Page 11 of Story of My Life
“Even better,” I promised. “It’s an ice glove for after the signing. You just slide your signing hand into it, and it helps with the inflammation. Plus, it’ll keep your drink cold while you hold it.”
“You’re my hero,” she said.
I waved awkwardly and ducked out from behind the table, carting the suitcase.
It felt like a symbolic passing of the torch. The old creaky athlete turning over the captain armband to someone with younger, fresher muscles. I was glad to help. But there was a partof me that I barely recognized. One that didn’t feel ready to just gracefully give up.
I found Zoey in the atrium, leaning against the glass rail and staring down at the fountain in the lobby below, her phone still clutched in her hand.
“I need a drink. How about you?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically hoarse.
“What’s wrong? Did a pigeon get in here?” Zoey’s fear of birds was an endless source of entertainment for me.
She looked up at me finally, her green eyes watery. “No. I just got fired.”
“So apparently todaywas the day I volunteered to babysit Earl Wiggens,” Zoey said, staring morosely into her drink. She’d asked the bartender for whatever drink contained the most amount of alcohol, and he’d delivered what constituted a vat of Long Island iced tea.
“The vaguely misogynistic horror writer who always puts his foot in his mouth during live interviews?” I prompted, stirring my vodka soda with the lime wedge.
“That’s the one. He’s one of the agency’s biggest clients. He had an interview scheduled with theNew Yorker, but his agent is at a book fair in Germany. I thought it was next weekend. I put it in my calendar wrong.”
“Oh, Zo.” The woman’s failures with calendars were legendary.
“So he went to the interview alone and said something stupid,” she continued.
“They can’t fire you for something someone else’s author did,” I said, indignant.
Zoey folded her arms on the bar and rested her chin on them. “They can and they did. Lawrence said it was the last straw.”
I reached over and affectionately ruffled her curls. “What are you going to do?”
“Drink. A lot,” she said to the bar.
“Allow me to support you in your time of need.” I signaled the bartender for another round.
“I work so damn hard, but I just keep screwing up. Every other adult on the planet can use a calendar app. Not me. Now the agency is doing damage control and—oh my God! I have a noncompete,” she wailed. “I can’t take any of my clients with me, even if they were willing to overlook my gross negligence.”
Well, hell.
I’d known she’d taken some heat from work during the divorce. But I’d been mired in my own lengthy pity party and hadn’t thought much about anyone else. Zoey was the only one who had been pulling for me and pushing me. Now she’d lost her job because she’d shown up for me when I needed her.
I took her hand. “I know this doesn’t mean anything right now, but you have me. And just because I haven’t written a book in forever doesn’t mean I’m ready to be put out to pasture or whatever they do with old horses.”
“Glue factory.”
“Gross. I’m not going to the glue factory without a fight. Neither are you. We’ll get through this together. And then we’re going to rub our success in their stupid, smug faces.”
Zoey gave me a watery smile that wasn’t even remotely convincing. She didn’t believe me. Hell, I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t sureIbelieved me.
“Thanks, Haze. I appreciate you,” she said before finding her straw with her mouth and guzzling until the ice rattled in the glass.
I slumpedagainst the wall of my building’s elevator. It wasn’t the four vodka sodas careening through my system that had robbed me of the will to stand up. It was reality.
It was barely 6 p.m. on a Saturday, and I was ready to crawl into bed for the next twenty hours. My limbs felt heavy, my head fuzzy. Why did life have to be so hard, require so much energy?
I stabbed the button for my floor and pulled out my phone, needing a numbing distraction from the spectacular defeat that was my career and the guilt I felt over Zoey’s blowing up.
