Chapter 3
It was one of those beautiful May evenings on the coast that had been so rare this year: clear skies, cool without being cold, only a hint of a breeze.
Summer was technically almost here, and although the coast didn’t really warm up until July (and even then it depended on your definition of warm), pretty soon tourists would flood Hastings Rock again.
Along with the rest of the Last Picks, I was taking advantage of the lull before the storm to walk around the scenic downtown in relative peace and quiet.
Everything looked perfect: the medley of shops and galleries clean and freshly painted, their landscaping touched up to welcome the summer crowds.
Lights glowed in windows. A few of the more daring restaurant owners had already set out their patio seating along with fire pits and heaters.
As my friends and I followed the sidewalk, the sounds of laughter and the clink of glassware filtered out to us.
At the intersection ahead of us, one of the galleries stood with its doors open, and people spilled out into the night.
“Somebody’s having a party,” I said.
“Pippi,” Millie said. “It’s a BOOK LAUNCH party. And the theme is ANIMALS WHO ARE FRIENDS!” She grabbed Keme’s arm. “Can we go?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “We can’t.”
Sometimes, Keme’s eyes could be very dark and very intense.
Very murder-y.
(I’m a writer.)
“Why not?” Millie asked.
“Because—”
“Is it because you don’t like Pippi?”
“No—”
“Do you not like her because she’s so successful?”
“No!”
“Is it because she finishes so many books and you still haven’t finished yours and you’re afraid you’ll never finish it and somehow her success threatens your own chances at being a happy, successful writer someday?”
Ladies and gentlemen: these are my friends.
“It’s probably because he’s afraid they’ll be wearing the same T-shirt again,” Fox put in.
“It’s not any of that!” I snapped. “I did finish my book, thank you very much.”
“Kind of,” Keme said.
Millie giggled way too loudly about that.
I refused to engage with them, but I couldn’t let the other insults stand. “And for the record, that T-shirt is from the boys’ department, so I don’t know why Pippi—”
“You know what we should do?” Millie asked. “We should play Who Wore It Best?”
“Pippi,” Fox said.
“Children,” Indira said.
“Okay,” Bobby said. He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me against him. He was warm and solid, and he smelled like that clean, sporty scent I had come to associate with him. “No more teasing Dash.”
“It must have cost her a fortune to rent that gallery,” Fox said. “Michael has an outrageous sense of his own importance.”
“Oh no,” Millie said, “she got the space for free.”
Fox’s “What?” sounded choked.
“Yeah,” Millie said. “Because she did this collaboration with all these other writers and artists on the coast, and they all contributed something, and so there’s an anthology of stories, and they’ve got all these accompanying pieces that you can buy to go with them.”
In the silence that followed, the drone of voices from the gallery washed out into the night.
“Probably motel art,” Fox said. “Insipid little watercolors with no passion, no soul.”
“What writers on the coast?” I asked. “Who? Because there aren’t any writers.”
Indira raised her eyebrows.
Face heating, I stammered, “I mean, no real writers—”
Even Keme looked kind of disappointed in me at that one.
“Professional writers,” I said. “Writers who are working at a professional level.”
No one said anything.
And then Keme said, “You’re a donkey.”
Fortunately, Fox swept in at that moment with “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that gallery. Shilling my wares to—to a crowd of smug, self-satisfied corporate drones.”
Indira’s eyebrows went up again.
“Hawking my work—the work of my soul—like I’m a fishwife at market!”
Bobby squeezed my arm.
“I don’t even know what kind of story she’d want me to write,” I said.
“I mean, I don’t think I could write a story that would fit into that anthology.
I don’t write that kind of stuff. I don’t read that kind of stuff.
There’s a certain degree of craft and intelligence and—and insight into the human condition that goes into my writing, and I can’t just churn it out on demand. ”
Again—mercifully—nobody said anything.
Then Millie opened her mouth. And God bless her, because she was Millie, she actually, honestly meant it.
“Oh,” she said with an unnecessary amount of surprise. “I didn’t know Pippi invited the two of you.”