Landline (9 page)

She smiled back—she couldn’t help it—and sat next to him on the floor.

This was how Georgie had spent her first two years of college. Whenever she wasn’t working with Seth at
The Spoon
, she was hanging out at his frat house, watching
Barney Miller
and
Taxi
and
M*A*S*H
. His room was lined and carpeted with VHS tapes.

“What are you doing in a fraternity?”
she’d asked.
“Comedy writers don’t join fraternities.”

“Don’t pigeonhole me, Georgie. I’m infinite.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“The usual reasons. Backup friends, navy blue jackets—plus someday I might run for office.”

They’d written the first draft of the
Passing Time
pilot in Seth’s room. And written the second draft down at
The Spoon
, Georgie doing all the typing.

How had she missed Neal until junior year? He’d started working at
The Spoon
as a freshman, same as her. Georgie must have seen him, without really seeing him, dozens of times. Was she that sucked in by Seth? Seth
was
extra sucky—pushy and loud, always demanding Georgie’s attention. . . .

But once Georgie noticed Neal, she saw him around the office constantly. She’d try not to stare when he walked past her desk on his way to the production room. Sometimes, if she was lucky, he’d look her way and nod.

“I just don’t understand the attraction,” Seth said after a month of this.

“What attraction?”

They were sitting at their shared desk, and Seth was eating Georgie’s princess chicken. Stabbing at it with one chopstick. “Yours. To that fat little cartoon man.”

Georgie didn’t quite understand it either—why Neal was suddenly the only thing on her radar. “We’re just friends,” she said.

“Really,” Seth said.

“Friendly acquaintances.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing, Georgie—he
isn’t
friendly. He growls at people, literally, if they get too close.”

“He doesn’t growl at me,” she said.

“Well, he wouldn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because you’re a pretty girl. You’re probably the only pretty girl who’s ever talked to him. He’s too stunned to growl.”

Georgie tried not to watch for Neal. She tried to play it cool when she saw him. But she usually found an excuse to walk back to the production room a few minutes after he got there. Sometimes she’d pretend she had to talk to one of the other artists. Sometimes, she’d walk right up to Neal’s drafting table and lean against the wall, waiting for him to acknowledge her.

Seth was an idiot: Neal wasn’t fat. Just sort of soft-looking. Small and strong, without any corners.

“You’re lurking,” Neal said that night. The princess-chicken night.

Georgie had meandered back to the production room and was leaning idly against a pillar near his table. “I’m not lurking,” she said. “I just didn’t want to startle you.”

“Do you think you’re startling?”

This week’s comic strip was more complicated than usual. One panel with lots of characters. Neal had started inking at one corner.

She craned her head over the table. “I wouldn’t want you to jump and spill ink all over your drawing.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”

“You might,” she said.

“I don’t jump.”

“Nerves of steel, huh?”

Neal shrugged.

“So,” she said, “I could sneak up behind you and, I don’t know,
scream
, and you wouldn’t even flinch.”

“Probably not.”

Georgie pulled a wheeled stool over and sat across from him. “But I could be an ax murderer.”

“You couldn’t.”

“I could.”

“Georgie McCool, ax murderer . . .”
He cocked his head, like he was considering it. “No. You couldn’t.”

“But you wouldn’t know it was
me
sneaking up on you,” she said.

“I’d know it was you.”

“How?”

He looked up at her for a second, then went back to his work. “You have a very distinct presence.”

“Distinct?”

“Palpable,” Neal said.

Georgie tried not to smile. “Is that a compliment?”

“I don’t know, do you want it to be?”

“Do I want people to know when I walk into a room?”

“Do you want
me
to know?”

“I . . .”

Neal glanced up over her shoulder, then looked back down. “Your boyfriend needs you.”

Georgie spun partway around. Seth was standing in the doorway, his smile falsely bright. “Hey. Georgie. Could I get you to look at something?”

She squinted at him, trying to suss out whether he really needed her help or whether he was just being obstructionist. “Um, sure,” she said, “just a minute.”

He waited in the doorway.

“Just. A minute,” she said again, pointedly raising her eyebrows at him.

Seth nodded, already pouting, and backed away.

Georgie stood up. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Ah,” Neal said, inking a smile onto a cartoon rabbit. “Conjoined twin?”

“Writing partner.” She reluctantly made for the door.

“Writing partner,” Neal murmured, going about his business.

Seth hadn’t really needed her help—of course he hadn’t. (And he’d eaten everything good out of her dinner.)

“I knew you were crying wolf,” she said, pushing the take-out container onto his side of the desk. “Next time I’m going to ignore you.”

“I wasn’t crying wolf.” He scooted his chair closer to hers. “I was crying hobbit.”

“What if I did this to you when you were on the make?”

“Oh God, Georgie, take it back. You can’t be
on the make
with
the cartoon hobbit
.”

“I never pass judgment on any of your girlfriends.”

“Because they’re all nice and gorgeous. Uniformly. God, they should wear uniforms, isn’t that a delicious idea?”

“The point is—I get to do this, Seth. I get to talk to guys. Do you want me to spend the rest of my life alone?”

“
No.
Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then back off.”

He leaned forward, resting an elbow on her armrest. “Are you lonely, Georgie? Do you have needs?”

“I said back off.”

“Because you could tell me about your needs,” he said. “I think our friendship is ready for that.”

“I hate you.”

“Where ‘hate’ equals ‘love’ and also ‘can’t live without.’”

“I’m ignoring you now.”

“Wait, I really do need your help with this.” He turned his computer monitor toward her and pointed. “Is this funny? It’s a Snoopy/Snoop Dogg thing, and every time Charlie Brown tries to feed him, he’s like, ‘Thanks, Chizzuck.’ . . .”

The next time Seth tried to interrupt her while she was talking to Neal, Georgie really did ignore him. She sent him away with an “I’m sure it can wait.”

That made Neal look almost all the way up from his comic strip. He raised an eyebrow, and the side of his lips curved up into a closed-mouth smile.

Neal had nice lips.

Maybe everybody had nice lips, and you only really noticed it when you stared at their mouths all the time.

Georgie stared at Neal’s mouth all the time.

It was easy to stare at Neal because he was always looking down at his comic; there was no danger of getting caught. And it was easy to stare at Neal because Neal was easy to stare at.

Maybe not breathtaking. Not the way Seth could be when he was all dressed up and posing and he’d just run his fingers through his hair.

Neal didn’t take Georgie’s breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay—that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air.

Georgie just
liked
to look at Neal. She liked his dark-but-not-very-dark hair. She liked his pale skin. Neal was
so
pale, even on his cheeks and the backs of his short, broad hands. Georgie wasn’t sure how anyone could stay that pale, walking around campus all day. Maybe Neal carried a parasol. Anyway, it made his lips seem really pink, in comparison.

Neal’s lips were first-rate—small and neat and symmetrical. Horizontally symmetrical, the top lip almost exactly the same thickness as the bottom. There were even matching dents, one just above his top lip and one just below his bottom lip. A permanent, 20 percent pucker.

Of course Georgie thought about kissing him.

Probably everybody thought about kissing Neal, once they’d gotten a good look at him. That was probably why he was so loath to make eye contact with anyone—crowd control.

Neal was drawing something now in the margin of his comic strip. A girl. Glasses, heart-shaped face . . . hair coiling in every direction. Then he drew a thought bubble:
“I can’t stay back here all day. Comedy needs me!”

Georgie worried she was blushing. “Am I bothering you?”

Neal shook his head. “This can’t be exciting for you.”

“It’s not exciting, it’s . . . mesmerizing. It’s like watching somebody do magic.”

“I’m drawing a hedgehog wearing a monocle.”

“It’s like you can make anything you want come out of your hands,” she said. “That’s magic.”

“Maybe if it were an
actual
hedgehog coming out of my hand.”

“I’m sorry.” She sat up in her chair. “I’ll let you work.”

“I can work with you here.” He didn’t look up.

“But—”

“I can even work if you talk.”

Georgie settled back in the chair, hesitantly. “Okay.”

Neal added another thought bubble to her caricature:
“Now what am I supposed to say?!?!”

Then he drew a thought bubble coming out of the bottom of the page, pointing back at himself:
“Anything you want, Georgie McCool.”

And then a smaller thought bubble:
“If that
is
your real name . . .”

Georgie knew she was blushing. She watched his hand go back to the comic, then cleared her throat. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

That got a smile out of Neal, a real smile, with both sides of his mouth. “Nebraska,” he said.

“Is that like Kansas?”

“It’s more like Kansas than other things, I guess. Do you know a lot about Kansas?”

“I’ve watched
The Wizard of Oz
many, many times.”

“Well then,” he said, “Nebraska’s like Kansas. But in color.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Mesmerizing you.”

“You came to California to mesmerize me?”

“I should have,” he said. “That beats the real reason.”

“Which is . . .”

“I came to California to study oceanography.”

“That sounds like a perfectly good reason,” she said.

“Well”—he flicked his pen in short strokes around the hedgehog’s face—“as it turns out, I don’t actually like the ocean.”

Georgie laughed. Neal’s eyes were laughing with her. “I’d never seen it before I got here,” he said, glancing quickly up at her. “I thought it seemed cool.”

“It’s not cool?”

“It’s really wet,” he said. “And also outside.”

Georgie kept laughing. Neal kept inking.

“Sunburn . . . ,” he said, “seasick . . .”

“So now what are you studying?”

“I am definitely still studying oceanography,” he said, nodding at his drawing. “I am definitely here on an oceanography scholarship, still studying oceanography.”

“But that’s terrible. You can’t study oceanography if you don’t like the ocean.”

“I may as well.” He almost smiled again. “I don’t like anything else either.”

Georgie laughed.

Neal added another thought bubble to the bottom of the page:
“Almost anything.”

“You can’t leave yet.” Seth stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.

“Seth, it’s seven o’clock.” Nine in Omaha. Or maybe 1998 in Omaha.

“Right,” he said, “and you didn’t get here until one, and you’ve been practically useless all day.”

“
A
, that isn’t true,” Georgie argued. “And
B
, if I’m being useless, I may as well go home.”

“No,” he pleaded, “stay. Maybe you’re about to come out of it.”

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “And possibly still hungover. And you know what? You’ve also been useless for the last three hours—what’s your excuse?”

“I’m useless when you’re useless, Georgie”—Seth swept one hand up helplessly—“that’s a long-established fact.”

She unplugged her phone. “Then maybe we’ll both be in better shape tomorrow.”

“You can talk to me about this,” he said, his voice low and losing all pretense. “Whatever’s going on with you today. This week.”

Georgie looked up at him. At his brown eyes and still-not-even-a-little-bit-gray hair. Never removed from the package.

He was her best friend.

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

G
eorgie started to call Neal on the way home that night, her phone plugged into the lighter—then she stopped. Neal hadn’t picked up any of her calls, all day.

The last time she’d talked to him was still . . . the
last
time she’d talked to him.

Which Georgie still wasn’t dealing with.

Which she still couldn’t accept.

Georgie thought about her big, dark, empty house—her house that already felt haunted. . . .

And instead of heading back home, she got off the freeway in Reseda.

She didn’t have a key to her mom’s house, so she had to knock on the front door.

Heather opened it, looking significantly more kempt than usual. She was wearing lip gloss and at least three shades of eye shadow.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” She pulled on Georgie’s arm. “Come inside—hurry—and stay away from the windows.”

“Why? Is someone casing the house?”

“Just come
in
.”

Georgie came in. Her parents—her mom and Kendrick—were watching TV on the couch, cuddling one of the pugs, the lumpy pregnant one, between them, and petting her with all four hands. “Georgie!” her mom said. “We didn’t know you were coming.”

“I just didn’t feel like driving out to Calabasas. You’re so much closer to the studio.”