If you were here with me... but it is a good thing you’re not. To build something real takes time, and care. Tonight I have neither.
I know precisely what would hypnotize you in a hotel room. I’d read to you. In bed. Any story of your choosing.
What if you come to another of my events? Well then our story will unfold. In ways I can only imagine. In ways I love to imagine.
I look forward to it. If you are not just teasing.
More from the road when a roomful of septuagenarians have not gotten me drunk.
XOXO! I see your XO’s and raise you two and some exclamation points, XO!!!
William
PS, not one of those women could slay a red dress like you.
To: William Corwyn
From: Sam Vetiver
Date: August 12
Time: 10:08 a.m.
Dear William,
I won’t keep you while you’re in event mode, which I know is all-consuming. Break a leg. I hope you’re not too hungover from the frisky librarians. But I have your tour schedule from your website, and what if that What If is not a plot device after all? I’d love to come to another of your readings. So keep glancing up from that podium.
XOXO and then some,
Sam.
PS, that was not my answer for how to hypnotize me in a hotel room, it was you could braid my hair, but it might work. We could test the theory.
The Rabbit
It’s so welcome when William has a down morning in his events schedule, a rare one-evening-event day, because it means I get a little break too. I’ve saved up a lot of vacation time from work, four years’ worth, and deployed it for William’s tour. But I know my boss, Tim, was P.O.’ed that I asked to use it all at once, and the store doesn’t run as smoothly when I’m not there. So even though technically I could do today what William was doing this morning at his Connecticut hotel, which is to put his feet up and catch up on correspondence, I go in to work.
I have some correspondence of my own to attend to.
I’m in the staff room when Tim comes in. He’s the GM, but you’d never know it; he looks like a retired Marine, with a beefy build and a crew cut and biceps that strain the sleeves of his gray T-shirts. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up one day with a whistle around his neck and made us run laps. He used to play football before he blew out his ACL, and that’s how he came to books: reading Stephen King while he was recuperating. Tim is the only straight man I know in publishing besides William, though he lacks William’s elegance.
“Hey,” he says, sticking his square head into the room. “Somebody’s sitting in my chair.”
“It fits me just right,” I say, pushing the rolling chair back from the desk. I heard him coming, of course, and clicked out of the screen I was working on. Now the desktop shows only his screensaver, his two adorable twin girls smashing rainbow Popsicles into their mouths.
He leans against the doorway. “Seems to me I remember somebody pestering me for the whole month off. You miss us that much?”
“Just couldn’t stay away,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I can’t figure you out, Sparky.” He calls everyone Sparky, and sometimes I wonder if he can’t remember our names. “If I were you, I’d be on the beach.”
“I burn,” I say.
He takes a box cutter from his pocket and tosses it to me. “Since you’re here, how do you feel about unloading and shelving a shipment?”
“I feel fine about that,” I say.
He gives me another long, level look, then finger-guns me and leaves, whistling.
