The Roughest Draft(23)
We lead strangely luxuryless lives for people holed up in a gorgeous Florida cottage. We wake on the far ends of the house, listening—or I know I do—with embarrassing intensity for the sounds of each other rustling bedsheets, opening bathroom doors, turning on showers. There’s intimacy we no longer permit in seeing each other unshowered. We used to, on our retreats. I don’t let myself miss seeing Katrina’s pillow-creased cheeks, sleepy eyes, and the unruly shock of her hair spilling over her neck.
In the kitchen, we crunch down toasted bagels, unspeaking. Then we write for eight hours. The dining room is the war room. In the evenings, I pound frustration into the pavement on nightly runs through the quiet, palm-treed streets of Key Largo. It’s my only respite from Katrina, from overthinking the plot points and dialogue we’ve thrown at each other like barbs.
There’s only one potential problem with our new working routine, one Katrina and I have chosen to ignore. We don’t write the flashback romantic scenes. It’s an unspoken agreement. Whenever we reach one, we move right on to the next scene instead. While I know we have to write them eventually, I’m daunted by the prospect. If we’re drawing from our relationship in the scenes where the characters argue, what will we draw from in the scenes of their romance?
I’m contemplating the question while I read the vitriolic passage in front of me, open on Katrina’s rose-gold MacBook. Katrina watches me, her eyes hawkish, sitting with one foot curled under her the way she does. Her expression neutral, she’s pretending she’s impassively waiting for my reaction. I know better. I notice her gaze hasn’t left me.
“The parallels to me are a little heavy-handed,” I finally say.
Katrina is writing Michael to be selfish, full of himself, and rash. In fairness, I’ve written Evelyn petty and fearful. I know exactly what I’m doing. Katrina obviously does, too.
She shrugs. “Only someone who knows you like I do would notice.”
It’s a surprisingly intimate statement. While it’s not untrue, it reflects a closeness neither of us is comfortable with. The room goes quiet, except for the unchanging overture of the ceiling fan and the restless ocean. For the first time since she passed the computer over, Katrina’s eyes flit from mine.
I’m spared having to reply by someone knocking on the door.
Katrina stands up and starts for the entryway, her brow furrowed. “Did you order takeout?”
In the heat of the day’s writing, I’ve lost track of time. Katrina’s guess is reasonable. The past three nights we’ve ordered from various restaurants in town, eating our dinners out of plastic containers while we read what we’ve written. Not tonight, however. “No,” I say. “It’s—”
Katrina opens the door. “Harriet,” she says.
I hear Harriet’s voice, flippantly easygoing like usual. “Katrina. So nice of you to invite me over for dinner after not speaking to me in years.”
She walks in the door, holding a bottle of the pinot noir the three of us used to drink on our retreats. Her heavy-soled boots thud on the floorboards.
Harriet is cool. There’s no other way to describe her. Even when we were young writers coming up in New York, I was conscious of her being cool in ways I could never learn or master. Nothing’s changed about her. She’s dressed in shades of black and gray and wearing an oversized floppy hat.
“I didn’t invite you,” Katrina says slowly, frowning at me.
I blink. Katrina is . . . pissed. I thought she and Harriet had kept in touch—honestly, when our partnership collapsed, I presumed Harriet had taken Katrina’s side. Evidently, I was wrong. Why Katrina dropped Harriet is hard for me to fathom, though.
“Nathan did,” Harriet replies, walking into the dining room, unperturbed by Katrina’s frosty welcome. She examines the walls with the fascinated eyes of tourists visiting famous battlefields. “I figured he told you, which I’m now realizing was a supremely stupid assumption. How’s the writing going?”
Katrina’s reentered the room. From the opposite end of the dining table, she stares me down, squaring her shoulders. “You didn’t think to mention we’d be having company?”
I know I could calmly explain what happened. While I have in the past few days said things, written things, even done things to spite Katrina—turning off the fan when I know she prefers it on, using words starting with “un” in our writing when I know she finds them weak and repetitive—this was not one of those things. Harriet texted me, and I genuinely thought Katrina would want to see our old friend. I thought she’d even appreciate the buffer between us. Every night we’ve eaten our meals in silence, practically racing to be the first one locked safe in our bedrooms for the night. I just forgot to mention I’d invited Harriet.
This, of course, is not what I say. “We don’t have company,” I reply. “I do. Last I checked, I don’t need to run my plans by you. We’re not a couple.”
Past her wire-frame glasses, Harriet’s eyes widen. “Wow, this is even worse than I thought.” She moves to the barstools, where she sits to spectate, helping herself to the tortilla chips Katrina left out from her lunch.
I watch the familiar flush rise from Katrina’s collarbone, up her neck, into her cheeks. She’s furious. I hold her gaze, positive she could light paper on fire with the vicious heat in her eyes. Conflicting impulses have collided in her, I realize. She hates when I make decisions without our having agreed on them. But she can’t refuse me without explaining herself—something Katrina’s been loath to do for over four years.