Life was not getting easier.
It was, apparently, still cyclone season.
Chapter 4
Q and A
“Son of Arthur Branksome debuts with taut family drama”
The Atlantic, December 2023
… Curious readers may be wondering ifIn Timeis derivative. After all, Stephen King’s son used a pen name so as not to be accused of riding his father’s coattails. No pseudonyms here, andBranksome, Jackis, of course, shelved next toBranksome, Arthur.
The answer is: kind of. Both writers deploy muscular yet sparse prose and restless-bordering-on-impatient sensibility…
An amazing thing happened to Jack over the next couple of weeks: he started to write his fucking book. And when he got stuck, which he did quite a lot, he texted Blair Kellermoon.
It wasn’t like him. But Blair was funny, and she gave good advice. She got him out of his head. And she didn’t seem to mind when he sent her random questions. It was like talking into the void—but the void talked back and said only the right things in only the right doses.
Jack:What would you say to a busybody who’s too much in your business?
Blair:Mind your own biscuits, and life will be gravy.
He laughed into his empty condo. He had discovered Blair was a veritable font of ridiculous sayings. He suspected that normally he would find her chipper Southernisms annoying, but somehow he didn’t. They were charming.Shewas charming. Which was a bit of a twist. He certainly hadn’t been charmed by her on that call last winter. She’d been all poufy blond hair and big hazel eyes and perfect white teeth—so OK, she was good-looking, but she was a movie star, so that came with the territory—and his overwhelming impression had been that Blair Kellermoon was an unserious person. Was there such a thing as a movie star whowasn’t?
Maybe it was different over text. She was a good texter. Witty and literate. She made him appreciate the medium in a way he never had.
They had gotten into playing this game where he would describe a situation and she would give him an inane Southern adage about it. Sometimes these scenarios were real, and sometimes they were fictional. More than one of her responses to the latter type had given him a small burst of inspiration for the book.
Blair:Who’s the busybody?
Jack:Fictional.
The dots that indicated she was typing started up, and he rushed to preempt whatever it was she was going to say. He had to press ahead with his next question or he’d never have the guts to ask it. This was what it was like, texting with Blair. She was engagingand charming, and eventually she disarmed him sufficiently that he could ask something real.
Jack:How do you know when you need to give up on something? Do you have a saying for that?
The dots started again.
Blair:One of my grandmother’s most common refrains used to be: you can put kittens in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits.
Jack had only ever heard Blair’s voice once, on that Zoom, and she hadn’t said much; her colleague had done the majority of the talking. But her voice had struck him. Not just the slight drawl, but the way it was so much lower than you’d expect from a petite Southern rom-com queen. That had been nine months ago, but somehow, that voice was still in his head. He couldhearher saying the silly aphorisms she was typing.
Or maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he just wanted to.
He didn’t like that thought, so he put it away.
Jack:You reference biscuits a disproportionate amount.
Blair:No I don’t.
Blair:Well, maybe I do. But if you’d ever had my biscuits—which are my grandmother’s biscuits—you would know that they loom large, and rightly so.
Jack:I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper biscuit. Is a scone a biscuit?
Blair:No. Most decidedly not.
Jack:Bagel?
