Chapter 6 The Hugging Window Has Closed
The Hugging Window Has Closed
A week later
Blair: I’ll meet you in baggage claim.
Blair scanned the arrivals screens, looking for Jack’s incoming flight.
Coming to the airport, she’d reasoned, was almost like going to the office, where she never experienced the cyclone. Today was just another workday. She had business to conduct—fetch the visiting writer—and then she would go home.
Jack: I don’t have a checked bag. Also, we’re still on the plane.
Blair: You’re here for at least a couple months and you didn’t check a bag?
Of course he hadn’t checked a bag. Jack was a cool, snobbish artiste who was always jawing about authenticity.
He probably lived in a cabin in the woods with one bowl and one spoon, both hewn out of wood from a tree he’d felled himself, and a fireplace over which he cooked deer meat he hunted himself.
Blair had never been to Minnesota, but she knew a fair bit about it secondhand, it being the setting for Green Light.
There were lakes there. Ten thousand of them, if you believed the license plates.
Jack’s cabin was probably on one of them.
He probably canoed across his lake to get his mail at a post office where a nosy postmistress with a heart of gold amassed his fan letters.
She snickered at the image she’d conjured, and it occurred to her that as well as she knew Jack—she knew about his writer’s block and his back issues, and she liked to think that when someone told you about his pain, of both the physical and spiritual varieties, you knew him—she had no idea what his day-to-day life looked like.
It was a little unsettling. They’d been disembodied consciousnesses “talking” through typed words on little screens.
She had referenced finding out what his favorite foods were.
Why hadn’t she asked him what they were?
Or any of the other customary getting-to-know-you questions?
Did he have siblings? What was it like being the kid of a famous dad?
What did he like to do when he wasn’t agonizing over his book?
Did he do anything besides agonize over his book?
Oh my stars, she had invited a stranger to stay in her house on a whim.
All right. Calm down.
She told herself that Jack wasn’t staying in her house; he was staying adjacent to it.
Also, Jack wasn’t a stranger. She didn’t know what he ate for breakfast, but she did know about his pain. They’d just skipped a few steps.
And her invitation hadn’t been issued on a whim, not really.
Yes, she’d thought of it impulsively that night, as they were texting and he was talking about being stuck.
But then she’d thought about how they were both stuck.
About how their strange friendship, if you could even call it that, was one of the only things these days that brought her joy.
Blair: Well, I’m already here, so I’ll meet you in baggage claim.
Jack: I could have Ubered.
Yes. Or she could have sent a driver. That was what she generally did.
The only person she picked up personally was Cal.
She was always so excited to see him that she didn’t want to wait a minute longer than she had to.
She assumed she would do and feel the same with Esme.
So how to explain why she had personally driven more than an hour to fetch Jack at LAX?
Blair: I’m trying to show some Southern hospitality here.
Jack: Well, thanks. I’ll head for baggage when they let us out of plane jail.
And then, a minute later:
Jack: It appears our door is broken. That’s too heavy-handed to be a metaphor, right?
Blair: Right.
Jack: I came all this way to get my book done, and now I can’t physically get off the plane. But that’s definitely not a metaphor.
Blair: Definitely not.
Jack: Are you sure?
Blair: I don’t know, you’re the one with the MFA.
Jack: My short fiction prof would have had me forcibly removed from class if I’d written about a writer trapped on a plane.
Blair: So there you go. Way too obvious to be a metaphor.
Jack: I’d have been ejected not only because of the obviousness of the metaphor but because you’re not supposed to write about writers.
Blair: That’s stupid.
Jack: Is it?
Blair: What about Misery? What about The Shining?
Jack: I think there are different rules for Stephen King.
Blair: What about all those romance novels?
Jack: I do not know the novels to which you refer.
Blair: You know, romance novels about authors. Romance novels about book clubs.
Blair: Romance novels can be very meta.
Jack: I still do not know the novels to which you refer.
Blair. Wow, you only said it like that because you’re about to move into my pool house, didn’t you? Why do I feel like in other circumstances you would have said something insanely snotty?
Blair: Have you ever even read a romance novel?
Jack: Does Jane Austen count?
Blair sent an eye-rolling emoji and set her phone on the bench next to her.
She needed a moment. That last exchange had given her pause.
Not because she found it so remarkable that a person could get through life without having read a romance novel.
She would have been surprised if Jack Branksome had.
But it was a reminder of how elementally different they were.
They’d managed to sidestep their differences while their relationship had been unfolding solely via text.
It was possible that they wouldn’t know how to do this—how to do them.
She was overthinking this. There was no them. They weren’t even friends, not really. They were just two people engaged in a period of mutual disarmament in support of his book. She was hardly going to see him—that was part of the deal. Time to take the drama down several notches.
Blair: I’m stuck on the fact that you only have a carry-on. If there’s a metaphor in all this, it’s probably that.
Jack: I don’t think it’s that deep. I threw some summer clothes into a bag. I figure anything I’m missing, I can buy here. I’m not sure what else you thought I’d have.
Blair: I don’t know, several suitcases of… authory stuff?
Jack: What, dare I ask, is “authory stuff”?
Blair: You know, your reams of research, your manual typewriter, a framed letter from when they longlisted you for the National Book Award, your lucky mug.
She hoped the self-deprecating tone she was aiming for was coming through.
She was just stuck on the idea of moving across the country for several months with only a carry-on.
Her shoes alone would fill a carry-on, and she wasn’t one of those women who made shoes her whole personality.
Just the bare bones of what she would be expected to encase her feet in at different times of day and at different types of events would fill one bag.
Jack: I have a backpack as a personal item if that makes you feel better.
Blair: It actually does.
Jack: And I do have a favorite mug at home, but I didn’t bring it.
Blair: What’s on it?
Jack: Nothing.
Blair: Your favorite mug doesn’t have anything on it?
Jack: What’s supposed to be on it?
Blair: The logo of an obscure band. The name of a local bar you frequent. A vintage typewriter.
Jack: That’s the second time typewriters have come up in this conversation.
Blair: You seem like the type. Ha. Pun intended.
Jack: I have never used a typewriter in my life.
Blair: Do you write longhand on legal pads?
Jack: I do not.
Blair: Is your favorite mug at least an interesting color?
Jack: It’s blue.
Blair: What makes it better than other mugs?
Jack: For one thing, it’s a normal size. Have you noticed the extreme mug inflation that characterizes our times?
Blair: I can’t say I have.
Jack: Mugs have grown obnoxiously large. And I’m not talking about travel mugs. Just normal, ceramic mugs. They look like they belong in Wonderland.
Blair: And here you strike me as the kind of person who drinks a lot of coffee.
Jack: I do drink a lot of coffee, but I like it to be hot. I’d rather drink three normal-size cups over the course of a morning than one Wonderland-size cup.
She didn’t know what to say next. This was what it was like with Jack. They texted fast and furiously and then… she was out of things to say. She reminded herself of Esme’s assertion that texting was a mode of communication that didn’t require a salutation or a closing.
She should have brought her own laptop so she could get some work done. She settled for opening the Kindle app on her phone and pulling up the manuscript she was supposed to be considering for Books with Blair, even though she’d pretty much already decided it wasn’t for her.
The next few months were certainly going to be interesting.
“Blair?”
Blair jumped, and her phone clattered to the floor.
The man in front of her stooped to pick it up, his backpack and small rolling suitcase confirming that he was indeed the literary genius she had invited to move in with her.
He straightened. He looked like his author picture, which in her experience was rare.
Most authors she’d met in person bore only a passing resemblance to the images on their books and websites, which tended to have been taken many years and pounds ago—a fact she noted with neutrality and not judgment.
She herself had only recently quit with the cosmetic dermatology stuff, and honestly, she was still struggling with confronting what she actually looked like.
But Jack. He had medium-length sandy-blond hair that flopped to one side, blue-gray eyes, and a couple days’ worth of stubble. He was wearing jeans and a faded black T-shirt, and he had a black-and-red plaid flannel shirt slung over one arm.
She should not be so taken aback by his appearance, given that she’d “met” him on that Zoom call. But Jack Branksome in the flesh was… something.
He took a step toward her, holding her phone out.
She had been worried about things being awkward between them. She wasn’t helping on that front, standing there dumbstruck by… what? The fact that he looked like he was supposed to? It was her turn to speak.
“Jack, hi.” She accepted the phone from him, taking care that their hands didn’t touch. “Why didn’t you—”
Why didn’t you text and tell me you were en route?
Why did you ambush me?
How, though, could she be ambushed by someone she was expressly waiting for?
She felt ambushed, was the thing. She felt in no way ready for whatever was about to happen.
“What are you reading?” he asked when her aborted sentence wasn’t followed by anything.
“What?”
He nodded at her phone, which she was still holding face up and which was still open to her book.
A reasonable question from someone whose relationship with her had heretofore mostly revolved around books.
“A prepublication copy of a book an editor friend wants me to consider for Books with Blair.”
Why was she still sitting, letting him tower over her? She stood.
But now that she was up here, what should happen? Should they hug? That’s what she would do with most people in this situation.
“How is it?” He took a step back.
So they weren’t going to hug. The hugging window, if there had been one, had closed. Should they shake hands? No. That was stupid. This wasn’t a business meeting.
“Lots of angst,” she said about the book. “Set on a farm. Drought as metaphor for illness and/or loneliness. Very Alice Munro–esque.”
He barked a laugh, and she was pleased and even a little proud to have amused him until he said, “And here I’d have thought that would be exactly your thing.”
“Why would you think that?” The question came out sharp, but she felt sharp. When he said nothing, she pressed him. “Because I’m a woman who tends to gravitate toward books written by women?”
He shrugged. “There is a whole category called women’s fiction.”
“Yes, books written by women about internal concerns. Families, emotions. Unlike books written by men about families and emotions. Unlike your book about families and emotions.”
He held up a palm. “I get it. I’ve heard the argument before.”
She waited a beat for him to add that he sympathized with this argument he’d heard, but he said nothing.
“Farms are not really my thing. Farm landscapes as metaphor are especially not my thing.” She was aware she was coming off as brittle. She just didn’t know how to stop. “Shall we go?”
He still didn’t say anything. Probably because he didn’t know what to say. She’d gotten herself all worked up, gone from zero to sixty over basically nothing. She nodded at his backpack. “You want me to carry anything?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
She turned and set off toward parking, trusting he would follow.
She could feel him following, as if he were giving off heat, which maybe he was given that he’d shed his flannel shirt.
Maybe his cold Minnesota blood wasn’t suited to Southern California.
Maybe she should have listened to him when he tried to decline her invitation.
She clicked open the doors of her car, bracing for him to make a comment about how girlie and/or LA her vehicle was—and it was both.
He said nothing, just threw his stuff in the trunk and buckled himself into the passenger seat.
The only words they spoke on the way out of the airport came when he tried to pay for the parking.
She shut him down, and soon they were zooming up La Brea.
Traffic was surprisingly not bad, but it was still going to take the better part of an hour to get home.
The silence that settled was oppressive.
She should have sent a car.