“So both your parents are accountants?” I asked, and Clark nodded. “That must have been rough.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me and gave me a smile, like he’d decided something, before going on. “This one time, I think I was eight, they’d sent me to the store and told me to bring back change. But when I was walking back, I saw a new Batman comic. . . .” As Clark went on, telling his story, I realized that I wasn’t trying to stop him, or control the conversation, or keep him from asking me something I didn’t want to answer. It was like talking to my friends—and I would just have to see where the conversation took me. And so, surprising myself, I leaned forward to listen.
? ? ?
“Explain it to me,” I said. Now that I was, apparently, spending the night in their house, I thought I needed to know a little more about the people who lived there. “Since you’re not Clark Goetz-Hoffman.”
Clark winced. “That’s a pretty terrible name,” he said, and I silently agreed. “My publisher is Goetz. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is Hoffman.”
“Got it.” I looked at Bertie’s water dish, at the B. W. that was painted there. “Then what’s the W for?”
“Oh,” Clark said, giving Bertie a gentle pat. “That’s his middle name.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “The dog has a middle name?”
“Bertie Woofter Goetz-Hoffman,” Clark said, raising an eyebrow at me, letting me know he thought this was ridiculous too.
“Woofter?”
“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug. “It’s from a book they liked. The character is Bertie Wooster . . . so it’s like a pun.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding, remembering the framed book cover I’d seen the first day. “So the dog has four names,” I said, still trying to get this to make sense.
Clark gave me a small smile. “I don’t get it either.”
? ? ?
“So you write books,” I said, shaking some Skittles into my hand. I’d found a half-full bag in my purse, and we’d been sharing them. We were both starting to get tired, and I’d decided we needed some sugar. “That’s so weird,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, you’re my age.”
“Just a little older,” he said, turning so that he was facing me a little more fully, both of us sitting cross-legged on the carpet. “I’m nineteen.” He held out his hand, and I tipped the Skittles into his palm.
“But still,” I said around my candy. “That’s weird. You have a job.”
“You have a job,” he pointed out. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d be off somewhere not reading.”
“But you have a career,” I said as Clark gestured to me for more candy. “Isn’t that weird?”
Clark laughed. “I guess not to me. I’ve been doing this for five years now, so publishing books is just . . . what I do.” As I watched, his smile faded, the wattage of his dimples dimming slightly. “It’s what I did, at any rate.”
“So you need to give them your third book?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well, when is it due?”
“Two years ago,” Clark said, and I felt my eyes widen. “Yeah. That’s pretty much everyone’s reaction. There are a lot of people who are really not happy with me at the moment. But it’s coming together. I just need to finesse some things, pull some threads together.”
I nodded. “Okay.” I was still trying to process the two-year delay. “So do you have a plan? A schedule worked out for when you’re going to turn it in?”
I saw something pass over Clark’s face, but before I could really see what he was thinking, it was gone, and Clark was giving me a smile. “It sounds like you’re pretty organized.”
I nodded, taking that as a compliment, even though he might not have intended it as one. “It’s the coin of the realm in my family.”
Clark stared at me. “The what?”
I realized a second too late what I’d done. It was an expression my parents always used, and I’d used it enough around my friends that they no longer thought it was strange. But I sometimes forgot that not everyone had heard it before. “Coin of the realm,” I repeated. “Something that carries the most value.”
“Oh,” Clark said, nodding, like he was turning the phrase over in his head. “I like it.”
“You still haven’t answered the question.”