Chapter 16
What did I say about authors being able to get away with just about anything?
Well, they are.
Because that was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me, packaged in a glaring double negative. And it worked.
Gently, I unwind myself out of his arms and set my feet unsteadily back on the ground. The elevator draws us downward to the
bottom floor, then dings.
“I think you’ve made your point,” I say, smoothing my hairs back in place. “In more ways than one. Thank you.”
I realize Nash still has his arm clamped around me, his face awfully close.
Does he realize it too?
“Anytime,” he says quietly.
And for a moment that lasts forever, it’s just him and me on a flashy elevator in the bottom of the ocean. We stand like a couple in those moments just before the music turns on and they begin to tango. His face close over mine. Arm wrapped around me. Me looking up. Both of us frozen.
When I can’t bear it any longer, I murmur, “So.”
“So,” he repeats.
Then, out of nowhere, a blast of music plays from somebody’s phone. I turn and to my shock see a woman has squeezed herself
as tightly as she can into the corner of the elevator, her arms tucked to her sides as she clearly tries to make herself invisible.
“Oh, so sorry,” she says in a hush to no one—a.k.a. us—as she swiftly turns the ringer off. And with a little squeak of her
shoes against the porcelain tile, she pulls herself another inch toward the wall as if trying to melt into it.
I take a wide step back from Nash and the rest of the ride passes in silence.
When the elevator doors slide open, a whole new world emerges.
The carpet on the lower level is much more vibrant than upstairs, with playful swirls of gold dancing over red and blue and
green. The walls are covered in a textured wallpaper of horses and their stables, and in the distance I can hear music coming
from multiple different restaurants and bars. People teem in the halls, carrying drinks and shopping bags as they go out from
one door and into the next.
So this is where everyone’s been. Dining and shopping and who knows what else.
Nash’s arm has gently come behind me and quietly urges me out of the elevator.
I hesitate.
Feel one foot step onto the plush carpet as the doors close behind us.
Sinking in.
I look around in vain for any windows.
We’re just . . . down here.
Encapsulated.
“Take your pick,” Nash says. “We can stow away in any of these.”
There’s a tiny pinch in my chest that I steadily ignore. I look to the place closest to the elevator. “The piano bar,” I say,
and he nods, gently stepping us around a woman holding an actual coconut in her hand with a green-and-white-striped straw
popping out of a little hole inside.
Together we go in.
“Two, please. Is there a wait?” Nash says to the hostess.
My eyes scan the bar. There are two pianos back-to-back on a stage in the center of the room, a little pink glow lighting
up the ebony keys and empty black seats. Thirty or so black tables surround the pianos, each holding a single white rose in
a small vase. Crystal twinkles in the dark space beneath the dim light of one enormous chandelier above. The room smells of
red wine and meat.
No windows in sight.
Her eyes flick to a poster with Nash’s face on it announcing the activities for The Book Cruise. She looks at the laminated
room overview below her and wipes a dry-erase marked note off a two-top table with her thumb.
“You’re in luck, a two-top just left,” she says, gathering the menus in hand. And in her cheeriest tone, “If you’ll follow
me.”
She leads us to a table directly by one of the pianos, swiftly picks up a little golden Reserved placard, and sets the menus down.
I shake my head as she leaves.
“What?” Nash says.
“Nothing. It’s just, you’d think after five years I’d get used to this.”
“What?”
“You authors, casually getting away with anything.”
Nash lifts a brow. “It’s not because we’re authors, Pip. It’s because we’re the cruise entertainment. If the highlight of
the cruise was a magician, she’d have done the same thing for the guy and his rabbit.”
I smile a little. “Do you think they’d give the rabbit his own seat?”
“On a ship like this? They’d give the rabbit its own menu.”
After we’re seated and some water is brought, I pull out my phone.
I’m anxious being alone with him here. Nash and I have always been friends, but never before would I have agreed to go so
far (and he never asked) as having a meal alone together, whatever the pretext. Here? I have no excuse. No clear borders.
But here we are.
I don’t quite know how to proceed when we don’t have The Seven hanging around as foils.
“So. I guess we ought to do the interview then.”
“Guess so.”
I pull out the Notes app on my phone. At this point, it’s a crutch, a baby blanket, but I need it. I need something else to
look at every once in a while. Something to shift my attention to when this conversation feels too intense. I clear my throat.
“As I was saying, where were you the night Hugh was murdered?”
“With you.”
I frown.
“Watching the meteor shower,” he continues.
“Wow. That was only a few days ago. Feels like a lifetime. After you dropped me off, though, did you notice anything unusual?”
“No, I just went to bed.”
“And what was your relationship with Hugh? How long have you known each other?”
“Four years. Hugh is . . . interesting. I appreciated my time with the man and the network he built up.”
I raise a brow. “But you weren’t close.”
“Not like the others, no.”
“Why is that, you think?”
Nash shrugs. “Some people are just not your type. Hugh was not my type.”
“He’s not Jackie’s type either, and yet they formed a close”—although, I note mentally, quite complicated and possibly backstabbing—“bond.”
“Everyone else had four decades with the man. I think that length of time with anyone will make you love them or hate them.
And he provided something they all wanted, which wasn’t the case with me.”
“Which was?”
“Fame.”
I raise a brow. “And you’re telling me”—I lift up my phone—“on this very serious and official record, that wasn’t the case
for you? You don’t want the fame?”
“No.”
“The sales?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Nash shrugs. “Everybody tries to hate on being in the middle of the list, but it has its perks. Success without notoriety.
Success without the pressure.”
“Really?” I’ve never heard it put that way.
“Four years ago, I had my tenth book out. My sales were fine, nothing that left the publisher bragging, but not so low that I had to fear being cut loose. They weren’t thrilled with me.
There wasn’t energy around my books like there was with Hugh’s.
No adrenaline. But they were . . . content enough.
And that sums up how I felt too. I had a rhythm; I kept to a pace.
I got a contract and I began writing. I finished that book, got another contract, and kept writing.
For a less-than-peaceful type of work, it was about as peaceful as it came. ”
I set the phone down. “You know, I don’t think any author I’ve ever met has held the same view. It’s always more, more, more. The publisher wants more. The author wants more. That must feel kind of . . . freeing. Relaxing, not having to put that kind
of stress on yourself.”
Nash shook his head. “Writing as a career is inherently competitive. I don’t blame them for pushing for the top to keep themselves
from sinking to the bottom. I just can’t live that way. I figured, if it wasn’t meant to be for me, and sales dropped and
I got cut loose, I’d go another way. There’s more than one way to make a living.”
My brows rise. “Whereas to everyone else, it’s write or die.” I swallow, then take a sip of water. “Writing is their everything.
Not yours, though?”
“It’s work, like any other work. There are benefits to it, and things you wish you could avoid.”
“And the benefits?”
“I make my hours. I work for myself. I can write anywhere.”
“And the cons?”
“Being noticed.”
I laugh. “Being noticed, if you’ll recall, is what got us at this table right now.”
Nash grins. “Anonymity, I’ve found, is worth a fifteen-minute wait.”
“Fine. If it wasn’t for the money and it wasn’t for the fame, why did you join the group? What was so tempting about the group
that you just couldn’t resist?”
For a long moment, there’s silence between us.
Just Nash looking at me.
And me back.
“You.”
The thought is so outrageous, so absurd and impossible to take to heart, that I lean back in my chair and laugh. “Me.”
But Nash leans forward, the flannel of his shirt rubbing against the table between us, a little dimple peeking out from the
corner of his lips. “Yes,” he says with all the sincerity in the world. “You.”
“Stop teasing.”
“I would never.”
“C’mon.”
“I am.”
Oh my gosh—he is serious.
Nash is serious.
I feel a little bump as somebody grazes the back of my chair in passing and hops onstage.
I look around. More people are gathering in by the moment.
The man onstage is wearing sneakers but also coattails, jeans but also that telltale peacock bow tie. He’s younger—mid-twenties
or so—but as he slides onto the piano bench, I notice the classic swirl to his hair and swagger to his style that speak of
a golden era long ago.
People begin to clap, the noise like thunder in my ears.
My chest tightens another notch.
Focus, Pip. This is not the time.
I force myself to stay calm. Tuck my hands under my legs on my seat.
The feeling of being even more constricted makes me panic a little more and I quickly untuck them.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” Nash continues.
“Sure I do,” I say. “But nothing happened. It was just an ordinary day.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it, how two people can see life in extraordinarily different ways? Mark had asked me to come to lunch with
him on the heels of news of his retirement. He wanted me to meet some of his friends. I didn’t want to, but he insisted, and
he’d been a mentor to me for some time. Of course I had to say yes.”