by Erin McRae
HE MET DENNIS AT THEIR regular bar, to the extent they had a regular bar. They might have lived in the same city, but they didn’t spend much time together. An inevitable outcome of being adults with complex schedules, perhaps. But in the wake of the conversation with Jonathan about relationships, Harry wondered why he found keeping people in his day-to-day life so hard.
As always, Dennis was a few minutes late. When he appeared at the corner of the bar Harry had staked out he pulled Harry off his stool and into a brief, but fierce, hug.
“What’s going on?” he asked, once they were seated and Harry had ordered drinks for them both.
“Steven sent me his diary; I had an affair with Eliza, who I also wrote a book about, in Paris; I think we flooded the city; and I’m possibly on the verge of a breakdown of some sort.” Harry paused. “No terminal diagnoses, though.”
The laugh that pealed out of Dennis was, Harry knew, a testament to how terrible both of them were as human beings – and also the tension that existed in their lives that such a statement was greeted with almost giddy relief.
“Okay, but seriously, what the fuck?”
Harry pulled the diary out of his bag and pushed it across the bar towards Dennis, who looked at it as if it were a live grenade. “Steven’s diary.”
Dennis poked it gingerly with a fingertip. “Only the first of many what the fucks. He sent this to you? When?”
“It was waiting for me when I got back from the funeral. Mallory put it in the mail. Same way she hit send on the ‘Sorry, I died’ emails.”
Dennis nodded; they’d not spoken of them, but Harry was certain he’d gotten one too.
“So that’s messing with my head,” he said. There was, in the midst of his angst about Eliza and the rest of his life, a comfort in speaking about this with someone who’d known him as well.
“I would think.” Dennis was still looking at the diary as warily as Harry had regarded it the first time he saw it.
“And then in Paris...Actually.” Harry stopped himself. “Let’s start with Brittany. You recall when I was doing the Brittany book?”
“You mean the only book you’ve been more annoying about than the Vienna book? Yes.”
“Remember when we were there?”
“And in Paris and Marseilles. Yes, of course. It was thirty years ago and we were drunk the entire time.”
“You almost got run over by a horse that didn’t exist.”
Dennis laughed. “Oh shit, I actually had forgotten about that. We were really drunk.”
“It was foggy, you heard hooves, I heard hooves, Steven heard hooves, and then you screamed and jumped out of the way and there was absolutely nothing there.”
“And?”
“I went to Brittany four times because of that book. And no matter where I went, or what I was trying to research, or how much I wanted to be alone and stare at that ocean, people told me ghost stories. So many ghost stories, that my editor called me four days before it was supposed to go to production to ask me if we could kill one of them out of the supposedly final manuscript.”
“Why?”
“Because exile and despair is not sexy and does not travel books sell.”
“Your point, other than angst and this stroll down memory lane?”
“Eliza is a quarter of a century younger than me and that’s nothing compared to the fact that a lot of evidence is piling up to indicate we’re living in a ghost story.”
Dennis stared at him unkindly. “You have got to be kidding.”
“I really wish I were.”
“All right.” Dennis got himself situated more comfortably on his bar stool and clasped his hands together. Harry could see him transition into his mode for interviewing a somewhat dotty guest on his show. “I’ll bite. Why do you think you’re living in a ghost story?”
“Not just any ghost story. The myth of Ys. The one where the woman falls in love with the devil and opens the city gates to him, and it all floods. And drowns. And disappears beneath the waves. Waiting.”
“Variation number three hundred and forty-seven on the classic story of ‘Don’t piss off gods because floods aren’t fun?’”
“Yes,” Harry said somewhat irritably. “The thing is – well, one of the things is – she wears a key around her neck.”
“The girl in the myth?”
“No. Eliza.”
“Like, a Tiffany key?”
“No. A key-key. To her hope chest. The one she’s not going to need anymore because she broke off her engagement. She wears it like a necklace.”
“That’s...different.”
“We all need talismans of our own agency,” Harry said. “I asked her about it, when we slept together, and she told me. When we woke up the next morning we found out that the city had flooded.”
“It made the news here,” Dennis noted. “So, you think her wearing her hope chest key while you had magic sex made the sky open up? Come on Harry, I know you’re a man and a writer, but even you’re not that terrible.”
Harry shook his head. “No, I know. But I wrote a book about her while I was in Vienna. About Eliza. That my agent can’t possibly find a home for because it’s six types of odd and too short, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I need to publish something to keep my career going, but all I have is that and my broken Vienna book.”
“That’s easy,” Dennis said. “Self-publish the one you wrote about Eliza.”
“What?” Nothing about that solution seemed easy. Or even appealing. “Jonathan mentioned something about self-publishing as an option once, but....” Harry trailed off.
“But you’re a publishing industry professional and can’t stand the thought of abandoning tradition and convention?”
That was exactly what Harry thought, but to hear it put so baldly was somewhat embarrassing. “It sounds bad when you put it that way,” he muttered.
“It is bad. But you are who you are, with the structural privileges that you have, and we all cling to the things that give us power and a sense of stability. Also, you’ve worked in publishing your whole adult life. But I think that means you should break the mold. Anyone can be a publisher. What do you think we do on The Really Late Show every time we come up with another absurd idea for a book mocking the rich and powerful? We get it done and out the door and on the bestseller list and all that money to charity so fast because we do it our damn selves.”
Harry had to admit Dennis had a point. Several of them, actually. But the question of what to do with the book was only half of the issue.
“All right,” he said. “So that’s one problem. But the other problem is the hook, the thing I framed it around, was Ys. And then...this all happened. I know this is my brain recognizing patterns that probably aren’t there, but it’s odd and it’s reminding me that there are consequences to what I did – what I’m doing – with Eliza, and that they aren’t okay. For me or for her or for the flood insurance underwriters of Paris.”
“And what you’re doing with Eliza is...?” Dennis left it hanging.
“I don’t even know. She’s still in Paris. She had a meeting that got postponed.”
“Because of the floods?”
“Because of the floods.”
“Good. Sounds like you could use some distance.”
The fact that Dennis’s calm assessment of the situation aligned with Harry’s own more rational instincts should have been helpful, but all it did was make him feel depressed.
“Plus,” Dennis went on. “Even if you did cause Paris to flood by having sex with her, at least now the flood thus caused is giving you some time apart to sort yourself out.”
“I guess?”
“Look, Harry, if you’re going to be irrational about probably random events, at least go all in.” Dennis paused. “Have you talked to Meryl about any of this?”
“Ah. No.” Harry traced the grain of the wood on the bar. “Meryl and I are...figuring some things out.”
“You seemed fine tog
ether in Italy,” Dennis said, but a faint crease appeared between his eyes. Sweet of him to worry about a relationship that both didn’t exist and had been continuing in one form or another for almost thirty years.
“We’re always fine in Italy. But she’s moving to New York, and it’s throwing off our, well,” Harry swallowed. “Our everything.”
“Because you excel at keeping people at a distance,” Dennis said.
“Yes. Apparently. Which Steven felt the need to scold me for from beyond the grave which is why I’m now here talking to you.”
Dennis looked at him reproachfully. “Because you thought I’d have more wisdom than a dead man?”
“Death didn’t make Steven any wiser. Or funnier,” Harry said.
“So what do you want from me?” Dennis asked.
“I can actually argue with you.”
Dennis shook his head. “You don’t want to argue, you want someone to tell you what to do with your book and this woman and your entire mess of a life.”
“My life has always been a mess.”
“That’s less true than you think. But anyway. I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m merely going to point out that if you publish a book about Eliza I’m not sure how likely she’s going to be to want to date you. Also you turn fifty in, what, like a month? So you need decide between your career and a woman who is too young for you.”
“Thanks,” Harry said bitterly.
Dennis took a sip of his drink, ’til then left untouched on the bar. “Anytime.”
BACK AT HOME IN HIS study, lit by the glow of a solitary green-shaded lamp, Harry sat with his hands folded in his lap and stared at his computer screen.
He definitely needed to sell books, and he probably needed not to pursue a relationship with Eliza. Both of those things were as true now as they had been last week, before Harry spent a glorious few days in Paris pretending the dilemmas before him were entirely different. But reality always caught up in the end. If nothing else, Steven’s death had taught him that.
So he made himself reach for the keyboard and Google how to self-publish a book.
Harry was not a newbie when it came to computers or the internet, and he was well aware of the gains in indie titles from his own professional life. But he was still surprised at how easy this was going to be. Within an hour he’d set up an account on a major ebook distribution site and made a list of what he was going to need. Which boiled down to a cover and a copyedited manuscript. Harry worked in publishing. He knew where to look for cover designers and copyeditors.
He almost wished it were harder. Anything to delay the inevitable would have been welcome.
Because he shouldn’t publish this book. That much was certain. He hadn’t even needed to discuss it with Dennis. Not really. This book was about Eliza, and he had never told her it existed let alone asked her consent to publish it. Once it was out in the world, Harry would never have to worry about what the future held for them collectively. It would be a monument to what they could not have.
He would tell her, once he worked up the courage. It was the right thing to do.
One right thing, he thought, staring at the release date he’d created on the screen. He already felt awash in shame and guilt. But all his other choices were worse in this great deep sea of wrong.
TWO DAYS LATER HARRY had just arrived in his office and was hanging up his coat when someone called his name.
He whipped his head around to see Eliza standing in his doorway, returned from her extended Paris sojourn. She looked awake and refreshed as only the young could after a transatlantic flight, a laptop cradled against her chest and a mug of tea in her hand. Her face, as she looked at Harry, was very soft.
“Elizabeth.” Harry wondered if her name on his lips sounded like a cry of pain to her, too, or just himself.
“Hi,” she said, leaning against his door jamb, her expression somewhere between teasing and concerned. “Is everything all right?”
“Close the door,” he told her.
Eliza gave him a puzzled look and then swung it shut with her foot since her hands were full.
“Do you want to put that down?” Harry asked, gesturing at his own desk.
Eliza looked confused; she’d long ago commandeered the window sill by her chair as her place of work in Harry’s office. But she set the mug and the computer down and then folded her arms over her chest. Defensively, Harry thought. Uncertain. And not a little afraid.
“What is it?” she asked.
Harry had to swallow to be able to begin. “I think we should talk.”
“We talk a lot,” Eliza said. Her voice was cheerful, but an uneasy calm came over her face.
“About Paris.”
“Harry –”
“I don’t think we should do this.”
For several long moments, Eliza stared at him. Then she said, very calmly, “Why?”
Harry had rehearsed this. Because he couldn’t very well say because being with you feels like living in a story and not one that has a happy ending. “Because we work together. And I’m twice your age.”
Eliza’s face rapidly shifted from calm, to confusion, to anger. “You’re telling me this at work?”
“This is where we spend most of our time.”
“Except for seventy-two hours in Paris where I spent every possible moment in your bed.”
“Betts –”
“No.” Eliza was wroth. “You don’t get to call me that. And don’t do me, or yourself, the disservice of acting like this was a stupid business trip fling. We’ve been doing this for months and you know it. If you don’t want to keep seeing each other, that’s fine.” She spoke with a chill calm that made Harry shiver in his seat and remember streets full of ice in Paris. “But at least have the decency not to treat me like the secretary you shouldn’t have fucked. I would have expected that from other men. But not from you.”
With that, she picked up her laptop and her mug again. Her hands must have been shaking; tea sloshed over the rim of the mug and landed in dark spatters across the polished surface of the desk and the papers scattered on it.
Long after Eliza had shut the door behind her, Harry was left staring at the little, dark, reflective spots of tea. With an effort, he grabbed some tissues from the box on his desk and scrubbed them up.
Eliza
ELIZA SPENT TEN MINUTES at her own desk trying to come down from the pitch of fury with which she’d stormed out of Harry’s office. She didn’t have longer because she had to go to the weekly staff meeting. Where Harry would also be. The universe had a cruel sense of humor.
She had to pull herself together and put her game face on. She’d had plenty of practice. With Cody, with her parents, with the very world she lived in. But she wasn’t sure she’d ever been this angry before. Or so hurt.
I thought you were better than this, was the refrain ran uselessly through her mind as if Harry could hear her. Maybe he could. They were strange like that.
Either way, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being late or looking at all concerned. So she blew her nose, touched up her makeup, and gulped the last of her tea.
Harry was already in the conference room when she arrived. He glanced up briefly when she walked in, but that was likely only a reflexive response to someone coming through the door. He didn’t acknowledge her in any other way.
The meeting itself was torture. Eliza did her best to act normal, while not engaging in any of the little glances and email exchanges she and Harry usually entertained themselves with. Which meant that neither of them were acting anything like normal. Harry, in fact, sat stone-faced. Jonathan, seated next to him, also tried to act normally, but Eliza saw him glance occasionally at Harry and herself, his eyebrows furrowed with concern.
Her attention was only called to the business at hand when she heard her name.
“Eliza and Jonathan,” Ioanna was saying. “Are our two lucky winners. They’re going to be representing us at BEA in Chicago next mon
th.”
Eliza’s first thought was to wonder if travel assignments always got handed out at meetings like candy. Then she wondered why Jonathan and not Harry was going. A quick glance at the younger man, who looked positively startled, suggested that he was wondering the same.
To hell with this game of trying to out-poker face him. Under the guise of taking notes on her laptop about the BEA trip – which Ioanna was still talking about – Eliza shot Harry an email.
Any reason your assistant and not you is getting the business trip to Chicago?
Eliza bit her lip as she pretended to listen to Ioanna while really watching Harry out of the corner of his eye. He took an irritatingly long time to see the message on his own computer, and an even longer time to respond.
He’s perfectly capable of travelling by himself.
That wasn’t what I meant, Eliza typed before deleting the message. She wasn’t going to argue with Harry. Not now. Not in email.
When the meeting finally came to a close Harry was out of the room before Eliza had even gathered her things. She walked back to her office slowly, acutely aware of the sharp press of metal against her skin that was her hope chest key. She didn’t have Cody – thank God. And she didn’t have Harry – who can go right to hell. But at least she had herself, even if she was adrift.
OVER THE COURSE OF the next week Eliza barely saw Harry at all. She missed him, more than she would ever have thought possible. Certainly more than she had ever missed Cody when they were on separate continents for weeks at a time. She could force herself to imagine a world where she wasn’t romantically involved with Harry, but she couldn’t imagine a world where she wasn’t involved with him at all.
It was with that in mind that, one evening, she ventured to Harry’s office and rapped on the door. Harry’s familiar call to come in floated through the wood. She missed, violently and not for the first time, their easy intimacy before Paris.
“Oh.” Harry looked up from his desk and blinked. He looked surprised to see her there. “It’s you.” He collected himself, or at least seemed to try to. “Can I help you?”