Chapter 2 A Waste of a Bed
A Waste of a Bed
After the event Sam drove back to her hotel and ordered a room service cheeseburger, then stripped off the red jumpsuit and
sat on the bed in her Spanx. It was such a nice big bed, a California King with crisp sheets smelling of bleach and all those
extra pillows, and it was such a waste. Sam thought this whenever she stepped into a hotel room with her rollaway. Back in
the day, she and her ex-husband, Hank, had despoiled many a hotel bed, but that was before Hank went to rehab. Once that happened,
they pretty much had not gone anywhere at all.
As she waited for her dinner, Sam embarked upon her second job of the evening: social media. She posted her selfie with the
illuminated library sign across all platforms, adding: The Sodbuster tour has reached the end of the trail! Thank you to everyone who came out to hear me read. Next novel underway . . . stay
tuned! She added book and heart emojis, tagged the library, her literary agency, and her publisher, and signed out.
She checked her texts: a couple from unknown numbers that were political or dating app candidates; one from her best friend
and codependency sponsor Drishti.
u done????
Hey D! Yep, the tour is officially over.
The three dots rippled, and Drishti wrote:
congratz kid!!!! How do u feel????
Okay. Not **100%** looking forward to going home and getting back in the chair.
well but thats ur job!!!!! dont u have a contract????
Can’t hear you, going into the tunnel, Sam wrote.
Drishti sent three rolling-on-the-floor-laughing emojis.
how r u celebrating?????
Doing some coke and going clubbing, by which I mean having a cheeseburger and faceplanting.
u wilding
Unless you want to say hi? Sam suggested hopefully.
Cant, kiddo, on shift. But c u manana at group????
Wouldn’t miss it.
kk text me when u get home!!!!!! a workshop student submitting his novel pages; an email
from her agent with a command in the header: CALL ME WHEN YOU GET HOME, ROAD WARRIOR!; a promotion promising to increase Sam’s book sales by up to 400%!—the literary equivalent of a penis extender. Finally the three dots rippled, and Sam’s mom sent her usual string of nonsensical
yet sinister emojis: a penguin head, the ladder, and a hole. Jill had never quite gotten the hang of texting.
“Who knew there even was a hole emoji,” Sam muttered.
Her cheeseburger arrived and she ate it with gusto, swiping through her dating apps with considerably less enthusiasm. She
did this twice a day, a necessary evil like brushing her teeth. Sam had been married for fifteen years, divorced for one,
and in that time it had apparently become all but impossible to meet somebody in a human, organic, rom-com way like a blind
date, or bumping heads when you both reached for an apple rolling down the street. Sam worked from home, and her publishing
colleagues were, like her readers, 98 percent women and 2 percent men who tended to play for the other team. Unless Sam wanted
to wait for a sexy, hyperliterate window-washer to come crashing into her living room, she had to swipe.
Hi cutie nice Smile!!!!!! Wanna chat?
I see your a writer thats cool! What do you write?
Greetings! I, like yourself, am a Laborer in the Trench of Words. You may have heard of my bestselling sci-fi series The Wormhole Galactica, a Top 1000 Seller in self-published books! Would you like to quaff a libation?
hey princess i can write on your tits with my special pen lololol call me at . . .
As Sam closed the apps, she felt as she usually did after a swiping session: mildly beslimed and utterly despairing. Was there
anyone out there like her? She weighed her phone in her hand.
Drishti would scold her for the person Sam was considering calling.
Her codependency group likewise. Even her therapist, if he hadn’t retired.
But Sam was tired and lonely, and she had nobody to celebrate nor commiserate with, and only one person would get how Sam felt in this moment.
She hit the videochat icon for her ex, Hank.
The phone rang and rang, and Sam was about to hang up when the screen suddenly burst into violent tumbling life. “Hang on,” Hank bellowed.
“Okay,” Sam yelled back.
She watched the ceiling and floor switch places as though Hank were on the sinking Titanic. Eventually the image steadied to show Hank sitting in a recliner on the halfway house porch, beneath a bare light bulb,
wearing his Guggenheim T-shirt and a porkpie hat.
“Heyyyy!” he said happily. “Look at you! You look fantastic.”
“So do you,” said Sam, relieved to see it was true: Hank was shaved, showered, and sober. At least, he seemed to be.
He took out a cigar and lighter. “Where you coming from, all dolled up?”
“I just had the final event for my Sodbuster tour.”
Hank stuck his cigar between his teeth to clap. “Bravo, Ms. Vetiver! How do you feel?”
“Freaked out,” Sam admitted. “You know how it is after tour.”
Hank nodded. Like Sam, he had the rare public speaking gene, and before rehab he had traveled nationally to showcase his work.
Hank was, or had been, a renowned portrait photographer. It was how they’d met, Sam’s publisher hiring Hank to take her new
author photo when Sam was nominated for the National Book Award.
“You have tour postpartum,” Hank said now.
“Exactly! I knew you’d get it. It’s so hard to go from the road back to the chair.”
“At least you have the new book to dive into,” Hank pointed out.
“I wish,” said Sam glumly. “But that’s the thing, I don’t. I have five months left until delivery, and I have yet to write
a word.”
Hank’s brows rose over his glasses. “That’s not good. What’s going on?”
“I don’t care about the book,” Sam admitted.
“I can’t plug in emotionally at all,” and as soon as she heard herself say it, she knew it was true.
Many writers Sam knew based books on an idea, a story ripped from the headlines!
or overheard by chance. Sam’s novels came from an emotional place—her bestselling debut, The Sharecropper’s Daughter, was ostensibly about an itinerant girl and her mother doing seasonal farm labor, but in fact it was about Sam’s childhood
with Jill after Sam’s dad died, being dragged from home to home whenever Jill moved on to a new minion, as she called her
husbands. Sam’s subsequent novels had been less successful, and Sam secretly suspected it was because each was more emotionally
removed from her. The one she was meant to write now, The Gold Digger’s Mistress, was loosely based on her great-great-grandfather Ole Nielsen emigrating from Norway, navigating the deadly Drake Passage
to the Gold Rush, finding a fortune, losing it all at poker, and making a reverse trip across the Rockies until he reached
Minnesota, whereupon he married and had eleven children. It was a terrific story, and Sam could not connect to it at all.
“I feel like I’m just reheating my leftovers,” said Sam. “What happens if I don’t hit a home run with this next book? Things
are tough right now. Hercules could cancel my contract.” This was Sam’s publisher.
“Oh, come on,” said Hank. “That sounds like catastrophizing.”
“Because it would be an actual catastrophe,” said Sam.
“Let’s try some evidence-based logic,” Hank suggested. Sam tried not to roll her eyes; Hank had picked up many behavioral
strategies in rehab that were as annoying as they were useful. “How is this recent book doing? Have you asked Mireille?”
“I would,” said Sam, “if I weren’t avoiding her.”
“That sounds healthy. Why are you avoiding your agent?”
“Because I already know what she would say.” Sam adopted a French accent. “Chère Sam, I complétement understand. Making art is not like making vacuum cleaners. But you have a contract, and you must honor it, or Hercules might
revoke it. So get your derrière in the chair!”
Hank laughed. “Trés bien.”
“Merci,” said Sam. She’d been with Mireille for twenty years, longer than her marriage to Hank. She’d earned the accent.
“Can they actually revoke your contract?”
“Yes sir. And make me give back my advance.”
Hank paused mid-puff. “I thought that was an urban legend to keep writers in line.”
“Oh hell no, it’s true. They can sue me for it. Or they could, if I hadn’t spent it.”
“Good Lord, girl, on what? Botox?”
“It is called a mortgage,” said Sam, more acidly than she’d intended. Hank had been flush when they first met, but for much of their marriage she’d
carried their Little House in the Berkshires and their other expenses too. The halfway house where Hank lived now was so filthy
Sam peed in the bushes when she last visited, but it was state-subsidized, as were Hank’s groceries. He had no overhead.
“You best get to writing, girl,” said Hank.
“I know. But how? I’ve never been blocked like this before.”
Hank blew a smoke ring and followed its progress toward the light bulb. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
Ding! Sam could practically hear the timer that signaled the end of Hank’s interest. She felt a familiar irritation, more at herself
than at him. It was true that she’d spent years of their married life proofreading Hank’s agency contracts, analyzing gallery
owner communications, and peering at contact sheets to select the images for Hank’s exhibits. Not to mention all the time
in emergency rooms, police stations, counselors’ offices, and Family Day at rehab. But Hank had been kind to her this evening.
They were no longer married. He was under no obligation to Sam. And extended attention span was not a recovering alcoholic’s
greatest strength. What’d you expect, kid, Sam could hear Drishti saying, you went to a hardware store for bread!
“I’ll tell you one thing, you might have writer’s block, but you look like a million bucks,” said Hank. He made a horny Frenchman
hon hon hon noise, but his voice was wistful when he asked, “Any chance of a visit?” He meant could Sam come to the halfway house, which
he couldn’t leave with his ankle bracelet on.
“I’ll check my schedule when I get home,” Sam promised.
Hank sculpted the end of his cigar against his ashtray. “I sure wish I could be there when you land, Ms. Vetiver,” he said
to it. “I still love you, you know.”
Sam smiled sadly in the middle of the big empty bed.
“I know,” she said. “I love you too.”