It was all taking a toll on Veronica. She was feeling like she was going to lose her control and burst at the publisher she was interviewing right now. Like a lioness smashing a cat into a pulp of flesh. She was that angry. And top of all that the mask of coyness she was wearing – it was very hard for her to maintain it, contain her anger. She was never a shy girl – she had never ever been shy – it was not in her nature. Yet here, here, she had to act shy in order to get some answers. It would have been better had she dangled the man from the ceiling with the help of a rope upside down. Then she could have asked him directly what she had intended to ask and answers would have come spurting out of his lecherous mouth. And his gluttonous eyes. She was fantasizing about playing marbles with his eyes. She would love to play with them. But she had promised no violence. That was why she was controlling her anger. Very hard it was for her to control her anger. But her greatest fear was that she would at sometime burst out and that would make her Papa feel down. For Papa. For Papa: she muttered under her breath. She knew what questions the publisher was expecting. He was expecting her to ask him about how he dared venturing into publishing new genres; how his workers and associates reacted; what was the public opinion; etc. Why he was expecting these questions there was a cause. Papa had asked her to do some homework on this guy. Read something about him. She read as much as data available on internet. Then Papa had asked her to create a YouTube channel. She did exactly as she was told and she appeared as a new aspirant novelist. Then as per Papa's plan asked the publisher over Facebook to meet him and talked over Skype and told him that it was her first celebrity video for her YouTube channel. Seeing her beautiful he had agreed at once and gave his address. Today she came by a scooty. Reaching this condo she had tipped and bribed enough the gatekeeper to stay away from the condo. She guessed that she was not the first girl setting feet in this condo. Men here enjoy too much of liberty and she was very recently feeling jealous of all men surrounding her. She wished had her Papa and others enjoyed such an amount of liberty, she would have been very glad.
He asked, "Hmm, what is your next question? Fire it up."
"Yes sir, sorry Karl. You are now in vogue because of your dashing steps. But it was a couple of decades earlier you were all over the media once. Do you remember?"
"Yeah," he said. "like I am now. Yeah. By declaring to publish Andrew Long's research paper. It was exactly twenty years prior. You were not even borne then."
She smiled thinking: I am the age of your daughter and yet you see me lecherously.
"So," he said. "You have done your homework. Nice. I suppose you read last week's papers."
She nodded her head and said to herself: Yes man, it was my Papa who showed me the article on you and showed me the path to come to you.
And she said to the publisher, "Yes, Karl. When I read the article a brilliant idea struck me. A novel idea. Your friend Mr. Andrew Long was researching on matriarchy both in ancient and modern Anglesland. That is a very interesting topic. I thought to write a novel basing on this concept. The idea of matriarchy. If you allow me I will put it before you."
"Yeah, sure."
"One young girl from a strict matriarchal society comes to this society in search of a boy. A boy who had been decided by the Chief of the matriarchy to be sacrificed on his eighteenth day after his birth. But his parents somehow smuggled him out of the slavish world. So the boy is still alive somewhere secretly. The Chief gives the heavy responsibility to the girl to fetch the boy. She is determined. She comes here and searches the boy. But it is very hard to find the boy…"
The publisher added, "And the inevitable happens. The girl falls in love with the boy. Then she has to fight against the Chief, her society and herself to save the boy from his sure doom."
Then he grinned and added, "Nice romantic and adventure story it will become. You have talent. Genius. A fantastic romance."
She interrupted, "But I have not thought of making it a romance!!"
"No add romance into it. It will sale like hot cakes," saying so he woke up from his seat and went to the camera on the tripod stand and switched off the camera. He said, "As I presume you are going to tell me more about your novel idea, so you do not want it to be recorded and shown to people. So I stopped the video here." Now squatting before her and putting his hands – now hot – on her knees, he said, "What was your name dear?"
"Veronica," she said. Her eyes became big as orbs now out of surprise.
"The idea is as brilliant and unique as your beautiful name is," he said and took her hand in his; played with it for few seconds; then kissed it. He looked at her eyes then to see any sign of fear or shock or was she blushing red with coyness. But she was neither shocked, nor shy. Her eyes were uncontrollably red. She was angry.