Chapter 26 Unicorn Central
Unicorn Central
Dahl Hus, though, added its own charming twist, which was the addition of literal dollhouses throughout the space.
There were a dozen or so of different styles and sizes on shelves on the far wall, and on a shelf above the booze behind the bar, an impressive Victorian was displayed such that patrons sitting at the bar could see into the rooms—which were inhabited by Nativity figurines.
Jesus and Joseph were chilling in the living room, but Mary was in the bathtub upstairs.
The three wise men were seated at the kitchen table, and there were assorted donkeys throughout.
Which, come to think of it, probably meant the strings of lights were in fact Christmas remnants.
“We can switch.” Jack picked up his plate of parmesan pan-fried walleye and tried to hand it to her.
She waved him off. “No, no, you told me.” He had explained that parmesan pan-fried was the best way to order the Minnesota state fish, and still Blair had gone with lemon broiled.
“You have to at least try some of this.” Jack cut off a generous chunk of his fish and plopped it on her plate.
“You were right,” she said after a bite. It was meaty and crisp and cheesy but not overly heavy like deep-fried fish often was. “Walleye: Who knew?”
He tried again to switch their plates and yet again she had the semisuspicious thought Why are you being so nice? “We’ll come back, and I’ll rectify my error in judgment.”
“How long do you think you’ll want to stay in town?”
Forever.
Not really, but this was the place. Everything about the cabin, and the town, screamed Green Light. Blair’s body was buzzing. But not in the cyclone way. In a good way, and she had forgotten what that felt like.
“I don’t think I need to stay too long up here. Maybe I’ll poke around a bit tomorrow, look for some secondary locations, but the cabin is a winner, as long as Allie’s cool with it. I just… find myself not wanting to leave.”
“We don’t have to. Allie said they’re not going to be using the cabin for at least a couple weeks.”
“But if I’m done scouting…”
“Then you’re…” He made a face of mock horror. “On vacation.”
“Oh, like you’re so good at R & R.” She reached out to swat his arm but reversed course. Arm swatting was awfully flirty. She and Jack were having sex, but they shouldn’t be flirty. Right?
Thinking about it was confusing, so she decided not to think about it. She tried a Tater Tot—yes, she had opted for the broiled fish but had selected Tater Tots for her side dish. Contradiction was the spice of life. No, actually, the truffle aioli served with the Tots was the spice of life.
“You think Allie would be OK with next summer for filming?” Blair asked, taking care that her tone was Certified Nonflirty.
“I’m sure she’d be OK with anything. They don’t use the place that much, and she told me she would put whatever you’re paying her in her daughter’s college fund. But honestly, I think she’d do it for free. She’s a huge fan. I had no idea.”
“A lot of women of a certain age found Hidden Gems inspiring.”
“Were you offended that she was trying to give you so much credit for it?”
“Not at all. That happens a lot. In the old days, it used to rankle, because I truly felt the credit for a movie should go to the writer, the director, and the producers, in that order. It’s not that I thought or think that acting is unimportant.
I was a good actor. But I wasn’t a great one, you know? ”
“You keep saying that, but is that true?”
“I’m not saying I wasn’t good. But I was never going to win an Oscar, at least with the kinds of roles I was getting.
But probably not regardless. So being awarded ‘credit’ for a movie just kind of made me feel like I wasn’t…
doing enough, you know? It’s actually what inspired me to start the production company, and the book club. ”
“You were a storyteller miscast as an actor.”
“Maybe.”
She didn’t want him to start in on her about the Green Light script, so she changed the subject. “You and Allie seem tight. You never dated?”
“No, no.”
He sounded a little horrified. “Not even any teenage crushes?”
“No. Our dads were close, and they were both single parents. Well, Allie’s dad was a single parent.
My dad was a summer parent. They spent a lot of time together, and we were always tagging along.
And we were both bookish only children, so we did our thing while they did theirs.
Allie was almost a sister. A summer sister. ”
“You have a summer sister and you never told me?” She was kidding, but it had been a little disconcerting to meet someone who had such a history with Jack.
“Do you have siblings?”
“Don’t you think you’d know if I had a sibling?”
“Would I?”
“Well, you know about my kids and my ex-husband. You know about my parents.”
“That’s true.”
“Probably part of the reason my parents were—are—so intense was that I was the sole focus of their attention.”
“Allie was like a sister,” Jack said. “I’ve done an abysmal job staying in touch, and I’m ashamed of myself for it.”
Wow. “Well, it’s never too late to start again.”
“True. Plus, being the person who introduced her to Blair Kellermoon will probably go a long way in terms of amends.”
“Ha ha.”
“Anyway, let’s stay a few days.”
“You don’t need to work?”
He snorted in a way that struck her as slightly self-deprecating.
“What?”
“I sound like a fucking broken record, but I should be working on a proposal for my next book, and guess what? I have nothing.”
“Hmm.” Blair was full of questions, but she wasn’t sure an interrogation would help.
“You’ve never asked me about my process.”
“I know, but I’ve been dying to.”
“Why censor yourself? That doesn’t seem very you.”
“Are you trying to say I’m nosy?” she teased.
“I’m not not saying that.”
She cracked up. “I am nosy. But I will say for the record that the same qualities that make people call me nosy would likely be deemed curiosity or imaginativeness in a man. I haven’t asked you about your process because I thought you would hate that question.”
“You would be right. I hate the question, and I hate the word itself. Process. It sounds like something an auditor would say, or an internet self-help quack.”
“But? You suddenly want to tell me about your process?” She was teasing, but she sincerely hoped the answer was yes.
“I suddenly want to tell you about my process.” He paused. “Apparently.” Another pause. “Because then maybe you can tell me what’s wrong with it.”
A flare of excitement in Blair’s chest had her physically clapping her hands together.
“You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
Blair’s first instinct was to make a joke about NDAs, but, sensing it wouldn’t land—though when had that ever stopped her with the historically very serious Jack?—she went instead with an earnest statement. “You can trust me.”
He looked at her for what felt like an age but was probably more like a few seconds before saying, “I know.” The staring continued for another few seconds before he started talking.
“When people talk about the writing process, they usually want to know either what how-to book they can use that will magically make them masters of prose, or they want to hear that I light a candle next to my computer and write for two hours, then go for a walk in the forest to recharge my spiritual battery.”
Blair snickered. She had missed getting regular doses of Jack’s wit.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. My process is: I see the book, and then I write the book. Well, I don’t see all the book. If I did, I wouldn’t have any problems.”
That was not what she’d expected. “What does that mean, you see the book?”
“I get a flash of an image I know belongs in the book.”
“I find this fascinating,” Blair said. “Where do you think those images come from?”
“There’s a question worth asking. I wish people would ask me questions like that.”
“What’s the answer?”
“Just because it’s a good question doesn’t mean I know how to answer it. I suppose from my imagination, but it feels like they arrive fully formed—the images, I mean, not the book, alas—from some other place.”
“The collective unconscious? Paging Carl Jung?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. To be honest, I don’t love the woo-woo-ness of it. But it’s an interesting thing to ponder. In Time started with the image of a family on the end of a pier with a Ferris wheel behind them.”
“Oh!” Blair knew this image!
“I get an image, and then the work is to figure out what’s going on in it.
And what led up to it. And what happens after it.
” He paused. “I’m making it sound easier than it is.
It’s not a clear image I can see straight on.
It’s a flash, almost akin to a mirage. If I look at it too closely, it shimmers away. ”
“It reminds me of Emily of New Moon.”
“Who?”
“Emily of New Moon. A series by L. M. Montgomery that is inexplicably less popular than Anne of Green Gables. Emily is a writer, and she has these supernatural episodes she calls the flash. She describes it as a curtain being lifted between two worlds.”
“What’s the other world? Creative inspiration?”
“I can’t remember exactly. Some of her flashes were memories. Some of them were more mysterious.”
Jack made a noise of vague dissatisfaction. “The problem is, and this is getting back to the proposal I’m supposed to be writing, it seems like they’re gone, these images. If my process is to sit around and wait for woo-woo images to arrive, what do I do when they don’t?”
“Ah. I see the problem.”
“It took me years to write In Time. And two to write the second book, and that only happened because you basically dragged it out of me.”
“Maybe you don’t have any more books in you. Or maybe you can’t write to a schedule.”
“But then I’m back to my old problem of I need money.”
“Gosh, maybe you should consider alternate sources of income. Have you thought about selling out to Hollywood?” Blair was gambling that even though Jack was being uncharacteristically open, it was best to proceed as she normally would, with a mix of earnestness and humor.