I turn to face him. “No. I think I’m going to stay in the guest room. I like the bed in there better,” I say without emotion.
“So you’re gonna stay in the guest room and leave this for Mom when she’s here and then I’m going to move into Nana’s old room?”
“That room actually used to be the office,” I say and then immediately wonder why I had to clarify that. The woman is dead, for Christ’s sake.
“Do you guys even need an office? Mom writes in here and you work at the clinic and no one has used that room since Nana died.”
I’m staring at him and noticing the hair on his upper lip. He looks like a completely different person just in the span of a few months. He’s taller, lanky, awkward, but it’s not the braces that make him seem awkward. He’s in that couple of years where your body isn’t quite in proportion. Almost like his arms are longer than they should be. His hair cannot decide if it’s long or short and it looks oily from where I’m at, even though I know he showers every day.
He’s looking back at me, expressionless, waiting for me to respond. I seem to be at a loss, just examining him and how different he looks to me in this moment. If Dani were here she might say it’s a good time to havethe talkwith Noah.
“Yeah, you can have that room, Noah,” I say, completely ignoring my train of thought. Dani can havethe talkwith him if she thinks it’s so necessary. “I need to move your grandmother’s stuff out of there and put it in the garage.”
“Do you want me to do that?”
“Yeah, I’m just gonna finish folding these clothes and I’ll come in and help you in a bit.”
“Why are you in here?” he asks. “If it’s just basically Mom’s room now and you’re folding your own clothes?”
“I don’t know. It’s closer to the laundry room. It just seemed more convenient.”
He shrugs as if he doesn’t buy my excuse. It’s true there really isn’t any reason for me to be in this room. It’s just where Dani always folded the clothes. I glance at her desk and notice the computer is gone but there are handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad. This is how Dani has always brainstormed for whatever she’s writing. Early in her career, I was so fascinated by her process. When I had asked her once if she outlined, or plotted, or jotted down notes on bar napkins to bring home and turn into magnificent stories, she laughed and said, “That’s not exactly how it works, for me anyway.”
She had been writing since I’d known her, but didn’t really call herself a writer until she got paid for it. That was not long after we met. Our first date, though, she told me she was an assistant producer. I remember the day she completed her first episodic series script. We were still in our early months, not yet living together, so I hadn’t ever seen her actually sit down and write.
We were in this tiny Thai restaurant somewhere near Warner Bros. Studio, where she was working with an all-female team developing aCagney & Laceytype of TV show. She hated the idea of how women making shows about women had to be a thing people would ask her about. She said, “It’s like asking Anthony Yerkovich and Michael Mann how they felt about creatingMiami Viceabout two male detectives. It’s just a stupid question that perpetuates sexism.”
That night we were celebrating the episode she had written, which was about to be filmed. We weren’t even exclusive, but I remember asking her, “How do you write this stuff? Do you have a bulletin board with a bunch of scenes written on four-by-five cards?”
She laughed, “Sometimes I scribble little notes.”
“Well, how do you keep it straight in your head? Like, organized?”
“I just do. It’s kind of intuitive. The stories are three-dimensional in my mind.”
“Is every writer like that?” I had asked.
“I have no idea. Probably to a degree. Think of it like this…You know Clare?”
“Yeah, what about her?” I had said. Clare was a girlfriend of Brian’s. Brian was a writer friend of Dani’s from work whoIactually hit it off with, and whoIam friends with now. He’s my only single friend. We mainly just golf together once a month. Clare and Brian broke up long ago, but at the time I was dating Dani, Brian was dating Clare and we used to all go out together.
“You know how she’sshitat telling a story? Like you never know when it’s over, so you’re not sure when to react or respond and it always makes for a weird conversation with her? You feel like you’re patronizing her all the time?”
“Yes, it’s totally like that.”
“She wouldn’t make a very good writer. Like, no sense of timing, no intrinsic understanding of beginning, middle, and end, you know? Like climax and resolution? When you hear her talk you’re always wondering if it’s the end, if it’s time to force a laugh, and then she just continues on and on like a toddler giving a foreigner driving directions. When she doesn’t get the reaction she’s hoping for, she adds another layer to the story and it becomes this convoluted mess. Horrible writing.”
I laughed so hard. I remember thinking back then about how much I liked Dani’s brain. Now all I can think about is how much I hate it.
“That’s so funny, Dani, and so true about Clare. I never really thought about writing that way.”
“Storytelling has to be inside of you, and then you have to be able to write it down in a way that makes sense. That’s it! It’s simple. Those two things make a writer, I think. If you’re creative on top of it, and you can imagine well, it’s a bonus. You’ve got all the parts needed for fiction writing. That’s how I see it. I could be wrong. I mean, I know some writers who obsessively outline and plot, but I bet they have it in their head already. I usually just take a notepad and scribble down words or scenes that I don’t want to forget. I don’t think anyone else could decipher my notes. It’s nonsensical chicken scratch.”
I smiled, then said, “There’s this guy I work with and he’s always saying he’s got the next great American novel in his head. He’s really passionate about it. He talks incessantly about going on vacation so he can write the book.”
“That’s the thing though,” she said, “I don’t want to squish his dreams or anything but he’ll probably never write it. Writers don’t sit around thinking about writing. My favorite thing is the guy on a first date who says he’s an aspiring writer because he has a clever idea about a casino heist or something. I tell him I’m a writer, and then he insists on telling me the whole fucking casino story over tapas, while I nod, smile, and ply myself with alcohol. Then I suggest he sit down and write it and he either says he will someday, or he says something even more idiotic, like ‘You can write it if you want. I’d give you half credit.’ Weallhave a story in our head, you know? But you have towriteit to actually be a writer. You have to want to write it, and you have to like it, the same way a person likes roller skating. Have you ever heard a person say, ‘I hate roller skating but I think I could choreograph it really well?’ It’s not the idea, or inception, it’s the execution. Believe me…there’s no shortage of casino heists up here.” She tapped her temple and winked.
I think that was the moment I fell in love with Dani. I also simultaneously prayed she would never go on another first date again. It’s too bad we couldn’t have held on to that thing we had. I was so impressed by her, so enamored, even though she was never trying to impress me. She was literally just being in the moment. She was authentic and that’s what I loved.
