Blair:What’s a doornail?
She was attempting to close off the conversation—this didn’t feel like one where she could follow Esme’s direction and just disappear—but she had done enough oversharing.
Jack:??
Blair:You know the phrase “dead as a doornail”? What does that mean? Where is it from?
Jack:It’s from A Christmas Carol. Scrooge’s business partner, Marley, is dead as a doornail. And I think a doornail is just a big nail that goes in a door. Why?
Blair:I was thinking the other day that Green Light was dead as a doornail, but I didn’t know where that phrase came from. But of course, Dickens.
Jack:I think the narrator goes on to wonder what is soparticularly dead about a doornail. So maybe your “little project” isn’t totally dead.
Blair:Ha ha.
Blair:Alas, it is very dead. Deader than a doornail.
There. That was a good enough place to leave it. And look at her, she’d been able to refer toGreen Lightas dead without crying.
Jack:My back is killing me. All day every day. I am forced to conclude that my writer’s block is manifesting physically.
The next night, Blair was once again eating dinner alone with a book she had not opened. She glanced at the clock. Seven. If Jack was in Minnesota, it would be nine there, and it was a Saturday. She knew why she was alone, but Jack? He must be having a rough time of it if he was textingheron a Saturday night.
Blair:Hence yesterday’s opening question.
Jack:It’s strange that I’m texting you, I know. I’m in a funk, and I’m sitting here staring at my phone.
Join the club, Jack.
Blair:Someone lick the red off your candy?
Jack:I beg your pardon?
Blair:That’s a Southernism. What’s the problem?
Blair was prepared to solve problems. She was good at it. Surprisingly, she was even prepared to solve Jack Branksome’s problems. It was better than eating alone.
Jack:I go to the gym.
He certainly did. Those arms didn’t grow on trees.
Blair:Good for you?
Jack:I mean that merely to indicate that I’m physically fit. So why the sudden, excruciating back pain?
Blair:Clearly because you can’t write. All those words are probably clumping up in your back.
Jack:How do I get them out of my back and onto the page?
She had been kidding, but he must really be suffering.
Blair:I can’t help you there. I’m not a writer.
She hated admitting that she couldn’t help. It made her seem ineffectual, and there were few things Blair hated more than being ineffectual. She considered telling him what Angela had once told her, that there was no such thing as writer’s block, only problems of motivation, but refrained.
Jack:But you’re a reader.
Blair:I am well-read. I was a lit major the one semester I went to college.
