Retool, p.19
Retool, page 19
part #12 of The Last Picks Series
Other papers suggested that Vivienne had been working, at her agent’s suggestion, on a follow-up to Matron of Murder. One of the beauties of the Matron of Murder series was that the protagonist, Genevieve Webster, had an endless supply of nieces and nephews (who could, as the occasion called for, either be murdered, suspected by the police of murder, or function as convenient excuses for Genevieve to be dragged off to London or New York City or wherever else she might stumble onto a murder or herself be suspected of murder—can you tell there was a formula?). Apparently, someone thought it was a great idea for Genevieve’s niece Amber to become the next Matron of Murder, passing the torch to the rising generation, etc., etc. Oh, and she had a boyfriend who was a surfer. Or maybe a rapper. Or would it be too much if he were an astronaut? (Matron of Murder on the Moon was basically a book that wrote itself.) At the bottom of one of these pages, in her unmistakable handwriting, Vivienne had written, If I have to write these books, I’m going to kill myself.
And then I came across the book that Vivienne had plagiarized from Pippi. I’d forgotten about it, if I was being honest. Forgotten about that whole bizarre situation. Forgotten that at some point in her life, Vivienne had been in such despair about her writing that she had tried writing a cozy (called, egad, Café Capers).
I sat there, pages loose in my hands, and forgot about the trash can. I’d forgotten how bad things had gotten for Vivienne at the end. Her stories blocked. Her creativity dried up. The thing she had loved most, the thing she had sacrificed everything for—her writing—slipping out of her hands no matter how tightly she tried to grasp it. I mean, my God, she’d been planning on stealing ideas from me; that’s how you know she was desperate.
And I found myself thinking about the letter she had written to me. At the time, it had seemed like—I don’t know. A mixture of Vivienne being a know-it-all about writing (definitely in character) and, later, a clue about where to take the investigation, by looking at Simona’s publishers. But now, in that strange bubble of time and space that the middle of the night brings, I wondered if it wasn’t more. Not Vivienne’s letter to me. But, in a strange way, Vivienne’s letter to herself. Everyone must choose who they are going to be. And Vivienne had chosen the money over the writing. Maybe that wasn’t fair; she was a good writer. She was a brilliant writer. And she had loved writing. But in little ways, she had chosen other things over writing again and again. Until, when she needed it, the writing was gone.
I set the manuscript aside. Pippi would want it. She could sell it to Pippi’s Privateers or Pippi’s Pioneers or Pippi’s Piranhas (jeez, there was a fitting name).
As I worked my way around the room, I crawled behind the desk to pick up the papers that had fallen there. Instead of full sheets, a pile of smaller pieces of paper lay on the floor: sticky notes, the pages from a day planner, a scrap torn from the corner of what appeared to be a takeout menu. One said, You only have today. And another said, Write what you love. And then there was Remember why you do this, and Writing is its own reward, and then, on half a napkin, in blue ballpoint that had torn the paper, a single word: Write.
Two had clearly been handled more than the rest—they had wrinkles from careless foldings, and their edges had that soft, brushed look of paper that has been worn down. The first said, You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. And the second said, A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I’m not sure how long I would have sat there if a soft tap at the door hadn’t pulled me back.
The door opened, and Indira stepped into the room carrying two mugs. The scent of chocolate—warm, creamy, sweet chocolate—bloomed. She was dressed in sensible sleep pants and a sleep shirt, with a rain jacket. Her hair was loose and pulled over one shoulder. Her face still slightly soft with sleep, she looked strangely vulnerable.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Indira said. “And I saw the light.” She tipped her head toward the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Not at all. I was already up.” But she stopped and waited and asked, “If I’m not intruding?”
I hesitated. Then I shook my head.
She came around the desk and sat on the floor next to me. The mug warmed my hands—I hadn’t realized, until now, that my fingers were cold—and the hot cocoa was perfect. Not as thick and rich as the hot chocolate Indira occasionally made, but the right balance of sweet and flavorful to be a good nightcap. (Was it a nightcap? A good back-to-bed beverage? What’s the term for that?)
“Thank you,” I said.
Indira nodded and sipped her cocoa.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” I said. And I glanced around. “And this makes me look like I’m insane, I am realizing in exactly this moment.”
Indira laughed quietly. But all she said was “Sometimes it helps to have a project. Something to do. The nights can be long, otherwise.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“I’m not trying to get rid of her,” I said. “Or erase her or anything.”
“I know.”
“I—it felt like it was time.”
Indira nodded. “Dash, it’s your house. Your home.”
We sat there for a while.
“She wasn’t always that way,” I said. “Or maybe she was, but there was—there was more, you know. I don’t think a lot of people saw that.”
“She was a complicated person.”
I nodded. It felt like something huge shifting inside me, a glacier cracking, a sheet shearing off and plummeting into dark water. My eyes stung. I shook my head, wiped my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Indira rubbed my back.
“She wasn’t a good person,” I said, my throat tight, and even though I fought to get the words out quickly, the tears came faster. “But she didn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” Indira said quietly, and I started to cry.
Chapter 28
After a good cry (and more hot cocoa), I went back to bed. The next day, I woke up feeling as tired as I’d been the day before, but with that hollowness that follows overpowering emotions. I dragged myself out of bed. I made myself shower and eat breakfast and go downstairs. Bobby was on leave pending an investigation into the shooting, and Keme and Millie were home too. We talked about things we could do to get out of the house, but my mood must have been catching because we didn’t go anywhere, and we didn’t do anything. Bobby lay on the chesterfield, listening to his music. Keme and Millie went upstairs. I pretended to read. (Which is way easier than pretending to write, for the record.)
I was pretending to read with my eyes closed when a knock at the door jolted me awa—uh, upright. Bobby tapped his earbuds and said, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” But I moved over to the window that looked out on the veranda. Julian stood there in that too-short raspberry-colored trench coat with the ridiculous flared hem.
I groaned.
“Which one is it?” Bobby asked.
I groaned again.
“What’s up?” Bobby sat up. “The sheriff? Oh, not that—” And here he said a word that the sheriff would not have appreciated. “—guy Spenser?”
“No,” I said. But I did groan again—surprisingly, it made me feel better. “It’s Julian.”
Bobby said, “Oh.”
(Has your fiancé ever said, Oh? It’s not a good sign.)
“I’ll tell him to go away,” I said.
“No, Dash, you don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. He has some seriously messed-up expectations if he thinks I’m going to—if he thinks he and I—if he thinks—What’s Hollywood lingo for when there’s lots of kissing, and if it’s on the CW, the guy’s shirt falls off?”
Bobby actually took his earbuds out at that point.
“No,” I said, “don’t fight him. He’s not worth it. Okay, fine, beat him up, but only a little.”
“Babe,” Bobby said. He came across the room and braced me by the arms. “This TV show is a big deal.”
“It’s not a big deal—”
Bobby gave me direct eye contact.
“Okay,” I mumbled, “but it’s not worth it. You are way more important to me, Bobby, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m leaving you behind or escaping in a life raft or abandoning ship, uh, while the musicians play. I guess.”
A pause as Bobby recalibrated. “When did you watch Titanic?”
“Last weekend. Keme had never seen it, and he cried. He says he didn’t, but I know he did.”
“This is a big deal,” Bobby said. “I love you. I want you to have this; you deserve it, and you’re going to do great.” I opened my mouth, but he said over me, “I trust you, Dash. I want this for you.”
“I want this for us,” I said.
Bobby gave me that goofy grin. And then he turned me toward the front door and gave me a pat on the bum to get me moving.
(It was weirdly incentivizing.)
When I opened the front door, Julian gave me a huge smile and started inside without waiting for an invitation. The movement turned into an attempted hug, which I forestalled coolly and gracefully: by planting a hand on his chest, squirming backward, and tripping over an umbrella stand.
“Are you okay?” Julian asked. “Here, let me—”
“I’m fine!” I scooted back, got the umbrella stand between us, and managed to regain my footing. A part of me decided at that exact moment that it would be ideal to keep a sword-cane in the umbrella stand for exactly this kind of situation. (This kind of situation being amorous gentlemen callers who can’t read the room. They were an epidemic during the era of sword-canes. It was why ladies kept leaving town and going to the beach.)
“Uh, right,” Julian said. He raised his hand again like he might try for a shoulder squeeze or, God forbid, another hug, but then he let it drop. “Okay, yesterday was insane. I’ve been piecing together footage all weekend, but yesterday—”
“Yesterday was insane in a bad way,” I said. “Just to be clear.”
“Yesterday was insane in a good way, Dash. Do you have any idea what you did? You made sure this show is going to happen. I mean, my God, doing the big reveal like that in front of all those people? And then he attacked you? That’s gold. And you were so brave. I’ve been calling to check on you, but—”
“Julian.”
“—you didn’t answer any of my messages—”
“Julian.”
“—talked to my boss, and she thinks we should shop it to Netflix—”
“Julian!”
He stopped. “What?”
“I’m not going to sleep with you.”
The distant sounds of Indira working in the kitchen reached us.
“Uh,” I said, “to clarify: I appreciate this opportunity. I’m excited about the idea. I want to do it. But I love Bobby, and I’m not going to have sex with you to—to seal the deal, as it were.”
Julian didn’t say anything for several seconds. And then he said, “What?”
“No sex. I’m not going to trade my body—” I could feel the conversation getting away from me, but I also wasn’t sure how to stop it. “—for this opportunity. No judgment on people who do. And I’m not trying to make a broader statement about sex work, whether people find themselves doing it by choice or because they think they have no other option—”
“Stop, stop, stop. Dash, stop.”
“Oh thank God.”
He gave me this bewildered look for about two-point-five seconds. “I’m straight.”
“Uh,” I said.
He nodded.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Am I sure?”
“In my defense,” I said, “that coat is at least bisexual.”
The look on Julian’s face suggested that his faith in my powers of deduction was waning.
“Uh, so you don’t want to sleep with me?”
“No.”
Okay, well, rude, because he didn’t have to say it quite so quickly.
“Oh,” I said. And then, for lack of anything better, “Great.”
Julian stared at me for another two-point-five seconds. Then he said flatly, “Great.”
“No, I meant— Great! Hurray! We’re going to make this show happen!”
With another of those I-may-have-made-a-mistake looks, Julian took out his phone and opened the calendar. “When can you come to L.A.?”
“Believe it or not, my schedule is fairly flexible.”
“Great. Tomorrow?”
“Uh—”
“Or the day after. I’m traveling again at the end of the week, and I want to get our contracts department working on this before we lose momentum.”
“That seems…fast.”
“Dash, I promise you, we’ve got to do this while the buzz is still building. It’s a twenty-four-hour news cycle; people are going to start forgetting by the end of the week.”
“Set up the meeting for the day after tomorrow,” Bobby said from the hall. “It’s not a problem.”
“Great,” Julian said. Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed me in another hug—lots of body-to-body contact for a man who had been so quick to say he had no interest in sleeping with me—and then Julian was heading out the door, waving his phone over his shoulder at me, apparently as a promise of further contact in the future.
“I can’t go the day after tomorrow,” I said.
“Why not?” Bobby said.
“Because—because I have things to do.” Genius: “I have to drive Keme to gymnastics.”
Can you believe Bobby didn’t seem to be amused at all?
“I know it’s scary,” Bobby said. “But this is what you want, right?”
“This is what everybody wants. But I’m not ready, and I don’t have an agent, and—”
“Call Phil,” Bobby said. “He’s your parents’ agent, right? He’s already looked over the offer. He can help you get through this part of it, and then you can decide down the road if you want to work with someone else.”
“But I didn’t query him. I didn’t convince him to represent me because I’m a good writer and because he believes in me. He’d only be helping me because of my parents.”
Bobby’s eyebrows went up. “Dash, you’ve got an offer for a TV show. Is there an agent who would look at that and tell you they weren’t interested in working with you?”
It was weird, but that actually made a huge difference. Because Bobby was right—I wasn’t letting Phil and my parents manufacture a career for me. I had something valuable that I was bringing to the table, something that had come out of my own hard work and effort. And now I was trying to find the right person to help me. In that sense, Phil was a great choice. My parents trusted him. I trusted him. He was good at what he did. I knew he was a nice guy I could get along with.
I was still explaining all of this to myself as Bobby chivvied me into the den to make the phone call.
(Phil would be delighted to help me, I discovered. He was a nice guy, but I think it also had something to do with all the zeros on the offer.)
The next day, I got up early and packed. Strangely, nobody seemed to believe me when I said I could catch an early flight and make it to my meeting in time, so I had an evening flight to L.A.. I’d sleep in a hotel, get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow for the meeting, and fly back tomorrow night. I’d be gone less than twenty-four hours. It totally wasn’t a big deal. (Bobby wouldn’t even have time to miss me.)
For someone who had a lot of awesome clothes (three different Sonic the Hedgehog hoodies, including this rare one where Sonic has sunglasses), I had a surprisingly hard time picking what to take with me. Keme watched me for a while—silently judging as I tried to decide between two different Princess Peach T-shirts. Then he texted Millie, who showed up and, with ear-splitting enthusiasm, told me she’d pack for me. Then somehow Indira got involved, and it turned out she was into sweaters that didn’t have a single cute video game or comic book character on them. And Fox ended up holding up a pair of my Super Mario Bros. trunks and putting their finger through a hole and making a face like it was the most disgusting thing they’d ever done.
At that point, Keme turned into the bouncer and threw me out of my own bedroom.
The outrage!
It seemed like a good time to grab my laptop and work on a few ideas I’d sketched out, so I made my way down to the den. I futzed around for a while. (Yes, I ended up on Crime Cats, and yes, there was a gorgeous British shorthair that was charged with hunting a moth, and she had the biggest, softest eyes.) I was digging into some serious reportage on a chonky loaf when the doorbell rang.
“I got it,” I shouted.
Nobody answered. (Fox, presumably, was still passing judgment on my underwear.)
“Nobody get up,” I shouted. “I got it.”
Still nothing.
The doorbell rang again.
I heaved myself out of my chair. Apparently, I had to do everything.
Charlie stood on the porch. Their color was much better than it had been the other day, and they wore a smaller bandage barely visible under their bowl cut. The day was gray and cloudy, with diffuse light that made Charlie’s ultra-pale skin glow. (Look who was talking.) Next to them, AJ had her arms folded across her chest. She’d added a new piercing since the last time I’d seen her, this one a barbell in her upper ear.
“We told Thatcher he couldn’t come,” AJ said.
“We’re so sorry, Mr. Dash,” Charlie said. “He lied!”
“He’s a Hemingway wannabe poseur jerk,” AJ said. (But she actually used a word that would have made Mr. Hemingway nod in an approving, masculine, but somehow still withholding way.)
(Is that a dad thing?)
(Oh my God, do I have daddy issues?)
“We didn’t know he was going to do that!” Charlie said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I never liked him,” AJ said.
Which was probably true, but mostly because I got the impression AJ didn’t like anyone—Charlie being the obvious exception.
