Chapter 19 Into the Woods #2
“Somebody broke into my room at the retreat. Trashed it and took my laptop.”
“That’s terrible! Did you report it?”
“The owners did. They were mortified. They said they’d never had a break-in before.” Simone sighs. “They don’t have a security
system beyond locking the doors at night because they host only writers. What’re people going to steal?”
“Um, laptops?”
“Well, we know that now.”
“Please tell me you backed up your work.”
“Sort of,” says Simone. “I keep forgetting to use my thumb drive, but I’ve been emailing myself what I’m working on at the
end of every day.”
I grind my knuckles into the pine bark. Fuck. Not only is she appropriating my past, she’s stealing my backup method. And she didn’t tell me this. It’s unwelcome news.
It means her new purloined abomination still exists out there somewhere.
“That’s a relief. And you can always get a new laptop.”
“I’m going to have to. I found the old one by the duck pond. It looked like somebody had run over it with a truck.”
“Wait,” says the ex. “That makes no sense. If someone stole it to fence it, why would they destroy it?”
“Because they weren’t going to pawn it. It was a warning. To me. I think from this insane woman who’s been stalking me ever
since . . . I got involved with another writer. A guy, I mean.” Simone glances at him. “Sorry, do you not want me to talk
to you about this?”
“It stings a little,” he admits. “But go on.”
Simone tells him about the Rabbit. “It’s probably her. Although it also could be another woman, an ex William tried to break
it off with, who’s maybe not taking no for an answer . . .”
“Let me get this straight,” he says. “This guy has not one but two women stalking him.”
“Not him. Me. And it’s probably only one. I just can’t tell which one. But I’m pretty sure she, whichever it was, is the one who broke into my room at the retreat and trashed it. Nobody else’s room was touched.”
“Did she leave you a note this time?”
Simone pauses. “No. Come to think of it, she didn’t. Unless I just didn’t see it . . . I was upset, so I didn’t look that
closely.”
“I’ll bet. Sam, I don’t want to overstep, but I have to say: This guy sounds like bad news.”
That is a bit of an overstep, pal, I think.
“Not overstepping,” says Simone. “Caring. It’s not his fault, though.”
“I’m not sure I agree. You said not one but two women. It sounds like a pattern. And patterns don’t make themselves. He either
didn’t stop them—or he’s actively encouraging it.”
Simone laughs. “That’s dramatic.”
“It’s a dramatic situation. Stalking? Notes in your apartment? Now a break-in? Good grief, why are you staying with this guy?”
Simone sighs. “I’m not sure I am with him. We’re kind of on the outs right now. Not because of the dramatic situation. Because of the book.”
Simone tells him about our contretemps and my ultimatum. I listen carefully for any note of derision, but she simply recites
the story. “He feels I’m appropriating his life for material,” she says. “And it makes him not trust me. So we’re at a stalemate
at the moment.”
“Of course you’re appropriating. That’s what writers do, borrow from life. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”
“I mean, sure. Little bits and pieces, anyway, and then we change it. The story becomes its own thing. And he knows that,
of course. But he was really pissed about it, I clearly hit a nerve there, and no matter how much I apologized, he can’t hear
me. So now I have an impossible choice to make: Man or book?”
“You want to know what I think?”
Not in the slightest.
“Of course,” says Simone.
“Nobody worthy of you would put you in that position. Why would you dump the book? It’s the first time I’d heard you excited about your work in ages. Dump the guy.”
Cicadas whir while Simone considers her answer. Her ex smokes serenely, continuing to pollute the orchard. It just seems so
dangerous, putting a recovering alcoholic in charge of a property, especially one who smokes. Don’t they say an addict never
really recovers, that he must be vigilant every day? And isn’t isolation poison to them? What if this poor bastard, stranded
here without a car, grew so lonely he took his emergency handle of vodka from its hiding place, in a high cabinet or in the
dry grass near the Airstream’s tires, and poured himself a shot? And another and another? And what if he lit a cigar while
drinking and passed out with it in his hand? What if? Anything at all could happen to a drunk living alone in the woods.
Finally Simone says, “I don’t think William and I are over . . .”
I smile behind my tree. Good girl.
“But I’m not ready to give up on the new thriller idea, either,” she admits.
Wrong answer, Simone. Very wrong answer.
“Is it bad I’m hoping it goes badly with him?” he says, and she laughs.
“It’s human,” she says. She stands and stretches. I watch him eyeing her breasts beneath her thin T-shirt as she arches her
back. Behold ’em and weep, you poor sucker, I think. They used to be yours. Now they’re mine. If I want them.
“I’d better go,” Simone says. “I want to hit the road before dark.”
He stands, too, and hugs her. “Remember when we talked about getting an Airstream just like this and driving around the country?
And I’d take portraits of people while you wrote and sold pies out the back window?”
Simone laughs. “I remember you having a fantasy about this that I in no way partook in.”
He draws back to look at her. “You sure you don’t want to reconsider?”
“I’m good, thank you,” she says. “Besides, you seem like you’re in a solid place now. With your friends the bears and all.”
They embrace again, and now I do make my silent departure. Let them have their tender moment.
Eight months, is what I’m thinking as I make my way back to my car. I have a two-book contract, All the Lambent Souls being the first, and the second is due in eight months. I have only that long to deliver it. Is it worth continuing with
Simone? It’s starting to seem like a lot of work for diminishing returns. It is very sad, but I didn’t hear the answers I
was hoping for today. So Simone didn’t bang her dumpster fire of an ex; bully for her. I’d rather she fuck a platoon than
say what she said. Not sure which book to write indeed. It’s imperative I be with a woman who supports my creative needs, not tears them down. How can I be with one who
shows such disrespect? I cannot.
Back in my car, I wipe pine sap and blood from my knuckles and retrieve my phone from the glove box. There are responses from
the messages I sent yesterday. Good. Hello, backups! I’m reading them when I hear Simone’s Jeep coming and slide down in my seat. There’s a pause, as if she’s idling at the end
of the drive while I sweat here. A text from her pops silently onto my screen:
I miss you. ??
She drives off. I’m about to do the same when another vehicle comes up behind me and I have to duck again. What the hell?
This is a lot of traffic for a private road. Is it the owner of the big house, or some guests he’s hosting for dinner, perhaps?
Then I see who it is and start to laugh. Simone and I might be done, but she won’t be lonely. As the Rabbit barrels past me
in her rustbucket, I see beneath the brim of her ballcap the unmistakable overbite.