35.

There’s not a lot of point spending time at work on Tuesday – not writing about it, that is, although it’s a frustrating day where software fucks me over.

We use Macs at work; for some reason, every now and again when I open any Microsoft software, like Word (to read and edit a manuscript), or Outlook (to check my emails), the Mac decides that it needs to verify the software. I’ve only used this computer and this software for the last ten years, so I have no idea why it insists on these sporadic verifications. Somewhere, somebody (or a team of somebodies) is being paid to make these decisions that these things will happen.

While waiting for it to verify, Autumn texts me: You okay?

This is how we speak in the office when we don’t want to be seen speaking: Yeah. Why?

You’ve been different this week, she says.

I immediately think that somehow she’s picked up on what’s happened, but then reasons it’s just that I’ve been unfairly standoffish. It’d probably seem stupid to you. This should be a tremendous opportunity, but my thinking has been remarkably channeled, and none of it seems unusual. This is the way I am always.

Right?

Just trying to make things right with Lana, I say.

Nothing for a while. I can picture Autumn in her office, debating with whether she’s going to respond. She used to be such a sounding board for all things Lana, as I was with her relationship. But then it felt as if I was complaining too much. And being too repetitive. And a whole lot of things. So I pared back, and so did Autumn – not because her relationship to Dennis wouldn’t have had things going on, but it was like an unspoken retreat where we decided to stay within defined roles, even if they were fucking stupid.

You deserve better, Autumn’s message finally hits me.

This doesn’t shock me – she’s told me this before, and like I’ve explained, sometimes I believe it, and sometimes I think I’m not giving Lana, our relationship, and our future a chance because I’m just not committed.

I don’t respond, because I don’t need any more doubt, so one the verifications are done, I get on with the editing, and come the end of the day, shoot off to Ben’s, the pizzeria down the road, to meet Ethan, but it’s not Ethan sitting at the table waiting for me, but Quinn, another young author I mentor.

She sees me and waves to flag me, this pretty twenty-something brunette who’s this irrepressible buoyant energy, although a lot of that hides this anxiety. I worry, as the cliché goes, the world will one day eat her up. I know the writing world will because it’s so arbitrary.

In some ways, she reminds me of me – so hopeful and optimistic and sure that there’s going to be this fairy tale outcome. It’s a right of passage for most writers: we’re all going to be the next JK Rowling, Stephen King, or whoever, and for writers who aren’t into genre, they dream of becoming the Donna Tartt or Margaret Atwood or Melody Merlo. Well, maybe not the last one (although thinking it, I know there’d be somebody out there who does aspire to that).

Quinn jumps up, bounces on the spot, and gives me a hug, but it’s always this light hug, like she wants to make sure I know it’s just a friendly hug and nothing more (although in this case I’ve never thought anything improper). Then we sit down and she asks me how I’ve been (I’m always noncommittal), then starts telling me how she’s struggling with shifts at the gym where she works (as a trainer) and finding the time to write.

Just as I start orienting myself, remembering that Luca told me that there might be little changes that occur, my phone rings – Lana. I decline the call, then send her a text, saying, With my mentee Quinn. Lana doesn’t respond immediately. She’d be driving home from work, waiting until she hits a red light, although I can imagine her ruminating over this.

“You okay?” Quinn asks.

“Sure,” I say.

“You look different.”

“Good different or bad different?”

She studies me, and I think of her looking me through this filter of innocence – there’s no disdain, like Melody; or dismissiveness, like Regina; or tolerance, like my lifetime friends. I don’t know what any of that means, other than it feels like she could just about see through the affectation of why I’m here.

“I’m not sure yet,” Quinn says.

“How’s your book going?” I ask.

“I just haven’t had as much time as I’d like to write. I’ve had problems with Wade.”

Wade’s her dickhead boyfriend. I’ve never met, but she’s had a succession of dickhead boyfriends. She plunges into relationships with fatalistic optimism, tries to make it work, but inevitably the mounting evidence of boyfriend dickheadery overwhelms her, she breaks up, takes for time for herself, then leaps into the next disaster.

“It’s not so much a problem,” Quinn says, probably in response to the way I must be scowling, “but just with our work schedules and that, we don’t see a lot of one another, so when we have free time, we want to spend it together, but …”

“What?”

“He likes doing his thing – like I’ll go over, and then he’ll expect us to sit there and watch English soccer. Or he’ll want to watch some movie I have no interest in – like some action movie with karate or something.”

“What do you do that you like to do?”

“We’ll go to dinners,” Quinn says. “One time, we went to a show – to a Harry Potter musical, although he didn’t like it.”

I’m not one who should cast aspersions given my relationship malaise, inexperience, and what I’ve done, but I can see this relationship is another disaster on countdown to meltdown. We always see everybody else’s problems better than our own.

“It’s okay, though,” Quinn says. “We’re just trying to make more time for one another. I think then things will be different.”

Life doesn’t really structure for most of us to be our best versions of ourselves – and that means being good to ourselves with relationship choices. Between work, obligations, and chasing whatever dream, we have limited time to think we’re getting everything right.

“Did you get a chance to read my excerpt?” Quinn asks.

I give her feedback that’s remained constant to her work: flashes of brilliance, but a voice emerges that’s not entirely hers – it’s an amalgamation of the awful books she reads, thinking that’s what fantasy is (I know, because I went through this myself), and that she has to be truer to who she is, to how she is going to write, because that’s much more engaging than some simulacrum.

Once we’re done with our pizzas (and beer for me, and red wine for her – I’ve never gotten the red wine kick), we pay up, then chat outside for a bit.

I see her to her car, hug (lightly) goodbye, and once she’s driven off, make my way to my car. On the drive home, I call Lana.

“You just finish up with Ethan?” she asks after our preliminary greetings are done.

“Sorry – it was Quinn,” I tell her.

“You told me Ethan.”

“I got mixed up.”

“How do you get wrong? Ethan’s a guy. Quinn’s a girl.”

“They both sent me stuff to read – I mixed up their names.”

“How do you mix up their names?”

“It was a mistake, okay?”

I hate how she’s pressing me. Lana doesn’t know Quinn – Lana only know Quinn’s a young woman I mentor. But I feel the difference in way Lana and I are speaking. It feels like I’m making some formal report because I caught up with another woman, and now she’s suspicious because I flubbed the names.

Her paranoia makes no sense – not to me, at least. She’s thinking I didn’t tell her because she might object, but if I truly wanted to hide this, I wouldn’t have told her at all. I would’ve continued saying it was Ethan. But she’s thinking now that I’m doing with Quinn, it’ll mitigate any response.

“I just don’t see how you could mix up two different people like that,” Lana says.

“Old age maybe,” I say, although I wonder if this change was purposeful – a way of trying to either show me something, or teach me how to respond. Any other day, I would’ve exploded as this line of questioning continued.

“Well, then,” Lana says, and I can feel she’s going to move on, but hear that it’s still an issue, “how’d that go?”

“She’s got talent, but she’s still finding her voice.”

“Oh yeah. What’s she writing?”

“A fantasy thingy.”

“That it?”

“That’s it.”

Lana doesn’t rate fantasy. She reads classics. And Twilight. Somehow, fantasy doesn’t rate, although she watches Game of Yawns.

“What else you talk about?” she asks.

This isn’t interrogative – not like she had me sweating under a hot lamp, but she wants to deconstruct every moment, possibly examining it for what is acceptable and unacceptable in her relationship parameters. She has no interest in Quinn’s writing, or Quinn, outside of it serving as the platform for the conversation.

So I tell her about Quinn’s relationship woes, but skim over them, because I just want to be done with this now, and look for openings to close the conversation. It’s like bomb disarmament, trying to work out which wire to cut while the timer keeps ticking down.

But there’s nothing immediate – she tells me about a follow-up in her dispute with Mel, how Mel had printed out, laminated, and stuck up a  list kitchen rules. Even after I get home and make myself a tea, she’s still deconstructing this conflict, like a historian studying the Great War or some shit. Then she asks me what I think.

“So what?” I say testily. “She’s not going to change. You’re getting upset over something you have no control.”

“But it’s so stupid.”

“It is, but is she gonna change?”

“No.”

“Then why bother getting upset? Anyway, I should go. I’m home and got some stuff to do.”

“Oh yeah. What’re you gonna do?”

“I’ve got some writing stuff to look over,” I say, and it’s funny how I can infer that the silence that meets me is dismissive, so I add, “For my meeting with Regina.”

I always feel bad when I have to be the one who ends the conversation. Usually I don’t. Usually I let her close it wherever she’s going to close it. Whenever I do, she responds with a quiet hurt and disappointment, like we were in the middle of some rousing, never-to-be-missed interaction, and I yanked myself out of it.

“All right,” she says magnanimously – she’s assigned importance to it because I’ve made it look at least professional, even though the equation of how many hours I’ve spent writing, and how much money writing’s actually paid me, probably works out to three cents a week (and Lana would still consider that overpaid).

“Bye,” I say.

“Bye,” she says.

I hang up, feeling like I’ve pushed a kid off a swing so I can have a turn, but the real reasons for my eagerness is the whole Quinn thing.

I hurry to my study, and check the emails I received last week. Sure enough, there’s emails from Ethan and Quinn with their excerpts attached.

Last week, Ethan suggested a Tuesday catch-up, and Quinn had said it’d be good to grab dinner at some point, but hadn’t proposed anything fixed. Now it’s swapped – Ethan’s indeterminate and Quinn’s the one who suggested Tuesday, and I responded and told her okay, although I don’t recall writing that. Prior to my reboot, I’d confirmed with Ethan.

So that’s changed somehow.

Luca said thought defines reality, but I don’t get the connection of why this particular thing has swapped.

And it leaves me unnerved.