Eight months ago
Caleb was freaking out.
Show, don’t tell, he chided himself mid-freak out. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Then he typed:
Caleb Rye’s stomach churns. His brain does not. His brain is a frozen lake in a barren field. Outside his window, he hears the shouting of a couple arguing in a Spanish-English hybrid. He forgot her birthday. His bodega peace offering, limp flowers at the end of their life, splats against his front window, a misaimed missile. He watches through the streaked glass as the dyed carnations leave a soft purple smear tracing their journey to the sidewalk.
This reminds him that the windows—some held in place by electrical tape, some by layers of paint, some by the grace of the Almighty—will not survive another winter. Not even a mild DC winter.
And this, in turn, reminds him of the astronomical estimate to replace them in conformity with the requirements of the historic district. As the result some cosmic joke, his falling-down row house is subject to the same restrictions as the pristine pastel-colored beauties on New Hampshire Avenue.
One bedroom, one bathroom, twelve feet across. Half a million dollars in a down market and too expensive to keep up.
The need to replace the windows jump-started his muse, who until then had been more interested in the fighting lovers outside than his impending deadline. She cracked her metaphorical knuckles and clocked in.
He exhaled a whoosh of relief that filled the tiny office. Then he backspaced with vigor to delete his spiraling thoughts and return to his work. His fingers flew over the keys:
The water, was it water? The water ran in rivulets. Tears of a vanquished god. A dream turned to dust. He shuddered and crawled through the mud, through the muck. His fingers, warm with the blood of his lover. He grasped the sun.
He read it twice, nodded once, satisfied. Then he texted his agent.
Making good progress on the rewrite. Seven sentences in the death of the god scene.
He saved his document and backed it up, ready to shut down for the day. Then two things happened.
Emmaline appeared in the doorway. Her dark eyes were enormous and her pale skin was nearly translucent. She held a white plastic object, roughly the size and shape of a thermometer. She rotated it toward him to display two pink lines.
And his phone rang.
He glanced away from his wife for a fraction of a second. Biz. Calling rather than texting—a flagrant violation of elder Gen Z norms. Then again, his agent was pushing thirty.
Locking eyes with Emmaline, his heart pounding, he picked up the call. “Biz?”
“Honey, we need to talk.”
The words were gentle. Her tone was not.
“Okay?”
“Your book. Look, the market isn’t there right now.”
“No?”
“No. A fallen Egyptian god? No romance, no spice?”
“Biz, it’s literary fiction.” He cringed at the pleading tone in his voice.
She sighed. “Caleb …”
“Yeah?”
“I have an opportunity for you.”
He stared at Emmaline, at the positive pregnancy test. “I’m listening.”
“A publisher needs a writer. They’ve got a fully developed thriller concept—outline, character arcs, the works. They want someone to execute it. Ghost work, but you’d get sole cover credit.”
“I don’t write thrillers.”
