The Romance Writer #2
“Oh, are they now?” he teases, twisting his voice to mimic hers in a way that makes Priscilla’s hackles rise, but Millie only sticks out her tongue.
They arrived together, shortly after she did, their voices crashing through the quiet house, her high squeal and his belly laugh, their arms already linked, even though they just met on the boat. Oh to be young and have low standards.
“Yeah, they are,” Millie says with faux outrage. “And the urgency reflects the way everything feels life-or-death when you’re sixteen. And okay, so what if there’s romance in there, too. Romance is all about tension! Right, Priscilla?”
She blinks, and for a horrible second, her mind goes blank. Her fingers twitch toward the flower-pin, desperate to hold on to something. But then the moment passes, and she bobs her head.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Kenzo’s right. Every genre uses the same deck of metaphorical cards, even if they use those cards to play a different game.”
“Ha!” barks Malcolm. “I like that.”
“Careful,” says Sienna. “He’ll steal it.”
“Art is theft,” says Jaxon, clearly expecting a “Hear, hear” and getting only looks. In the short but heady silence, he adds, “You know, in the truest sense. We’re always walking in someone else’s footsteps.”
Priscilla clears her throat, eyes drifting to the shallow stack of paper on the coffee table. She and the others have already filled theirs out, but now she offers the last blank form to Sienna and Malcolm.
“You’ll need to sign one of these.”
Sienna takes the sheet, frowning when she sees the words printed across the top.
NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT
“An NDA? Seriously?” She looks around. “Isn’t that a little much?”
“Everything about this place is a little much,” says Kenzo blandly.
Malcolm plucks the paper from her hand and gives it a cursory look. “Arty’s always been notoriously private,” he says.
“Arty?” says Jaxon, but Malcolm presses on.
“Besides, these salons of his are sacred. A chance to talk through ideas, past, present, and future. Wouldn’t want those secrets getting out.”
“I guess,” says Sienna, obviously looking around for something to sign with. Priscilla finally lets herself reach for the golden flower pinned to her dress, revealing it for what it is: the decorative cap of a pen.
A gift from her mom, and a nod to the fact that even when she was supposed to be off the clock, on a date, or home for Christmas, some part of her was always working.
Sienna uncaps the pen, and frowns. She obviously expected it to be black, but the tip, where the ink shows, is beaded crimson.
“What kind of serial killer writes in red?” asks Jaxon with a nervous chuckle, repeating the same line he gave her when he borrowed it to sign his own paper.
Priscilla shrugs. She knows it’s a common superstition among writers—had a friend who claimed it was the ink equivalent of a scythe, slashing through his work, that he would only accept edits done in a friendly shade of green or blue—but personally, she’s never understood the repulsion.
Surely what’s being written is more important than what color it’s being written in.
Sienna and Malcolm sign, neither writing their own name. Instead, he makes two grand flourishes—a P and an S—and then Sienna does the rest, scribbling in enn and tonely, their two styles locking together like hands to form the name.
Priscilla doesn’t know if it counts as legally binding, but it’s rather charming. She’s just fastening the filigreed pen back to her dress when Cate appears in the doorway, clutching a tray with a teapot and half a dozen mismatched cups.
“I found the tea!”
Priscilla’s first thought, when she met Cate, was that she didn’t look old enough to drive, let alone write crime novels. At least ones good enough to publish.
She’s small and waifish, her dark hair chopped bluntly just above her shoulders. She’s dressed in an oversize green cardigan, the sleeves so long that they keep swallowing her hands—and part of the tray—as she beelines for the table, cups and saucers rattling with every step.
Kenzo and Malcolm both twitch toward her to help, but she shakes her head.
“I’ve got it. I worked in a coffee shop. Never so much as broken a cup.” She puts the tray down on the table, careful to avoid the pile of NDAs. “I just thought—I didn’t know how long we’d be waiting . . . hopefully Mr. Fletch won’t mind. I raided the biscuits, too.”
She backs away from the tray of tea and contraband cookies and looks around, as if trying to decide where to perch. She ends up on the very edge of Kenzo’s sofa.
Priscilla notices that none of the men are pouring tea for themselves. She wonders how long they’ll wait for one of the women to do it—it’s not about to be her, and she’s hoping the others will hold the line—but then Sienna makes a show of playing hostess, asking everyone how they take it.
Cate takes hers with a splash of milk and a flustered thanks.
Millie starts with three cubes of sugar, then surreptitiously adds a fourth.
She doesn’t need to ask Malcolm, just passes him a cup.
Priscilla takes hers black—personally, she prefers coffee, but she’s tired enough from the flight that any form of caffeine will do.
To her surprise, both Kenzo and Jaxon pass, though for very different reasons.
“I’ll stick to espresso,” says Kenzo, while Jaxon insists that “the body’s a temple, gotta worship it.”
“Most temples appreciate offerings,” quips Kenzo.
Priscilla smiles into her cup.
Malcolm, meanwhile, has sidled over to Cate. “A fellow Brit, if I’m not mistaken?”
She bobs her head, tucks a chunk of hair behind her ear. “Yorkshire. You?”
“Why, Bonnie Scotland, of course!” he says in a heavy brogue, feigning offense well enough that Cate blushes, clearly embarrassed.
Sienna cuts in. “He’s lived in New York for more than a decade. At this point, no one can tell where he’s from.”
Malcolm shoots her a look, but Sienna seems immune.
“You must be Cate,” she says. “I’m Sienna. The lapsed Scot is Malcolm.”
“Just you wait,” he mutters. “A few days in Skelbrae, Scottish air in my lungs, and Fletch by my side, the old brogue will come right back.”
No one points out that Arthur Fletch is in fact American.
Born in the Midwest—Nebraska, she thinks—he’s one of those men who always points out that they have a grandfather on their mother’s side from somewhere more interesting, who dreams of being from older, wilder places and has the money to make it happen.
Priscilla hears the faint rattle of porcelain, and frowns when she realizes it’s coming from the cup and saucer in Cate’s hands. She’s actually trembling.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I suppose I’m a bit nervous.”
Sienna gives her a comforting smile. “Kenzo tells us you write crime?”
Cate’s hands disappear into her sleeves. “Not really. I mean. Yeah, kind of, but . . .” She trails off, and Jaxon huffs out a breath, clearly impatient.
“Is this all of us then?”
“All but Arty, I’d wager,” says Malcolm. “Given that Sisi and I were late.” He glances around. “Dropping the ball on the hosting gig, isn’t he? Has he made an appearance yet?”
Everyone shakes their head.
“Pretty rude, if you ask me,” says Jaxon, “not even being here to greet us.”
“Maybe he’s writing,” says Millie. “It was in one of those profiles, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” Cate adds, brightening. “The New Yorker one from last year? I was just rereading it.” She flushes as the words come out.
“You totally have it bookmarked,” says Jaxon.
Cate’s flush deepens. “I mean, it’s kind of inspiring, isn’t it? Coming from nothing. Building all of this. It’s nice to know it can be done.”
“Totally,” says Millie with an encouraging nod. “I loved the part about his discipline. How he writes every single morning, rain or shine, from ten to noon.”
Half a dozen heads turn toward the clock on the wall. It’s almost noon.
“He does it religiously,” says Cate. “Even at Christmas.”
“Not that religious, then.” Jaxon laughs at his own joke.
“But he totally is,” counters Millie. “He’s like a monk! Even locks his phone away, to avoid any distractions.” Even though she sounds awestruck, she’s also clutching her own phone against her chest in sympathetic horror.
The minute hand on the clock twitches, hitting twelve. It chimes softly, and everyone holds their breath. But nothing happens.
“Hmm,” says Priscilla, breaking the silence. “Maybe he’s planning to make a dramatic entrance?”
Sienna offers up a nervous laugh. “The trip here was dramatic enough.”
“But that would be just like Arty, wouldn’t it?” says Malcolm.
Jaxon shrugs. “Wouldn’t know.”
“But surely you’ve met him before?” He looks around, expecting everyone to join in. Cate shakes her head. Kenzo looks nonplussed. Millie chews her lip. Priscilla resists the urge to fidget.
Malcolm chuckles. “Hmm . . . interesting. I wonder what he’s playing at.”
The clock tick-tocks, the seconds passing, each more awkward than the last.
At some point, Malcolm and Jaxon and Kenzo gather next to the cold fireplace, as if drawn to it by some primal urge. Sienna, Priscilla, Cate, and Millie have settled in the mismatched furniture.
Priscilla tips her cup toward Cate. “Thanks for the tea.”
The girl smiles shyly, clutching her own cup.
“This is all kind of . . .” She shakes her head, then lowers her voice.
“The way Fletch talked about these salons, I got the sense they were for a certain—tier?—of writers. But then, I don’t know what I’m doing here.
In fact, I feel like a bit of an impostor. ”
Priscilla leans in. “If it makes you feel any better, so do I.”
Cate’s expression softens. “Really?”
Millie jumps in. “Hey, come on!” she says.
“We’ve all worked hard to get where we are.
To finish stories and get published and see the actual books that we’ve actually written in actual bookshops.
And sure, I was confused for a minute when I got the invite for this weekend, but then I said to myself, ‘Millie Mitchell, you are worthy.’ ”
Even though she’s still sitting, cross-legged, she might as well have struck a power pose. Priscilla smiles, lowering her cup. “I like that attitude,” she says, but at the same time Cate mutters something inaudible.
“What was that?” asks Sienna.
Cate blushes fiercely. Swallows, fingers fluttering around her mug. “I said, I haven’t done those things. I haven’t seen my book on shelves. I haven’t even got a book deal yet. I just signed with my literary agent a couple of months ago . . .”
“You’re not even published?” yelps Millie, her cheerful demeanor slipping for just a second before she recovers. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Obviously. We all start somewhere.”
“Cate’s right,” says Sienna, glancing around. “No disrespect, but none of us seem to be the usual suspects for this sort of thing.”
Priscilla clears her throat. “Perhaps he’s decided to branch out . . . encourage more diverse voices? Or maybe he—”
GOOOONGGGGG!
A single deep, rich sound rolls through the room like a tide, and as it retreats, Priscilla mentally follows it, back through the door and down the hall to the foyer, and the grand stairs, and the copper disk on the landing.
Everyone falls silent, and in the absence of sound, all she can hear is her own heart hammering inside her chest. She wants to stop time, take a moment to collect herself. Instead, she rises with the rest of them, clutching the high-backed chair for balance as she gets to her feet.
“Whatever Arthur Fletch is up to,” she says, willing her voice smooth, “I think we’re about to find out.”
And then the room is bubbling over with excitement, bodies surging toward the door. Priscilla lets them pass, stalling for a moment to steady herself. She catches her reflection in the coffee table, awash in pink, eyes wide behind her rosy frames.
Well, she thinks, molding a smile onto her face.
No going back now.