Elise Blackwell - Grub

She also tried to savor her times with Jackson, the night or two she spent at his place every couple of weeks. But the disturbing truth was this: it was the idea of him that made her happy. While she was with him, she fretted over saying the wrong thing or sounding stupid, about talking too much or too little, about the time passing too quickly or too slowly. And sometimes — she needed to face this — his rants were repetitive. He espoused the same ideas over and over; they never seemed to develop or move toward any deeper truth.

She was happiest, perhaps, when looking forward to their next meeting or reflecting on an earlier encounter. She would go over each weekend spent together as if shuffling photos from a nice vacation to a country you don’t necessarily want to visit again once you remember the details — the cold water or mosquitoes or unsettling food — that aren’t visible in the snapshots.

Yet each time she started to draw the obvious conclusion — that she probably wasn’t in love — she stepped back from the line. She wanted to be in love. And she didn’t like the idea of being post-Jackson, of not having him as her boyfriend, of not celebrating their twin publications. Such were her thoughts one morning when the phone rang while she was alone in the house. She gulped a small breath and readied to hear Jackson’s voice.

“It’s Lane,” said the voice. “I need you to steel yourself. There’s nothing to worry about, mind you. Circus reviews are always first and commonly negative, even vicious. Just remember that it was written by some thirty-five-year-old loser still living in his mother’s basement and picking his zits.”

“That’s not a very kind characterization,” Margot said, processing what Lane was trying to break to her.

“Believe me, sweetheart, you’re going to have worse things to say about him after you read the review.”

Her stomach clenched. “Review of my book?”

“Can I fax it to your father’s number?”

It took Margot a moment to realize that she was nodding rather than answering Lane’s question in an audible manner. “Sure,” she croaked.

“Remember, now: first and worst. The good reviews will follow in short order.”

Margot’s hands trembled just a little as she lifted the sheet from the fax machine in her father’s office. Her intestines churned as her eyes skimmed phrases like “term-paper-like,” “curiously unmoving,” and “childishly romantic.”

Only when the urge to spit had safely passed did she try to call Jackson. She hung up on his answering machine once before calling back and leaving a message: “I really need a friend to talk to. Please call me.”

Later she checked her email and found a message from her ex-boyfriend the guitar player saying he’d learned to appreciate a soft-spoken woman. She laughed and felt a little better.

When people asked her if she was excited about the impending publication of The Progress of Love , Amanda Renfros said “I’m very happy about my book.” What she felt was not the excitement of striking gold or matching lottery-ticket numbers but the pleasurable satisfaction of settling into destined success after a cosmic foul-up that had threatened to snatch it away but in fact had only delayed it. She felt as though she had been born to lead the life she was about to lead.

“Just wear a black turtleneck,” Eddie told her when she’d returned to their place with several bags of a mix-and-match wardrobe, selected to last the duration of her twenty-city author tour without repeat combinations.

“I’m not that kind of writer,” she said, clipping price tags with her manicure scissors. “And I hope that’s not what you’re planning to wear to your own publication party.”

“It’s hardly a party, Amanda,” Eddie said. “Just a cordoned-off corner of a bar so my editor can repay a few vodka-and-tonic debts and not be accused of having done nothing at all for my book. It’s right next to nothing at all.”

“I suppose they’re all sensitive after that poor young woman — what was her name? — was in that plane crash. Remember? Her parents chartered the plane because her publisher cancelled her author tour after the editor who acquired her changed houses. And then it crashed right after her second stop. Her dad had just learned to fly. She hardly sold any books at all.”

“Yes, my ever-supportive wife, that’s likely why they’re at least bothering to liquor me up.”

“Perhaps they’ve noticed that you don’t need much help in that area.”

After that bleak connubial conversation, Amanda made Jackson her confidante in all publication-related matters. In Jackson, she recognized a kindred spirit with whom she could discuss those details she knew would only demoralize her husband.

“I understand,” Jackson said when she’d explained this over coffee one afternoon. “It’s the same with me and Margot. She’s elated her book is being published, and I don’t want to tell her anything that will make it small to her.”

Amanda looked around the diner, noting the plastic vines wrapping the coat racks, the brown-rimmed translucent plates supporting white toast and eggs, the Eastern European servers whose beauty was quickly fading now that they’d become waitresses instead of models. In them she saw herself as she might have been if she hadn’t noticed the boat pulling away, or hadn’t leaped across the widening gap of water and landed safely on deck. “You’re not really still seeing her, are you? She works in a bookstore, right?”

“Worse. She’s living at home for awhile, with her insufferable father.”

“Is Andrew Yarborough insufferable? He looks so, well, avuncular.”

“Trust me. He’s an oaf.”

“Regardless, he’s certainly last year’s model, soon to be obsolete. He’s like a car without air conditioning.”

“You do have a way with words,” Jackson said. “At any rate, I’ve been crossing my fingers that Margot’s book will do really well. I don’t have the heart to tell her everything my publisher is doing for me. She doesn’t write for the kind of audience we aim for, of course, but she’s really very good. Gorgeous sentences.”

“Well, that’s enough to keep someone like Eddie or Henry Baffler reading a book, but let’s face the fact that most people aren’t much like those two.” Amanda tried for an inscrutable smile.

“Her first review was a massacre. I mean out-and-out mean spirited. Worse than if it had been written by an ex-boyfriend. I don’t understand why any reviewer would pick on someone like her. Someone like me, sure, and it would only help my cause. But it has decimated Margot.”

“Where’s the review?”

“Just Circus , but it might be one of the only reviews the poor girl gets.”

“But your own prospects continue to brighten, I have no doubt.”

“Of course, but I had hoped that Margot and I could be something of a literary couple — two big books out at once.”

“My, Jack, are you that serious about her? I always figured you’d opt to marry for money or at least operate as a gigolo. A sweet little crafter of fine sentences with curly hair? This throws new light upon your character. I thought you were more ambitious in every way.”

“Do you think me so desperately scheming and ice-veined that I could never marry for love?”

“Sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean it that way. And for all I know, your Margot may be perfectly suited to you. I certainly hope she is.”

“In ways that I wouldn’t have imagined, yes, she is. Of course she is a much better person than I am.”

“Terrific. I take it she’s witty and gracious to boot?” Amanda hated her catty tone and didn’t understand why she sometimes reverted into the unhappy teenager she had been in Wilkes-Barre. She sipped the weak coffee, reminding herself that she could afford to be generous to other people, that she wanted to be generous, that it was a better way to be.