Page 15 of A Christmas Harbor

“So with fiction, right, readers can climb out of themselves and into someone else’s skin. That’s the whole point of it, to forget about life for a while and live vicariously through a detective or a spy or a…”

“Taxi dancer?”

“Exactly. No matter what you read, you’re expanding your mind into another person’s consciousness.” Was he making any sense? “But when you listen to a song, you can’t get away from yourself. The songwriter takes a personal story and makes it universal. We put ourselves in their place because we’ve had those same feelings before, or maybe we’re even feeling them now. And when we sing along, we sing as ourselves.” He shrugged. “Except when we sing as a donkey.”

“I never thought of it like that before. Ooh, check it out.” Paul pointed down an alleyway, where a trash can and recycling bin had been wrapped in red and green Christmas lights, respectively. “You know, fiction’s an escape for writers, too.”

“Escape from life?”

“Sometimes. Or sometimes just myself. Whoever the hell that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Writing fiction…it’s like acting, I guess. I’m always someone else, having their thoughts, their feelings, their hopes and dreams—even their taste in coffee. My characters give me somewhere to hide. Forever, if necessary.”

“Why would it be necessary?” David regretted the question as soon as it sprang from his tongue. If he could hide behind his uniform, why couldn’t Paul hide behind his characters? “Never mind. Stupid question.”

“It’s not stupid.” Paul gawked at a large eighteenth-century house across the street bedecked with thousands of tasteful white lights. “This is gonna sound weird, but we’re probably just hammered enough not to care. Sometimes—a lot of the time—I feel like there’s nothing reallytome, nothing that’s mine and mine alone. Every experience, big or small, eventually becomes part of someone else’s story.”

Would their night together become fodder for Paul’s fiction? The thought should have bothered David, but instead it was comforting. Whatever happened between them might be immortalized.

“It can be a blessing,” Paul continued. “Readers only have a few days or weeks to inhabit another world. But I get to be there—be someone else—for a year or more. Writing gives me free time-travel, free space-travel, all in my head. I live as many different lives as I write.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Yes. Absolutely. But sometimes I think it’d be even more cool to just have one life. A life that’s all mine.”

David motioned for him to bear right at the corner they’d just arrived at. “Do other writers feel this way?”

Paul snorted. “I’m afraid to ask. ‘Hey, do you feel like you’re a real person?’ What if they say ‘Of course I do, all the time’?”

But he hadn’t been afraid to tell David, even though he’d be less likely to empathize than a fellow writer. How had they established such a fearless understanding in so short a time?

Maybe it was the bourbon. Maybe it was Christmas. Or maybe it was them.

“So what happens when you finish a book and you have to say goodbye to that world?”

“I find a new one as soon as I can.” Paul drew his fingers along the brick exterior of a raw bar. “When I was a kid, I had hermit crabs. You know how they live in the discarded shells of other animals, like snails and whatnot?”

“I had a pair of them too. Named them Crockett and Tubbs after theMiami Viceguys.”

“Did you ever watch a hermit crab move into a bigger shell when it outgrew the old one?”

“Once.” The memory was clear as yesterday. “It was naked behind its legs. Its abdomen was this soft, curled-up thing.” Crockett’s fleeting vulnerability had filled him with dread.

“That’s what it’s like finishing one book and searching for the next. Life gets…I don’t know, precarious.” Paul pressed a gloved hand to his forehead. “Ugh, I’m being a self-indulgent asshole. Right this instant, people are dying from war and famine and floods, while the greatest threat to my well-being is writer’s block—that and my publisher threatening to cancel my contract if I don’t give them a manuscript by March.”

Was that what was haunting him? Every time David had broached the subject of why he was here—alone, tonight—Paul had artfully given specific, practical reasons, none of which answered the full question. Obviously writer’s block was a distressing experience, but what if there were something deeper, something worse, at the root of it?

“Are you…” How to even ask this? “Are you between shells right now?”

Paul gave a hoarse, muted laugh. “I am between shells.”

The sentence hung in the air, holding out against the rain.

Finally David cleared his throat. “I can’t say I understand, but—”

“Of course not. You’re a normal person. An engineer, even. You think about concrete stuff. You probably never get caught up in your head and forget what hour it is, much less what day.”

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