Lies She Told(31)
Trevor steps toward the gate door and then glances over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. “Courtney has you in coach?”
“It’s no big deal. I’m narrow.” The phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind, but I can’t utter such a hackneyed expression in my editor’s presence. I’m fortunate that the publishing house is footing the bill for the trip at all. Many writers pay their own way at these things.
He rubs the back of his neck. “That’s too bad. Now I’m stuck finishing that waste of paper I was reading.”
I frown out of fellowship for the unknown writer. Trevor never couches his criticism with favorable fluff. Books are either superb or they stink. There’s no in-between for him. “Whose is it?”
“Greg Hall’s latest. The guy must have a deal where no one is allowed to touch his work. I’m not even halfway in and could have shaved twenty thousand words.”
“Well, if you really need the excuse, I’m sure whomever is sitting next to me will gladly switch for your reclining seat with extra leg room.”
Trevor doesn’t laugh at my joke. Instead, he eyes the queue. A handful of passengers are lined up, though probably not the number needed to fill the front cabin of the massive plane tethered to gate. He grabs his rolling suitcase and points at me with his free hand. “Look after that book for me. Be right back.”
Trevor grabs an attendant’s attention. He points in my direction twice during the conversation, erasing any doubt as to what he’s doing. Embarrassment at my unintended role as an upgrade beggar encourages me to open a blank document on my laptop and pretend to work. I should think of something to say on my panel, though I have little idea what made my first book so much more “believable” and “gripping” than my others. Even after I wrote it, I’d largely faked my way through the bookstore tour. I’ve always felt as though another version of me penned the novel or that I’d been a conduit for some outside storytelling intelligence that had quickly moved on, leaving me with a bestseller and no concrete idea of how to repeat it.
The story itself wasn’t that novel. Drowned Secrets told the tale of a young girl whose alcoholic father had been sexually molesting her. The mother finds out one summer and hits him in the back of the head with a shovel beside their pool. He falls in, concussed, and drowns. Later, the mom buries the murder weapon beneath the bushes. There aren’t too many twists and turns. No gotcha moments. The perspective, I think, was what hooked the readers. My narrator was Bitsy, the abused twelve-year-old. Reviewers crowed about how I’d really gotten into her head.
Trevor’s step has added swagger as he returns. I pick up the Hall novel and hold it out to him, a lead weight in return for his trouble. For the first time I notice the cover: a Southern gothic image of a house with a child waiting on the porch. I wouldn’t have wanted to read it before Trevor’s scathing review.
“Will you be needing this?”
“I was able to upgrade you, sans charge.”
“That never works for me. It’s the accent, isn’t it?”
He winks. “Gets you Americans every time.”
*
The business-class seats are wide and deep. No one tells me not to recline before takeoff or to stow my electronic devices. Instead, the flight attendant assures us that the food service will start as soon as the cabin doors close and asks for cocktail orders.
Remembering how violently three drinks had mixed with my medication, I am about to say, “Nothing for me,” when Trevor orders a red wine. I must look shocked by the hour because he clears his throat and says, “Conferences make me a bit nervous. So much selling.”
His sentiments so agree with my own that I tell the flight attendant to “please make that two.”
As we wait for the drinks, Trevor and I gush over the latest releases from mutual favorite crime writers who, in our humble opinions, deserve all the money they’ve made. My editor is the only man I’ve ever met that enjoys fiction as much, if not more, than I do. He’s the Calvin Johnson of literary references. It’s impossible to make a quote that he won’t catch. When the wine appears, conversation moves on from respected writers to overrated hacks. We trade names, hipster teens pitching pebbles at the popular kids. Trevor is mean in his straight-man British monotone. He’s always had an uncanny ability to cut with bluntness.
Two minibottles of Barolo arrive that I am sure would never have made it to the back of the plane. As I sip my drink, Trevor turns the conversation to my book. “How is the writing coming?”
He probably wants to hear that I’m a third done. But I can’t deliver that line with a straight face. A more responsible person would have declined her editor’s offer of first class and sequestered herself in steerage, laptop open on the dining tray. “The setup is taking me a bit longer than I thought.”
I glance over Trevor’s shoulder into the aisle. The flight attendant’s backside sticks into the walkway as she passes a bag of chips to a passenger. If Trevor is going to grill me about my story, I need a clear head. Water not wine.
“I wanted to apologize for being so negative about your idea before.”
I stop trying to make eye contact with the airline employee. Trevor looks at me from beneath half-lowered lids. His dark gaze draws me in, like the mouth of a cave. “I think affairs are a sore spot for me after the divorce.”