Page 59 of Kill Your Darlings

“Yes, and freshman year of high school. Becky, how doyouknow Wendy?”

“Rice University. Creative-writing majors.”

“Do you both still write?”

Becky turned to Wendy, who said, “Not really. My concentration in college was poetry.”

“She was really good,” Becky said.

“So what do you do now? You’re married, it looks like.” Thom nodded down toward her ring.

“Oh,” said Wendy. “I was married. He died about five months ago.”

“Oh, Jesus, sorry,” Thom said, as Becky put a hand on Wendy’s back.

“We don’t need to talk about it. I came out here—”

“Yeah, we don’t need to talk about it,” Becky said, suddenly serious. “Not this weekend, anyway. Thom, how about you, were you a creative-writing major in college?”

“Mather didn’t have it as a major, so I was English lit.”

“But you write?”

“I do. Stories, mostly, nothing very good.”

“And what do you do for work?”

“It’s not very exciting. I work at a video store.”

“Oh, fun.”

“It’s not bad. It’s a pretty cool indie store in New Haven called Penny Farthings Video. I just got made manager so there’s that.”

Becky and Wendy held up their glasses and congratulated him.

They talked some more about jobs; Becky was an assistant for a big-time editor at Knopf, and had lots of literary gossip. They ordered another pitcher, and Becky took herself off to the restroom. Wendy turned her head to watch her friend cross the now-crowded bar, then turned back to look at Thom. Neither said anything andthey just looked at each other across the booth, each smiling. Thom desperately wished they were alone, but he also knew that it was a good thing that Becky was there to witness their reunion. He wondered if Wendy wanted it that way. He thought of asking her, but she hadn’t spoken yet and they just continued to look at each other, pressing their knees together under the table.

“It’s very nice to see you.” Thom had spoken first.

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“I am. You?”

“Yes. I’m good.”

Thom saw that Becky was working her way back toward them, and he leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden bench and lit a cigarette. As Becky retook her spot next to Wendy, she said, “God, I wasn’t going to ask, but can I have one of those? I quit three months ago.”

Thom gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. It was clear that he wasn’t going to be alone with Wendy tonight, but that was fine. She was here across from him. She was real. For now it was enough, and some part of him was happy that they weren’t alone, that tonight was not the night that he would have to lie to her about what had happened in Texas.

ii

“It’s an hour drive from here,” Thom said apologetically as he pulled away from the airport’s parking lot. They’d been speaking on the phone for the past five months, but it was the first time they’d seen each other in person since New York.

“No problem,” Wendy said. “In Texas it’s an hour drive to get to your neighbor’s house.”

“Oh, good. I was worried you’d be sick of traveling.”

She’d flown in from Lubbock that morning, leaving just before dawn and watching the sunrise from her window seat on the nearly empty flight to D.C. On the second leg of her trip, a crowded flight from D.C. to Hartford, the plane had hit a pocket of extreme turbulence that lasted fifteen minutes at least. The man next to her had closed his eyes and seemed to be praying. Wendy had looked out the window, wondering if she were going to die. She imagined that it would be a notably tragic story. Her husband drowning in his own swimming pool nearly a year ago, and then the grieving widow going down in a plane along the eastern seaboard. The pilot came on to reassure the nervous passengers that they’d “unexpectedly hit a little bit of rough air” but that the wind wasn’t expected to be a problem on the landing. Wendy felt calm and wondered if the money she’d recently secured would automatically go to her mother upon her death.

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