crass and creepy as fuck. But from him, somehow, it’s just charming.”

All lines from Lucy’s story...from the narration, fortunately, rather than the dialogue. By that point in the story Bambi couldn’t even have spelled ‘stereotypical.’

“Um, Scarlett?” Lucy gasped. She wished she still had her beer. Where would she start?

“Hmm?” She said, examining herself in the mirror.

“You know what kind of books Jerome and I write, right?”

“Sure.” Scarlett said, adjusting her neckline. “Erotica. Harlequin romance stuff for the indie market. Lucy, for the thousandth time, I’m just glad you’re writing, I don’t judge you for going independent.”

“A bit more than Harlequin romance.” Lucy confessed. “It’s, uh...for specialist markets.”

“Ooooh,” Scarlett’s mouth made a red, sexy O, “spicy. I didn’t know you had it in you! So, what? Whips and chains?”

Lucy fidgeted in the mirror, looking plain and, well, frumpy and Chinese next to Scarlett’s sexy-professional “opposing lawyer on The Good Fight” look.

“More like magic and, um, dubious consent...” she willed herself to finish, “...and sexy charming Italian literary agents.”

Scarlett just laughed.

“Scarlett, I invented Antonio Giovanni of the Italia Fresci Literary Agency.” Now that Lucy had spilled the beans, they just kept spilling. “About six months ago, as one of the three guys who gangbang the blonde American editor. I even described him just the way you did now! He’s not a real person!”

“Wow.” Scarlett deadpanned. “Wow, girl. If I didn’t know it was Lucy Lee, I’d ask what you’ve been smoking and where I could get some. Because that is so out there, I don’t think Creepy Craig over in the sci-fi department would touch it. So, gliding straight over all the questions I have about the blonde editor in this story, even if you did write a character with the same name and appearance, it doesn’t mean he’s the same person. It’s called coincidence.”

As if to punctuate how over this conversation she was, Scarlett pointedly dug through her purse for her makeup.

“I’ve been having too many coincidences today.” Lucy intoned. “And not just me. Jerome, too. We’re seeing people and things we invented...trust me, we invented them. They’re fictional. And now they’re real. And I don’t know why or what’s going on, but I know Antonio Giovanni leapt off my page and I know you don’t want to wind up in the end of that story.”

“Jesus Christ, Lucy.” Scarlett hissed. “You are fucked up. Now listen to me, we are going to smile when we walk out of this bathroom, and you are going to grab your computer, and you are going to leave, and you are going to lock the door when you get back to the apartment because I am not coming home tonight...huh. What’s this?”

Scarlett stared, puzzled, at the nondescript lipstick between her fingers.

“Could have sworn I bought Faded ...” She shrugged. “Oh well...”

Lucy realized only a moment too late. Her overtaxed, overstressed brain didn’t make the connection immediately, as Scarlett reapplied her fuchsia lipstick. It’d been one story, she’d pounded it out in a single night on a word-run sitting next to Jerome at this very bar, pounding back a bottle and a half of cheap white wine along with it. She’d thrown a cover together when she was so drunk she couldn’t stand up and Jerome had to walk her home, uploaded it when she got there, and never looked at it again. She blushed whenever she saw the cover in her lineup, and not just from the title.

Fuchsia Futa: Lipstick Lesbian to Hottie Horndog.