“You got writer’s block, didn’t you? About the same time the dream started, I’m guessing.” Andy looked over at him, his watery gray eyes looking through Lance the way no other person’s could. Lance’s mouth opened and then closed as Andy went back to watching the highway. “I figured as much. Tell me about it.”
Lance began to retrace the events that had unfolded in the past month, beginning with Ellen slamming the door in his face and ending with the first night he had woke from the nightmare, sweaty, a scream echoing off the walls of his dark bedroom. He started to speak, the sound of the tires singing on the road beginning to resemble scraping footsteps. “I told you I had the dream the first time about six weeks ago.”
“Nightmare, go on.”
“Yes, okay, nightmare. I had it in the middle of the night, just like I’ve had it ever since. I wasn’t able to sleep the rest of that night. Ellen was staying over, so I just went downstairs and thought I’d write a little until I was tired enough to go back to bed.” Lance paused, as if saying the words out loud would make them true. A childish belief system, but nonetheless, he hesitated. “I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve never had that happen before. Never. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting down without a single idea in my head and staring at a blank page, I’ve never not been able to write.”
“How’d that make you feel?”
Lance looked over at Andy as if he’d just made reference to an intention of desecrating his neighbors’ plaster impression of Jesus in their front yard. “It felt horrible. I felt lost. Everything I’d written to that point didn’t seem to fit together. And the ending …” Lance rubbed his jaw and shook his head in exasperation. “It didn’t work anymore. I felt like I’d spent the last six months writing complete shit.”
Lance fell silent and the dull hum of the car pervaded the air between them. Andy chewed the inside of his cheek, just as he had been doing the first moment Lance saw him standing alone in the lunch line at St. Cathleen’s orphanage twenty years before.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that you got writer’s block the same night that you had a horrific nightmare about your father?”
“No, believe it or not, I made the connection. I just don’t see why a dream would stave off my creativity. I’ve lived worse than that. I’ve always been able to write …” Lance’s words trailed off into silence.
Andy swerved onto an off-ramp and made a left turn before racing south on a two-lane once again. The bright sunlight hurt Lance’s eyes and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The different businesses and stores lining the sides of the highway that normally drew his attention had lost their flare. The tops of high-rises and office buildings loomed into view over the trees as they rounded another corner. Lance hadn’t been into the cities since his last meeting with Ellington & Field three months prior. He hadn’t been much of anywhere, he realized. His writing had kept him completely busy up until six weeks ago, but even after his inspiration had evaporated into thin air, he still preferred to stay near or at his home, hoping that at some point the switch that had so unexpectedly been flipped off would be turned back on again.
“So what do you propose we tell them when we get there? Cole’s going to demand to know the reason why you haven’t finished his next bestseller.”
“I’ll just tell them I need more time,” Lance said with more confidence than he actually felt. He saw Andy turn his head toward him, and could nearly make out the frowning expression on Andy’s face in his peripheral. Andy studied him for a few seconds before turning back to the road and shaking his head.
“I’ll have to shake a stick at them, I suppose.”
“You mean, go to bat for me?”