Chapter 9 #5
‘No, he works in media sales here in the city, for The Helix.’
I took down a couple of notes. ‘“Shark”?’
‘Oh yeah, me and Rick are obsessed with shark movies. The weirder the better.’
‘Omigod, have you watched Under Paris?’
‘Of course. A masterpiece.’
‘They really ought to have stayed out of the Seine.’
‘That triathlon was just too important to the corrupt mayor.’
‘Okay… and “flying”?’
‘Ah, well, that’s one of the aforementioned phobias: I’m terrified of flying.’
‘I quite enjoy it,’ I said absentmindedly, as I kept notetaking.
‘So many people say this to me, but I just don’t get it. You’re in a hunk of metal in the frickin’ sky. We’re not meant to be up there!’
‘Sure, but we’re not meant to be staring at electronic screens for nine hours a day and infusing our bloodstreams with processed cocoa beans and milk from an artificially impregnated cow.
’ I raised the dregs of my freebie hot chocolate to my mouth and took a sip to hammer home my point.
‘Plus, aviation’s one of the only industries that learns from past mistakes.
If a plane crashes, measures are put in place to make sure the same error doesn’t happen again.
I feel safer in a plane than I do on a bus. ’
‘You raise some good points, Flora, but the moment I step on a plane I freak out. It’s involuntary. Like you and eggs. Rational arguments won’t change my mind.’
‘Hence the family road trip all the way to Seattle?’
‘Yeah, it was a mission – the whole trip lasted weeks one summer. But core memories and all that, y’know?’
I nodded, but did I know? Most of my primary family-related memories seemed to involve me cowering in a random plot of land while someone with authority over said land tried to shoo us away.
That’s why meeting Will had felt like such a relief; he’d felt like family from the off.
Like home. All my happiest memories had him at the heart of them, in sharp, high-definition focus.
And now he’d never be part of my life again.
‘I guess airplanes aren’t all bad, though,’ Ethan mused, snapping me out of my thoughts.
‘No?’
‘Yeah, I mean, one of them brought you here.’
If my arms hadn’t been covered by multiple layers of fabric, Ethan would have surely noticed all the hairs on them raising in acknowledgement of his words.
‘Oh! So… I could help you with your speech?’ Why was my voice all squeaky?
Breathe, you absolute dweeb.
His response took longer than it ought to have done, and he didn’t look at me when he finally did answer. ‘Yep.’
I swallowed, attempting to re-focus on the task at hand, drawing a wiggly line from one corner of a fresh notebook page to the other, with a few dots along it. ‘This road trip. I’m wondering if it could form the backbone of the speech.’
Ethan shuffled even closer to me so he could get a clearer look at my notepad. ‘In what way?’
‘You could open with a story about it, use the metaphor of a road trip as a framework for everything else you want and need to say, with some funny stories dotted here and there, like waymarkers along the route.’ I doodled on the page as I spoke, sensing Ethan was a visual thinker and that this would help him better understand my plan.
‘And then you can segue into how Rick’s own journey has forked off from yours, and taken him to…
oh, I don’t even know the name of his fiancée! ’
‘Sinead.’
I wrote her name down and underlined it. ‘How it’s taken him to Sinead, and all the adventures they’ll have on their own future travels, and then loop back around to a standout memory from the first road trip you shared together.’
‘Fuck, you’re really good at this.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘No, I mean, like, you’re really good.’
‘C’mon, it’s not like I’m the only one sitting on the freezing pavement of a New York street who might underplay their talents every so often. How many times has your work featured in The New Yorker?’
‘Seventeen,’ he replied without hesitation.
‘And how many caption contests?’
‘Just the one. But I’ve got another one coming up in a couple of weeks.’
‘Ooh, could I get a sneak peek?’
‘Nuh-uh. Absolutely not, that wouldn’t be fair on the other entrants.’
‘I wouldn’t have put you down as a jobsworth, Mr Carmichael.’
‘A jobs-what-now?’
‘Oh, “jobsworth”. Someone who meticulously follows the rulebook at work.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say? I’m a pro. Have you ever won the contest?’
‘No. I made the final once, but the pressure to canvass for public votes sent me into a tailspin and I basically hid for a week. I ended up coming second to a caption with an exclamation mark.’
‘Ouch, I’m surprised that even made the final.’
‘Tell me about it. Are you working on any other cartoons at the moment?’
‘Always. You can pitch up to ten each week, so it pays to be prolific and submit in batches. Wanna take a look?’
‘Abso-bloody-lutely.’
Ethan removed an iPad from his backpack and opened up an app called Procreate.
‘Huh, I kind of assumed you’d work on paper what with all the pencils?’
‘Yeah, that’s how I doodle and sketch out ideas, but once I’ve landed on a concept I move over to digital.’
He navigated to his latest sketch and handed it over. The cartoon depicted a man and a woman sitting on a sofa with a giant eye peering through their window. The caption read:
“I knew we should have gone for the mouth-facing apartment.”
‘Haaaa, that’s good.’
Ethan smiled shyly while I swiped through his other cartoons – and then something clicked into place in my brain.
‘Omigod, I’ve just had an even better idea for your speech, but it could end up being more work for you and you might hate it.’
‘I live for ideas that people might hate. Shoot.’
‘We’ve been thinking about your speech all wrong! You shouldn’t be writing your best man’s speech; you should be drawing it!’
‘Keep talking…’
‘So, just as one example: that anecdote about the mistaken identity of your boss. You could turn it into a cartoon, and show it on a big screen with a caption. And then all you’d need to actually say would be a few contextualising lines per image.
You could still use the throughline of the road trip so there’s something to hook it to.
It’d be such a unique speech and would mean you could play to your strengths.
And, as we’ve established, your strengths are stronger than most.’ I lifted up my clothbound notebook and made an exaggerated motion as if I was trying – and failing – to rip it down the middle.
‘You’re gonna have to stop mentioning that poor novella; you’re giving me a complex.’
‘The joke’s always right there at the front of my mind, Ethan; it’s too hard to resist.’ It was the first time I’d said his name. It felt nice to say it out loud. But a little risky, too. ‘But do you see what I’m saying about the speech?’
‘Yeah, I totally do. In fact, it’s wild that I haven’t thought of this myself.’
‘Nah, that makes sense: you’re so close to it that you’ve not been able to see the bigger picture. Sometimes you just need a fresh eye staring into your metaphorical apartment window.’
He grinned.
‘I’m liking this,’ he said. ‘No, actually, I’m loving it. It feels like a weight’s lifted from my shoulders. I could even get it printed as a little book for their wedding gift – something else I’ve yet to get sorted.’
I looked at him for a moment, my head cocked, considering all the small things I’d learned about this stranger in the last twenty-four hours.
‘You don’t seem like the kind of person who enjoys leaving things to the last minute?’
‘That’s an accurate assumption. But it’s been… a tricky year. My head’s not been in the game.’
‘Yeah, not the best year for me, either.’
A moment of eye contact ended as quickly as it started. But it still managed to wordlessly communicate that both of our hearts were bruised.
‘Well, shit, I need to get drawing!’ Ethan said, breaking the short-lived spell of silent understanding.
He jumped up, briefly brushing the creases out of his jeans and hoisting his rucksack onto his back.
I did the same, albeit in a much slower fashion.
I glanced at my watch. It was approaching eleven – the end time we’d agreed for our speechwriting session.
But the truth was, I didn’t want this… collaboration – or whatever the hell it was – to be over just yet.
‘So, I’m guessing you don’t need any more of my help?’
‘I mean, I’m finally feeling ready to tackle this beast, thanks to you. But… if you’re at a loose end it would be awesome if you could…?’
‘Sure!’ I said, probably too enthusiastically, since he’d not even finished the question. ‘You’re basically my New York tour guide now, so if you’re happy for me to keep tagging along for a few more hours…?’
Ethan cleared his throat earnestly, as if it would help him assemble the right combination of words.
‘Yeah, I would, actually. Plus, I think I know somewhere we can go so we can both get some work done, since you mentioned you had your own speech to finish. And I promise you there’ll be no eggs in sight.’