3. #2
“Covid first,” I say. “That shut down pretty much everything. Then after that came the writers’ strike three years later. None of us worked for months. The show I was working on ended up getting cancelled and I was going through some stuff.”
She raises an eyebrow. Sets her fork down on the plate and gives me her full attention, the way you do when you know something interesting is about to get skipped over.
“Just relationship stuff,” I say. “Long story. Longer than the one I’m telling about my spiralling career and early semi-retirement. And this one has a happy ending because I ended up in Thailand.”
She wants to ask more, but she’s holding up a finger to let me know she needs a minute.
“Yeah, ya know what? Why don’t we both take a pause and eat first,” I say. “My food’s getting cool.”
I take a spoonful of chili powder from the little dispenser on the table, then add just a dash of sugar for balance, in the Thai style. Then I take my fork in my left and the spoon in my right and stir the noodles together with the bean sprouts and start eating.
We both let the quiet do its job for a while.
The lunch rush has started to build at the other tables around us.
Nikoy’s son has given up on his homework and is now helping carry plates.
A dad, mom, a little girl in a school uniform at the next table work through their food without saying anything to each other.
Once I’ve cleaned my plate and Thalia’s eaten all she wants of hers, I resume.
“Anyway, when times were good I had an apartment on the Westside. After they got bad, I sold up and decided I’d come here.”
“So what about your whole life in LA?” she asks. “You said you needed to be close to people who bought what you write. What about that?”
“Oh, well, I had to do a career pivot,” I say.
“After 2023 I wasn’t the only one out of a job.
Most of my friends were too. Some of the people I used to work with were delivering food or walking dogs.
These were talented people who’d worked hard to climb the ladder, and there they were back where they started. ”
“That’s rough,” she says.
“Yeah. And I decided I didn’t want to be one of them. I was going to use my skills. I knew I could write fast and for an audience. So I decided to try publishing books on Amazon.”
“Hey, that’s great,” she says. “You worked it out. Now you’re doing something you actually care about.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m lucky. I don’t make what I used to, but I get more creative control and nobody can fire me.”
“That’s so good,” she says. “Most people don’t get to be creative at work.”
“True. And most of the creative ones don’t get to make a living at it.”
“Are you working on anything right now?”
“I’m hard at work as we speak,” I say.
She grins.
“What’s this latest masterpiece called?”
“Gimme Goblin Girls 16.”
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called,” I say.
“Gimme goblins?”
“Gimme Goblin Girls,” I say. “Volume 16.”
She covers her mouth to laugh, shoulders going up.
“I’m sorry… what?!”
“Okay, I should explain.”
“Yeah, I reckon you should.”
She can’t stop giggling, and I can’t blame her. I’m about to initiate her into a whole world of literature she never suspected existed.
“Okay, so romance novels are for women, right?”
“Sure.”
“Except no, they aren’t,” I say. “Men like reading romances too. It’s just that guys like reading different kinds of romance.”
“Goblins? Men like reading romances about goblins?”
“Come on, is it any weirder than books about werewolves or vampires?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says. “It kinda is. I mean, what’s sexy about a goblin?”
“I think it’s just something exotic,” I say. “It’s fun and a little bit different. Fantasy characters, monster girls—it’s just a way to take ordinary situations and make them more interesting. Goblins are all the rage right now. Everybody’s doing goblins.”
She has to think about this for a moment, trying to process what I’m describing.
“So what do the goblin girls do?” she says. “Are they magic?”
“Sort of. It’s urban fantasy. The whole world is magical but mundane at the same time. Like, the hero of the story is a powerful mage but he has a job as a checkout clerk at the grocery store.”
“If he can do magic, why does he need a job at all?”
“Keeps him humble,” I say. “Plus, he’s got a lot of goblin girls to provide for.”
“So he’s in love with all of them at the same time?”
“Exactly. That’s the most important part. It’s haremlit. It’s all about this guy having relationships with all of these different girls. Each one’s different and special in her own way. Everything else about the story just gives the reader permission to believe that all of this happens.”
“That’s… interesting,” she says.
She seems more amused than anything, but I can see she’s still perplexed. She glances out at the creek, then back at me, like she’s checking that I’m still the same person she thought I was ten minutes ago.
“And that’s what you do now? You live in Thailand and sit in your big house on the hillside and write about goblin girls?”
“That’s what I do,” I say.
I understand her reaction and I’m not bothered by it. It’s not a genre that a lot of women understand right away. But then, some guys sneer at bodice rippers too. Easy to dismiss something before you really get what it is.
“Do you miss Hollywood? Working on TV shows?”
“Honestly? No. I thought I would. But writing this way gives me way more freedom than I ever had in LA. Way less stress too.”
“You definitely seem relaxed,” she says.
I shrug. Being happy is effortless when it’s real.
“Tell me more.”
“That’s all about me,” I say.
“That’s not all about you,” she says. “You still haven’t told me about your personal life. I’ll need to hear more about that later.”
So there’s going to be a later. That’s interesting. Glad to know that.
“Fair enough,” I say. “Tell me about you.”
“I don’t have this impressive life history like you have,” she says. “Let’s see. I grew up in Mackay, which is this town in central Queensland—”
(Queensland! I was right!)
“—Went to uni in Brisbane and that’s it. Now I’m on this trip. No work history. Pretty boring, really.”
“Come on, you’re holding out on me,” I say. “There has to be more to this story. You’re a solo traveler. That’s impressive. More impressive than you’re giving yourself credit for.”
“Yeah, okay, but so are you.”
“I don’t know if I qualify as a traveler,” I say. “I mean, except for trips around Thailand, I don’t really go anywhere. Besides, I’m a guy. Nobody’s impressed by a middle-aged guy traveling by himself.”
“You’re not middle-aged,” she says.
“I’m not?”
“No, my dad is middle-aged. You’re mature.”
Definitely liking the way she said that. There are a lot of ways to understand the word mature, and most have positive connotations.
“I’ll take it. But the point still stands.”
She rests her chin in the heel of her palm. Outside, a motorbike backfires on the road and a bird lifts off one of the empty tables in a panic, lands three feet away, and starts picking at the rice again.
“I wanted to travel and I didn’t have anyone who wanted to go with me. What’s impressive about that?”
“You went anyway. A lot of women your age wouldn’t.”
“I don’t believe in letting fear hold you back,” she says. “Sounds like such a cliche—YOLO and all that. But it’s true, ya know?”
“When you see something you want, you go for it,” I say. “That’s how you ended up in my pool.”
“Right. And look how well that turned out.”
She smiles at that and doesn’t look away. I don’t either.
The place is really filling up now that the lunch rush has hit.
Voices bouncing off the corrugated roof, Nikoy calling something back into the kitchen, the smell of frying garlic coming in waves.
I know I need to get back. But I’m having so much fun I don’t want the conversation to end.
Thalia senses it too because she checks her phone and then sets it back on the table face-down, which I notice.
“Do you need to go?” she asks. “Back to your goblin girls?”
“Actually, yes,” I say. “I’ve missed out on the whole morning.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Not your fault,” I say. “Believe me, I can procrastinate without help. But I should get back to work if I’m going to get 2,000 words in.”
“2,000 words? How long does that take you?”
“Couple hours, most days,” I say.
“That’s it? God, I used to pull all-nighters writing papers that weren’t even half that long.”
“It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare,” I say. “And after doing it for years, it tends to come easy.”
“Can I be honest? I actually really want to read your book now.”
“You can,” I say. “Start on GGG 1. I’m proudest of volume seven, but unless you start at the beginning it won’t really make sense.”
We get up and squeeze past the line of people standing and pointing at the big premade vats of curry and vegetables and pay at the counter.
Nikoy looks at the little pad of paper he wrote our order on and tells me the cost in Thai.
I hand over the money. He counts the change from a tin on the shelf, not the register, sliding the coins across the counter one by one.
“How much was it?” Thalia asks, fishing a little coin purse out of the pocket of her elephant print pants.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ve got this one.”
It’s the cheapest imaginable date, so it would be almost ridiculous if I didn’t cover it. Even if this isn’t a date. Which I’m pretty sure it’s not.
We walk out from under the shade covering the front of the lime-green building and the sun is even more intense.
“What’s your plan for the rest of the day?” I ask.
“I’ve got a reading assignment, remember?” she says, looking at her phone, apparently checking the Kindle app for my book.
“You don’t have to really do that if you don’t want to.”
“Yes, I absolutely have to,” she says, scrolling. “Oh, here it is!”
She smiles as she looks at the cover with green-skinned girls wearing skimpy t-shirts and shorts posing in a trailer park. She holds it for me to read it off her screen.
“Who’s Thurston Kade?” she asks.
“Every romance writer uses a pen name.”
She nods.
“I like it. It suits you.”
It’s time to say goodbye but I don’t know how to. A hug? I’m getting sweatier by the minute, so I’d better make it fast if I do. But I don’t want to be the one to open my arms first, in case she finds it creepy. But a wave seems too wimpy, like I’m afraid of making contact.
None of this matters, though. Because she’s coming home with me.
“So, Thurston,” she says with a grin. “Is this going to make me hot?”
Okay, that’s a signal right there. I would be crazy not to see it.
“Only if it’s doing its job right,” I say.
“In that case, I think I should read this by the water,” she says. “I might need to cool off.”
She’s confident, bold. What am I saying? Of course she is. I found her swimming topless in my pool at night. I don’t know why I should be surprised. She’s making her intentions clear. Now it’s up to me not to say no.
“The sea is pretty warm around here,” I say.
“Yeah, too bad,” she says.
“But I have a pool.”
“And inviting me over to swim would be very gentlemanly of you.”
Immediately my mind starts protesting. You won’t get any work done.
You’ll tell yourself you will, but you won’t.
You’re behind enough already. Tell her you can’t today but that you’ll make it up to her later, before she leaves.
That way, you can be productive and still enjoy her company without letting her break your concentration.
That’s the thing to do. But instead I say—
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s go.”