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“I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I understand. It must be very difficult to talk about.”
“You could never understand.” I feel an anger rising in me, a sense of injustice that I haven’t felt in quite some time.
“You’re not the first person to know grief, George. And I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be the last.”
I don’t answer. He’s looking for a fight, and I’m not interested in competing in a suffering contest.
“It’s just—” he presses. “I think maybe it would help your writing.”
I imagine taking my elbow and smashing him in the face.
But then I realize that it wasn’t just my imagination, because suddenly his nose is pouring blood and it’s running down the front of his tux. “It’s okay,” he says after awhile. “I probably deserved that.”
Resting my forehead against the window, I do my best to push the memories to the furthest corners of my mind.
“Eve has been telling me stories. It’s been really good for her.”
“Are you really telling me what you think is good for my wife?”
“You’re living in a prison, George. And pretty soon its walls are going to come tumbling down around you.”
“And you know all about that too, I presume.”
“You’d be surprised by the things I know.”
I suspect he isn’t wrong about that, but there’s no sense in admitting it, so I don’t say anything.
“You were very successful once,” he remarks, deftly changing the subject, pulling something out of my wife’s bag of tricks. “I’d like that for you again. And I know, without a doubt, she wants that too. I think you owe it to her. And to your children.”
I turn to him, years of pent-up rage bubbling to the surface. “You’re just a punk kid who hides behind other people’s work. What would you know about what anybody deserves?”
He offers an infuriating smile. “Believe me, I know enough.”
The nerve of that smug little bastard. I couldn’t get out of that car fast enough. I was afraid if the drive lasted any longer I would have killed him. Sitting in silence in a confined space, plotting a person’s death, mustering restraint you’re not sure you have, is no small feat.
My first stop was the bar. I couldn’t wait to have a drink. I don’t remember most of the event. I only remember Liam and his goddamned popularity. Certainly, I had underestimated him. He knew everyone worth knowing and then some. By the time we took our seats, I knew that if one more person told me how lucky I was to be working with such talent, I was liable to cause a scene.
I’ve never murdered a person before, not in real life, and it’s probably best not to start now, considering my advanced age.
When they call my name for the award, it takes me a second to get out of my seat, only I can’t blame that on being over the hill but rather nearly under the table.
I manage to make it up to the stage unscathed despite the fact that I’ve had too many drinks to count. I’m pretty sure I don’t even slur my words throughout the entirety of my acceptance speech. Also no small feat considering that I hadn’t even rehearsed it.
I don’t recall exactly what I said, except that I give some utterly charming story of how I pulled my neck pursuing a long list of honey-do’s and how it’s all in a day’s work. Ah, the life of a writer.
The whole thing is entirely a waste of time, but everyone’s either too drunk or too bored or too ready for it to be over with, and I get a very gratifying round of applause and cheering.
I’m standing at the bar afterward, feeling pretty good, thinking about everyone I’ve ever encountered in life. Like the waiter at the diner who was the first to learn I got a book deal. Where is he now?
Like the flight attendant who brought me a drink without my asking the first time I got a scathing review. What’s she up to?
Or the lady in the airport terminal who received some very bad news by text, and everyone around her, we all stared at our shoes out of respect.
Like the publicist who I always carried a torch for, who was there when I learned I’d hit the New York Times list for the first time. She ordered champagne and told an apathetic waitress, “We’re celebrating!”
Or the father I passed kneeling in the hallway of the labor and delivery wing, who would not be wheeling his wife and chil
d out of the hospital. Did he remarry? Did he have another? Could he imagine I still think about him twenty-three years later?
