Chapter 12 The Future Perfect
The Future Perfect
“So this is your apartment,” said William.
He and Sam were lying naked on the floor of Sam’s library, Sam’s head pillowed on William’s chest. All around them their clothes
lay where they’d been shucked, peeled, and ripped off in great haste, as if the people in them had exploded, then been raptured.
“I’m a little disappointed,” William said. “I thought there’d be more books.”
Sam laughed. William gently dislodged her and stood to prowl her shelves. Sam watched happily. He had a few days’ worth of
scruff now, glinting with silver and long enough to be soft. And she really enjoyed observing him stroll around naked. Aside
from liking big guys, Sam didn’t care much about the nude male form—she’d never oohed and aahed over six-pack abs or bulging
pecs or tight ends in sport uniforms. To Sam, it was a man’s mouth, the way he smelled, the intersection between his mind
and sensuality that mattered. His attentiveness. His sense of naughtiness and play. She was thrilled to find that she and
William were pitched in exactly the same key this way, more than anyone Sam had ever met, so she knew almost before she did
it that if she touched him this way, he’d groan; that and he’d get a devilishly intent look that meant Watch out, girl, I’m about to throw you down. It was uncanny how well they fit.
William wasn’t thirty; he had the usual scrapes and dings from the decades, maybe more because he’d used his body hard and
well. Watermelon-pit scars around his right knee from surgery. A translucent circle the size of a peach pit on one hip, a
toe banged permanently crooked. Scratches and bruises of indeterminate origin. He had a slight paunch that he hated and slapped
with a scowl, and the hair on his chest was silver—but the erectile matter Tabby had mentioned and Sam had wondered about
after the fort? A nonissue. William had popped a pill with dinner, and Sam had said, All the better to ravish me with?
He’d looked confused, then smiled. Oh, this isn’t Viagra, honey, it’s for my ticker.
I take these for arrhythmia. He’d slid his hand up Sam’s thigh under the table.
I don’t need pharmaceutical help to do this, he’d said, thumbing her thong aside. I can take care of you all on my own.
“Impressive collection,” William said now of Sam’s books. He held out a hand to help Sam up. “Show me the rest of the place?
And don’t you dare put any clothes on.”
Sam walked him through the apartment. “Kitchen. Bathroom. Sleeping loft, which maybe you’ll see if you play your cards right—though
so far you seem to be a man allergic to beds. And this is my study.” She hugged herself, feeling almost more naked than she
had when William had first hoisted her against her foyer wall and yanked up her skirt.
William explored this room, too, squinting without his glasses. “Nice ego shelf,” he said of the display of Sam’s first and
foreign editions, the covers with women in red. “Pretty maids all in a row.” He bent to peer at Ole Nielsen. “Is this your
stubborn protagonist? Handsome.” He straightened. “But where’s the rest of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s immaculate in here,” he said. “The walls should look like a crime scene breakdown. Please tell me you’re the neatest
writer who ever lived. Because otherwise you’re more blocked than I thought.”
“I’m completely blocked,” Sam admitted.
“Oh, sugarplum.” William pulled out her desk chair, sat, and patted his thigh. “Come.”
Sam went, leaning into his reassuring solidity. William combed his fingers through the remains of Sam’s braid, untangling the snarl their energetic lovemaking had made of her hair.
“I know you said you don’t discuss your work in progress,” he said, “but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Darlings,
it’s that talking it through might help.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Are you, though? When’s your delivery date?”
“Five months—no, four,” Sam said, her stomach sinking.
“That’s a minute from now. Please let me help you. What if we just brainstormed? Not about your current book. But other ideas.
What if you think laterally: Do you have other books you might want to write?”
“I have no books I want to write,” Sam said, and laughed. “That’s the problem. I think I might be done.”
William skimmed his fingers up Sam’s obliques in a way that made her squirm and swat his hands. “I’m going to keep doing this
until you take it back. You are not allowed to be done.”
“Okay, fine. I’m not done. I’m just fucked.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, his voice dropping into the low growling register Sam was becoming familiar with and to which she
had an instant, happy anatomical response. “And you will be again. Soon. Meanwhile, I’m serious. Do you have other concepts
in the bullpen?”
Sam sighed. “Just wisps,” she said. “But before Ole, I thought I might write about . . . a rumrunner. Dual timeline, the woman
who runs a boardinghouse now and her great-grandmother. Both of them married to alcoholics. The great-grandmother’s husband
is the rumrunner . . .”
“Now that,” said William, “is pure historical fiction gold. Why didn’t you pitch it?”
Sam shrugged. “It didn’t feel ready yet.”
William drew Sam’s detangled hair to one side, exposing her neck. “What if,” he murmured against her nape, “you set Ole aside
and we work on this rumrunner idea?”
“I can’t,” said Sam. “I’m under contract for Gold Digger.”
“That’s horseshit. It means nothing. They don’t care what you hand in, as long as you hand in something that’s the same genre.”
“Is that true?” said Sam. “I’ve never done that before.”
“It is true.”
“Says the man who switches genres with every book.”
“How do you think I get away with that?” William said. “I tell them I’m going to write one thing, and then I write another.
Nobody has ever said boo.” His hands began to rove. “I bet your editor won’t even notice.”
Sam thought this was untrue; Patricia would almost certainly remark on the fact that her gold miner had morphed into a rumrunner.
But it wasn’t a bad idea. “Are you sure?” she said. “It’s kosher for me to just kill this darling?”
William had been tiptoeing his fingers between Sam’s thighs, but now they stopped. “Do not use that malapropism around me,
please. I loathe it.”
“What?” said Sam, confused. “Kosher?”
“No. Kill your darlings. Did you know that most common piece of writing advice is also stolen? It was originally murder your
darlings. Billy Faulkner appropriated it.”
“I never heard that,” said Sam. “Who said it first?”
“The fellow’s name escapes me now,” said William. “Which only proves how easy it is for one’s literary legacy to be obliterated
once somebody else purloins it. My greater point being, I hate a thief.”
“Okay,” said Sam, thinking, Now there’s a trigger. “Noted.”
William’s hands recommenced their stealthy southward slide. “What if we work on this new book idea together? I’ll help you.
I’ll be your writing Sherpa and sex toy.”
“You’re so generous,” Sam said.
“I’m a giver,” he agreed. “Let’s give it a try, what do you have to lose?”
Matters progressed. The chair rolled dangerously beneath them. William stood and turned to set Sam on the desk, then dumped
her suddenly on her feet.
“What is this?” he said, bending to retrieve a greeting card from the rug.
The card featured Hemingway at his typewriter, above the caption: I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.
Most people never listen. That was not what William was asking about.
He held out the paper that had slid from the card, which said:
YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, SIMONE. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE YOU LISTEN? STAY THE F*CK AWAY FROM WILLIAM CORWYN.
“Oh,” said Sam. “That.”
“Yes. This. What is this, Simone?”
“It’s nothing,” said Sam. “It was taped to my apartment door when I came home last week.”
“It was inside?”
“No, no. The outer door. It’s fine.” Although the thought of the Rabbit waiting in the bushes outside Sam’s building like
a rat and then darting in behind some delivery person was not pleasing.
“It is in no way fine.” William set the note on the desk and began to pace. “I hate that she’s targeting you.”
“So you think it’s the Rabbit too.”
“Likely.”
Sam watched him stalk her study. “Then that’s okay, right? Because you said she never does anything. Just leaves notes.”
“She never does anything to me,” said William. “Who knows what she’s capable of with someone else.”
He came to Sam and took her hands.
“There is one other possibility,” he said. “I had . . . a complication a month or two ago. Not a relationship, although she
seems to think it was. I thought we were just having some saucy fun. But when I broke it off, she was wildly angry.” He sighed.
“I’m not proud of myself. I crossed a boundary. She was from the Darlings.”
“Oh, William,” Sam groaned.
“I know.” William rubbed his emerging beard.
“It was a grave error in judgment. She’s fragile, so I was gentle with her, and I thought ignoring her was the best course of action.
But she’s been contacting me, and I think I must talk to her again, more emphatically. I’m sorry if this hurts you to hear.”
Sam blew out a ball of air. “It’s not my favorite,” she admitted. “But I get it. Life is messy.”
“Thank you.” William gazed down at her. “Meanwhile, Simone, maybe we should stop seeing each other for now. I’d rather mourn
the loss of you than put you in harm’s way for even a moment.”
“No,” Sam said, feeling the free fall of panic. She smacked William lightly on the bicep. “I refuse. Why should some poor deranged
girl have the power to decide what we do? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—honestly, I can see this really being something
serious, William.”
William ran his thumb down Sam’s cheek. “Same. It’s perishingly rare, what we have.”
“Yes,” Sam said. “I’m in if you are.”
“Have you told anyone about the threat? Reported it to the police?”
“Of course,” said Sam. “I took it right down to the station. They can’t do anything—as you know. But it’s all on record.”
William cinched his arms around Sam and propped his chin on her head. “At least,” he said, his voice a rumble against her
cheek, “if we’re together, I can protect you.”
Sam laced her fingers behind his back, grateful he couldn’t see her face. When was the last time somebody had said this to
her? Exactly never. She thought of visiting Hank in inpatient, the winter of his suicide attempt. The cubby in which she had
to stow her phone, her jewelry, her boots because they had laces. How she had to be buzzed into the unit. How Hank’s clothes
had been replaced by mint-green scrubs and the smell of his skin by rubbing alcohol. How slow and slurred his speech had been.
And how, when she drove home, the sun was low over the bare trees and she sat in her study by herself, paying bills and making
dinner in the Crock-Pot because somebody had to. Maintaining.
“What if,” said William into Sam’s hair, “we do go the distance? Do you remember what I said to you at the fort, Simone?”
“Zoop?” said Sam.
William laughed and drew Sam down onto the rug.
“Yes, Zoop. But also that you’re safe with me. Do you remember? Do you believe it?”
“I’m trying to,” Sam said.
William knelt above her, swept Sam’s legs apart with his knee, bent over.
“What if you come to my house in Maine?” he said. “What if you’re naked all the time. Venus de Milo—ing around the grounds.
What if you slept with me every night . . . and I brought you coffee every morning . . . and I made you a study where you
could write? What if I were your in-house sounding board? What if you didn’t have to do it alone? What if you were so happy
and cared for and sated . . . you wrote that damned book in a month?”
What if. Every fiction writer’s magic wand, the necessary plot-conjuring device. Could it survive the transition to real life? What
if it did? What if indeed?
Sam moaned. William pulled out and flipped her over.
“Your back, Simone,” he murmured in her ear. “Your shoulder blades are made for angel wings. What if . . . we’re making the
future perfect?”