“Where did you think I lived?”
“In a cabin in the woods by a stream where you caught your own fish and then cooked them over an open fire.”
He barked a laugh. She could be so funny sometimes. And she was closer to the mark than she knew, at least when it came to the childhood summers he’d spent with his dad.
“I guess I should have known that wasn’t right,” she said. “You told me early on that you tried to go to the woods last summer to get your book done. That implies that you didn’t already live in the woods.”
“My building is on the Mississippi River, and I have a great view, so I canseenature, but I’m in the thick of urban Minneapolis.” He paused. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to tell her this, but he did. And given that he did, he wasn’t sure why he was hesitating, other than that debasement was not an attractive character trait. “I used the advance from my first book as a down payment on the condo. It—the advance, not the condo—seemed so big. I wanted to do something responsible with it.” He scoffed.
“Well, you didn’t blow it on slots and hookers in Vegas.”
“I should have bought something smaller. Something cheaper. I quit my job, too, once it was clear the book was taking off.” If he thought about it too much, he started to sweat. “What was Ithinking?”
“I suspect you were thinking that you’d cracked the book-writing code and that this was your new life.”
She was spot on. “I had this charming little apartment. Well, it was actually kind of a dump. I’m probably romanticizing it in retrospect. But it was fine.” He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. He wasn’t sure why he’d ever wanted to. “Why does everyone in America know about your real estate situation?”
“Peoplemagazine.” She curled her lip. “I’m pretty sure Reggie wasleaking stuff designed to make himself look good, which has the side effect of making me look pathetic.”
“Classy.”
“Yeah. If I was having second thoughts about the divorce, which I wasn’t, that would have cured me of them.” She sat up. “Oh! I forgot the wine! You want a glass of wine?”
“Sure.”
She disappeared, and he used the moment of solitude to marvel over the dinner. Both dishes were so good, it was enough to create a kind of disequilibrium inside him.
“I thought you’d like to have your wine in this glass.” Blair plunked down an enormous, balloon-style wineglass.
“Ha ha.”
“Just kidding.” She set down a pair of normal-size stemless glasses, filled them, and picked up the remote. “You ready? I think I’m done enough with dinner to start.”
“Ready.”
He could see the video game influence. He wasn’t a gamer, but you didn’t have to be to understand the concept of a quest, to recognize the stylized bursts of violence against a seemingly endless supply of enemies. It was rather innovative, the way the writers kept those aspects of the story even as they made it into a more conventional narrative.
Blair watched through her hands a lot of the time. Itwasgruesome.
Somehow, by the time they were almost through the episode, she had migrated toward him. The gray line in the upholstery was no longer visible. But… he realized with dismay that the line was under his leg.Hehad migrated towardher.
He migrated away.
“That was horrid,” she said as the credits ran.
“Horrifying,” he said, agreeing with the sentiment but believinghorridwasn’t quite the right word.
“Hideous,” she said immediately, and he somehow knew they were playing a word game.
“Heinous,” he suggested, even though that was too strong.
“Horrendous.”
“Harrowing.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, threw up her hands, and said, “You win.”
He smiled despite himself.
