“That’s funny, right?” Seth asked, then repeated a joke for the fourth time. “Is it funny? Or is it just weird?”
Georgie wasn’t sure. She was having a hard time staying focused.
“I need a break,” Scotty said. “I can’t even see straight.”
“Push through it,” Seth ordered. “This is where the magic happens.”
“This is where I go get frozen yogurt.”
“All you do is eat. You eat, then you start thinking about the next thing you’re going to eat.”
“Eating is the only thing that breaks the monotony,” Scotty said.
Seth’s eyebrows shot up. “This isn’t monotony. This is the fucking dream.”
“It will be,” Scotty said. “When I have some yogurt.”
“Georgie. Tell him. No frozen yogurt until he says something funny.”
Georgie was slouched down in her chair with her feet up on the table and her eyes closed. “Can’t talk. Too much magic happening.”
“Do you want frozen yogurt, Georgie?” Scotty asked from the door.
“No, thanks.”
She heard the door close. Then felt a pen bounce off her shoulder.
“You should take a nap,” Seth said.
“Hmmm.”
“We need a napping couch. Passing Time is going to have a napping couch. Remember the couch at The Spoon? That was a first-rate napping couch.”
Georgie remembered. It was gray velvet and worn smooth on the cushions. If Georgie was sitting on it, Seth would sit down right beside her, even if there was plenty of room. Even if there was no room at all. He liked to rest his head in her lap or on her shoulder. If he didn’t have a girlfriend, she’d let him. (He almost always had a girlfriend.) Seth was a relentless flirt. Even with Georgie—maybe especially with Georgie.
For the first few months after they met, she found all the attention thrilling. And then—when she realized that Seth flirted with everyone, and that he was usually actively chasing another girl—it was heart-breaking.
And then it was just noise. Like his talking. Like his humming. Georgie liked it, even when she wasn’t paying attention. Sitting on the napping couch, Seth’s head on her shoulder, his wavy cherrywood hair tickling her ear . . .
They were sprawled out on the napping couch the second time Georgie saw Neal. Seth had a girlfriend at the time—leggy, cheekbony, actressy—so he was supporting his own head. Georgie stuck her elbow in his ribs. “There he is again.”
“Ow. Who?”
“The cartoonist,” she said.
“The hobbit?”
“I’m going to go introduce myself.”
“Why?”
“Because we work together,” Georgie said. “It’s what people do.”
“He doesn’t work here. He just turns in his cartoons here.”
“I’m going to introduce myself. And tell him how much I like his work.”
“You’ll wish you hadn’t,” Seth warned. “He’s a scowler. He’s the least friendly hobbit in the Shire.”
“Stop talking Tolkien at me. All I know is ‘Frodo lives.’”
Seth laid his head on her shoulder.
Georgie shrugged him off. “I’m going. To introduce myself.” She got off the couch.
“Fine,” he moped. “I hope you’re very happy together. Cute little hobbit couple with lots of roly-poly hobbit babies.”
Georgie turned back to him, but didn’t stop walking away. “I’m not hobbity.”
“You’re short, Georgie.” He spread out across the couch. “And round, and pleasant-looking. Deal with it.”
Georgie turned the corner into the production room and stopped. The writers almost never went back to the production room. The artists hung out back here—and the paste-up people on the nights that The Spoon was going to press.
Neal was sitting at a drafting table. He had a penciled comic strip laid out in front of him, and he was opening a bottle of India ink. There was a radio somewhere playing the Foo Fighters.
Georgie thought about going back to the couch.
“Hi,” she said instead.
Neal glanced up at her without lifting his head, then looked back at his comic. “Hi.”
He was wearing a black T-shirt under blue flannel, and his hair was dark and short, almost military-short.
“You’re Neal, right?”
He didn’t look up again. “Right.”
“I’m Georgie.”
“Are you?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you really?” he asked.
“Um, yes?”
He nodded. “I thought it was a pen name. Georgie McCool. Sounds like a pen name.”
“You know my name?”
Neal finally looked up at her. With round blue eyes and practically his whole head. “Your photo’s in The Spoon,” he said.
“Oh.” Georgie wasn’t usually smooth with guys—but she was usually smoother than this. “Right. So are you. I mean, your comic strip. I came back to talk to you about your comic.”
Neal was focused on his page again. He was holding an old-fashioned pen; it looked like a fountain pen with a long nib. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” she said. “I just . . . like it. I was going to tell you how much I like it.”
“Are you still going to?”
“I . . .”
His eyes met hers after a second, and she thought she might see a smile there.
She smiled back. “Yeah. I really like it. I think it’s the funniest thing in the magazine.”
She was almost sure Neal was smiling now. But it was just a twitch in his lips.
“I don’t know,” he said. “People seem to like the horoscopes. . . .”
Georgie wrote the horoscopes. (In character, sort of. It was hard to explain.) Neal knew she wrote the horoscopes. He knew her name. His hands were small, and they moved with complete surety across the paper, leaving a thick, straight line.
“I didn’t know you used real ink,” she said.
He nodded.
“Can I watch?”
He nodded again.