The Unsinkable Greta James(28)

Ben waves a hand. “Sure.”

“I could be home writing, I guess,” she tells him. “Or out somewhere getting an early bite, if I have a show. Or maybe at the studio, depending on where I am in the process.”

“You have a studio?”

“I rent one. When I’m not on the road.” She takes a sip of her beer and tilts her head at him. “What would you be doing at five o’clock on a Monday in New York?”

His eyes drift to the tin ceiling, the rusty light fixtures that look like they’ve been there since the 1800s. “Well,” he says. “Six months ago, I would’ve been hurrying through the end of my European history seminar so that I could make the five thirty-two from Penn Station and get home in time for dinner with the girls.”

“And now?”

“Now,” he says with a rueful smile, “I’m usually driving my students nuts by going fifteen minutes over, then heading back to my depressingly bare faculty apartment and drinking a few fingers of Glenfiddich while I attempt to write something half as good as my last book.”

“Does the whisky help?”

“With the writing?” he asks with a laugh. “Or with everything else?”

She gives him a long look. “You know, when I’m stuck on a song, it usually has more to do with my life than my creative process.”

“Well, my life is a total mess right now, so I guess I should probably stop blaming Herman Melville.”

“I’m sure he deserves at least some of it. I mean, the guy hunted whales, right?”

“We all have our faults,” Ben says with a sardonic smile. “I certainly have mine.”

Greta studies him over the rim of her glass. “You seem pretty okay to me.”

“You should talk to my wife then. She’d probably have a few things to say about it.”

“Hard pass,” Greta says, but he doesn’t smile. She watches him spin his glass in a slow circle on the scarred wooden table. “What does she think of you being all the way up here in Alaska right now?”

He shrugs. “She’s used to the travel at this point. When the book came out, there was only supposed to be a five-day tour. But then it started to take off, which meant more cities and more speaking engagements.”

“And she didn’t mind?”

“No, she did,” he says, his shoulders tightening. “She blamed it for a lot of our problems at first. Even though they started long before that. We’d been growing apart for years, ever since the kids were born. But sometimes it’s harder to see that up close.”

“And easier when you’re out on the road.”

He nods. “It’s like that feeling of getting off a long flight and taking your first breath of fresh air. You were okay on the plane. You could breathe just fine. And you could survive like that for a pretty long time if you had to. But once you’re off, you realize you wouldn’t want to live that way forever. Not if you had a choice. I think being away did that for me. It helped me realize I hadn’t breathed—really breathed—in a very long time.”

“I get that,” Greta says. “I’ve been there too.”

“You have?”

“I mean, not married,” she says. “But a lot of the guys I’ve dated thought it was cool at first when I went out on the road. They worked in advertising or tech or had jobs I honestly can’t even remember because they were so boring. But it meant they had normal schedules, normal lives. And after a while, it started to wear on them that I was always on the move. You miss a lot in this life. Weddings. Birthdays. Anniversaries. It’s hard to make relationships work. Friendships too. Most of mine have slipped away over the years. My friend Yara is a musician too, so it works with her. But with others, not so much…” She trails off and takes a sip of her beer. “Which is why I now tend to date people who are already in the business.”

Ben lifts his eyebrows. “Oh, are you…?”

“No,” she says. “Not at the moment.”

“Right,” he says, trying and failing not to look pleased. “Right.”

Suddenly, Greta’s face feels too warm from the fire. She picks up her glass but realizes it’s empty. Ben shoots to his feet, pushing his chair back hastily.

“Another round?” he asks, then walks off without waiting for an answer.

As she watches, he leans over the bar to order, then notices the giant stuffed head of a grizzly bear and pulls out his phone to take a selfie with it. Greta is thinking it might be the most unself-consciously dorky thing she’s ever seen when he raises an index finger and takes a second one pretending to be picking the bear’s nose.

She closes her eyes and scrubs at her face, wondering if he’s seen the video by now. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it, when you meet someone random like this? You go digging for information. Fifteen minutes of searching this morning, and Greta already knew Ben’s middle name (Robert), his hometown (McCall, Idaho), and his alma mater (Colgate). She found a picture of him at a faculty dinner with his wife, who is tall and blond and pretty, if a bit generic-looking, and read several interviews he did when the book came out, where he mostly talked about Jack London but also mentioned how much he loves Dave Matthews (she knew it!), how he eats exactly eight almonds for a snack while he writes (because of course he does), and how he wanted to be an explorer when he grew up. The biggest scandal she could find was a prank involving a swimming pool and a pair of swans during his senior year of college.