“Shit, fuck,fuck.”
“Goodness,” said Diana, looking up from the display where she was micromanaging Huong’s arrangement of various fall cookbooks. “Is everything all right?”
Her ivory-colored hair was in a ponytail today that swayed as she surveyed Merritt. There was a hint of eagerness in her eyes, and Merritt was sure her mind had wandered up the hill to Whit’s house.
“Um,” Merritt said, looking to Huong, who was intrigued herself but without all the indecent eye-work. “It’s nothing.”
Diana and Huong narrowed their eyes in unison.
“It’s just something with an ex.”
Merritt wanted to stand, to put distance between herself and the now-oppressive heat of the fireplace, but that would look like retreating from the scrutiny of her coworkers’ eyes. That would look like this was a big deal.
She shrugged instead, clearly unconvincingly, because Huong laughed at her, while Diana very nearly scampered over to perch herself on the armrest of the mismatched Edwardian sofa.
“Well,” Diana said, and Merritt could tell she was excited about the word she was going to use next. “Dish.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Merritt said, straightening up as if about to stand. “It’s fine.”
Huong, with her eyes trained on the cookbooks, muttered, “You said ‘fuck’ three times.”
Merritt pressed her head against the chair. She did not have to tell these women anything. She did not owe it to them.
But Ian’s email had not been about her, not really. It had been about Graydon and what he wasreallylike. What he was reallylike was a man who performed progressiveness in order to mask his serial womanizing. Merritt had been fooled by this behavior, but that did not make her the fool. And anyway, Diana had been surprisingly restrained about Merritt’s working relationship with Whit after their car ride, while Huong, she sensed, would be on team Screw Graydon Always and Forever.
Right. Screw Graydon, then.
“Okay,” she said, before tumbling into a short version of the story: boyfriend, breakup, book.
Diana, paying rapt attention, raised her eyebrows as high as her recent Botox treatment would allow. Even Huong detached herself from her arrangements and came to join their boss on the sofa somewhere around the part where Merritt was explaining Graydon’s jokey promise that he’d never write about her and Bebe telling her about the draft he’d shared in workshop. By the time she read the email aloud, both women were shaking their heads in angry solidarity.
“I never liked him,” Diana said.
“Graydon? You know him?”
“No, Ian Hoult. A cold-blooded striver, if you ask me.”
The older woman shrugged demurely, as if they might scold her for saying the truth, then she smoothed the creases on the silk scarf tied at her neck and returned her hands to her lap.
“I know he’s supposed to be a good writer—heandLyons—but I find it all so boring.”
“Well.”
Merritt’s mind was divided: Graydon’s books at least were good, and yet the thrill of having spotted a fellow hater in the wild was powerful. Though she suspected that Diana was putting on an exaggerated show of solidarity, it was nice regardless.
“Do you think your friend is right?” Huong asked seriously.
“Bebe?”
“Yeah. Do you think she’s right that no one will respond to him?”
Merritt heaved a deep breath from her lungs. “No. I don’t know. She’s just being kind, probably. People love gossip, and it’s not hard to send an email and ask to be kept anonymous.”
Huong nodded. Diana shook her head.
“Pigs, they’re all pigs.”
“Ian’s just doing his job,” Merritt said, mostly to fill space. “He’s not targetingme.”
