The following is an exclusive excerpt fromMy Life as aVillainess,by Laura Lippman, out August 4.
A Fine Bromance
1.
It would be three days before a record company confirmed the singer-songwriter’s passing.
Credit: Lesley Unruh
This wasn’t new for me.
It had been more than a decade since I could muster actual grief about a famous person’s death.
“I don’t know him,” I explained to my shocked friends.
I was indifferent more often than not.
It was about me, where they resided in my memories.
I shyly confided I was a fan.
“You just keep on doing what you do, darlin',” said the Doctor.
My lack of emotion when famous people die is probably a character flaw.
I’m okay if you want to build a spontaneous shrine, toss another teddy bear on the pile.
But I am skeptical of those social media sob sisters who appear to be gutted by every celebrity passing.
I’m a tough old bird, in case that’s not clear by now.
You don’t want to know what I do with my daughter’s artwork.
June 8, 2018, was different.
Bourdain is dead, a suicide.
I burst into tears.
But I had been the Cyrano in their love story, telling my husband the right words to say.
Was I crying for Bourdain, or was I crying for my husband?
Was I crying because the circumstancessuicide, a young daughter left behindwere unfathomable to me?
Or was I crying for myself?
If so, wasn’t that unseemly, a variation of the performative Internet mourning that I so loathe?
Almost two years later, I’m still trying to answer these questions.
From MY LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: Essays, by Laura Lippman.
Copyright 2020 by Laura Lippman.
To be published on August 4, 2020, by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.
