It was one in the morning before I remembered. “The book!”
“You may not know this yet,” Joyce said, masterfully switching into editor mode. “But you’re a writer. You think like a writer. Yes, I want those Flood Girls illustrations. But I want your words too. Is the book mostly words? Mostly pictures? I don’t know. Every book has to invent itself. I’m giving you complete freedom. Use those illustrations. Just put what’s in there…” She pointed to my head and said, “On the page.”
I don’t know if I got Joyce Primmed or if she got Eleanor Flooded. But I skipped out of there with a book deal.
“I did meet your sister,” Spencer was saying, utterly flummoxed. “She was willowy. She always came by.”
“Must have been someone else,” I pronounced and sealed it with a smile.
Spencer looked like the guy in Alien before he started blurping up that white stuff. He checked his watch.
“Hi,” he said to a passing waiter. “Would you mind terribly bringing us the check?”
“Now?” Timby said, having hardly made a dent in the heap of fries.
“We’ll get a box for those,” I said.
I don’t have a sister.
I don’t have a sister.
“French fries aren’t good to go,” said Timby.
“You two stay,” Spencer said. “I have to find my way to the sculpture park for a meeting with my curator.”
Thank God Spencer had no way of knowing we lived three blocks from the sculpture park, that it was where I brought Yo-Yo for his midday walk— “We’re going there too!” Timby erupted. “We can give you a ride.”
I saw panic in Spencer’s eyes.
“No, darling,” I said to Timby. “Spencer’s a busy man. He’s not going to want to come home with us first and get the dog, and you know.”
“I can show you my art!” Timby said to Spencer. “And then you can show me your art!”
Timby’s voice had a plaintive little squeak to it.
Spencer = trapped animal.
Lying in bed this morning, I had set the bar laughably low: look people in the eye, get dressed, smile! It should have been a Sunday drive. Then that prankster Reality appeared in the pickup truck ahead of me and started tossing watermelons out the back. And it wasn’t even one o’clock!
Today, at the very least, I’d fulfill my promise to Timby. I’d make it his day.
I looked at Spencer with what must have been desperation.
“Sure,” he said. “I guess we could all go.”
“Yay!” cried Timby
“I owe you one,” I whispered to Spencer as we left the restaurant.
“It all evens out,” he said tightly.
I flung open the front door with a flourish that said the hills were alive with the sound of music, when really I wanted a head start to make sure the toilets were flushed. On the off chance Spencer still admired me, I didn’t want to queer it by him seeing our toilets full of pee.
Guess who didn’t greet me at the door? Yo-Yo. He didn’t even raise his chin off the rim of his bed. The most he could muster was to follow me around with watery, put-upon eyes.
“Would you look at this view?” I said, momentarily confused that I was Spencer seeing my apartment for the first time.
Spencer couldn’t help but be pulled toward the floor-to-ceiling windows and our cartoonish panorama of Seattle: snowy Mount Rainier, Space Needle, Pacific Science Center arches, container ships of Elliott Bay.
“We were so nervous about the infamous Seattle weather that Joe said, ‘Let’s give ourselves half a chance of avoiding a murder-suicide and get a place with lots of light.’” I had to stop talking!
I popped into the bathroom, flushed (nice save!), and emerged babbling.
“This is where the magic happens!” I said, presenting Spencer the walk-in pantry I’d converted to my studio. “Or doesn’t, depending on the day.”
Spencer poked his head in. The space was barely big enough for my drawing table; the walls pinned floor to ceiling with a mad jam of photos, images torn from magazines, notes to myself, random trinkets. On the floor, waist-high stacks of the photography books I use for reference, and a glass jug that held the stubs of all the colored pencils I’d ever burned through.
“Thank God you’re an artist,” I said to Spencer. “Most people who sneak a peek think I’m batshit.”
Spencer couldn’t resist a closer look at my current project. I was working on a commission for the Telluride Film Festival, fiddling around with the idea of the knots in aspen trees looking like eyes. Or something. Scattered on the desk were strips of film, glass eyes I’d found at a curio shop, and an out-of-print book flagged for Herbert Bayer photographs.
“Imagine being you!” I said. “Seeing the inside of my car, apartment, and studio in the same day. It must feel like skipping first and second base and going straight to third!”
“If I’m making you nervous,” Spencer said, “I can just go.”
“Don’t go!” I screeched, scaring even myself.
Joe’s and Timby’s breakfast dishes were still on the table, a diorama of half-eaten toast and half-finished orange juice.