The dialogue is an alternative version of the debacle that took place. A version of our brunch in which Chris thanks me for being such a caring friend and breaks down his walls and we talk more about Luke and the impact his death had on Chris and howhis relationship with Olivia is little more than a misplaced coping mechanism.
The words, the pages, start to stack like dominoes filmed in reverse motion, standing up one after the other, an accordion of creation. It’s the kind of tunnel vision I’ve been wanting to feel with my playwriting, so I keep riding the wave and soar, soar, soar straight into the mouth of the serpent.
Tara appears at my shoulder sometime later, though I’m only half aware. “I thought you said you didn’t want to think about Chris anymore,” she says, snooping at my work before it’s even half baked, greedy for the gooey batter.
“Don’t ask me to make sense,” I say, refusing to peel my eyes away from my screen, from my characters, from my calling. “Or you’re asking me not to be an artist.”
Hal comes over to join us on the couch, some chemical energy drink in one hand, homemade green juice in the other. “Now you understand what it’s like to be in flow,” she says. “And why I don’t like to be interrupted.”
I tilt my computer away from Hal. Tara’s snooping is one thing, but I’m not ready for Hal’s judgment, her lectures about how I need to hone my value proposition and develop my pitch.
“I’ve been in flow before,” I say, though I’m starting to wonder if I ever really have been. If all the times before were just imposters and apprentices of the real thing. The exposition slanting up, gradual until the parabola shoots up to the climax, propelling me here, into the eye of the storm that I hope never subsides.
It does let up after a while, but first it doubles down on itself, carries me out into the white-capped waves of a second draft. In this version, I scrap all the sentimental lines and trade them in for biting humor, so dry it crumbles like sun-cracked clay.
I don’t edit myself based on what my audience may think of it, if I reach an audience at all. But I still enjoy how the deviations fromthe facts of what really happened make it harder to compare my life to this play. There’s a freedom that comes from letting real life bleed into make-believe, making it impossible to prove or disprove. The trick is making sure that the fiction still reverberates with the solid thump of fact.
“When can we read the script?” Hal asks late one night when we’re out back in the garden. Astrid is there again too. The two of them still haven’t shared what their stealth-mode start-up is all about. If you ask me, it’s just an excuse for them to be spending all this time together, fooling themselves into thinking that they’re being productive. I could hack Hal’s computer and find out if I wanted to, but I don’t because I’m busy enough.
“It’s not done yet,” I say, editing it on my laptop, wobbly on the patio table whose uneven legs teeter on the gravel. My eyes are strained from staring at the screen in the dark. Bitterness resurfaces at how Jenni pulled a total Grinch move, taking all the light strands when she left us.
Tara spritzes her water bottle onto the plants, abetting the ivy in its quest to crawl up the whole wall, over the roof, and up into the sky or down to the earth, whichever path it chooses, maybe both. “Writing is never done, though,” she says.
Leave it to Tara to spoil my bad excuse with a good rebuttal.
“There’s just a time when you have to say ‘good enough’ and put it out into the world,” she carries on. “Otherwise, art would always stay hidden and only be discovered after the creators died.”
“Maybe that’s not the worst thing,” I say. “No positive recognition, but no negative recognition either.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Tara says. “Taking a moderate stance.”
“What can I say? I’mevolving.” I put a dramatic spin on the word, wag my fingers ominously.
“Start-ups are like that too,” Hal says, pivoting the conversation back to herself, like she does best. “They’re never fully done. It’s all about just getting to the MVP—theminimum viable product,” she explains importantly, as if we don’t know this from the thousand times she’s used the acronym. “And then sometimes you have to launch before you’re ready so you can be the first mover, capture the market share before your competitors. Sprinting is the only speed in the start-up world.”
“That means you should be close to launching by now, right?” I ask Hal. “How about this? I’ll let you see my script if you tell me what your start-up is.”
I know she won’t take me up on it, so I’m safe.
“That’s not the same,” Hal says, shooting down my proposal. “There are intellectual property concerns for my business.Ourbusiness,” she corrects quickly, as Astrid emits an acerbic “ahem.”
“Writing is intellectual property too,” I retort.
Astrid comes to my defense. “Hally, love,” she says. “We can tell your friends. We can trust them.”
I’ve got to admit I like Astrid more than I was expecting to, despite the fact that she’s started staying over sometimes, breaking our sacred ground rules. Hal says those rules were made during a different era when we were sharing rooms, and now that she has her own, she should be able to fill it however she likes.
“Fine,” Hal says, unable to resist Astrid. She pauses for a dramatic crescendo. “It’s a software app.”
Tara and I exchange a look, reciprocal underwhelm. “Aren’t all apps software by definition?” Tara poses. She does it in a gentler way than I would have, but Hal still gets prickly, like we’ve attacked her baby, gone straight for the jugular.
“I wasn’t done yet,” Hal says. “It’s a social impact platformthat fosters global diversity and inclusion across an array of end markets.”
The buzzwords fall flat onto the stones beneath our feet. Not the grand reveal that Hal had hoped for.
“You’d better not be using AI,” I say. “It’s destroying the planet, way worse than eating meat.”
“Of course we’re using AI. How would we get funding without it?” Hal says. “You don’t understand the funding landscape.”
