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in front of us, and folks clear a path as if he’s an ambulance.
    The Scientologist is trying to contain himself. The booth he’s in borders the auto area and is run by a gentleman with a braided beard who sells spare parts. The man’s wife sits on a stool by a cashbox, where she’d been reading until the Scientologist asked to buy the book out of her hands.
    The book is an Amy Madeline.
    “Come on,” says the Scientologist. “You’re not even ten pages in. I’ll double your money. How much did you pay for it?”
    The woman says, “Fifty cents.” She closes the book, saving her place with a finger. She studies the glossy rose-colored cover. She asks, “What’s it to you?”
    F’in Tiny says, “Yes, tell us all. What
is
it to you?”
    I know what it is.
    It’s a rare first edition with a typo the size of Texas. A copy editor got fired over that typo. A hundred thousand copies were pulped because of that typo. Riding the surprise hit of Amy Madeline’s first novel, her rose-colored second novel was rushed to print. Her main character was a pastry chef, and an autocorrected joke wasn’t reversed, so that every time the nice lady stuffed her face with
cake,
she ate
cock.
Reprints were published with a lilac cover. Finding a rose-colored cover is as hard as finding a real-life sixty-hour-a-week pastry chef who’ll perform fellatio with the frequency and gusto that Amy Madeline’s character did.
    The Scientologist wife tells the lady, “He’s just joking with you, girl.”
    Disappointment flashes across the Scientologist’s face, but he masks it with a marriage chuckle. He must be a closeted fan of Amy Madeline’s: a Mad Hag. Only Mad Hags know about this particular book. I wonder if he knows that this book is dedicated to me. I wonder if the producers know. I wonder if they planted it for me to find. Judging by their interest in the auto area, where Mitzy is riding a rusty tricycle like a sexy toddler, they didn’t.
    I am as invisible as I am at Amy Madeline’s readings, where I sit in the front row, holding her purse. In literary circles, I’m not known as Amy Madeline’s peer anymore. I’m her wing woman. As a Mad Hag, I’d think the Scientologist would know about her campaign to get me on the show, but he hasn’t mentioned it. Nobody else on this show had mentioned it either. To
Dumpster Diving with the Stars,
I’m just
the writer.
I could be any writer. I could be Amy Madeline. They don’t know
Portnoy’s Complaint
from
Pet Sematary
.
Cardinal Reality Rule #4: Appeal to a new audience.
I’m a novelty—like a disabled vet or a little person—cast as a new way to breathe new life into an old show.
    I say, “I’ll buy it.” And I whip out my fifty.
    The biker’s wife snaps up her quick hundred percent profit and hands me the book, which turns out to be worth six hundred dollars more than I paid.
    Mitzy’s trike is worth seventy-five. John Lithgow suffers a thirty-five-dollar forgery penalty because Herman Melville never signed a book with a ballpoint. Mario Batali’s music box is worth a hundred. The tennis player breaks even with her “folk art” (three stuffed animals sewn together like a totem pole). Verbena comes in a close second to me with a cigar box full of Rat Pack–era casino matchbooks. The Scientologist wife comes in third with a musket.
    She pouts about her loss but throws a tantrum about her husband’s low score. She demands that the local appraisers get a second opinion on his Harley Davidson bicycle crank. “I mean,” she says directly to the camera, “it’s a Harley.
We
know it’s got to be worth more than that.”
    The Scientologist says, “Baby, let it go. Enjoy your own score. We’re cool.”
    “We are?”
    He says to the camera, “Hey, all we can do is buy what we like.”
    What they’ve bought is extra camera time to show the world that the Scientologist millionaire movie star is just a “regular guy.” Just like a regular guy, he passed up