Mechanically, I cross the room. I pick up the bookstore bag and pull out the copy of Refraction, watching my fingers run over the raised lettering of Nathan’s name.
Then I open the back flap, where I find his author photo. It’s not the one from Only Once, and he’s visibly three years older. The changes are subtle, but I take in every one of them. The narrowing of his face, the definition of the edges and angles, the reservation in his eyes.
He’s looking into the camera. Looking right at me. It’s the expression I’ve seen a hundred times, when he’s listening to my ideas, drawing them in, improving them.
I close the cover and walk over to the boxes of books in the closet, where I place the new purchase on top of the copy of Refraction I already owned.
6
Nathan
It’s minutes until the conference call, and I’m expecting an email from Jen informing me Katrina’s called the whole thing off. Of course, I’ve been expecting that email for the past two days. The morning after I met with Jen, while I walked through LaGuardia to my gate, she wrote me confirming Katrina was in. The next day, a conference call was scheduled with Parthenon.
The fact that I haven’t heard from Katrina herself even once is what has me doubting this will ever happen. The point of this call is ostensibly to discuss ideas, yet the coauthors haven’t communicated enough to pick a genre. Granted, I haven’t exactly reached out, either. I fed myself bullshit reasons whenever I considered contacting her. She could’ve gotten a new cell number. She could’ve changed her email. For a fiction writer, I came up with pretty unconvincing excuses.
The email doesn’t come. I’m on my couch in my condo in Chicago, the white room quiet. It’s undecorated and impersonal, except for the books everywhere. Floor-to-ceiling shelves holding my collection of fiction, memoirs, history. They, and the complete absence of anything else noteworthy in my apartment, are reminders of how this—writing—is everything I am. When I found my craft, I clung and clung and clung to it, until it clung to me, intertwined with who I was. And now I have no way of existing outside of it.
Not even Melissa became part of me this way. I’ve asked myself why I couldn’t combine my soul with hers the way I could with writing, the way I knew others could with their spouses. I couldn’t. It didn’t matter that I genuinely cared for her. I just couldn’t. It’s taken me too long to recognize what I couldn’t have known when I proposed to her, what I didn’t even completely understand when we finalized our divorce—I’d mistaken companionship, even chemistry, for love. I found Melissa’s work and work ethic inspiring. She had constructive, kind systems for everything in our life, like how we would trade off each night’s choice of TV, one of her documentaries for one of my HBO dramas. She was funny in her text messages. She was good in bed and a wonderful friend.
Yet if someone had told me love wasn’t just the sum of those parts, but rather the exponent on the end of the equation, I don’t think I would have understood what they meant. Which has left me with nothing but pages and pages in my empty, empty home.
Checking the clock on my phone, I see the time I’ve been counting down to. I dial in to the conference call, putting in the code when the robotic voice instructs me to. I speak into the empty fuzz on the line. “Hello?” I hate this part of conference calls. I feel like I’m shouting into a well, hoping voices respond from the darkness.
“Hi. Jen here,” my agent says. “We’re just waiting on Chris and Katrina.”
“Nathan, hello.” I recognize my editor’s voice. Elizabeth Quirk, publisher of Parthenon Books, plays the eccentric New York editor to perfection. She wears thick plastic glasses and elaborate shawls, and cups of coffee cover her desk. It’s an act, or half the picture. She is ruthlessly entrepreneurial, and I respect her despite my frustration that she’s rejected my solo proposal, which has landed me in this position with Katrina. “Have you recovered from your tour?” she inquires.
“You know me,” I respond shortly. “Always eager to start the next book.”
“Indeed. We love that,” Liz replies magnanimously. I know she won’t bring up the book Parthenon passed on. We’re just going to pretend there’s no bad blood between any of us. Not between me and Liz, and certainly not between me and Katrina. “Well,” Liz continues, “I can’t tell you how excited everyone is in-house about this project.”
Right on cue, the line beeps. The voice I hear next is Chris’s. “Chris and Katrina here,” he says. I hate how he strings their names together like it’s second nature. I hate how he says his first. Hearing him reminds me of phone calls four years ago where he’d give us half-assed ideas, and Katrina and I would only need to exchange one look to know we were going to ignore him.
I wait for Katrina’s voice.
Everyone does, for a second. When it doesn’t come, Liz chimes in. “Katrina! I was just telling Nathan and Jen how excited everyone is for this. It’ll be the literary event of the year.” I have to roll my eyes. Even if we might be the literary event of the year, publishers love to promise you everything. No one ever really knows until the book is on shelves.
Chris laughs, and it’s gratingly evident he’s having the exact opposite reaction. He sounds self-congratulatory, presumptuous. I find my mind straying to my now-shelved thriller manuscript. In it there’s this supporting character, this fumbling douchebag of an FBI agent who interferes in the central pair’s life. I’ve named him Dean, but character names are easy to change. “Glad to hear it,” Chris says. “We all know Nathan and Katrina will deliver something fantastic.”
Once again, his fiancée’s name second. When we were both his clients, it invariably went the opposite way. Katrina was the one he showered with praise, with special interest. Even then, it was unmistakable why. I guess it worked in the end.
Jen interjects now. If Liz’s voice is syrup, Jen’s is something stiffer and more refreshing. “I’d love to discuss the timeline. What’s Parthenon want for deadlines and publication?” Thank god for my agent. Of everyone on this call, she’s the only one I trust.
“For a book this big? I see no reason to delay,” Liz says. “So let me turn that question around to the authors.”
The line falls silent. I find myself waiting, expecting. Wondering when Katrina will speak up. The combination of hope and dread makes me drum my pen on the pages of my leather-bound journal. Katrina’s voice never comes.
The pause expands, and I recognize it’s not only Katrina holding out. I could chime in right now. Why I haven’t is complex. It’s part competition, not wanting to look like the more compliant, eager one in this unhappy reunion. Underneath my petty resistance, though, there’s a detestable current of fear. If I speak, I’m pushing through choking curtains of things unsaid four bitter years in the past.