Simone tells him about our contretemps and my ultimatum. I listen carefully for any note of derision, but she simply recites the story. “He feels I’m appropriating his life for material,” she says. “And it makes him not trust me. So we’re at a stalemate at the moment.”
“Of course you’re appropriating. That’s what writers do, borrow from life. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”
“I mean, sure. Little bits and pieces, anyway, and then we change it. The story becomes its own thing. And he knows that, of course. But he was really pissed about it, I clearly hit a nerve there, and no matter how much I apologized, he can’t hear me. So now I have an impossible choice to make: Man or book?”
“You want to know what I think?”
Not in the slightest.
“Of course,” says Simone.
“Nobody worthy of you would put you in that position. Why wouldyou dump the book? It’s the first time I’d heard you excited about your work in ages. Dump the guy.”
Cicadas whir while Simone considers her answer. Her ex smokes serenely, continuing to pollute the orchard. It just seems so dangerous, putting a recovering alcoholic in charge of a property, especially one who smokes. Don’t they say an addict never really recovers, that he must be vigilant every day? And isn’t isolation poison to them? What if this poor bastard, stranded here without a car, grew so lonely he took his emergency handle of vodka from its hiding place, in a high cabinet or in the dry grass near the Airstream’s tires, and poured himself a shot? And another and another? And what if he lit a cigar while drinking and passed out with it in his hand? What if? Anything at all could happen to a drunk living alone in the woods.
Finally Simone says, “I don’t think William and I are over...”
I smile behind my tree. Good girl.
“But I’m not ready to give up on the new thriller idea, either,” she admits.
Wrong answer, Simone.Verywrong answer.
“Is it bad I’m hoping it goes badly with him?” he says, and she laughs.
“It’s human,” she says. She stands and stretches. I watch him eyeing her breasts beneath her thin T-shirt as she arches her back. Behold ’em and weep, you poor sucker, I think. They used to be yours. Now they’re mine. If I want them.
“I’d better go,” Simone says. “I want to hit the road before dark.”
He stands, too, and hugs her. “Remember when we talked about getting an Airstream just like this and driving around the country? And I’d take portraits of people while you wrote and sold pies out the back window?”
Simone laughs. “I remember you having a fantasy about this that I in no way partook in.”
He draws back to look at her. “You sure you don’t want to reconsider?”
“I’m good, thank you,” she says. “Besides, you seem like you’re in a solid place now. With your friends the bears and all.”
They embrace again, and now I do make my silent departure. Let them have their tender moment.
Eight months, is what I’m thinking as I make my way back to my car. I have a two-book contract,All the Lambent Soulsbeing the first, and the second is due in eight months. I have only that long to deliver it. Is it worth continuing with Simone? It’s starting to seem like a lot of work for diminishing returns. It is very sad, but I didn’t hear the answers I was hoping for today. So Simone didn’t bang her dumpster fire of an ex; bully for her. I’d rather she fuck a platoon than say what she said.Not sure which book to writeindeed. It’s imperative I be with a woman who supports my creative needs, not tears them down. How can I be with one who shows such disrespect? I cannot.
Back in my car, I wipe pine sap and blood from my knuckles and retrieve my phone from the glove box. There are responses from the messages I sent yesterday. Good.Hello, backups!I’m reading them when I hear Simone’s Jeep coming and slide down in my seat. There’s a pause, as if she’s idling at the end of the drive while I sweat here. A text from her pops silently onto my screen:
I miss you.????
She drives off. I’m about to do the same when another vehicle comes up behind me and I have to duck again. What the hell? This is a lot of traffic for a private road. Is it the owner of the big house, or some guests he’s hosting for dinner, perhaps? Then I see who it is and start to laugh. Simone and I might be done, but she won’t be lonely. As the Rabbit barrels past me in her rustbucket, I see beneath the brim of her ballcap the unmistakable overbite.
Chapter 20
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THE DARLINGS
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