In Too Hard (Freshman Roommates Trilogy, Book 3) Read online

  It felt like that kids’ game, where you put the squares and circles in the right hole. And I’d been trying to get the green triangle in the red square hole. And then, when he said “be a writer” I suddenly saw the triangle opening just a few inches away.

  My imaginary hand hovered over the correct hole, and then I pulled it back, setting it down.

  “Are you kidding?” I said to Montrose. “No way.”

  “Why not? It’s a noble profession.”

  “Yeah, if you’re the National Book Award winner,” I said.

  He, of course, was the National Book Award winner five years ago for Folly.

  And hadn’t published since.

  “Oh, come on, that’s not fair,” he said. He was right, it wasn’t.

  A thought occurred to me. “Wait. This job. My papers. This isn’t some kind of whole Pygmalion thing, is it?”

  “Christ, I’m only twenty-eight. I’m still learning myself. Do you really think I’m Henry Higgins material?”

  I had a flash of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine mispronounces Svengali, just as he added, “Or a Svengali.” He mispronounced it just like Elaine had in the episode, with a soft G.

  “Okay, Elaine,” I said, and he laughed—loudly and naturally.

  “I figured you’d be too young to get that one,” he said.

  “We’re both too young to get it,” I answered.

  But apparently we’d both been big Seinfeld rerun bingers. We spent the next half hour comparing notes on our fave episodes and lines (“No, I mentioned the bissssque” was a shared one).

  I laid back on the floor, reaching my arms over my head for a better stretch, and setting my phone in the crook of my shoulder.

  He did a great Bania impression that had tears of laughter rolling down the sides of my face.

  “You’re funny,” I said, catching my breath.

  “You seem surprised by that,” he said.

  I thought about that. “I guess I am. I mean, you can be light in class, but, like, no impressions or anything.”

  “Damn, and I was going to incorporate my Tolstoy impression into next semester.”

  I laughed again, then said, “But Gangster’s Folly was so…”

  “Not funny?”

  I thought about the book. I had read it ten times easily, though no other time had been so important, so monumental, as the first.

  “Well, I mean, there were funny parts in it. Like the scene where he’s trying to get Stef into bed—”

  “Based on actual events, I might add.”

  I smiled to myself, but continued, “But on the whole, it’s so dark. A tragedy, really.”

  “That’s your take? A tragedy?”

  I shrugged and my phone slipped from my shoulder. I caught it and readjusted.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Phone slid off me. All’s well now.”

  “Slid off you? How was it on you?”

  “I’m lying on the floor. It was on my shoulder.”

  There was nothing from him and I checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t disconnected. Nope.

  “So, back to Folly?” I said finally, after the silence. I figured he was doing something else, and now that we’d finished up the Seinfeld conversation, he was bored and wanted to end the conversation. Appealing to his inner preening artist, I tried to pull it back to him…or at least his book.

  “Um, maybe I shouldn’t say this…” he said.

  “What?” I asked. Was he going to tell me some secret about Folly that no one else knew? Like what Aidan whispered to Stef that made her say yes?

  “All thoughts of Folly rushed out of my head—perhaps forever—when you mentioned that you’re lying on the floor of my office.”

  “Why? Is that bad? Did someone die on this floor or something? I mean, I know it’s not crazy clean, but believe me, I’ve—”

  “Is your hair down? Loose?”

  “Why? Is there something on the carpet?”

  He chuckled, but this was a different sound. Deep and throaty, and it almost caught in his throat.

  Ohhhhh.

  “Yes, my hair is loose,” I said. Not in any kind of temptress voice (not that I even had one in my toolkit), but not in a no-nonsense tone either. Just a calm, low voice.

  Another long silence, which this time I had no intention of breaking with questions about his book.

  After a few seconds I heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You know, I think I’m just a little weirded out today. Coming back to the city, staying with my parents. My apartment being sublet. This whole year is kind of weirding me out.”

  I didn’t say anything, this was his ramble. I didn’t want to tip the scales one way or another, though I wasn’t even sure what was being weighed.

  Well, I sort of did. I’d known about those kind of scales for way too long.

  “I…I just don’t want to seem creepy or anything,” he finally said.

  “You didn’t. You don’t.”

  Another long exhale. “Good. Good. Listen, I’m supposed to meet friends downtown for drinks. I better get going.”

  “Okay,” I said, then waited for him to say goodbye. Which he didn’t.

  “It’s just that…I mean…” More silence. “Yeah, I’m gonna go.”

  “Okay,” I said again.

  “Syd?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for taking the job,” he softly said.

  “Thanks for offering it.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He was gone. And I laid on the floor of his office for a long time before I finally got up, pulled forward the notes I wanted to work on tomorrow, then went home to my dorm room.

  And thought the whole time about what he’d said—and more importantly, what he hadn’t said.

  Chapter Six

  “What box are you working on now?” he asked when he called me the next day. It was around one in the afternoon and I’d been there since nine working.

  “Rachel,” I said.

  “No, Billy,” he teased.

  “Ha. Ha. I’m working on the box with all the Rachel notes.”

  “Rachel? I don’t have a Rachel.”

  “I’m thinking she’s what Esme either started as or morphed into, or—”

  “Oh, Rachel, that’s it. Yeah, I know her,” he said, like he’d just remembered the name of someone he ran into somewhere but hadn’t seen for a while. In a way, that’s exactly what it was. Going through his notes made me realize that these people, these characters, were real to him. Friends.

  There would be innocuous items, like body type, race, coloring, that sort of thing, so he could keep the visual straight once he was writing. But then there would be this random note like “When she was in second grade, she wanted fashion-y boots, but her mother made her wear her current, dorky snow boots because they were still in good shape. So she took a butter knife (the only kind she was allowed to handle—she might have been a bit of a rebel, but some rules she knew better than to break) and pierced her boots so her mother would have to buy her new ones.” And wrapped around that piece of paper was a cocktail napkin from some place I’d heard of in Manhattan with “don’t use this…just for character development” scribbled on it with red Sharpie.

  “So, I’m creating a ‘possibly Esme’ pile. That’s what I’m working on.”

  “You can scratch the ‘possibly’ part. She was Rachel for a few months in there for sure.”

  I looked at the box, nearly full except for the pieces I had piled in front—and to the side, and to the back—of me on the same spot on the floor I’d sat yesterday.

  These were all notes he’d done on one character in a few months? Good lord, the man must have done nothing for the past five years but write plot and character notes.

  And yet, no novel to show for all of the labor that sat around the room, surrounding me.

  “So, you’re going with Esme? Rachel and Esme, same person?”<
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  “Yes,” he said.

  I hesitated too long, and he was starting to know me. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I quickly said. What I was thinking was not my place to say.

  “What?” he said with exasperation in his voice.

  “Well, it’s not really important.”

  “Is it about my stuff? My work?”

  “Uh…yeah.”

  “Then spill.”

  “No, really—”

  “Come on, Syd. I hired you, I want any feedback you want to give.”

  “I would never presume to give you…feedback.” Even the idea seemed preposterous to me.

  “At least I’ve read your stuff, your papers—and liked them. Most of the feedback I get is from hack critics who couldn’t write a grocery list and so they have to bring others down.”

  Huh. That sounded out of character for the person I’d gotten to know—albeit only in the last couple of days, three months of one-sided lectures, and one Seinfeld-bonding phone call.

  He snorted, and added, “Or at least that’s what my agent and editor say to me.”

  Yeah, that sounded about right. “And what do you say?”

  Another snort. “Nothing. I just let them blow smoke up my ass until I am properly soothed.”

  “Well let’s face it, there wasn’t a lot of negative feedback on Gangster’s Folly anyway, was there?” I mean, it had won a bunch of awards and still lingered at the bottom of several best-seller lists five years later.

  “Oh, there were a few. But yeah, it was well received. My ruffled feathers were more recent as it seems more and more people in the New York literary scene are getting in some shots about the wait on my next book.”

  He traveled in New York literary circles.

  A vision of Dorothy Parker and her gang at the Algonquin popped into my head and I saw Montrose sitting amongst them in a smoke-filled room, throwing out bon mots and looking debonair. His tousled, tired, world-weary look fitting right in.

  It was hard to imagine that he and I lived in the same country let alone the same city.

  “But enough of that, I don’t want to get pissed, it’s the holidays.” He let out a little laugh. “Though the holidays seem to bring out the pissed-off-edness in a lot of people.”

  A vision of my stepfather drunkenly knocking over our pathetic excuse for a Christmas tree flashed in my mind, but before I could agree with Montrose’s summation, he added, “Seriously. What thought did you have about the Esme/Rachel thing?”

  “Well, it seems like Folly was compared a lot to Salinger, particularly Catcher in the Rye.”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you feel about that?” I’d wondered about that for a few years, but of course I didn’t mention that part.

  A long sigh. I started to lie back, but stayed in my position, not wanting to take any chances that he’d ask if I was lying down and then feel weird and want to end the call.

  Because I could talk books all day with Billy Montrose. And it seemed I was getting my chance.

  “At first I was incredibly flattered. I mean, I love Salinger, you know?” I nodded, but of course he couldn’t see me. He went on like he could. “And then it got kind of annoying. This was my book. My work. My ideas. I got a chip on my shoulder about it. Those were what I endearingly call my ‘prick years.’”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “The last two years.”

  “You don’t seem too much like a prick now. Are you out of that phase?”

  “Depends on the day. That’s why I’m here. Well, not here, at my parents’, but at Bribury. I didn’t like what I was becoming.”

  “A prick?”

  “Oh, I had fully become a prick. The next stage I seemed to be careening toward was ‘self-entitled prick’, and it was coming hard and fast.”

  “So, Bribury.”

  “Yeah. I used the excuse that I needed a change of scenery to ‘get out of my head,’ in order to write the next book. And that’s true, but I knew I was just one martini-soaked, three-hour lunch away from being someone I didn’t want to be. Because I had the sneaking suspicion that he couldn’t write for shit.”

  I laughed at that. And kind of marveled at his self-awareness. Given the chance, I’d probably be perfectly happy to become a self-entitled prick and enjoy all the perks that came with it.

  “Anyway. You don’t want to hear all that.” Oh, I so did! “Why the Salinger question?”

  “Well, if there were all the Salinger comparisons, why would you bait that by having your protagonist named Esme? Seems like you’re waving a red cape at them.”

  An out-and-out chuckle from him now. “Is it possible that we really just ‘met’ yesterday? Are you sure you haven’t been organizing the files of my shrink?”

  Ooh, he had a shrink—so Manhattan. There was a couch I’d like to lie on with him. And not in that way. Okay, in that way, too, but I’d love to hear the deep thoughts he spilled to his therapist.

  “Yeah, that’s where Rachel came in. At first, always, she was Esme in my head. But…my own Esme if that makes sense.”

  “It does.”

  “And I loved her. I wanted to write her, to be her. I could easily spend a whole book with her. And then I realized I was playing into their hands and I’d be crucified if I used the name Esme.”

  “So she became Rachel.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m not through everything here—obviously—but I think the dates on your notes show that you went back to Esme. Is that right?”

  “Yeah, that was when the prick started rearing his head.” (I can’t even mention what visual that turn of phrase conjured up for me.) “And I was all ‘Fuck you, he doesn’t own the name. I can do great things with my Esme too.’”

  “Wow.”

  He let out a sigh, but I could see—hear—the smile on his face. “I know, right? Total prick.”

  “Well…hubris at the very least.”

  “Right. Exactly. Esme hubris.”

  “The very worst kind.”

  “Yes. But I couldn’t see it at the time.”

  “Because you’d become a prick.” There was no question in my voice.

  “Yes, as we’ve established. So that’s where we left off. With Esme.”

  “The ‘fuck you Esme.’”

  “Yes.” He let out a big breath, like he’d just told me a piece of gossip that he’d been dying to repeat. And maybe that was exactly what he’d done.

  “Okay. One pile for all Esme or Rachel related notes. Future name to be determined,” I said.

  I smiled as he laughed on the other end, then said goodbye.

  Chapter Seven

  “She’s an Esme,” I said when I picked up his call.

  “I know, right?”

  “But…”

  “Yeah? A ‘but?’ It’s okay, give it to me.”

  I was back in his office, having gotten there early, wanting to get back to work. Had I ever wanted to get to work?

  Plus, I needed to leave in time to take the bus to the mall before it closed.

  Knowing I’d probably be too engrossed in Montrose’s notes to notice the time later, I had set the alarm on my phone to go off in time for me to leave.

  I’d been there about four hours when Montrose called.

  “She’s Salinger’s Esme,” I broke the news to him.

  “Fuck.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said—”

  “No, no. I’m glad you did. Are you sure? I mean there’s not much even written yet, no prose or anything, bits of dialogue and character notes.”

  “Well, then, maybe…” But there was doubt in my voice and he knew it.

  “Fuck,” he said again. “I believe you. And, shit, I think I knew it.”

  “It’s just…it’s her. Practical. Unsentimental. Wise beyond her years. Very matter-of-fact. And yet you know she’s going to rip your heart out. I’m sorry,” I said. It almost felt like consoling someone whose friend
had just died. “I think,” I started, wanting to throw him a bone, “it’s because of these notes about her as a kid. They just feel so…so…Esme, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he said, dejection—almost resignation—in his voice.

  “But maybe if you just left those out? I mean, some of them even say ‘do not use, just for character development,’ so maybe if they’re not actually in the book?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, his voice perking up a little bit.

  “I mean, obviously I’m looking for it since you pointed it out, and I’m reading all these notes about her as a child, probably right around Salinger’s Esme’s age…”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” More hope in his voice now.

  “I don’t think you need to scrap her totally.”

  “No?” he asked, like I was his editor or something, not just some college freshman who had no point of reference on what made a novel a masterpiece—other than having read many of them.

  “But, you should probably go with Rachel, not Esme.”

  A long, loud sigh on the other end. “Yeah, I guess.”

  He asked me about the notes I’d gone through today and I answered him. I’d taken a stack and brought them to his desk, not wanting to spend another day on the floor. So I sat in his chair, going through his stuff and inputting it into some of the different spreadsheets and Word docs I’d already begun, while he spoke on the phone to me.

  It was definitely surreal.

  I was listening to him, but my eyes wandered to the framed photos on his desk. One of him and his parents taken at his graduation from Brown.

  He looked like his mother—very Upper East Side, very Old Money. She was in a smart, cream linen suit. My guess was Chanel, but I’m not well versed on WASP-wear. Montrose had his arm around her, a near-identical smile on both their faces.

  His father was on his other side and also wore what looked like a cream linen suit, though definitely not Chanel. Brooks Brothers maybe? His arm was not slung around his son or his wife’s shoulder, but there was a nice smile on his face and he seemed happy to be in the photo.

  The other photo was of Montrose and a beautiful young woman, their arms entwined, both looking at the camera. They wore ski gear and I could see a ski resort, and mountain, behind them.