Chapter 7
Things can’t get any lower than this moment, right?
Right?
I, without question, am living out the exact second I’ll look back on and think, Yup, that was definitely rock bottom. Can’t get lower than discovering your boss murdered, twice, being a suspect while stuck on a ship with the real murderer,
and still having to work.
The next three hours are a manic-induced blur.
And while everybody else kept to their rooms, I spent the majority of the day racing around, trying to come up with different
activities for each of the authors’ workshops that sounded believable and totally not made up on the fly.
No time for grieving.
No time to hang out in the land of shock.
Creating a Fantasy World 101 Workshop from noon to 2 p.m. with Gordon?
Not anymore.
Now it’s a “Magical Scavenger Hunt” that ultimately results in women charging the decks and kitchens, scouring through pots and pans, pressing elevator emergency buttons, and, in one case, breaking into the captain’s bedroom, hunting for clues that mirror Gordon’s latest fantasy release.
(For the record, all of my clues were in logical, legal places, and 85 percent of the ladies involved ended up looking in the exact opposite places. The crew was quite upset.)
It was hard going.
It was hard to convince three hundred avid readers who spent their hard-earned money to specifically see and interact with
their favorite authors that no, they didn’t really want to shake hands with Ricky Gables and hear intimate details of the time several Romanian politia came upon him when he was sleeping on the floor of an abandoned Transylvanian castle for research, that instead it was very exciting to do this puzzle shaped like a hot-air balloon while talking about our favorite books.
Isn’t that equally exciting? Isn’t that worth every penny?
Let’s just say I ended up pulling a lot of strings and making a lot of phone calls.
I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much given the circumstances and all, but the substitute activities turned out
to be pretty great.
In Ricky’s case, Stephen King did in fact play chess virtually on a projector screen (with me, and as it turns out, I am really bad) while fielding questions about his writing life.
For Neena’s class? Debbie Macomber crocheted on-screen from her plump sitting chair overlooking Puget Sound and shared stories
about all her Christmas books that became Hallmark movies.
Teen heartthrob Harry Bailes took fifteen minutes out of his day to video chat about his fiction-to-screen role from Crystal’s book Castaway City. Fifteen legendary minutes that made me realize I am indeed very good at my job.
I included a notice in the changes that Hugh was ill and would be kept to his room, although who knows how long I’ll have
before I start hearing complaints about that.
All in all, by the time six o’clock rolled around and everyone was leaving to go into the dining hall for dinner, I finally
stopped to realize I hadn’t eaten all day. In fact, I’d hardly taken a breath all day. Or had a moment to think. About much
of anything. At all.
Which of course was partly intentional, a parting gift from what I experienced the last two months over Michael. I am now
very good at stuffing emotions deep, deep down through the power of distraction.
A breakup, of course, is nowhere near as gut-wrenching as a murder. But at the same time, there is a certain kind of death
to both. And in my case, in both cases, Hugh was critically involved.
“You primed the pump, so to speak, Pip. And for that I’ll be forever grateful.”
“I-I’m sorry, Michael?” I stammered into my phone exactly six weeks ago. “You’re leaving me . . . after everything . . . on
public television, for a girl with a high ponytail you have never spoken to in your life, and the entire planet is deciding to root for it, and all you can say is, ‘Well, at least you can give yourself a pat on
the back, Pip, knowing you PRIMED. THE. PUMP?!”
Michael was my boyfriend of eight years. Eight.
An elementary school education is eight years.
An Olympic cycle is eight years.
A full term in political office is eight years.
The time it takes to go through med school and residency to become a doctor is eight years, including a bonus fellowship year.
The entirety of my adulthood. Spent with Michael.
Waiting on Michael.
Rooting for Michael—even when that meant positioning myself against everybody else to be on his side.
We were together practically since the day I walked into his sports medicine class sophomore year at uni. He was twenty-seven
then. I was three weeks shy of nineteen. He was the adjunct professor of the class. And to say it was a challenge wading through
the reality of his very forward romantic pursuit while being forced to be discreet under professor-student bylaws is an understatement.
I eagerly missed out on years of college experiences, trading sorority life and dances and football parties for eating pizza in his dim apartment. Sacrificing
a thousand college activities and precious future memories because (a) “It’s not really that mature now, is it, Pip?” and
(b) “I really can’t be seen with you or I’ll lose my job, but . . . if you really think it’s that fun to go without me, then go.”
I supported him as he spent his days teaching part-time at the small college that paid so little we couldn’t afford to go
hardly anywhere—even if we could.
I supported him choosing said part-time job so he could pursue his actual dream where he spent the majority of his time traveling: baseball.
I.
Supported.
Him.
And when he made the minor league after all his hard work and moved last year to Detroit, I.
Supported.
Him.
Why?
Because we were in love and soulmates and were going to get married and have babies and live happily ever after. Obviously.
As had been his stated plan. On repeat. Since I was three weeks shy of nineteen.
We were meant to be.
So obviously it was an unfortunate fact that here I was, eight years later, still without a ring on my finger. But as he had so “thoughtfully” articulated over the
years, he wanted to make sure it was the right time.
It was never the right time.
At first it was because he wanted me to finish college.
My parents would want that (though he never met them and I never dared tell them).
Then it was because he wanted to be in a financially stable place before he asked for my hand. He wanted to make sure he was
“worthy” of me.
I didn’t care, for the record.
I would’ve said yes by month three of my sophomore year.
I was head over it all for Michael.
I was so lost in him I would’ve followed him anywhere.
So imagine my surprise when on the one day I’d schlepped Hugh’s candy-apple-red 1964 Pontiac GTO uptown to one of the few remaining gas stations in NYC existence,
I discovered, at said pump, a slinky woman with an overbright smile and massive lips announcing on the pump screen the “trending
moment of the day” and then showing a clip of my Michael, clad in his baseball uniform standing over the wall from the fans, flirting intensely with this blonde girl who looks half his age.
As she tosses him the baseball she caught, he—to manic cheering all around—grins as he catches a Sharpie someone has thrown at him, scribbles his number, and tosses it back.
All while the slinky woman with big lips narrated the entire scene and summed it up with, “The video that’s breaking the
internet. I’m Elissa, and you saw it right here on Bright News TV, exclusively good news for a brighter day!”
And then, to shut the casket door entirely over my head, I saw a blurry video clip by an amateur do-gooder videoing the two
of them in a dimly lit restaurant hours later, and Michael, my Michael, kissing her.
“It seems dreams really do come true!” the woman announced merrily as I set the pump back in place and the screen clicked
off before my eyes.
The earth sucked all the air from my lungs in that moment.
I could feel it, all the air leaving my body, taking all the thoughts in my brain with it.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t breathe.
I was just . . . nothing.
And then, twelve eternal seconds later, my brain recharged with vehemence as I heard that woman’s grating voice again. “I’m Elissa, and this is your Trending Moment of the Day!”
My head shot over to the pump beside me, and there she was on the screen, retelling the story as the man pumped his gas. The
camera zoomed in again on the girl in the stands, and on Michael’s bright, charming smile as he caught the Sharpie and began
to scribble on the baseball.
“. . . and this is your Trending Moment of the Day!” I heard at the pump behind me.
“. . . and this is your Trending Moment of the Day!”
“. . . and this is your Trending Moment of the Day!”
I yanked the car door open and slammed it shut as “Dreams do come true!” rang all around.
This was . . . The Incident.
Hugh and the others had found me in the hallway of his office when I was on the phone with Michael.
They had just gotten off the elevator on the seventh floor, and there I was, fifteen minutes into the worst conversation of my life.
My hands were shaking. I still had my key in the lock of the office, the key long forgotten as I listened to Michael on speaker.
Trying to swallow this conversation.
Trying to make sense of it all.
“You showed me what love was, Pip. You got me to love again. Even if . . . you weren’t . . . you know . . . the final destination.”
I’m not . . . the final destination?
“I’m a vehicle, Michael? That’s what you’re saying. You appreciate me because I transported you from point A to point B.”
Everyone took a collective few steps toward me on instinct, surrounding me. They were mom and pop birds wanting to spread
out their wings over me, to protect me from the torrential downpour. Even Ricky proffered a creepy, wispy hold on my elbow.
It didn’t take long for them to get the gist of what had happened.