Hi James, I’m glad you enjoyed the show tonight. See you at work.
James shuts his phone off and thinks,I’ll reply in the morning.
But he won’t. When he goes to sleep, all he sees is Nelle. When he wakes up and slides Nancy’s notification away, all he sees is Nelle. When he goes to work and Nancy won’t acknowledge him, he doesn’t think about their date or his rudeness or whatever article he is supposed to be researching—
All he sees is Nelle.
Chapter 8
During the final hottest weeks of July, James spends more time at Nelle’s bedroom window than his typewriter. He gets to know the buzzing crickets, the coin-thin split in the wooden sill, the dried-out ladybugs crusting the frame’s bottom groove, and when the wind blows in, the honeysuckle from the bushes by the back of the house. He stretches back into the smell.
Nelle perches on her vanity stool by the window, chin on her knees, her eyes like a chinchilla in the dark.
“When was the last time you cried?” she asks. Her tone is bored, but James sees it for what it is. The effortless speech of the intimate.
He observes the wall of trees over his shoulder. A month before he met Nelle, he had a drunken meltdown during a two-hour bubble bath. He hated the pointlessness of his life, the school he had prayed to get into, his parents and their expectations, his lack of friends, his sister and her excess of them.
“I can’t remember.”
“Did you cry when Misty died?”
At some point over the last three weeks, he told Nelle about his family’s golden retriever. Red blood matted in her fur. His dad burying her in the backyard. To James, losing Misty was like losing a sister.
“I didn’t.” He would do anything to scratch behind her ears again, to throw the ball for her. “Not in front of my dad.”
“Why not?”
“Didn’t want him to think I was weak.”
The corner of Nelle’s mouth twitches down. “I’m sad a lot, but it only sharpens me. You’re better off for the shit you’ve been through.”
“You think?” James touches the hollow of his neck, the vial on its chain halfway visible beneath the collar of his sweatshirt.
“You show your feelings proudly, James. At least around me,” she says. “The smartest peopledon’tpush their emotions into boxes.”
He laughs. “You sound like a tea bag.”
Nelle’s head gives a little shake, her face a question mark.
“The little paper thing attached to a tea bag.” James motions with his hands. “Sometimes it has a saying on it, like a fortune cookie.”
“What is a fortune cookie?”
“You’ve never heard of a ...? Well, it’s like a wise phrase delivered to you with your food so you can think while you eat,” James says. “At least, that’s how I think about it. I’m not sure what the actual history behind it is. Why don’t we look it up?”
Nelle sighs. “I can’t go to a library. I can’tleave.”
“As much as I’d love to go to the library with you, I meant with my phone.” He holds it up. A spiderweb crack laces its glassy back.
“A ... cell phone?” Nelle reels back like he’s holding a bomb.
“A smartphone.” He types his question. “Wait, have you never seen a phone before?”
“OfcourseI’ve seen a phone,” she says, a drop of Quill’s Scottish in her American accent. “But it’s big, with a cord attached to the wall.”
“Welcome to the new decade.” James reads the first article aloud. A full history of the fortune cookie with all its potential creators.
“Do you have an encyclopedia inside there?” Nelle asks.
