Excerpt from BAD GIRL PIE by Marilyn Horowitz
Chapter 1
I stopped talk therapy when Aunt Cindy fell and broke her hip last year. She’s my mother’s sister and my godmother. She’s tall and slim, with stormy ocean eyes, and wears her silver hair in a flapper-style bob with bangs.
In the ambulance, I asked her, “What happened?”
She looked at me in disgust and said, “You’re always so effing morbid. Just like your mother, may she rest in peace. If you want the gory details, go read the report. If I repeat it, I’m making it happen again.”
After that, I stopped talking about my own past and asking people for details about their current tragedies. Soon, my tendency to create a worst-case scenario out of every event dwindled and I began to sleep more. But between me and myself, I clung to my story like it was a life preserver, because if I didn’t, I’d lose my identity, such as it was.
Why we had to begin life in this format of birth had always baffled me. Where was the upside? Why not just be born later in the first place, maybe at eighteen, so that there was a better chance of not having to spend your adult life recovering from the scars of bartering pieces of your identity for survival? Everyone I worked with had been crushed in the battle to survive infancy and childhood, and spent the rest of their lives recovering from it. It was the human condition. I had faith in a larger force, but if He was most high, then whose stupid idea had that been?
As a child, I’d written down everything my parents said, so that when I was accused of something, I could go into my notebook and quote them verbatim. Both narcissists, they lied to protect their fantasy of being “good” parents, often at my expense.
I had a similar mistrust of my self-involved clients. I recorded them in case there was ever a dispute, and later molded their words into the perfect answers to my questions. My outline was the skeleton and muscles; their words supplied the flesh that covered the carcass.
It was now 4:00 a.m., and my Manhattan kitchen was warm and cozy. I was pulling my second all-nighter, fueled by Coke Zero and coffee. I wrote frantically at my large freestanding island covered in butcher block. My feet rested on a small sky-blue rug embroidered with a life-size Yorkshire terrier. My beloved Yorkie, the late Toro, was always with me in spirit. I caught sight of myself in the bottom of one of the shiny copper pots that hung from a cast-iron rack above me: pointy face, horn-rimmed cat-eye readers, and an oversize pink Food Channel sweat suit.
The island was surrounded by professional-quality appliances as I often had to verify recipes for the various celebrities I wrote cookbooks for. Outside my West Village window, a steely moon glinted off the dark winter waters of the Hudson River.
This epic was my tenth celebrity cookbook-memoir. My current client, Babette LeBlanc, a successful Creole actress, was a tall, voluptuous redhead with a booming voice and a keto-cooking show on the Food Channel. The face she presented to the public was slim and wholesome, but she’d put on weight and was concerned that they wouldn’t renew the show since she was no longer a poster child for the food she was promoting. A book was the solution.
Babette’s mind was a fractured mosaic cobbled together of snippets from her many award-winning performances. I’d studied her movies and could pick up which role she was playing each time I interviewed her. It was hard to get someone to be themselves when there was no self, but I don’t like it easy. I’d created a complete, albeit imaginary, person for this cookbook-memoir; someone sane, supportive and admirable, a role model for women everywhere.
She had a raging ego that defended her persona with vigor. I’d fought hard to connect with the neglected, angry inner child who would do anything to get attention. Babette was like a fluffy cat who longed to be patted but, when you did, would hiss and bite. Luckily, she liked catnip, and a few glasses of Pinot Noir created an artificial consistency of personality that I could build a story around.
Babette was going through a bad breakup, and half of my work was letting her rant about her ratbag ex. No matter who was to blame, fat and forty was a scary place for any woman to be. We’d finally had a little talk over dinner at a Cajun restaurant on Greenwich Avenue. I waited until she’d finished the bottle of wine I’d ordered, then leaned forward and spoke when she took a breath between epithets.
“Okay, Babette, I get it. He’s a jerk. However, the words you use make your future, so you get to choose which movie you want to be in. It’s your narrative. Do you want to portray yourself as a victim or a victor?” She didn’t get it, so I attempted an analogy.
“Are you a natural redhead?”
She looked at me scornfully. “No, cher, of course not.”
“But you are a successful actress who is known for her beautiful red hair.”
“So?”
“You made a choice about your hair color. Making a decision about who you want to be in your own life is no different. Redhead or blonde, everything is a choice.” After I repeated the concept of personal agency ten or twenty times using different analogies, we parted. I was ready to quit the whole project.
The next morning, as I picked up the phone to resign, I got a Zoom invitation from Babette.
“Bon matin! I just hired me a new lawyer, cher, and got that hound on his back foot. I am ready to work.”
That made me happy. I was furious with women who played the financial victim when breaking up. Effing men. But I digress.
Our collaboration went so well that Babette was inspired to actually read a book! It was a bestseller written by a woman who had traveled to discover new recipes between stops at various ashrams. Reading can be dangerous, make no mistake. Babette was so excited about understanding “choice” that she wanted to change our book. I had to talk her off of the ledge.
“You’ll lose your audience.”
“But I want to help people, cher. You know what a big heart I have.”
I don’t argue with self-appointed deities and offered a fake smile and an encouraging nod.
“Yes, but the author you admire is running a Ponzi scheme. It’s a book about a woman who pretends to pursue enlightenment yet manages to stay blissfully asleep. She’s using her reader to validate her own lack of awareness, and passing it off as wisdom. The book is a manual for how to justify being an unwitting victim.” I made air quotes with my fingers as I said, “Unwitting.”
Babette fluffed her hair proudly and thumped her chest with a red-tipped fist. “I am nobody’s victim!”
“That was the point of the hair-color analogy. Brava!” I applauded.
“I can do better by sharing my recipes?”
“And losing those extra pounds. Maybe you can write a follow-up book on using dessert to lose weight.”
“And alligators can fly. Ha, that’s a good one, cher.”
I typed the final line: “And all that I’ve learned has led me to appreciate my life. The End.”
Text copyright © 2025 by Marilyn Horowitz
BAD GIRL PIE by Marilyn Horowitz
Bad Girl Pie is a dark comedy set in New York City. Dorothy Sherlock, a prolific ghostwriter, shares her running commentary on the absurdity of the human condition as she navigates her future. Until now, she’s spent her life crafting other people’s success stories and mourning a failed romance. After a near-fatal encounter with her abusive father and his sudden death, Dorothy resolves to write her own book, blending her expertise in dieting and dessert. A whirlwind trip to a tango festival in Mexico reignites her passion for love through a romantic tryst with a tango-dancing firefighter. Hopeful and happy, Dorothy returns home, only to discover that her agent has stolen the manuscript and sold it to a new client, and her late father has cut her out of his will. As if this weren’t enough, Dorothy reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, but after a night of bliss, she finds out that he’s living in sin with his cleaning lady. The triple whammy drives her to despair. Can Dorothy’s sense of humor and talent save her and help her find success?
Women’s Fiction | Literature and Fiction Literary | Humor [Roundfire Books, On Sale: August 1, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781803417639 / ]
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About Marilyn Horowitz
Marilyn Horowitz is an award-winning author who has taught her trademarked storytelling method at New York University for twenty-five years. Her students have been nominated for Emmy Awards, won a Peabody Award and been produced by the major Hollywood studios. Horowitz is a Reiki master and is certified in Dao Yin Yoga and Authentic Movement. She lives in New York, US.
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