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AMY GENTRY is the author of Good as Gone, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. She is also a book reviewer and essayist whose work has appeared in numerous outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Salon, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Austin Chronicle. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and lives in Austin, Texas.
Good as Gone
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Amy Gentry 2019
Amy Gentry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008215682
For AJZ, a very wise woman
Contents
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Next up, Daaaaana Diaz!”
A few hands clapped as I stepped up onto the wooden platform stage, picking my way around the PA system. Under the lights, I tugged my shirt hem away from the waistband of my jeans one last time, cleared a strand of dark brown hair from my lip-glossed smile, and palmed the mic, carefully unwrapping the cord from the stand. No point in losing two minutes wrestling it down to my level—five foot four in the four-inch heels I am rarely without onstage.
“Hello, everyone,” I said. “I’m Dana, and I will be your brown person for the evening.”
I waited for the uncomfortable snicker, but there was only the dim, offended pause of a bar in which the music had been turned off, followed by a hacking cough. I forged ahead.
“And don’t tell me to go back where I came from. Amarillo is the pits.” Silence again. I toyed with the mic stand. “Have we got anyone here from Amarillo tonight? No one?” There was no hoot. “It’s okay, I wouldn’t cop to it either if it wasn’t my job. Well, hobby.”
I’d been back in Austin a little over a year, performing as many open-mics and guest spots and showcases as I could force myself to show up for, and I’d earned my slot in the Nomad Third Thursday lineup fair and square. But nothing was landing lately, and I wasn’t sure why.
I pressed on. “There’s not a lot to do in Amarillo. I mean, the second-largest employer in town is a helium plant. When I was in high school, we used to hang out behind the
