Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(34)

Bringing him into the loop about her family was too dangerous a line to cross, too close to home. “I know. Thank you.” She sat up. “Let’s just go back to bed.”

With a nod, he stood and held his hands out, helping her to her feet. Then he led her to bed, tucking her under his arm, her head on his chest.

When she was finally able to sleep again, Carmen dreamt that the house on Caravel Road was burning. She ran in to save her family, but every time she brought one to safety, the others she’d saved would be back in the fire.

She woke, tense and gasping, when Theo shook her awake, his eyes sparking with worry.





8



Theo closed his Mac, shoved it away, and stared out the window at the Eiffel Tower.

He was blocked.

He’d been in Paris for more than two months, and he had five thousand words, maybe a thousand of them worth the space they took up on his hard drive. There were times while he’d been writing Orchids in Autumn when he’d written five thousand words—good words, keepers—in a day.

He simply could not write. Not even drivel. He’d tried all the exercises he knew to ignite even a flicker of inspiration, but there was nothing. Even when he gave himself permission to write sewage, as long as it was words on the screen, the sewage dried to a trickle in a matter of a few sentences, and then he’d zone out, his mind drifting far away, and he’d come back ten, fifteen, thirty minutes later, still staring at the screen, the thin line of the cursor blinking with steady determination at the beginning of an expanse of white emptiness.

The grant that was paying for this Parisian retreat bound him to write the follow-up to Orchids, a prequel of sorts about his early life with Maggie. He intended to have a complete manuscript draft by the end of the year, when he was to return to his regular life as a professor of creative writing and American literature at Colson College in Colson, Maine.

That was the plan, anyway. At this rate, he wouldn’t have the first draft of the first chapter done by then. Fuck.

He drained his crystal glass of bourbon and, deciding he needed another, he stood abruptly, nearly overturning the fey chair with curlicue legs he’d been sitting on. He hated this damn apartment. He felt like a visitor in a museum every single second.

Well, not every single second. He’d become quite fond of and at home in the bedroom.

That brush of thought about Carmen brought an upward twitch to his mouth. Yes, he was quite fond of any space he shared with Carmen Pagano.

He went to the bar and refilled his glass, emptying the bottle of Maker’s 46. That gave him a moment’s pause, and he considered when he’d bought this bottle. Wednesday. Today was Sunday. No worries, then. Even accounting for what he’d had while he was away from the Hunter Anders Museum of Expensively Prissy Taste, he was fine.

Maybe he wouldn’t rush out to replace this bottle, though.

He was alone in the apartment today, by his request. Eli was spending the day with Carmen and Rosa, even going to Mass with them at Notre Dame. Then they were visiting Versailles. As far as Theo was concerned, he had plenty of artsy-fartsy décor right where he was, and he’d rather use the day to work.

He needed the day to himself. He needed to f*cking write, to get something down, and Carmen was a delightful distraction. They’d been together for six weeks or so—if ‘together’ was what they were. They spent most of most days together. They ate most meals together. They slept most nights together. They were going off to spend the next weekend in Avignon together, and he’d booked a romantic hotel. But even when she was curled up with him, sleeping quietly, her body woven with his, he didn’t feel like she was ‘together’ with him. Even in sleep, even when he could not possibly get closer to her, he could feel her holding him off. He couldn’t quite explain how he could feel it, but it was there. Even in moments of playfulness, even in passion, even when he had all of her in his hands, he had none of her, really.

In five weeks, her French sojourn would be over, and she’d be gone. He knew that when she left, she’d be gone from his life completely. He wondered how long it would be before she forgot him completely.

He drained his bourbon again, staring out at the balcony, watching birds perching on the building across the street, his thoughts dark. He set his empty glass on the bar next to the empty bottle, walked into the bedroom and opened a drawer, pulling out a large, worn, handmade leather journal. A gift from Maggie when his MFA had been conferred, more than twenty years ago. He plopped down into the wingchair over which Carmen always tossed her clothes, and he opened the leather tie. The journal was refillable; he had banker’s boxes at home in Maine full of the previous contents. This was where he wrote his poetry. He probably wrote fifty poems for every one he published—hundreds of poems, thousands of attempts—and every draft, from the first wobbly words to the polished piece, had been written in this book since he’d had it. He’d never written a poem in any way but longhand. Ink on paper, the heel of his hand sanding the words as it passed over them, pushing them into being.

Being a poet, perhaps more than any other career in the known world, was a calling, an act of love, not a career choice at all, despite the burden of student loans he and Maggie had struggled for a decade to pay. Any other artist—painter, musician, novelist, sculptor, weaver, anything—had at least a glimmer of hope that their labors might someday feed them. People bought paintings in galleries, in restaurants, at flea markets, at art shows. Musicians might get recording contracts or work as studio talent, or play gigs in seedy bars. Fiction writers, biographers—memoirists—might see their work displayed on a prominent table at a bookstore, might be interviewed on a morning talk show. Might earn a living from their work.