At the Union Square Barnes & Noble, with the audience for Em’s book launch ascending on the escalator, I tried to change the subject with Grace—the apparitions word wasn’t a wise choice with her. “The way people just appear on that escalator—the first time you read here, it can be a little unnerving,” I was saying, when a wild-eyed woman with a hangman’s noose around her neck came up the escalator.

“I told you to talk Em out of that title,” Grace said. I just watched the escalator. I knew the fangirls would keep coming, not only the Nora look-alikes but the women wearing the nooses. I tried to change the subject again, by asking Grace how she’d managed to edit out the Bat Pussy part. “One student intern deserves another,” was the way Grace explained it. She said some film students at NYU had done the editing. Grace also instructed them to edit out the night of the Santas—when the tall Santa had shot Nora, after he’d taken aim at Em. Em would never forget that Trowbridge intended to kill her first; she didn’t need to see it.

That night in Union Square, I slipped away from Grace, who was preoccupied with the film clip from the Gallows—she’d selected it, of course. The projectionist was already screening it for the early arrivals in the audience. This was how I got a glimpse of what Em’s public appearances would be like. You could count on Em’s fangirls to get there ahead of time. The Nora look-alikes and those women with the nooses wanted front-row seats.

In black and white, from more than twenty years ago, I was watching and hearing Nora ask Em where she’d been last night. More than twenty years later, Em still looked contrite and fearful. “You got home so late, I was asleep. You hit your head on my knee, getting into bed,” Nora was saying—when I snuck off to the back room where the booksellers were hiding Em. I wanted to let Em know about the fangirls, but she’d had sufficient forewarning in her mail. Em said the hang-yourself women were new to her, but many of the Nora types who’d written Em had enclosed photos. These women—including a bunch of the early arrivals that night in Union Square—had managed to read Come Hang Yourself in galleys. Grace said she’d sent out an unprecedented number of advance galleys for this largely unknown author.