Chapter Ten
Jaimie
When I woke up on Friday morning, I was surprised to find Rennie sleeping next to me.
Firmly but gently, I shook her awake. “Ren? Ren, sweetie. What are you doing in my bed?”
“I have a key, remember,” said Ren sleepily, and turned over on her side. She was wearing a thin silk nightie with her initials monogrammed on the back.
I tried to remember if we had gone out the night before and I had forgotten, either though drunkenness or exhaustion. But no, I had worked from home. The last thing I could remember was brewing myself a cup of tea and settling down at around nine pm to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary. I watched about twenty minutes of that before getting bored and turning on a Pandora station. I’d fallen asleep listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
“Ren, I thought you were at home working on your book last night,” I reminded her. “When you texted me, that’s where you said you were.”
“Well, I lied.” Ren threw a pillow over her head as though hoping to drown out my voice. “Do you know how much pressure it puts on you when everyone thinks you’re a genius? My family’s been asking when I’m going to finish my novel the way a normal family would ask when you’re getting married. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“But you really are brilliant,” I said with a twinge of sympathy. “You’re a much better writer than me.”
“But see, that’s what I’m talking about.” She wagged one finger in my direction. “You underrate yourself and put me on a pedestal. You’re not doing any favors for either of us.”
I supposed there was some truth in that, though by this point I had long since accepted that Ren was the more gifted writer. “How close are you to being done with your book?”
“I’m so close,” she said in frustration. “So close. I’m right at the climax, and I’m so worried I’m not going to stick the landing. And then everyone will know I was just pretending to be brilliant when all along I was a sham and a fake.”
“But you know everyone has these fears sometimes. Even the smartest, most gifted person you ever met.”
I threw on a shirt and ran into the kitchen to grab some orange juice. When I came back, Ren was still lying motionless with her head buried under the pillow.
“Here, drink this.” I set the glass down on the nightstand. “It’ll help you feel better.”
Ren raised the pillow just enough to look at it. “Pulp or no pulp?”
“Too much pulp, in my opinion.”
“Perfect.” She sat up and drained the whole glass.
“See, here’s the thing,” she said. “I’ve been reading biographies of Mozart and Paul McCartney—every genius you ever heard of had an unshakeable faith in their own genius. But I question myself, I second-guess myself, sometimes I doubt myself. So I must not be a great genius.”
“Let me see if I can follow your logic.” Sometimes talking with Ren made my head hurt. “You sometimes aren’t sure if you’re a genius, so you must not be.”
“Exactly,” said Ren.
“But have you considered that maybe the biographies didn’t tell the whole story? Maybe they had doubts but kept them to themselves. I’m sure Joyce and Morrissey questioned themselves just as much as you do.”
“Maybe.” Ren fell back on the bed with a sullen expression. From this angle, I could see the lace fringe of her underwear. “Sometimes I just wish I had a fellow genius I could commiserate with. It gets lonely.”
I turned away so she couldn’t see the immediate effect these words had on me. Of course, Ren had never considered me her equal as a writer—she was better at it, and she knew it—but it still hurt to hear the truth stated so plainly. I was just a mediocre talent, not even worth talking to because I could never understand the high and lonely calling of genius.
She was right in what she said; that wasn’t really the issue. The issue was that we both wanted the same thing, and only one of us had the skill and dedication necessary to make it happen. And I was going to be forever frustrated until either I abandoned my dreams or became serious about bringing them to fruition.
And even then, I would probably still be frustrated because I could practice the craft for the rest of my life and still never be as good as Ren.
When I hadn’t spoken in a while, Ren placed a cold hand on my back. “Hey, hope I didn’t upset you. I’m just thinking out loud here.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort,” I said with a sad smile, “I don’t think you have to worry about a lack of faith in yourself.”
“Maybe not.” She rubbed her eyes, which looked red and sore. “I’m probably just being dramatic because I don’t want to finish this book. Later this week, I’ll drag myself back into the coffee shop and bang out the last couple chapters.”
“And then what?”
“Then everyone in the world will love me.”
I smiled, for real this time. “I think there are a few steps in between that you’re forgetting.”
“Yeah, there’s editing and actually landing a book deal. But I’m not even worried about that at the moment. I just need to get it finished.”
“Well, maybe you’ll have it done by the time I get back.” I rose and began lazily tossing clothes into a suitcase.
“Where are you headed?”
“The boss and I are flying down to Vegas, purely for business reasons. We have to watch an exhausting number of fights, and I sort of envy the person who can just sit at home and write.”
“Sorry!” said Ren, not very convincingly.
***
I entered the office to find Randy standing at his desk, hands clasped around the handle of a brown leather satchel. He was wearing a crisp-looking gray blazer and a rather plain blue and red tie, and he looked, if possible, even more excited than usual.
“Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to eat for a few hours after we get there,” he said as he turned out the lights. “We’ve got a weigh-in first thing when we land, and Aardman wanted to meet with me privately for a few minutes just to go over some things—”
“Why not talk with him over dinner?”
“I suppose we could do that.” He paused at the door, patting his pockets to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. “Do you ever get that feeling like maybe you left the stove on?”
“There’s no stove in your office.”
“I know, but I’m sure there’s something. Oh, well. I’ll probably remember once we’re in the air. If I didn’t think it would be inappropriate, I would invite Braxton and Bruce out to dinner with us.”
“Why don’t you?”
Randy smiled shyly, like a boy trying to explain why he couldn’t ask his crush out. “I’m sure they’ve already made other plans for the night, and I’m probably going to be exhausted. If we go out as a group, we’ll end up staying out half the night. Besides, I don’t think it’s prudent to cultivate an atmosphere of over-familiarity.”
“Where were you thinking about eating?”
“Oh, anywhere! You know what I’m looking forward to right now? I’m looking forward to getting on that plane and opening one of those little packets of peanuts and just eating them one by one as I stare out at the clear blue.”
But I hadn’t eaten at all that morning, and it was going to take more than a package of peanuts to fill me up. On our way through the airport, I stopped and bought one of those giant pretzels and ate it while we were sitting in the terminal waiting to board our flight.
“Some people get nervous about flying,” said Randy as we sat facing the windows through which a serene sun shone. “But I find it invigorating. It’s one of the miracles of our age that you can climb into this—this tube thing—and be transported anywhere in the world in a few hours. To me, that’s just magic. I mean, there’s no other word for it.”
“I wish I could appreciate it the way you do,” I replied. “Flying just stresses me out.”
“Well, I hope you won’t be overly stressed this weekend. We’re here on business, I know, but there’s no reason we can’t also have a little fun while we’re at it.”
And I might have enjoyed it, if it hadn’t been my second weekend in a row away from home. At some point, I would have to say no to these constant trips out of state.