Page 38 of Suddenly Dating
“That’s the plan. If I finish it. And then I have to sell it. It’s not easy to get a book published these days. It’s going to be a challenge convincing a publisher they ought to buy it.”
Harry chuckled. “I can imagine.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, looking up. “Why do you say that it like that?”
He looked up with surprise. “I, ah... well, the pages I read were... different.”
Lola laughed. “You clearly don’t appreciateAmerican PsychomeetsGone GirlmeetsBridget Jones’s Diary.”
“Huh?”
“See, that is one reason I want to meet Birta Hoffman so badly—how do you explain something as complex as a book? And I want to know how she works, how she plans a book, what her routine is. I want to know everything about her.”
Harry had no idea who she was talking about. “Who is Birta Hoffman?”
Lola gasped so suddenly that she almost sent half a potato flying across the dining room table. She gaped at him, wide-eyed, and Harry felt a little foolish for not knowing the name. As if this Birta Whoever was someone everyone would know, like the President of the United States.
“She just happens to be last year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, that’s all. And she was a finalist for the Pulitzer once.”
That meant nothing to Harry; he looked at her blankly.
Lola gasped again at his apparent stupidity. “She is one of the most important writers of our time and I’ve been dying to meet her foryears. I love her work, I would love to know how she constructs her novels. Is she a plotter? A pantser? Now do you see?”
What he could see was a very attractive woman whose eyes sparkled when she talked gibberish. “Umm... no,” he admitted, shoving a hand through his hair.
“Ohmigod, what is happening to our society?” she murmured, and tossed back in her seat, staring off toward the window as if she’d just realized life was hopeless.
“Wow. Surely I’m not the only uncultured male walking around.”
“God, definitely not,” she said, sitting up again.
Harry was too amused to be offended. “So what about this Bertha, genius of fiction—”
“Birta. Birta Hoffman is the genius of fiction. And what about her is that I just found out she lives on Lake Haven!”
“Is she rooming with Amy Schumer?” He laughed at his own joke.
“Hey!” she said, pointing at him. “You can’t blame me for hoping to meet Amy Schumer.” She grinned and poured more wine into her glass. “But my friend Mallory actually knows Birta.” She sipped her wine. “I have this fantasy that she and I will meet, and we’ll be friends, and then one day I will casually mention my book, and she’ll be all like, ‘oh, I must have a look, Lola,’” she said, mimicking some sort of accent that Harry didn’t recognize. “And of course I’ll let her, and she will love it, and she will want to send it to her agent—he’s like one of the best agents in all of New York, by the way—and the next thing you know, they are offering me a million bucks for the book. Does that sound weird?”
“One hundred percent,” Harry assured her. “They actually pay a million dollars for a book?”
“What? No!” She laughed as if that was as ridiculous as believing Amy Schumer would attend a party in a village the size of a postage stamp.
This woman confounded Harry, as women often did. But more than that, Harry thought, he was actually having a good time. A surprisingly good time. Lola was a bright light, a fun dinner companion. Maybe it was the second glass of wine—or was it a third? Maybe it was the smell of apple pie. Or maybe it was that the last several times he’d had dinner with a woman, it had been Melissa, and the tensions between them had seemed to permeate even the taste of the food.
Whatever it was, he was beginning to think that as far as roommates went, he’d lucked into a good one. She liked to cook. She had a healthy appetite, silky hair, and pretty eyes. They talked about New York and their favorite spots, about the new resort area at the other end of the lake. They talked about favorite bands and films. She said she liked the Mets.
Harry’s opinion was solidified when she served the pie—warm, with ice cream, of course. It was incredible, the perfect complement to their discussion about the possibility of the Mets going all the way. Harry was sold. If he had to have a roommate, he wanted it to be Lola Dunne.
When he stood up to help with cleanup duty, he was fairly Zen about the mess in the kitchen. Tonight, it seemed amusing that there was dough stuck to the counter and more pots and pans in the sink than in the cabinets. “I’ll wash,” he offered.
“You know, you are turning out to be nicer than I thought,” Lola mused, peering up at him with that sparkle in her eye.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he warned her. “I’m drunk.”
She laughed. “Then my nefarious plan has worked.” She cleaned up around him, but apparently she’d had enough wine to make her a little wobbly. She kept brushing against him or bumping into him. “Sorry,” she muttered when she’d done it a third time.
“Are you trying to get my attention?” he asked over his shoulder.
