Chapter 8 #2
been important enough to bring us into her fortress, serve us four hundred dollars’ worth of smoked fish, and show us her
unphotographed-for-decades face? And what could possibly be the rush? Sure, Katie and I were on a tight schedule, but Meredith?
Didn’t she, by definition, have all the time in the world?
“I know this probably seems strange,” she said, and my eyes went a little wide. I took another bite of cake. It was very good.
“And I’m sure both of you are wondering, why now? Why this book? Why us? The answer is simple: I, despite thirty years of
success, have never written a novel that takes place here, in my hometown. The village I was born in, raised in, fell in love
in. It has taken me a very long time to feel ready to share this place with the world. But I am now. And so, as I sat down
to draft last night, I realized it: I’d like you two to write a love story of your own, also using Southampton as your muse.
I thought our two projects could be in conversation with each other. That they might hold each other up, almost explain each
other. Almost . . . intertwine.”
We just sat there, nodding. The cat curled up in a comma and fell asleep.
Right there, on the table. The sun was rising higher and higher, those last hints of morning disappearing as the salt air warmed into day.
A few wide, high clouds streaked the sky, and the horizon—long and blue—never ended. Meredith continued.
“I don’t want to tell you what story to write,” she said. “Clearly, Katie, you know what you’re doing. But, if it’s okay with
you, I’d like to put together a framework while we’re all here today.”
“Absolutely,” Katie said. “My god, I can’t believe this. Yes, of course. How do you write your books? How do you plan?”
Meredith took a long sip of her wine. From underneath the table, she pulled out . . . a salad bowl? Yes, it was a salad bowl.
Looked expensive too. Hand-painted, probably from Europe. And it was teeming with rolled-up pieces of paper.
“Pinot usually does the honors,” she said.
“What?” I said. “Who’s Pinot?”
Meredith looked right at me, head tilted ever so slightly as the sun gleamed into her eyes. Her face, otherwise, perfectly
plain and reasonable as she nudged the animal awake.
“The cat?” I said. Out loud. Sorry, but this was too much. The fucking cat? The bestselling author of her generation, and
her cat picked her novel’s beats? No wonder I never got a book published. The industry was broken. The system, a joke. And
this woman was just sitting there, not writing her own books, day drunk and getting richer by the minute, all while a bloated
Persian in a lavender collar determined what seven million American women were going to read next summer? It was all too much.
“Yes, Tyler,” Meredith said. “The cat.”
“Hi, baby!” Katie said, squealing as she outstretched her hand to scratch between his ears.
He squinted with delight, offered her a soft purr and a raised paw, then wandered into the middle of the table—he walked through the salmon; he walked through the tomato slices—and dipped his face into the bowl.
Katie, cheeks flushed, giggled and poured herself another glass of wine. I tried not to wail.
Pinot bit into a paper ball and spat it into my hands. I wished I was making this up. I wasn’t, though. I should have delivered
for Grubhub or held out for a tutoring gig.
“Well,” Meredith said to me. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I cringed—the ball was a little damp. From the cat.
“Grumpy sunshine?”
“Oh! My favorite!” Katie said as Pinot, without prompting, face-planted into the bowl and fished out another trope. He spat
it at me again.
“Local boy in the way?”
Meredith nodded in approval. Katie, who was officially sloshed, started writing things down in a notebook she’d pulled out
of her bag. One of her trusty feather pens, it seemed, had also made the trip.
Pinot and I rinsed and repeated.
“Will they or won’t they.”
“Too-convenient displacement.”
“Forced proximity.”
“Broken in some way.”
“Forbidden love.”
“Kissing in the rain.”
“The groveling hero.”
“Secrets and lies.”
“Irrationally time-sensitive inn renovation.”
“Second-chance romance.”
“Tortured poet on a nightmare-induced tangent.”
Katie squealed again. “Aw, Tyler! You’re in the book.”
I smiled—what else was there to do but play along? These women were deranged. The cat too.
“Two more, Pinot, please,” Meredith said.
The cat—fuck my life—obliged. I opened the next one, then folded it right back up. Sweat suddenly lined my forehead, and my
skin had grown prickly.
“Can he pick again?” I said as the heat spread to my hands and cheeks. “Is that allowed? He’s a he, right? Sorry, I didn’t
mean to gender your cat.”
Meredith laughed. “He’s a boy, yes. And, unfortunately, no. Once Pinot has selected, we cannot change course. It creates dishonesty
in the narrative, and you’ll feel it. And then, of course, the reader will feel it too.”
I nodded. That was an insane thing to say, given the cat, but otherwise, I did understand. She was right: good writers told
the truth, always. Eventually, at least.
“Just read it,” Katie said.
I handed it to her. She gulped.
“Girl next door.”
Meredith nodded, then shook the bowl once. Pinot, this time, jumped inside, pushed a few balls around, and made his selection.
He delivered this one directly to Meredith, almost as if he didn’t trust us.
Meredith’s face remained neutral as her eyes passed over the scrap, but I swore, somewhere in there, beneath the filler and the facelifts and whatever else she’d surely done to herself, I saw it: a sliver of a smirk.
“What does it say?” Katie asked. For what it was worth, she’d stopped taking notes, and her cheeks were completely red. I
stared into what was left of my cake slice and braced for it. We all knew what was coming.
“Brother’s best friend,” Meredith said. “A classic, don’t you think?”
We were mostly quiet in the back of the car. After brunch, Meredith had told us she’d send for us again two weeks from tomorrow
and to put together an outline and our first fifty pages for her to review. We also left with a stack of books, all set in
the Hamptons: A Widow for One Year, Amagansett, Philistines at the Hedgerow. Neither of us bothered to mention we’d grown up an hour west of here: same county, same ocean, different world.
“Hey,” I said as the skyline encroached, thick stacks of gray and gold. It was late afternoon now, the sun low but relentless.
“Why did Meredith stop writing?”
“I don’t know, honestly. From what I’ve heard, she just loved it too much.”
I nodded, then pressed my nose against the window. Neither of us said another word for the rest of the ride home.