Chapter Twenty-One
With Thanksgiving three days away, Merritt and Whit were on a roll. They had recently passed the halfway point of the novel—they
were deep within the murky middle, the part every writer hated, and they were stomping through it like fearless, well-seasoned
explorers intuiting the proper paths to take. They had crafted a comfortable, habitual world for themselves, communicating
often through looks and hmms and glances at the clock. Merritt started bringing new teas for them to try, and she had left one of her sweatshirts hanging
on the coatrack for days when the house felt drafty. She had a favorite mug and a favorite blanket; the chair nearest the
fire was hers in the early hours of their work, and the spot on the rug in the patch of sun was where she moved as dinnertime
approached. Annie, now on break from school, would swan in and out of the living room, “bothering” Merritt, who loved it.
She would talk with the eight-year-old about books and TV shows and what she wanted for Christmas.
Merritt was really happy. Scrolling on her phone from the cracked red leather chair during a break at the bookstore, she was
thinking about just how happy she was: the kind of state, she would later think, virtually guaranteed to result in bad news.
Thus, the text from Bebe shouldn’t have come as a shock, though of course it did. Things like this were impossible to take
in stride.
Forwarded you an email you need to see, Bebe wrote. I didn’t respond, and as far as I know, no one else did either. The faculty have asked us not to. Call me if you want to talk.
Merritt’s stomach looped itself into a Mobius strip as she navigated to her email and opened the top forwarded message.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Ian Hoult. You may have read some of my books—at least I hope you have! (If not, they are available for purchase
at this link.)
I’m currently writing a story for The Atlantic about Graydon Lyons and his latest book, Serious Games.
For this piece, an investigation of the rumors that the work is a roman à clef or something similar, I’m trawling the depths for any true-to-life details that might grant me the clef to this roman.
I write this with an e-wink and an e-nudge, but I’m sure you’ll understand the obstacles I face. People are often reticent
to speak up about a beloved mentor or to speculate about the meaning of a work of literature. As such, I am reaching out to ask that question burning in each of our minds: What’s the true story of Graydon Lyons? What is he really like? What’s fiction? What’s fact?
Perhaps you know, perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you know someone who knows someone. Perhaps you’ve heard something, however frivolous,
you think would be worth sharing. I can promise you a listening ear and a discreet pen, not to mention my immense gratitude.
Please feel free to email or give me a call at your earliest convenience.
Cheers,
Ian Hoult
“Fuck,” Merritt hissed. The tangle in her stomach seemed to have doubled in weight as cold tingles crisscrossed her skin. She scrolled
up, frantic, and skimmed the email addresses in the forwarded email. Ian had done the mental math necessary to send this missive
to all the third years and, she thought, to the last three or four graduating classes.
“Shit, fuck, fuck.”
“Goodness,” said Diana, looking up from the display where she was micromanaging Huong’s arrangement of various fall cookbooks.
“Is everything all right?”
Her ivory-colored hair was in a ponytail today that swayed as she surveyed Merritt. There was a hint of eagerness in her eyes,
and Merritt was sure her mind had wandered up the hill to Whit’s house.
“Um,” Merritt said, looking to Huong, who was intrigued herself but without all the indecent eye-work. “It’s nothing.”
Diana and Huong narrowed their eyes in unison.
“It’s just something with an ex.”
Merritt wanted to stand, to put distance between herself and the now-oppressive heat of the fireplace, but that would look
like retreating from the scrutiny of her coworkers’ eyes. That would look like this was a big deal.
She shrugged instead, clearly unconvincingly, because Huong laughed at her, while Diana very nearly scampered over to perch
herself on the armrest of the mismatched Edwardian sofa.
“Well,” Diana said, and Merritt could tell she was excited about the word she was going to use next. “Dish.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Merritt said, straightening up as if about to stand. “It’s fine.”
Huong, with her eyes trained on the cookbooks, muttered, “You said ‘fuck’ three times.”
Merritt pressed her head against the chair. She did not have to tell these women anything. She did not owe it to them.
But Ian’s email had not been about her, not really.
It had been about Graydon and what he was really like.
What he was really like was a man who performed progressiveness in order to mask his serial womanizing.
Merritt had been fooled by this behavior, but that did not make her the fool.
And anyway, Diana had been surprisingly restrained about Merritt’s working relationship with Whit after their car ride, while Huong, she sensed, would be on team Screw Graydon Always and Forever.
Right. Screw Graydon, then.
“Okay,” she said, before tumbling into a short version of the story: boyfriend, breakup, book.
Diana, paying rapt attention, raised her eyebrows as high as her recent Botox treatment would allow. Even Huong detached herself
from her arrangements and came to join their boss on the sofa somewhere around the part where Merritt was explaining Graydon’s
jokey promise that he’d never write about her and Bebe telling her about the draft he’d shared in workshop. By the time she
read the email aloud, both women were shaking their heads in angry solidarity.
“I never liked him,” Diana said.
“Graydon? You know him?”
“No, Ian Hoult. A cold-blooded striver, if you ask me.”
The older woman shrugged demurely, as if they might scold her for saying the truth, then she smoothed the creases on the silk
scarf tied at her neck and returned her hands to her lap.
“I know he’s supposed to be a good writer—he and Lyons—but I find it all so boring.”
“Well.”
Merritt’s mind was divided: Graydon’s books at least were good, and yet the thrill of having spotted a fellow hater in the
wild was powerful. Though she suspected that Diana was putting on an exaggerated show of solidarity, it was nice regardless.
“Do you think your friend is right?” Huong asked seriously.
“Bebe?”
“Yeah. Do you think she’s right that no one will respond to him?”
Merritt heaved a deep breath from her lungs. “No. I don’t know. She’s just being kind, probably. People love gossip, and it’s not hard to send an email and ask to be kept anonymous.”
Huong nodded. Diana shook her head.
“Pigs, they’re all pigs.”
“Ian’s just doing his job,” Merritt said, mostly to fill space. “He’s not targeting me.”
“Fuck that,” Huong said. “If he read the book, he knows he’s doing a hit job.”
The sweat on Merritt’s neck and back was immediate.
“What? Have you read the book?”
“Yes,” Huong said flatly, as if it were obvious.
“Is it awful?”
“The book or the grad student part?”
“Both.”
Huong exhaled, then looked at the fire before finally forcing her eyes back to meet Merritt’s.
“The book is unfortunately good. And it’s not nice. The character, Isabel, she becomes pretty unsympathetic. And by the end,
it’s clear that she’s been fooling everyone about her talents and that she’s actually more or less insubstantial as a writer.
And there are some gratuitous descriptions of her boobs and ass and ‘curvy hips’ and comparatively few mentions of the professor’s
presumably flabby old-man body.”
Merritt clenched the armrests while Huong continued.
“And if Ian Hoult knows that, then he knows that revealing the source material isn’t going to do that person any favors.”
“But . . .” Merritt had to force herself to say it. “Does she seem . . . like me? Is it obvious?”
Huong actually closed her eyes to think. She hesitated.
“Be honest,” Merritt urged.
Huong sighed. “Yeah, a little. She looks like you, and there are elements of the plot that sound like the story you just told. She approaches him at a party. On one of their trips to London, the professor tells her she’d make a great protagonist for his next novel.
At the end, she drops out and moves home with her parents. ”
For the first time in their acquaintance, Huong offered her a look of pained sympathy. Merritt hardly noticed.
“Fuck,” she said again.
Diana nodded. “Fuck him.”
“Diana!”
Even Huong laughed at that. The older woman shrugged again.
“Fuck them both. Pigs.”
“If Ian comes around here again,” Huong said, “we’ll just lay him out. It wouldn’t be hard to push a bookshelf onto him.”
“Don’t,” Merritt said, managing to laugh. “Then he’d just know he was on to something.”
The bell above the door rang, and all three women’s heads whipped around to see Moishe arriving for his shift.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I know a coven meeting when I see one.”
He doffed his messenger cap and moved quickly into the break room.
That meant Merritt’s shift was over, and anyway, the spell was broken. The three women stood, and Diana briefly put a hand
on Merritt’s shoulder.
“Maybe nothing will come of it.”
“Maybe,” Merritt said, nodding her thanks with a small, hollow smile.
Well, this was a new experience. Whit’s phone was ringing. The name on his screen said joan eaton—work. Yet Whit was not panicking. In fact, he was excited.
“Hi, Joan,” he said, surprising even himself by answering the agent’s call, despite his mental goal to unplug, as he usually
did while walking by the stream in the woods behind his house.
Joan sounded surprised, too. “Whit! Hi. I’m glad I caught you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” he said, actually smiling.
“Really?’
“Really. I’m good. How are you? Any big plans for tomorrow?”