The Dead Romantics (9)

She punched him.



“Yeah, great job.” I sighed, and deleted that one, too. Amelia and Jackson were supposed to be reconciling, coming back from the dark night of the soul, and stepping into the light together. This was the grand romance at the end, the big finale that every Ann Nichols book had, and every reader expected.

And I couldn’t write this fucking scene.

I was a failure, and Ann’s career was dead in the water.

There was little more depressing than that, save for the state of my refrigerator and cabinets. All that we had left was dino-shaped mac and cheese. Perfect depression food, at least. As I pulled the box from the cabinet, my roommate burst in through the door, slinging her purse down on the couch.

“Fuck the man!” she cried.

“Fuck the man,” I intoned religiously.

“All of them!” Rose stormed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began to stress eat carrots out of the container. Rose Wu had been my roommate in college, but she’d graduated a year early and moved up to NYC to pursue a career in advertising. A year ago, she had a spare room. So, I moved in, and that was that. She was my best friend and the best thing about this whole damn city rolled into one.

She was the kind of person who demanded to be looked at—the kind who could walk into a room and command it with a single look. She knew what she wanted, and she always went for it. That was her mantra. “You see it, you reach for it.”

That might’ve been why she was so successful at the advertising firm where she worked. Only two years in, and she was already the social media marketing manager.

“Michael,” she began, shoving another carrot into her mouth, “came in today and was telling me I did wrong with our client—you know, the actress Jessica Stone? We’re working on advertising for her clothing line—and how it’s all my fault. Bitch, she’s not even my client! I’m not even in publicity! She’s Stacee’s client! God, I hate white men being unable to tell one Asian from another.”

“I can murder him if you want,” I replied with absolute sincerity, opening the box of macaroni, extracting the cheese packet, and dumping the noodles into a pot full of water. I didn’t even wait for it to start boiling. It would eventually.

Rose shoved another carrot into her mouth. “Only if we don’t get caught.”

I shrugged. “Grind up the body. Host a barbecue. Feed the remains to your office. There, done.”

“That sounds like the plot to a movie.”

“Fried Green Tomatoes,” I admitted.

Rose cocked her head. “Did it work?”

“Oh, hell yeah, and I’ve got a great barbecue recipe we can try.”

She sighed and shook her head, twisting the carrot bag closed and shoving it back into the refrigerator. “No, no. I don’t want to risk food poisoning innocent people. I’ve got a better idea.”

“Wood chipper?”

“Drinks.”

The water began to boil. I stirred the pot with a spatula, since everything else was dirty. “Do you mean arsenic or . . . ?”

“No, I mean we’re going out. For drinks.”

I gave her a baffled look. Me, standing in our kitchen, making deadline mac and cheese in my comfy flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized Tigger sweater, no bra, and yesterday’s hair. “Out . . . ?”

“Out.” Rose went to the doorway of the kitchen and stood there like Gandalf to the Balrog. None shall pass. “We are going out. Clearly I had a bad day, and by the looks of the new books on the counter, you did, too.”

I groaned. “No, Rose, please, let me stay in and eat my mac and cheese and die. Alone.”

“You are not going to die alone,” my roommate replied adamantly. “If anything, you’ll at least have a cat.”

“I hate cats.”

“You love them.”

“They’re assholes.”

“Much like every ex-boyfriend you’ve ever had, and you loved all of them.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I did not have cats, and I did not want to go out drinking, either. I ripped open the powdered cheese packet. “My bank account is about as lacking as my love life. I couldn’t even afford a Natty Light, Rose.”

She gave a loud sigh and took the packet from my hand, scooting the boiling pot of noodle water onto an off burner. “We’re going out. We’re going to have fun. I need fun, and I know you do, too. I’m sensing, from the mac and cheese, that the meeting with your editor didn’t go well today, did it?”

Of course it didn’t. Why else would I be making depressing mac and cheese? I gave a shrug. “It went fine.”

“Florence.”

I exhaled through my mouth. “Ann has a new editor. I think you might know him or something—he seems familiar. His name is Benji something or other. Ainer? Ander?”

Rose gawked. “Benji Andor?”

I pointed at her with the wooden spoon. “That’s it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kid you not.”

“Lucky!” Rose barked a laugh. “He’s hot.”

“Yeah I know—how do you know?”

“He was in a whole Thirty-Five Under Thirty-Five thing in Time Out a year ago. He used to be an executive editor over at Elderwood Books before they folded. Where were you?”