“Yes, my hair is loose,” I said. Not in any kind of temptress voice (not that I even had one in my toolkit), but not in a no-nonsense tone either. Just a calm, low voice.
Another long silence, which this time I had no intention of breaking with questions about his book.
After a few seconds I heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You know, I think I’m just a little weirded out today. Coming back to the city, staying with my parents. My apartment being sublet. This whole year is kind of weirding me out.”
I didn’t say anything, this was his ramble. I didn’t want to tip the scales one way or another, though I wasn’t even sure what was being weighed.
Well, I sort of did. I’d known aboutthosekind of scales for way too long.
“I…I just don’t want to seem creepy or anything,” he finally said.
“You didn’t. You don’t.”
Another long exhale. “Good. Good. Listen, I’m supposed to meet friends downtown for drinks. I better get going.”
“Okay,” I said, then waited for him to say goodbye. Which he didn’t.
“It’s just that…I mean…” More silence. “Yeah, I’m gonna go.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“Syd?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for taking the job,” he softly said.
“Thanks for offering it.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
He was gone. And I laid on the floor of his office for a long time before I finally got up, pulled forward the notes I wanted to work on tomorrow, then went home to my dorm room.
And thought the whole time about what he’d said—and more importantly, what hehadn’tsaid.
Chapter6
“What box areyou working on now?” he asked when he called me the next day. It was around one in the afternoon and I’d been there since nine working.
“Rachel,” I said.
“No, Billy,” he teased.
“Ha. Ha. I’m working on the box with all the Rachel notes.”
“Rachel? I don’t have a Rachel.”
“I’m thinking she’s what Esme either started as or morphed into, or—”
“Oh, Rachel, that’s it. Yeah, I know her,” he said, like he’d just remembered the name of someone he ran into somewhere but hadn’t seen for a while. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. Going through his notes made me realize that these people, these characters, were real to him. Friends.
There would be innocuous items, like body type, race, coloring, that sort of thing, so he could keep the visual straight once he was writing. But then there would be this random note like “When she was in second grade, she wanted fashion-y boots, but her mother made her wear her current, dorky snow boots because they were still in good shape. So she took a butter knife (the only kind she was allowed to handle—she might have been a bit of a rebel, but some rules she knew better than to break) and pierced her boots so her mother would have to buy her new ones.” And wrapped around that piece of paper was a cocktail napkin from some place I’d heard of in Manhattan with “don’t use this…just for character development” scribbled on it with red Sharpie.
“So, I’m creating a ‘possibly Esme’ pile. That’s what I’m working on.”
“You can scratch the ‘possibly’ part. She was Rachel for a few months in there for sure.”
