For the whole lot of good it did us.
When I take the copy of Refraction, the clerk’s voice drops conspiratorially. “It’s not as good as Only Once. But I love Nathan Van Huysen’s prose.”
I don’t reply, not wanting to say out loud his prose was the first thing I noticed about him. Even at twenty-two, he wrote with influences fused perfectly into his own style, like every English course he’d ever taken—and Nathan had taken quite a few—was flowing out of his fingertips. It made me feel the things writers love to feel. Inspired, and jealous.
In my silence, the clerk’s expression changes. “Wait,” she continues, “you have read Only Once, haven’t you?”
“Um,” I say, struggling with how to reply. Why is conversation way easier on the page?
“If you haven’t”—she starts toward the bestseller shelf to fetch the paperback. I know what’ll happen when she catches sight of the back cover. Under the embarrassingly long list of starred reviews, she’ll see the author photos. Nathan’s blue eyes beneath the immaculate black waves of his hair, the dimple he only trots out for promotional photos and press tours. Then, next to him, she’ll find his coauthor, Katrina Freeling. Young woman, sharp shoulders, round features, full eyebrows she honestly loves. Professionally done makeup, dark brown hair pressed and polished, nothing like it looks when she steps out of the shower or she’s reading on the patio on sweaty summer days.
The differences won’t matter. The bookseller will recognize the woman right in front of her.
My capacity for speech finally returns. “No, I’ve read it,” I manage.
“Of course,” the girl gushes. “Everyone’s read it. Well, Refraction is one of Nathan Van Huysen’s solo books. Like I said, it’s good, but I wish he and Katrina Freeling would go back to writing together. I’ve heard they haven’t spoken in years, though. Freeling doesn’t even write anymore.”
I don’t understand how this girl is interested enough in the writing duo to know the rumors without identifying one of them in her bookstore. It might be because I haven’t done many signings or festivals in the past three years. Following the very minimal promotional schedule for Nathan’s and my debut novel, Connecting Flights, and then the exhausting release tour for our second, Only Once—during which I made my only previous visit here, to Forewords—I more or less withdrew from writerly and promotional events. It was difficult because Chris’s and my social life in New York centered on the writing community, and it’s part of why I like living in LA, where our neighbors are screenwriters and studio executives. In LA, when people learn you’re a novelist, they treat you like a tenured Ivy League professor or a potted plant. Either is preferable to the combination of jealousy and judgment I endured spending time with former friends and competitors in New York.
If you’d told me four years ago I would leave New York for the California coast, I would’ve frowned, or likelier, laughed. New York was the epicenter for dreams like mine, and Nathan’s. But I didn’t know then the publication of Only Once would fracture me and leave me reassembling the pieces of myself into someone new. Someone for whom living in Los Angeles made sense.
While grateful the Forewords bookseller hasn’t identified me—I would’ve had one of those politely excited conversations, signed some copies of Only Once, then left without buying a book—I don’t know how to navigate hearing my own professional life story secondhand. “Oh well,” I fumble. “That’s too bad.” No more browsing for me. I decide I just want out of this conversation.
“I know.” The girl’s grin catches a little mischievousness. “I wonder what happened between them. I mean, why would such a successful partnership just split up right when they were really popular?”
The collar of my coat feels itchy, my pulse beginning to pound. This is my least favorite topic, like, ever. Why did you split up? I’ve heard the rumors. I’ve heard them from graceless interviewers, from comments I’ve happened to notice under online reviews. I’ve heard them from Chris.
If they’re to be believed, we grew jealous of each other, or Nathan thought he was better than me, or I was difficult to work with. Or we had an affair. There’d been speculation before our split. Two young writers, working together on retreats to Florida, Italy, the Hamptons. Photos of us with our arms around each other from the Connecting Flights launch event—the only launch we ever did together. The fact Only Once centered on marital infidelity didn’t help. Nor did the very non-fictional demise of Nathan’s own very non-fictional marriage.
This is why I don’t like being recognized. I like the excited introductions. I love interacting with readers. What I don’t like is the endless repetition of this one question. Why did Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen quit writing together?
“Who knows?” I say hastily. “Thanks for your recommendation. I’ll . . . take it.” I reach for the copy of Refraction, which the girl hands over, glowing.
* * *
• • •
Five minutes later, I walk out of the bookstore holding the one book I didn’t want.
2
Nathan
I’m on my third iced tea. I would order coffee, except it’s gauche to order iced coffee from the bartender. Fuck, though, I’m exhausted. I feel sleeplessness singeing my corneas, the small revolt they’re staging for the post-midnight hours I spent in front of my new manuscript. It’s this thriller I’m working on, where the wife of a federal agent stumbles onto the possibly criminal secret he’s hiding.
I look like hell, the product of being on a plane yesterday, then writing into the night, then getting shitty sleep in my non–Four Seasons hotel. It leaves me undeniably out of place in O’Neill’s, the trendy bar where I haven’t set foot in years. When I lived in New York, I’d come here to meet other writers. With gold-rimmed mirrors, marble tabletops, and cocktails named after playwrights, O’Neill’s was the place to be seen. Which I liked. But it’s been two years since I left the city I could feel turning on me, needing a fresh start following my divorce.
“Sorry to make you wait.” My agent sits down across from me. Jen Bradley is middle-aged, fearsome in negotiations, and fantastic with working out plot holes. She’s the second agent I’ve had in my career. After Only Once, I had my pick of literary agents. I chose Jen for her straight-shooting sensibility and her intelligence, which she’s shown in selling my solo manuscript.
“It’s fine,” I say, washing the words down with iced tea. “How are you?”
“Busy,” Jen replies. “How was your tour?”
I have to smile. Straight to the point. I just wrapped a weeklong book tour for my new novel, Refraction. It was a whirlwind of bookstores in Midwestern cities, nondescript hotels, dinners of room-service Caesar salads every freaking night. Hour-long flights between airports named for one president or another, which were the best parts of my day for the refuge I could take in writing on the plane, running wild on this new thriller. “Fewer stops than the last one,” I admit. “Pretty good turnout, though.”