“Dash, it’s okay.I don’t need a ring.”
“We’ll get you one tomorrow.”
“Okay.But it’s fine.”
“It could be a decoder ring.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“How long haveyoubeen awake?”
“Twenty hours and change,” Bobby said.
“Oh my God, Bobby.And you have to work tomorrow.Time for bed.Right now, mister.And don’t even think about, uh, hanky-panky.”
He did something with his eyebrows, and ladies and gentlemen: Iblushed.
Fortunately, Bobby’s amorous advances met significant opposition from his spic-and-span advances, which meant we cleaned up the kitchen before heading upstairs.I bustled Bobby into the bathroom so he could start getting ready for bed, but a moment later, he poked his head out, toothbrush busily brushing away, and asked something like one of the parents from a Charlie Brown special.
“Huh?”I asked.
Toothbrush out, he asked, “How’s the conference?”
“Uh, aside from the murders?Fine, I guess.I don’t know.”
He popped his head out again, still busily cleaning those toofers, and made an inquiring sound.
“Well, remember our friend Spenser?He caught up with me and offered a lot of ‘help.’I’m drawing air quotes so you know he wasn’t helpful and that I’m being sarcastic.”
A noise of affirmation came between the sounds of Bobby spitting into the sink.
“He haslotsof ideas about how the next Will Gower book should go.How the whole series should go, I’m guessing.And I don’t have the heart to tell him that I haven’t made any progress on book two, like, at all, so he’s probably getting his hopes up.In a weirdly rude fashion, as it turns out.I think he’s going to take it personally if I don’t deliver exactly the book he’s dreaming of.”
“He’s excited,” Bobby said from the bathroom.“Isn’t that a good thing when readers get excited about your books and want more of them?That’s what you want.”
“What I want is extreme sales velocity and rave reviews in theNew York Timesand for zero actual people to ever, you know, talk to me about my books in person.”
When Bobby poked his head out the next time, he was flossing, but let me tell you: he gave me an extremely disapproving look.Then he stopped flossing long enough to say, “Are you going to shower?”
I groaned.I stretched.I wiggled.
A shower sounded heavenly, but I was literallyin bed.
“Shower,” Bobby said with a laugh.
Somehow, I dragged myself out of bed.I started the shower.Pipes clanked and banged and moaned.As the water warmed up, I stripped out of my clothes.Bobby got an eyeful as I padded to the tub, and I don’t know what was happening that night, but I blushedagain.
The waterdidfeel heavenly, especially since the last chance I’d had to clean up had been at the hospital.As the water ran over my shoulders and down my back, I lathered up with some body wash.(Did you know in October, you could find it in pumpkin spice scent?Keme didn’t.He said that was reason number three thousand why someone should have beaten me up more when I was a kid.)
“It’s—” I said, picking up the thread of the conversation again.“It’s sad, I guess.”
“Spenser?He likes your books, Dash.”
“No.Although, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but there might be the slimmest possibility that he’s the one who broke into our house and tried to kill me.”
Bobby pulled back the shower curtain.“What?”
“He’sprobablynot, but, you know, maybe.”Before Bobby could change gears to detective mode, I said, “I meant it’s sad, the people I’ve been talking to.Everybody who’s a writer starts writing because they love stories.They want to tell stories.They have something to say—about themselves, about the world, maybe about this cool adventure they dreamed up.But at some point, for a lot of people, it stops being about the writing.It’s about getting an agent.It’s about getting a book deal.It’s about getting the right marketing, and a solid book launch, and then the next book deal, and a bestseller list.”
