Chapter 3 Pain Points
Pain Points
The ding of an incoming text interrupted Blair’s dinner by the pool one evening in early October, triggering a series of analogous internal dings—the percussive soundtrack of dopamine hits resulting from having something legitimate to distract from her sad solo meal.
Blair tried not to scroll while she ate.
She always intended to read instead. Reading had always been such a respite.
Yet there was her book, unopened, on the other side of the table, while her phone was at hand, requiring as much effort to resist as it did to use, commanding her attention even though it was only a dormant black rectangle.
But it wasn’t dormant now. She picked it up.
Do you think emotional or moral pain can manifest as physical pain?
Well, butter her butt and call her a biscuit. It was Jack Branksome.
She smiled. Of course she’d been hoping for Esme—or Cal, but Cal hardly ever initiated communication, even if he was warm enough in responding to her overtures. Jack, though. He would be… bracing. Not a lot about Blair’s life right now could be called bracing.
Blair: Yes.
Jack: Elaborate.
Blair: I don’t think it’s that complicated. The human mind is powerful.
Didn’t she know it?
Blair: I think it can hold us back in all kinds of ways, so, sure, maybe that stomachache is because you said or did something you’re not proud of or whatever.
Jack: I’m sorry the Books with Blair situation blew up the way it did.
She had to put the phone down for a second. Jack had now texted twice to apologize. Of course, he kept doing things that required apologizing. Still, this was not a plot twist she’d seen coming. She chewed her salmon, trying to think how to respond.
Blair: It was what it was. You’re allowed to say no.
Jack: I know, but I could have done so with more grace.
That was true. But to say so would suggest his rejection had bothered her. Blair didn’t let men bother her in a professional setting. She just moved on. She invoked Tiffany’s refrain, which had become their professional motto: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t sweat the small men.
Jack: I didn’t expect the media to get ahold of it.
Blair: I’m pretty sure the media got ahold of it because your publisher, not expecting the aforementioned no, did a huge reprint of In Time with a Books with Blair badge on the cover and somehow Target put a bunch of them on the shelves prematurely.
Jack: Right.
She wondered if he was wearing that raggedy Prince shirt. There had been something about that shirt. Well, there had been something about Jack’s arms in that shirt.
What was it about the men in her life and their arms? And why did Reggie’s new arms gross her out while Jack’s arms were compelling?
Jack: I thought if I said anything publicly to clarify, it would sound patronizing.
Blair: Kind of like talking about my “little projects” in The New Yorker sounded patronizing.
Jack: I thought you weren’t the kind of person who reads The New Yorker, but yes. The New Yorker debacle is what got me thinking about our initial dustup.
Blair: The strange thing was that you talked about me in that particular issue, with that particular cover.
Jack: What do you mean? What did that cover mean?
Blair: It was The Great Gatsby, wasn’t it? The green light at the end of the dock?
Jack: I guess it was.
Well, look at that, a piece of art had gone over the head of a luminary such as Jack.
What was supposed to happen now? He had apologized.
She hadn’t accepted it outright, because, again, to do so would imply a degree of botheration she did not want to imply.
So they were done, business concluded. But if this was the end of the conversation, she would have to go back to sad solo salmon.
A movement in her peripheral vision drew her attention. “Mrs. Afonso, is that you?” she called.
Nothing.
Mrs. Afonso was an older woman who was constantly sticking her head over the hedge that separated her front yard from Blair’s.
Yet when Blair tried to engage her in conversation, she was aloof.
Even a visit to drop off a homemade peach pie—as the “newcomer” to the neighborhood, wasn’t Blair the one who was supposed to be in receipt of baked goods? —had not thawed Mrs. Afonso.
“Your lemon tree is looking amazing,” Blair said into the void—the void she was pretty sure was populated by a lurking old lady. “Maybe you can give me some tips. The fruit on mine is all woody all of a sudden.”
Still nothing.
She picked up her phone.
Blair: It’s the hundredth anniversary of The Great Gatsby. I was hoping to have my film adaptation of Green Light, which you may or may not know is a young adult retelling of Gatsby, out by now. I thought we could capitalize on the attention the book would be getting anyway.
Blair: So, yeah, funny coincidence that my “little projects” were referenced in that issue.
Jack: So Green Light isn’t going to be ready in time?
Blair: It isn’t going to exist.
To her surprise, Blair went on to tell Jack about the book.
About how much she loved it and how excited she had been when Angela sold her the screen rights and came on board as a producer.
About how gutted she had been when Angela died in the first wave of COVID infections.
And about the project’s life—or lack of life—over subsequent years.
She felt a little sheepish when she was done.
Blair: What’s a doornail?
She was attempting to close off the conversation—this didn’t feel like one where she could follow Esme’s direction and just disappear—but she had done enough oversharing.
Jack: ??
Blair: You know the phrase “dead as a doornail”? What does that mean? Where is it from?
Jack: It’s from A Christmas Carol. Scrooge’s business partner, Marley, is dead as a doornail. And I think a doornail is just a big nail that goes in a door. Why?
Blair: I was thinking the other day that Green Light was dead as a doornail, but I didn’t know where that phrase came from. But of course, Dickens.
Jack: I think the narrator goes on to wonder what is so particularly dead about a doornail. So maybe your “little project” isn’t totally dead.
Blair: Ha ha.
Blair: Alas, it is very dead. Deader than a doornail.
There. That was a good enough place to leave it. And look at her, she’d been able to refer to Green Light as dead without crying.
Jack: My back is killing me. All day every day. I am forced to conclude that my writer’s block is manifesting physically.
The next night, Blair was once again eating dinner alone with a book she had not opened.
She glanced at the clock. Seven. If Jack was in Minnesota, it would be nine there, and it was a Saturday.
She knew why she was alone, but Jack? He must be having a rough time of it if he was texting her on a Saturday night.
Blair: Hence yesterday’s opening question.
Jack: It’s strange that I’m texting you, I know. I’m in a funk, and I’m sitting here staring at my phone.
Join the club, Jack.
Blair: Someone lick the red off your candy?
Jack: I beg your pardon?
Blair: That’s a Southernism. What’s the problem?
Blair was prepared to solve problems. She was good at it. Surprisingly, she was even prepared to solve Jack Branksome’s problems. It was better than eating alone.
Jack: I go to the gym.
He certainly did. Those arms didn’t grow on trees.
Blair: Good for you?
Jack: I mean that merely to indicate that I’m physically fit. So why the sudden, excruciating back pain?
Blair: Clearly because you can’t write. All those words are probably clumping up in your back.
Jack: How do I get them out of my back and onto the page?
She had been kidding, but he must really be suffering.
Blair: I can’t help you there. I’m not a writer.
She hated admitting that she couldn’t help. It made her seem ineffectual, and there were few things Blair hated more than being ineffectual. She considered telling him what Angela had once told her, that there was no such thing as writer’s block, only problems of motivation, but refrained.
Jack: But you’re a reader.
Blair: I am well-read. I was a lit major the one semester I went to college.
Jack: Where’d you go?
Blair: Vanderbilt. But I got into Harvard and a couple other Ivies.
She regretted adding the qualification the moment she hit send. She didn’t need to justify herself to him. Just like she hadn’t needed to accept his apology yesterday.
Jack: What made you choose Vanderbilt?
Blair: I went to visit Harvard, and it seemed like snob central.
Oh, crap. Hadn’t Jack gone to Harvard? Didn’t she remember that from when the Moonpics PR team put together a media kit they hadn’t ended up needing?
Jack: So you went to Vanderbilt for one semester and read a lot of books?
What was this? A getting-to-know-you session? Not that she minded. She would have preferred to spend her dinner solving Jack’s problems, but talking about herself would do as a plan B. It felt almost therapeutic.
She should probably go see an actual therapist, though. See if Martha was still in business.
She shoved the thought aside.
Blair: Yes, and I kept reading books after I dropped out and moved to LA.
Jack: Did you ever try to write?
Blair: No.
Jack: Really?
Blair: Really.
Not really, but she wasn’t about to tell Jack freaking Branksome about her two attempts at writing. He would see them as failures. Maybe they had been, but only in the sense that they’d nudged her along the path to success. Blair didn’t fail; she just moved on.
Blair: I’m a producer, which I think of partly as being a professional reader.
I make books into movies and TV shows that a lot of people see, most of whom never read the book to begin with.
Because of what I do, they still get to experience the story, or a version of it.
Some of them will go back and read the book.
One of the things I’m most proud of is when a movie based on a book that wasn’t a bestseller makes the book into one.
Or when it makes what was a bestseller hit the charts again years later.
As could have been the case with In Time, but whatever, that was Mr. Harvard’s loss.
Jack: You’re drunk on your own literary power.
She smiled. He was kidding, but she felt compelled to continue the essay she was apparently writing for Jack Branksome explaining her career philosophy.
Blair: My larger point is that I found a way to work with the books I love. It gives me a lot of personal satisfaction, more than acting did. But I also think it does some good in the world.
Blair: Not like I think I’m curing cancer, but stories are good for people, don’t you think?
Jack: I do think. I just wish I could write one.
Aww. He was really in a state. Something about his brand of confession tinged with self-deprecation made the grudge she was nursing loosen its hold on her.
Blair: You did write one. A great one.
It took him a long time to reply.
Jack: Thanks, but I have another one due March 15, and that’s already an extended deadline.
Blair: Beware the ides of March.
Jack: Exactly.
This was a good point to stop. She’d shared some real stuff with Jack, but not enough to make her feel overly vulnerable.
More importantly, she was done with dinner—she really hated eating alone.
The last several nights had been inexplicably hard, which was frustrating because it was the first week of October.
She’d been in the house for two and a half months.
She was supposed to be feeling more settled; life was meant to be getting easier.
Life was not getting easier.
It was, apparently, still cyclone season.