“She will. She won’t let this story go, and she knows your timeline. She’ll get things settled at home, and then she’ll be back.”
Jess nods, looks out again at Tegan. “What do we do until then? More of”—she breaks off, carefully uses her mug to gesture around at the air—“this?”
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean candlelit dinners, though I’d have a million of them with her. I’m pretty sure she means days like today, and days like yesterday. Research, interviews.
It’s what Salem would want me to do in her absence.
Jess still isn’t looking at me, which means I can look at her. Her nose turns up slightly at the end, and I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed that detail before. There’s so much research I want to do.
None of it to do with the story.
I have a traitorous thought: Salem didn’t say what she wanted me to do.
It’s a cracked window, too, this thought, and once that little bit of air gets in, I breathe it: Shouldn’t we wait to get going again until Salem is back with us? Wouldn’t it be unfair to go ahead without her, when this story means so much to her?
Doesn’t Tegan need a break after today?
Hasn’t Jess needed one for so much longer?
I speak before the window slams shut again.
“We could take a detour.”
Jess snaps her eyes to mine. “A detour?”
“Yeah. I’ll call your mom’s old friend Julia, confirm that there’s nothing there. Then we can take a few days off. While Salem figures out her stuff at home.”
Jess looks dubious. “Take a few days off . . . here?”
I shake my head. “Not here. Somewhere away from all this.”
Away from the story, is what I mean. Away from anything having to do with her mother. I want to give her that so bad, I can feel it in my bones.
She looks at me, assessing. This isn’t like last night at the pool, where I made her a careful argument about why we should split up—where I made everything personal about my idea sound professional. Where instead of talking about the dark circles under her eyes, or the growing tension between her and her sister, I talked about covering more ground, about compatible interview styles. I’m not going to say anything like that.
I’m just going to let her look at me, and decide whether she wants to trust me with this.
It’s a lifetime before she answers.
“That sounds good,” she says, her voice soft again. Almost as if she’s keeping a secret from herself. “Where would we go?”
Definitely I should have had a place figured out first, but I didn’t. So the only answer is the one that comes immediately to mind. The place where I’ve always, always gone when I needed a break.
“We could go home.”
The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore
Transcript Excerpt from Episode 7, “Young Lynton”
Baltimore:I thought this was an interview.
Durant:It is.
Baltimore:But you’re telling me things, not asking me them.
Durant:I’m telling you what I’ve learned about you, through my research. What I’ve learned about your parents, your sister. How you grew up, what your experiences have been. You’re welcome to correct the record.
Baltimore:I’m not in the business of correcting the record.
