“Breathe into this,” Andrew said, handing her a brown paper bag with ACTION BOOKS written on the side. Tina subsided into vexed silence as Todd removed his coat, draped it over the tall chair he’d apparently be perched on, and waited for—what, he didn’t know.

Slowly coming out of her pout, Tina put on a tape—Bad Brains Live At The Knitting Factory, just the kind of music to soothe an audience before a reading, Todd thought—and opened the door.

*  *  *

If the first reading had been okay, the second was even better. Better because it wasn’t a home crowd. Because the room wasn’t full of people who were only there because they knew him. Because there was a fair chance that some of the people here—some of the very attractive young people here, thought Todd—had read All My Colors, and were here because they liked it. And because this was real; they were real people in a real room, and Todd was, to all appearances, a real writer, with a real book to talk about. Whatever anyone might say, there was nobody more qualified to talk about this book than Todd, and anyway hadn’t this book been written by the sweat of his brow, if nothing else?

The people (kids) in the room were rapt. Todd’s readings induced attentive gazes in those who obviously hadn’t read the book and nods of pleased recognition in those who had. Lines he hadn’t expected to got laughs, lines he had expected to get laughs got sage nods. But mostly there was a hand, and it was his, and he had his audience in the palm of it.

The reading ended, and then there were questions from the floor. These were surprisingly varied. There was the question about where he got his ideas from again, to which Todd gave the same answer. There were a couple of questions that weren’t really questions, which was fine, because while they went on a bit, they did at least contain phrases like “I really loved your book” and even, “I gotta say, this is the best thing I ever read”. That was particularly good, Todd felt, because the person who said it wasn’t a fey young girl with too much Emily Dickinson in her system, but a big football player-looking guy who appeared entirely surprised and confused to be here, but was here, and stayed behind so Todd could autograph his book.

Todd autographed a lot of books, so many that his signature went from the full Todd Milstead that he signed his checks with, to a kind of abbreviated one-line yelp. Todd counted the books as he was signing them, and was surprised that there were more than fifty.