In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) (5 page)

Tell me about it
, he responded.

My thumbs were poised over my phone, but I wasn’t sure what to say next. Did I tell him how much I enjoyed this job, even though it was only my first day? (Would that sound like sucking up?) Did I relay how much more solidified my idea of him as a great author was, by just reading notes he’d scribbled? (That would definitely sound like sucking up.)

Before I could decide what to text, my phone rang with a call from Montrose.

“Hi,” I said, then put the phone on speaker and rested it on my thigh as I carefully unbent my legs and stretched them out, bending forward to touch my toes.
 

“Hi,” he said, his voice low and throaty. It instantly conjured up how good he’d smelled when he sat next to me on the ledge of his desk earlier. Seemed like I could almost still smell his spicy scent. “I forgot to tell you, there are a bunch of delivery menus and an envelope with some cash for you in the middle top drawer of my desk.”

“Cash?” I asked. My first payment for this job was to come January first, ten days away, and I hadn’t expected cash—though that would be great.

“For food for when you’re working there and want something to eat.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I can bring or buy my own food,” I said with a bit of defensiveness in my voice. A prickle of what Jane called my Chip (it was a proper noun to her) rose to the back of my neck.

“I know you can. But with the hours you’ll be working for admin, and then in my office, my guess is you won’t get to the caf a lot during their limited hours over break.”

He was right, and I’d thought about that. All the cafs but one were closed for break, and the one that would feed the students here over the holidays had limited hours. I figured I’d be making a lot of pit stops at the convenience store just off campus. And of course, delivery. But I tried to keep both those options at a minimum because of my tight budget, preferring to get most of my meals at the caf, which was included in my scholarship program.

“Well…I…”

“Listen, it’s not charity. I know this is your second job, and you’ll be doing it at odd hours. And I know from experience how easy it is to let time get away from you when immersed in a project. This was just an employer making allowances for his employee’s diligence.”

“Wow, that sounds so…corporate.”

He laughed. “Hardly. My guess is you’re camped out on the floor with my crap piled all around you. Not real executive of a setting.”

“Do you have a camera in here?” I said, kind of teasing, but dang his description was spot on.

“Like a nanny cam?” He chuckled, and I envisioned the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as it had when I’d seen him earlier today. “What would we even call that? A literary assistant cam?”

“Is that what I am? A literary assistant?”

I could almost see him shrug. Strange that I’d so quickly become attuned to his body language after so short of a time. Though, I had been watching him—closely—three times a week for the past four months.

“I thought it had a more prestigious ring than box unpacker. It might look good on a résumé, depending on what types of jobs you’ll be looking for in three and a half years.”

“God, I
so
don’t want to think about that yet.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did respond, it was with a quiet, low voice. “But you
do
think about it, don’t you, Syd? You think about your future all the time. Just so you don’t have to think about where you come from.”

I slowly eased my body out of my stretch, the phone moving slightly on my thigh. Reaching out to hold it in place, I felt another prickle on my neck. Not Chip this time, but something much deeper. Much darker.

“Yes,” I answered, not wanting to admit the truth.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to get all heavy on you.”

“That’s okay,” I replied, even though his insight was a bit unnerving.

There was a pause, and then he switched tone and topic with, “Have you ever thought about being a writer? Your stuff is so…honest. I know they were just papers for a freshman class, but, still.”

I’d never in my life thought about becoming a writer, even though I loved to read. But when he said that…yeah, the prickles again. Prickle city.

It felt like that kids’ game, where you put the squares and circles in the right hole. And I’d been trying to get the green triangle in the red square hole. And then, when he said “be a writer” I suddenly saw the triangle opening just a few inches away.

My imaginary hand hovered over the correct hole, and then I pulled it back, setting it down.

“Are you kidding?” I said to Montrose. “No way.”

“Why not? It’s a noble profession.”

“Yeah, if you’re the National Book Award winner,” I said.

He, of course,
was
the National Book Award winner five years ago for
Folly
.

And hadn’t published since.

“Oh, come on, that’s not fair,” he said. He was right, it wasn’t.

A thought occurred to me. “Wait. This job. My papers. This isn’t some kind of whole Pygmalion thing, is it?”

“Christ, I’m only twenty-eight. I’m still learning myself. Do you really think I’m Henry Higgins material?”

I had a flash of that
Seinfeld
episode where Elaine mispronounces Svengali, just as he added, “Or a Svengali.” He mispronounced it just like Elaine had in the episode, with a soft G.

“Okay, Elaine,” I said, and he laughed—loudly and naturally.

“I figured you’d be too young to get that one,” he said.

“We’re both too young to get it,” I answered.

But apparently we’d both been big
Seinfeld
rerun bingers. We spent the next half hour comparing notes on our fave episodes and lines
(“No, I mentioned the bissssque”
was a shared one).

I laid back on the floor, reaching my arms over my head for a better stretch, and setting my phone in the crook of my shoulder.

He did a great Bania impression that had tears of laughter rolling down the sides of my face.

“You’re funny,” I said, catching my breath.

“You seem surprised by that,” he said.

I thought about that. “I guess I am. I mean, you can be light in class, but, like, no impressions or anything.”

“Damn, and I was going to incorporate my Tolstoy impression into next semester.”

I laughed again, then said, “But
Gangster’s Folly
was so…”

“Not funny?”

I thought about the book. I had read it ten times easily, though no other time had been so important, so monumental, as the first.

“Well, I mean, there were funny
parts
in it. Like the scene where he’s trying to get Stef into bed—”

“Based on actual events, I might add.”

I smiled to myself, but continued, “But on the whole, it’s so dark. A tragedy, really.”

“That’s your take? A tragedy?”

I shrugged and my phone slipped from my shoulder. I caught it and readjusted.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Phone slid off me. All’s well now.”

“Slid
off
you? How was it
on
you?”

“I’m lying on the floor. It was on my shoulder.”

There was nothing from him and I checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t disconnected. Nope.

“So, back to
Folly
?” I said finally, after the silence. I figured he was doing something else, and now that we’d finished up the
Seinfeld
conversation, he was bored and wanted to end the conversation. Appealing to his inner preening artist, I tried to pull it back to him…or at least his book.

“Um, maybe I shouldn’t say this…” he said.

“What?” I asked. Was he going to tell me some secret about
Folly
that no one else knew? Like what Aidan whispered to Stef that made her say yes?

“All thoughts of
Folly
rushed out of my head—perhaps forever—when you mentioned that you’re lying on the floor of my office.”

“Why? Is that bad? Did someone die on this floor or something? I mean, I know it’s not crazy clean, but believe me, I’ve—”

“Is your hair down? Loose?”

“Why? Is there something on the carpet?”

He chuckled, but this was a different sound. Deep and throaty, and it almost caught in his throat.

Ohhhhh
.

“Yes, my hair is loose,” I said. Not in any kind of temptress voice (not that I even had one in my toolkit), but not in a no-nonsense tone either. Just a calm, low voice.

Another long silence, which this time I had no intention of breaking with questions about his book.

After a few seconds I heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You know, I think I’m just a little weirded out today. Coming back to the city, staying with my parents. My apartment being sublet. This whole year is kind of weirding me out.”

I didn’t say anything, this was his ramble. I didn’t want to tip the scales one way or another, though I wasn’t even sure what was being weighed.

Well, I sort of did. I’d known about
those
kind of scales for way too long.

“I…I just don’t want to seem creepy or anything,” he finally said.

“You didn’t. You don’t.”

Another long exhale. “Good. Good. Listen, I’m supposed to meet friends downtown for drinks. I better get going.”

“Okay,” I said, then waited for him to say goodbye. Which he didn’t.

“It’s just that…I mean…” More silence. “Yeah, I’m gonna go.”

“Okay,” I said again.

“Syd?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for taking the job,” he softly said.
 

“Thanks for offering it.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

He was gone. And I laid on the floor of his office for a long time before I finally got up, pulled forward the notes I wanted to work on tomorrow, then went home to my dorm room.

And thought the whole time about what he’d said—and more importantly, what he
hadn’t
said.

Chapter Six

“W
hat box are you working on now?” he asked when he called me the next day. It was around one in the afternoon and I’d been there since nine working.

“Rachel,” I said.

“No, Billy,” he teased.

“Ha. Ha. I’m working on the box with all the Rachel notes.”

“Rachel? I don’t have a Rachel.”

“I’m thinking she’s what Esme either started as or morphed into, or—”

“Oh, Rachel, that’s it. Yeah, I know her,” he said, like he’d just remembered the name of someone he ran into somewhere but hadn’t seen for a while. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. Going through his notes made me realize that these people, these characters, were real to him. Friends.

There would be innocuous items, like body type, race, coloring, that sort of thing, so he could keep the visual straight once he was writing. But then there would be this random note like “When she was in second grade, she wanted fashion-y boots, but her mother made her wear her current, dorky snow boots because they were still in good shape. So she took a butter knife (the only kind she was allowed to handle—she might have been a bit of a rebel, but some rules she knew better than to break) and pierced her boots so her mother would have to buy her new ones.” And wrapped around that piece of paper was a cocktail napkin from some place I’d heard of in Manhattan with “don’t use this…just for character development” scribbled on it with red Sharpie.
 

“So, I’m creating a ‘possibly Esme’ pile. That’s what I’m working on.”

“You can scratch the ‘possibly’ part. She was Rachel for a few months in there for sure.”

I looked at the box, nearly full except for the pieces I had piled in front—and to the side, and to the back—of me on the same spot on the floor I’d sat yesterday.

These were all notes he’d done on
one
character in a few months? Good lord, the man must have done nothing for the past five years but write plot and character notes.

And yet, no novel to show for all of the labor that sat around the room, surrounding me.

“So, you’re going with Esme? Rachel and Esme, same person?”

“Yes,” he said.

I hesitated too long, and he was starting to know me. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I quickly said. What I was thinking was not my place to say.

“What?” he said with exasperation in his voice.

“Well, it’s not really important.”

“Is it about my stuff? My work?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Then spill.”

“No, really—”

“Come on, Syd. I hired you, I want any feedback you want to give.”

“I would never presume to give you…feedback.” Even the idea seemed preposterous to me.