The In-Between Time, a novel excerpt

by Karen Moulding

 

We were on the couch making fun of a Brady Bunch rerun when Mom appeared at the front door, home from work, and said, “Look what I found!”

Suspended by its handle in her hand was a cardboard box with two sides slanting up like a roof and a round hole in the front. “Meow,” it said.

“A cat!” we both yelled.

“Ssh! Be gentle. We’ll let her out in the kitchen.” She carried the box past us, and we scrambled up to follow her.

She parted the cardboard roof and spilled the kitten out onto the linoleum floor. Its tiny white paws appeared first, and when Mom lifted the box away, there was its little orange head and orange and white body you could hold in one hand.

“Mew, mew, mew,” it squeaked. It ran a few steps and bumped its head into the refrigerator.

“He’s so cute,” you said.

“She,” corrected Mom.

“What should we name her?” I asked. “Clumsy?”

“No,” you said. “That’s mean. Spiffy!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Spiffy!” Ms. Rothman, my fourth grade teacher, and then yours three years later, had used that word to mean “neat-o.”

“Thank you, Mom,” said Mom.

“Thank you, Mom,” we said.

Spiffy strutted toward the living room. Except she didn’t really strut. She stumbled more than once and hit the wall to the side of the entrance before she found her way. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that kitten was drunk.

This was during that in-between time, remember? It was just after Len, the temporary stepfather, left, but before my own leaving occurred to me.

I begged to go to Eastlake when Linda Goldfarb, my best friend, switched schools. I still remember Mom smiling at the table that night. “Guess who’s going to Eastlake?” She’d shown them my scores and talked them into a scholarship.

You were harder. You got that warning from your fifth grade teacher that if she ever saw a joint in your desk again, you’d be kicked out of school. Before that could happen, Mom brought Eastlake some of your best drawings. And then you were in too.

Since Mom left for her copyediting job early –this was before she landed the book contract and got even busier, Linda’s Mom drove us to school.

“Thanks, Mom,” Linda would say as we scooted out of the car in the school parking lot.

“Thanks, Mom,” I’d joke.

“Fuck, man, I didn’t finish my math,” you’d say. Or, “There’s Miss Weston. She’s a bitch.”

“Jason!” I’d yell in embarrassment.

“Have a good day,” Linda’s mom would say, pretending not to hear you.

Linda’s mom drove a Suburban, a lot like Dad’s. Linda’s dad was a partner at some fancy law firm, and he had curly hair and a mustache like Mike Brady and never talked when I saw him. Linda’s two little sisters and baby brother were blonde and wore stylish clothes all the time, like new jeans with rips in the knee. I knew you assumed they were cool. You thought they were sort of in The Feeling, which is what we called how we felt at Dad’s, so that it was okay to cuss in front of them, like our stepbrother Rick and our stepmom, and everyone, cussed at Dad’s. Sort of the way you thought you should get high to be like Rick. You actually thought you were supposed to cuss with the Goldfarbs, to show them that you were in The Feeling too.

Once I had a sore throat at school. Mom was at home that day working on her book proposal, but when I called from the nurse’s office, she got mad and hung up. So I called Linda’s mom.”There, there,” she said when I climbed up into the front seat of their Suburban. Her blonde hair, which I now guess was bleached, was perfectly messy. “Every kid needs a break from school now and then.”

I yelled, “Thanks, Mom!” to Linda’s mom as she pulled away. When I stepped into the living room, there was Mom.

“I had a sore throat,” I started to explain.

“And I’m working for our food and clothes!” She stomped back to her study.

It was around then that I started keeping that journal. My Journal of Self-Realization, I titled it on the first page. “I hate my mom,” I wrote. “She needs too much appreciation from me! Ever since Len left, it’s like I’m the mother instead of her. It’s so SYMBIOTIC. Why can’t she INDIVIDUATE from me and find the appreciation inside herself?!” Symbiotic and individuate were words I found in Mom’s own psychology books which lined the shelves in our hall.

You got home from school and knocked on my door and said: “Come look at Spiffy! She keeps falling off the couch. It’s so cute!”

You would never say “It’s so cute” in front of Rick or Dad or even Linda’s family.

Later, Mom came into the living-room and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Penny. Can you be your usual big help and set the table?” and my anger melted. So I forgot about self-realizing for the rest of that night.

“Linda’s family is going to Napa for Columbus Day weekend,” I said one night. “Can we go too? I think a few other families from school will be there. Can we? Please!”

Mom stared at me for a minute. Her brown eyes were round below her brown shag. I squirmed and looked at my lap.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” you whined.

Then Mom pushed her chair back and ran down the hall to her room. The door slammed.

“Penny, what’s wrong with Mom?” A piece of frozen over-cooked broccoli was stuck in the front of your braces.

“Just shut up, Jason.” My stomach scrunched itself into a ball, and I pushed my plate away.

“Sorry!” You slinked out of your chair and off to your room, and a moment later I heard the usual music behind your closed door.

I couldn’t stand the thought of you in there alone. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t open your door. Instead, I slid alone into my room and opened my journal.

It was a few nights later that Mom stabbed a chunk of hamburger on her fork and said: “Guess who’s going to Napa for Columbus Day weekend?”

I was too afraid to answer.

It was you who yelled, “We are!”

“And guess who has a date?” I saw the beginning of Mom’s blush before she stood and opened the refrigerator. “Anyone need ketchup?” she said into the door.

“Look at Spiffy!” you yelled.

Spiffy stood under Mom’s empty chair. She butted her head against a leg of the table. Then she jumped two steps backward and did it again.

“She must want attention,” I said.

“Miss Psychology speaks!” you said. “Maybe Spiffy needs therapy.”

We both started laughing with our mouths full.

Mom knelt down and scooped Spiffy up with one hand. Her tail was a scrawny bone coated in a thin film of orange fuzz. Her head lolled back and forth for a moment, and then her eyes squeezed shut. The purring started up as loudly and suddenly as an unmufflered motorbike. Something white and foamy dripped from Spiffy’s mouth and her front paws protruded between Mom’s fingers. They looked as breakable as toothpicks. The word “vulnerable” came to my mind. I shuddered and looked away.

“I think we’d better take Spiffy to the vet this week,” said Mom.

“It’s okay, Spiffy,” you said. “Don’t be scared.”

“For you two,” Mom said as she turned the key in the lock of our room in Napa. There was a single bed, and perpendicular to it, at the foot, a cot.

“Where will you sleep, Mom?”

“My room’s a few doors down,” Mom whispered to the wood floor.

We’d passed the shared bathrooms in the hallway. I knew Linda’s family was in the fancier building, with their own bathrooms, TVs, and air conditioning.

“Thanks, Mom!” you said.

I stared out the window, across the hot tub and pool, at the fancier building.

We met Mom’s date in the coffee shop for dinner that night.

“This is Malcolm.” She slid into the booth next to him, and we scooted in across. He had a thick head of jet black hair. This was a plus since Len had been bald except for that semi-circle brown crown above his ears.

“How was your trip?” asked Mom.

“Good. I sold two cases.”

This was a minus. He didn’t look at us or explain what he was talking about.

“Malcolm invented Green-Out,” Mom explained for him. “It washes chlorine from pools out of blonde hair, so it won’t turn green.”

“Like Jason’s does,” I said.

“Hey, Dad,” you said. “Can I have some Green-Out?” You bounced on the booth next to me and giggled.

Your pupils were black dimes, and your laugh was too high and too fast. And it kept going. I felt what I’d felt when Mom held Spiffy in her hand. I tried to giggle with you. Please, I thought, let Malcolm say something nice.

“Are you going to pay for it?” Malcolm lifted his coffee cup and stared into space before bringing it to his lips for a sip. Then he turned to Mom. “I have an appointment with the gift shop manager here tomorrow morning.”

“Hey, Dad!” you tried again. “What do you have against green hair, anyway?”

Malcolm looked at his wristwatch. This was worse than Len’s wallops in a way.

“Well?”

“Nothing, if it’s on a Martian.”

It wasn’t that funny. But you slapped your hand over the imitation-Rick bolo tie on your chest and laughed and laughed.

“That’s enough, Jason,” Mom finally snapped, as if she didn’t even see the pleading in your squinted eyes.

There was a message from Linda on the lodge bulletin board when we got back. “We’re going swimming tomorrow after breakfast. See you there or else!” It ended with a smiley face, the way we all drew them then, with arrows pointing optimistically upward at both ends of the smile-curve.

“I wonder how Spiffy is,” you said as I unlocked the door to our room. Mom was on a walk with Malcolm. She said she’d see us at breakfast.

Spiffy, it turned out, had epilepsy. The vet had given us a bottle of tiny white pills, phenobarbital, to force down poor Spiffy’s throat once a day. We’d left the supply with the neighbor who was watching Spiffy while we were gone.

I thought the pills just made Spiffy look drowsy all the time, and she seemed to drop off the edges of furniture just as much, but Mom swore there was less foam around her little jaw. Besides, she assured me, it was too soon to tell.

When we got to the pool the next morning with our towels and your little portable radio and the books I was reading at the same time, Knots, by R.D. Laing, Fear of Flying, and My Mother, My Self, Linda, and her sisters and brother stood in a closed circle around Linda’s Mom. She sat with her shiny calves over the side of her lounge chair and rubbed Coppertone into her children’s backs, one by one. I was glad you were with me then.

Across the pool was Jessica Bunch, sunning between her mother, who was filing a nail, and her father, who was lying back with a folded newspaper over his face. I didn’t like Jessica Bunch, although I knew I would have changed my mind if she liked me. She’d whisper to Linda at the lunch benches, then stop talking whenever I’d show up. Linda said she was just shy. But once I asked both of them to come over after school, and Jessica said that since my mother worked “and there might not be an adult at home,” her mother had said she wasn’t “allowed” to come over to my house. What a baby.

We laid our towels on Linda’s side of the pool, several chairs away from her family. It was hot for October, “Indian Summer” they still called it then.

Linda came over. “You guys made it! Where’s your ceiling?”

Ceiling was our code-word for mother. “Ceiling falling down,” we’d say on the phone, meaning mother-fight.

“Resting,” I answered.

“Mine’s hovering, as you can see. Well, I promised Mikey a swimming lesson. Oh, your suit is so cute!”

Then Linda was in the pool surrounded by Mikey’s splashes.

“Hi, kids,” Linda’s mom called to us and blew a kiss.

Linda’s father appeared in a tennis shirt and shorts and laid out stacks of papers on an umbrella-shaded table. It was around then that you found K-ROCK.

“Not so loud!” I snapped. Jessica’s mom was staring hard at you from across the pool.

“Fuck off,” you groaned in your Rick voice. But you turned it down.

Linda put Mikey on the steps and swam to the edge and talked up to Jessica, who leaned over from her chair. I knew Jessica wouldn’t understand a word of Knots or Fear of Flying. As for My Mother, My Self, it was clear that Jessica was beyond help. She wouldn’t even try not to become her mother.

As for me, at thirteen I had figured out not only what neuroses I had, based on which of my developmental needs Mom hadn’t met, but also what our grandmother (the one we never knew) must not have gotten from her mother, based on how she must have treated our mother, to make our mother treat me in the way she did. You know, like always wanting me to appreciate her or pity her, and, of course, how jealous she was that we missed Dad. I was determined to end the pattern of generations. Armed with my journal, I believed I’d figured out how not to need the mothering that Mom couldn’t give me. That way I knew I wouldn’t turn into her.

“Hey, Miss Psychology,” you said. “Here comes Mom.”

Mom’s white terry-cloth sundress hung loosely from her shoulders. Her legs were pale, but her thinness was the style then. (She wasn’t too skinny yet.) And it was obvious that it came naturally. Jessica’s mom lifted her head and glanced up and down Mom’s physique. Jessica’s mom sported a golden-brown tan, greasy with Bain de Soleil, but her thighs protruded out from her bathing suit like lumps of butterscotch pudding.

Mom padded toward us in her beach thongs. Best American Short Stories: 1976 was tucked under her arm, and she carried a small draw-string beach bag.

I felt good. “What’d you do last weekend?” I imagined Kenny, my crush, asking at school.

“Oh,” I’d say. “We were in Napa with the Goldfarbs and Bunches.”

It was good that Mom’s date would be coming, I thought. Then maybe Linda’s mom wouldn’t have that nervous smile, like the time she picked Linda up after school and saw Mom’s car gone and blurted out to me, “Oh! Your mother’s still working.”

It was good to be in a couple at a place like this, I thought. Like everyone else was. Mom must have known that, and that’s why she invited Malcolm.

“Sit here, Mom,” I said generously and patted the chair next to me.

Linda’s mom looked up from her Mademoiselle and waved at Mom.

“Hi, Helen,” Mom said, too softly to be heard. She stretched her lips in a closed-mouth smile, then lowered her eyes and smoothed the terry-cloth over her skinny cream thighs.

I felt a stab of guilt. I’d never thought about it before, but I saw it then. Mom was shy.

But I knew she’d feel better when Malcolm got there. Then Linda’s mom and Jessica’s mom would see that Mom was just like them. Well, maybe even a little better, since Mom also had a career. I figured they’d invite Mom and Malcolm out for cocktails before dinner, and you and I would watch TV in Linda’s room.

Mom had a container of Coppertone Four. “Put this on, Jason,” she said to you right away.

Then she spread her towel over her chair.

You shrugged and complied. “Do my back, Penny.”

When I was done, you said, “Here, Mom, do you want some on your back too?”

“I’m fine,” Mom said. She was on her stomach in her blue one-piece with the scoop back, and her book was already open under her nose. She turned the page.

Linda’s whole family was tanned. I knew what Mom felt then, refusing the Coppertone. She wanted to catch up.

Malcolm’s shadow fell over Mom’s back just after she put down her book and dozed off.

“Look what I have.” He dangled a bottle of brick red wine over Mom’s head.

“Oh, how nice. Cabernet.”

“From Mondavi winery. I swung by for a tasting after my meeting.”

Beyond Malcolm’s frame, I could see Linda looking at me from her family cluster. She raised her thumb. She meant Mom’s date. We both giggled.

The pool gate opened, and a freckled woman in a white dress wheeled in a metal cart. She placed sandwiches and bottles of wine on the top. Then she approached us and pulled a little pad and pencil out of her pocket. “Buffet?”

I tried not to look at Mom. I knew she might say we couldn’t afford it.

But she exhaled: “Sure.”

Linda was already leading Mikey by the hand to the spread. Her sisters, who looked like blonde gymnasts, didn’t move from their whispery card game.

You glanced at me, and we both jumped up.

Somehow Malcolm got there before us. “Need these,” he said, grabbing two glasses of red wine. “Oh, and I’ll just borrow this corkscrew if you don’t mind.” He walked back to Mom with a glass in each hand and the corkscrew in the pocket of his baggy swim trunks.

“Sit with us!” Linda said.

“Penny!” Mom called before I got to Linda’s chair.

“What?!” I didn’t mean it to sound like that. Jessica’s mom, who had just reached the table, put a hand on her daughter’s arm.

Mom waved me to come to her. “Bring me a ham and cheese sandwich.”

I hated it when Mom made me bring her food. I especially hated it when I got home from school, and if Mom was working at home and I went into her study and said I was hungry, she snapped that she was working on her book proposal and more hungry and to go make her a tuna on toast.

Malcolm, of course, should have brought Mom a sandwich from the tray. But all I thought then was that I’d write about Mom’s parentalizing of me in my journal that night.

When I finally got over to Linda, I said, “Ceiling crack.”

“What?!” you said. You’d laid your towel on the cement next to the only empty chair near the Goldfarbs so I could sit next to Linda. Your radio sat by you on your towel.

“Nothing,” Linda and I chimed in unison.

“Turn that up a little,” said Linda’s second oldest sister, Suzanne.

“You bet,” came your Rick voice, and I could see you fight to keep the corners of your mouth from lifting in a smile, since one of the Goldfarbs had noticed you, and even asked you to turn up your music, which was sort of like saying you were cool.

“Ah, come on in!” boomed behind us. We turned. Malcolm, holding two full wine glasses above his head, was wading belly-button-deep in the shallow end. He pointed one of the glasses in the direction of Mom. “Beth, come on!”

Linda’s sisters were already trotting toward the deep end in their ruffled bikinis. “Cherry bomb!” they yelled, and hugged their knees in the air, then dropped in almost simultaneously, sending translucent green swells toward Malcolm.

“Hey,” he said to the water. As it rolled up his chest, he rolled up on his tiptoes and a splat of wine dove from a glass to the pool. The burgundy blob slowly spread in the water, like an opening hand. It dyed a larger and larger area, but it also traveled as its own unit, like it was looking for someone to stain.

“Oops,” said Malcolm.

“Oh, glass in the pool,” I heard Linda’s mother say.

Even her father said, “Helen, is that a good idea?”

“Girls!” called Linda’s mom. “Come out now! Time to eat!”

“I’m so sorry!” Malcolm called.

“Oh, no,” said Linda’s mom, smiling. “That’s fine. It’s just lunch time.”

Mom padded by us to the pool steps. Malcolm waded up to her. She whispered for a minute, then took the wine glasses from his hands, and padded back to her chair with them. She exchanged smiles with Linda’s mom as she passed. Mom’s was a thin, shy smile, but still, a smile. See, I thought. Everything is fine. Malcolm climbed out of the pool and followed Mom.

You turned up K-ROCK.

“Jason!” I snapped. I was fiercely embarrassed. Why couldn’t you see that your little macho act wouldn’t impress the Goldfarbs?

You turned it down. “Sorry, man,” you squeaked. You drew the radio to your ear, like it was a friend with a secret for you, like it was with you the way I was with Linda on her chair, the way Linda’s sisters hovered together over one plate, and the way Linda’s mother was with them all, the lotion she’d smeared on their backs seeping into their pores.

I was sorry then. I remembered you called Malcolm “Dad” at dinner. I leaned toward you. I wanted to say something. I didn’t know what. You pressed the radio to your ear, fixed your eyes on a dot in space, and nodded in rhythm. I hadn’t thought of anything anyway. Try harder, I told myself.

But then Linda tapped my arm. “We’re playing Marco Polo in the pool. Mom says as long as we don’t swim.” That was back when mothers had that half-hour-after-eating rule about swimming.

“What about Jessica?”

“She’s supposed to digest first.”

“Want to, Jason?” I asked.

“Huh?” you said, still nodding at space. “Nah.”

This was worse than if you had begged to come along. I started to insist, and then I told myself it was what you wanted: to not play. At the same time I thought no, it was because I didn’t ask hard enough. Then Linda was leading me away, to the pool, and you still sat there, wrapped in space.

“Marco!” Suzanne had cornered me, so it was my turn now.

“Polo!”

I heard one of the sister’s voices to my right. I groped at the water as I walked with my closed eyes until my hands scraped the pool wall. “Marco!”

“Polo!”

It was afternoon, past two, and I could feel the sun burning an insistent spot on the exact top of my head. I slid along the wall to the steps. My hand grazed something smooth and warm. I would have sworn it was flesh. But then my fingers gripped the hollow metal railing that split the pool steps. “Marco!”

No one answered. There was some splashing to my left.

“Look!” I heard someone say. “Oh, God!”

“Marco!” I tried again, louder. Maybe it was a joke on me.

“Penny,” I heard Linda’s voice. “Come here.”

I opened my eyes and saw the three Goldfarb girls huddled together on the pool wall, their indistinguishable legs kicking out behind them like the legs of a single creature, like an Octopus missing two of her legs. At first, I thought they’d found something gross in the pool gutter. I swam to them. “What?”

Linda nudged me with her elbow and pointed toward Mom’s lounge chair. Malcolm stood at its foot, vomiting on the cement. The wine bottle, now empty, stood next to his calf. Malcolm straightened himself and almost seemed to grin. Then he bent again at the waist, and a stream of brown-red liquid shot from his lips to the puddle waiting before him.

Mom stood by him. Her head barely came up to his shoulder. She tapped his arm, said something, and at the same moment that she stepped away from him, Malcolm leaned toward her, so that he began to fall, his chin grazing Mom’s chest. He caught himself by grabbing her arms. It looked like he was her baby, taking his first steps, then collapsing into her. Except it didn’t look like that at all. It looked like Mom was the baby. Like she could never catch anyone.

“Oh!” squeaked Mom. She wiggled out of his grip and backed further away.

Behind me, Jessica’s mother yelled, “You can take the sandwich with you. I said now!” They were leaving.

Malcolm veered toward Mom again, but she side-stepped out from the two lounges and jumped from his touch. Then she ran with her head down out the pool gate, clutching her towel at her chest.

We all stared at Malcolm. I wanted to say that Mom just met him, that he wasn’t really with us, but then the sandwich lady was there, and she led him away by the elbow. A teenage boy dragged up a hose.

“Jeez!” said Linda’s littlest sister.

“Come on out kids,” called Linda’s mom.

There was a hush, only the soft swirl of limbs in water. You’d turned off your radio.

“Come on,” said Linda to me, so I got out of the water too.

“Penny!” you started to say to me. You wanted to ask where Mom

was, if she was all right. Then you looked at Linda and changed your mind. You turned back on K-ROCK instead: “Everybody, here is out of sight. They don’t bark and they don’t bite, they keep things loose, they keep things all right, and everybody DANCIN’ IN THE MOONLIGHT!“

You stood and started your own little dance with your radio. Your eyes squinted, you hopped frantically from foot to foot. But no one watched.

Linda’s mom was whispering to Linda’s dad, and I knew it wasn’t about Malcolm, but about Mom herself. Something about why she divorced, then again, when the other mothers all stayed married; something about the “oh!” sound she made, like a little girl, when Malcolm fell. It was the something that made Mom alone.

Malcolm was supposed to be Mom’s prop to hide that. Instead, he just made everyone see it.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the rest of that weekend was a blur. The fake Summer disappeared, and Malcolm with it, and I was glad for the rain the next day. I didn’t want to go back to the pool. Somehow I couldn’t pick up Fear of Flying again, but I devoured the rest of My Mother, My Self and re-read Knots three times. And I wrote in my journal: “Kenny’s parents are divorced like mine. He has to see how much we’re alike! I have to marry him, I just know it, or I’ll die! The only thing I want more is to one day live with my dad. …I’m so stupid! It’s like I think Kenny’s in my head, but he’s not! I have to realize that, so I can stop wanting these things. I have to realize that we’re all alone.”

The manager knocked on our door while I was writing, and asked if we knew why it smelled like marijuana in the bathroom. The corners of your mouth pulled down slightly, like they did when you lied. You shrugged and said “no.”

Mom still had her sunburn the night we drove Spiffy. Those pills hadn’t worked. Spiffy slept more, but we could see her convulse in her dreams, her toothpick legs darting out, and the foam oozing from her tiny mouth. If she was awake, she’d still run in circles and bash her head into walls.

She mewed like crazy in her box in the car, almost as if she knew.

Mom took the box in. You and I didn’t talk in the dimly lit parking lot. We just stared out opposite windows. Mom came back so fast anyway. That meant it was happening as we drove home. You turned the radio knob in search of Grateful Dead, and no one objected.

I remember I tried to feel. I wanted to say something to Mom. But she didn’t look like she’d hear anyway. Tears flooded down her face like the sleek rain coating the windshield, and she held her sunburnt back stiffly away from the car seat. Then I couldn’t stop thinking of what I’d write in my journal when I got home. My journal was in my head more and more then, like a person.

We didn’t know, that night in the car, that, although Mom’s book would be a hit, and her social life would improve over the years, once all the other mothers got divorced too, a part of Mom had finally closed that weekend in Napa. Although it wasn’t because of him, of course, it turned out that Malcolm would be Mom’s last date. We didn’t know yet that I would be at Dad’s by the next year, that I’d even find popularity, and boyfriend after boyfriend, in Iowa, and I’d forget all about Eastlake, and the Goldfarbs, and Nob Hill. We certainly didn’t guess what was in store for you.

But we knew something. Tears still wet Mom’s face when we pulled into the driveway at home. Then you went to your room to get stoned. I went to analyze the day for my journal. And although none of us spoke for the rest of the night, I heard coughs and rustles through walls that felt as thin as cardboard.

 

Karen Moulding has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and a four year old daughter named Fin. “The In-Between Time” is excerpted from her recently revised novel, The Naked Shopper. Other excerpts from The Naked Shopper have been published in nerve.com and anthologized by Chronicle Books in Smut Volume 2, a best of Nerve anthology. Her work has also appeared in Piedmont Literary Review, Spectrum, Fawlt Magazine, and more. She has been a Fellow several times at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Squaw Valley Writers Conference, but that was before she had Fin. Karen is currently traveling the country as Fin plays Tam in Miss Saigon on national tour. She wakes up early in hotel rooms to write by iPhone flashlight while Fin sleeps in after late shows, stalks local bookstores in the cities on their stops, admires the books of local authors, and dreams of hosting her own readings there. Please follow her on Instagram @karenmouldingwriter or Facebook www.facebook.com/eastvillage.writingservices.