Jack:What does that mean?
Blair:I’m a college dropout from Savannah.
Blair knew exactly what she was doing: Saying what Jack Branksome was thinking. Saying it before he could. Getting ahead of the humiliation. Was it even humiliation if you said it yourself?
Jack:Flannery O’Connor was from Savannah.
Blair:What is your point?
The bubbles that indicated he was typing floated and floated and floated. Finally, a fully formed paragraph appeared.
Jack:I accept that perhaps you do not read The New Yorker. But I do not accept that you’re not the kind of person who reads The New Yorker. You’re more the kind of person who falls behind in her New Yorker reading and gets stressed when too many issues accumulate and finally calls off a brunch date and dedicates a weekend morning to scanning the tables of contents, resigning herself to being relentless in her triage, and bookmarks a few articles in each issue and settles in for a marathon day of reading.
That was exactly right—though the calling-off-brunch part was not that remarkable. These days she called off brunch for a lot less than a day of reading.
Somehow curmudgeonly, misanthropic Jack Branksome knew people. He had to, or he couldn’t have written a book likeIn Time, which was full of compelling, nuanced characters of all ages and backgrounds who knew exactly how to wound each other.
Jack:You’re too well-read to be “Not the kind of person who reads The New Yorker.”
She was flattered, though she probably shouldn’t be. There was bound to be a catch.
Blair:How do you know I’m well-read?
Blair:Do you think because I read your book that equals “well-read”?
Jack:No, I watched The Swallows.
The Swallowswas a limited series Blair had produced, based on the novel of the same name. She was exceedingly proud of it.
Blair did not know what to say.
Jack:That was a tough book, and even tougher, I’d imagine, to adapt. All that interior monologue, and you did it without any voice-over.
Maybe there wasn’t a catch. Maybe Jack wasn’t a jerk so much as he was socially awkward. In her experience, many writers were.
She thought back to that terrible Zoom. Nah, he was a jerk. A preternaturally talented jerk, but a jerk nonetheless.
Blair:My grandmother once told me that life is finite and that therefore a person can either read magazines—mind you, this was ages ago when magazines were more of a going concern—or books, but not both. You have to choose your horse, she said.
Jack:So you’re a book person.
Blair:I try to keep up with magazines, but yes, books win.
Jack:I will accept that as a reason that you don’t read The New Yorker.
Blair:Didn’t know I needed your permission to not read The New Yorker, but thanks.
Jack:My pleasure. Anyway, you can’t believe everything you read.
Didn’t she know it? She thought back to thatPeoplearticle implying that she, the “actress-turned-producer,” and not Gerhard, the “auteur,” had been the problem withGreen Light.
Blair didn’t know how to end this conversation, but since Esme was always telling her—and demonstrating to her in real time—that a person didn’t have to formally close off a text conversation, she left it alone.
She should have felt vindicated after that exchange.
Instead, the cyclone was starting up. Some people got a feeling in their bones when literal storms were coming. Blair’s bones told her when figurative storms were coming. Panic attacks, she was pretty sure, given that they were heralded by a racing heart, sweating, chest pain, and a weird sense that she could hear her own blood pumping through her veins.
But it always started with this amorphous “feeling in her bones.” A tingly sensation—but not the good kind of tingly.
