Plain Jayne (8 page)

Coolly, I say, “Oh, well… that. Yeah. I mean…”
I shrug helplessly. “Your idea didn’t work. I wasn’t…
feeling
… it.” I
try not to sound too eager when I add, “I think it’s safe to say the original
version was much better.”

“Ah.” He rolls his eyes. “I see.”

His know-it-all smugness immediately gets my
back up. “You don’t see anything.”

“I see enough.”

Suddenly I’m sure he
doesn’t
know the
truth. He’s bluffing, trying to get me to confess to something that he doesn’t
even know the first thing about.

I laugh at him. “You’re so full of it.” When
he puts his arms down, resting his hands in his lap, relief that my secret’s
still safe makes me blurt, “You know, I can’t
write
in this stupid
city.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Temperamental?” he
questions sardonically.

I don’t appreciate his smirk, but I want to
take advantage of this rare good mood he’s in. “Something like that,” I admit.
“I’m staying with my friend, Gus…”

“Your ‘friend’?”

“Yes. My very gay friend. And he lives in an
apartment the size of a mini-wheat.” My description earns another one of his
barking, rusty-sounding laughs. “And his neighbors have three settings:  sleeping,
screwing, and screaming. So I tried to write in some other places—you know,
coffee shops and libraries and even a park—but… it’s hopeless. I’m blocked.”

“That much is obvious. So… what do you want me
to do about it?” He stands and picks up his iPad, which he carries to his desk
and slides into the front compartment of a leather laptop bag that’s already
holding a computer probably worth more than what my dad paid for my first car.
With deft fingers, he zips and snaps and clasps everything closed as he states,
“You provide the writing; I provide the editing. That’s how this works. I can’t
help you until you give me something decent.”

“I gave you thirty-six chapters of ‘decent’ to
begin with. You’re the one who’s obsessed with fine-tuning it.” I stare at my
nails as I say this, so I don’t see his reaction to my statement.

I don’t need to see it, anyway. The
now-familiar impatience in his tone when he says, “That’s my job,” gives me a
good idea of what his face looks like:  he’s wearing the “something-smells-really-bad-in-here-and-I’m-pretty-sure-it’s-your-writing”
expression.

Resigned and hating myself for it, I reply, “I
know. But…”
Don’t you dare say it, Jayne, you stupid idiot. Do
not
trust
him, just because he smiled a few times and has managed to have a conversation
with you that doesn’t involve shouting.
“…I feel like I’ve forgotten how to
do
my
part of the job.”
Jane, you moron.

“You’re burnt out,” he declares as if it’s the
most harmless thing in the world.

“That’s not good, though!” I lament, taking my
cues from him and packing up my stuff. He’s obviously getting ready to leave. A
glance at the futuristic clock on his desk tells me it’s after 5:00. “You act
like that’s something as harmless as being hungry or tired.”

“It is,” he says shortly. “And I’m late. So,
here’s my advice:  no writing for a week. Unless you become inspired, that is.
But don’t
make
yourself sit down and write.”

“But—”

He sweeps past me to his office door and turns
off the light. The room is still surprisingly bright, thanks to the west-facing
windows. “But nothing. I have to go.” He doesn’t move, though, until I join him
in the empty outer office, which has been abandoned for the night.

“I just want to get this thing to print,” I
say, my voice on the verge of a whine as we walk together to the elevator.

“And you think I don’t?” He stabs fiercely at
the “down” button and readjusts his bag on his shoulder. “But you can’t force
it. It has to happen in its own time.”

“Screw that. Anyway, that sounds very
un-editorial of you. You should be cracking the whip.”

He waits to reply until we’re in the elevator
and he’s pressed the button for the lobby. “You can’t beat a dead horse, Jayne.
And if you ever use a cliché like that in a book, I’ll make you wish you
were
dead.”

Okay. So much for the warm fuzzies I was
starting to feel.

*****

It’s the first day that I can remember that I
haven’t written anything. Nothing. No edits, no proofreading, no revisions, no…
nothing. I feel like a tweaker who needs a fix, only my dealer is a laptop, and
it’s sitting across the room from me, tempting me from its padded case.

I know, though, that if I open it, I’ll wind
up sitting there, staring at the screen, frustrated by my ineptitude. That
frustration will eventually build up to the point of panic and then evolve into
despair, finally cooling down to resignation that I’m never going to write
another word again.

I’ve realized that—big deep breath—Lucas
Edwards was right:  I need a break from it. It doesn’t have to be a long break;
just enough to recharge my batteries. If I stop thinking so much about it, the
creative juices will flow once again. (I hate that disgusting term, but my
inspirational pulse is so flat that I’m resorting to banalities that nauseate
me.) I’m like a person who’s obsessed with meeting Mr. Right and looks for a
potential husband in every man she meets, until she deems the search hopeless
and stops looking. That’s when she finds him—or he finds her—in the most
unexpected place. At least, that’s how it happens in books and movies.

But sitting here, staring at the four
disconcertingly-close walls in Gus’s apartment, is decidedly un-Hollywood. I
honestly don’t know what else to do, though. Gus is at work. I suppose I could
wander the city and explore, but it’s not as fun doing stuff like that alone.
I’m alone all the time in my
real
life; here (which I somehow don’t
count as part of my real life), I don’t want to be alone.

Yet, I feel more alone than ever.

When Gus gets home from work each night, I
greet him like a dog with separation anxiety would. Last night, I could tell it
was starting to freak him out. He took the gin and tonic (his favorite) I had
waiting for him and nervously eyed me like I was an escapee from a nearby loony
bin who’d dropped in randomly on the first apartment she found unlocked. I
could see this, but that didn’t mean I was able to keep my rambling mouth in
check as I hopped from one unrelated topic to the next.

I know all too well that when Gus thinks
you’re acting certifiably insane, you’ve reached an advanced level of
nuttiness. And when he refrains from coming right out and telling you you’re
crazy, that means he’s possibly poop-his-pants afraid of you. I’ve seen him
react this way to homeless people on the subway and some of the residents at his
Nana’s nursing home.

Hence, I woke up this morning determined to
stop being the crazy friend that Gus regretted inviting to stay with him. I’ve
been here long enough, anyway. We’re starting to develop little weekend routines,
which makes our current situation feel too much like a permanent living
arrangement-in-the-making, so it’s time to find my own place, despite my fear
of loneliness. And anyway, just because we don’t live together doesn’t mean we
won’t see each other. We’ll simply have more than ten feet of personal space.

I was excited about the prospect of living
independently again, too, until I started inquiring about the cost to rent my
own tiny slice of Boston. It’s a tad more expensive to live here—or anywhere
within a 100-mile radius of here—than it is in the Midwest. Okay, so… maybe
this calls for a shorter-term commitment. But the rates at the hotels I called
knocked the wind out of me, too.

I’m sitting on the futon, trying to catch my
breath and decide what to do when my cell phone rings. “LUKE-ASS” flashes on
the screen.

“Mr… Lucas… hi,” I stutter like a moron. I
still don’t have any idea what to call him… to his face. “Dr. Edwards” has
already been shot down; “Mr. Edwards” seems too formal; “Luke” is too informal;
and “Luke-Ass” is probably inappropriate, although it’s my new preferred private
name for him, because it works on so many levels. So many.

“How’s the writing coming along?” he jumps
right in without returning my greeting.

Defensively, I snap, “What?! You said… I mean,
I’m
not
writing, remember?”

In his usual clipped, serious manner, he replies,
“Yeah. I was testing you. Anyway. Listen. I’ve decided what you need is a
change of scenery. I’m sure this whole experience is overwhelming, is it not?”

“Well, I’m not some country mouse wandering
open-mouthed around the city, if that’s what you mean.” What is it about this
guy that makes me all sweaty and irritable the minute I hear his voice?

“Good God,” he says impatiently. “Is that what
I said? No. I didn’t. I was referring to the publishing experience. And how
it’s intimidating to the uninitiated.”

“Maybe,” I reluctantly admit. “But I’m fine.”

“Except you can’t write, which is sort of a
problem.”

“Yesterday, you acted like it
wasn’t
a
problem.”

“I was trying to be nice!” His tone is
anything but.

This guy is hopeless. “I don’t need you to be
nice; I need you to give it to me straight.”

“You always act like I’m too mean or
something, so I decided to go gentler on you yesterday…”

“You don’t have to baby me, alright? I’m a
professional writer. I can take it.” As I say this, I’m already reaching for my
laptop bag. I should be writing!

“Okay, okay. Calm down! Good God… What the…? You’re
breathing right into the phone and killing my ear!”

I freeze and then transfer the phone from
between my shoulder and head to my hand so that I can hold it in a position
that won’t funnel my breath directly into the tiny mouthpiece. With my free
hand, I try to stealthily unzip the laptop bag.

“Jayne…” he warns.

Giving up the pretense of being sneaky, I go
back to frantic mode, not caring how loudly I’m breathing or unzipping or
panicking. “Don’t ‘Jayne’ me, like I’m a child! I’ve wasted the whole morning
not
writing because of your crappy advice. And by the way, you’re
terrible
at
being nice, so you should stop wasting your energy trying to be nice and save
it for important things, like… like… helping me finish this book!”

“If you’d sit still and shut up for one
second… Hey! What do you mean, I’m terrible at being nice? You’re impossible to
please!”

“I’ll have you know my standards are
pathetically low when it comes to you.”

“Then you’ll be stunned when I offer you the
use of my currently-empty beach house in Marblehead!” he shouts.

Oh.

This statement brings me up short. It takes a
few seconds for me to reconcile his furious tone of voice with the generous
offer, but when I realize how convenient this is and how it’s the answer to so
many of my problems right now, I quickly shout back, equally-testy, “Fine! I’ll
take it!”

“Good!” he replies, his voice still crackling
angrily. “I’ll tell Sally to send a car to come pick you up.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to be ready then!”

And with that, I mash down the button to hang
up on him. Damn, I miss the days of slamming a receiver down in someone’s ear!
There was no better punctuation mark to a heated phone conversation than the
clang of plastic on plastic and the faint ring of the bell inside the mechanism
as it dinged its protest at being treated so roughly. These dainty “beeps” that
cell phones make for every function are highly unsatisfying.

I hate you!
Beep.
You can’t even draw
it out to be a
beeeeeeeeeeeep
. It tones for the same length of time no
matter how hard you hold down the button. Lame!

I used to be a phone-thrower, but the person
you’re mad at has no idea you’re throwing your phone, so the only person you’re
punishing is yourself when you have to spend hundreds of dollars to replace your
broken phone or whatever your phone hits (my windshield was the costliest—and
last—victim of one of my post-phone call tantrums, which happened—ironically
enough—after a conversation with my auto insurance carrier).

Now that I’ve kicked my phone-chucking habit,
I’ve taken to sticking my tongue out at the device after hanging up with
someone who pisses me off. This behavior is less gratifying, but it’s also a
lot less expensive.

I do it now. And since I’m alone, I yell, “
You’re
a marblehead, Luke-Ass!”

Oh, gosh! I have to pack!

Chapter Seven

Who is Lucas Edwards, and how the heck can he
afford to own one of these places? It’s a question I keep asking myself when the
houses get bigger and bigger as we drive closer and closer to the water.
Knowing what little I do know of real estate prices in this area, I have to
assume these mansions are worth millions, maybe tens of millions. And even
though the Towncar pulls into the sand and gravel driveway of one of the
smaller homes on the avenue, it’s still gigantic, and it’s on an ocean-front
lot, so I know it’s not bringing down the property value of the houses around
it.