31.

Now that Lana is staying over Sunday unfolds differently, as I wake earlier, then make us breakfast, and we sit together and watch one of the morning breakfast shows. She asks me what I’ve got on for the day, and I tell her my Sunday usuals, such as washing and shopping. I can hear her thinking, wanting to do something together, and sure enough she suggests an afternoon walk to Peggy’s, a café that’s reached through a rural thirty-minute walk down by murky river or other.

So that’s the day set.

After I see her out for the morning, I shower, throw all my stuff into the washing machine, then head to the shopping plaza. It’s a different time now to when I did it last week, so I don’t get the same run I did then, although when I reach the parking I do have the guy in front of me decide to reverse-park into a spot, which leaves me waiting. He backs in, forwards out, backs in, forwards out and re-angles his car, then backs in again. By the time he’s parked, I have a line of cars waiting behind me. Reverse parking should be illegal the moment anybody has to stop and wait for you.

Shopping’s streamlined, so I feel better by the time I buy everything I need, get home, unpack, then hang the laundry on the line.

Lana texts me that she’s going to be forty minutes late, as she got held up doing something. I don’t ask what. It’ll be a phone call to the ex, her son, or one of the siblings, some household chore, or sometimes she just gets rooted watching something on television.

I try to write but struggle with a distractedness, although it’s not to do with Lana. It’s just writing as a practice. I want to believe I can keep writing the things that’ll interest me, and that’ll interest readers, but now I think I should do something with saleable components. Dan Brown and his wife Blythe sat down and worked out the ingredients that sell – espionage, religion, conspiracies, action – and Dan then went away and penned The Da Vinci Code. I’ve never read it; people tell me it’s awful, but it’s awful and it sells and has been a big movie with an A-list actor in Tom Hanks starring.

When Lana comes over (she tells me she was late because she had to throw in another load of washing) she drives us to the area where we commence the walk, following a trail that winds through gums and runs parallel to the river for a while, although I’ve always expected a brown snake just to slither out, or for it to already be sunning on the path, leaving one of us to unwittingly step on it and be bitten.

I’m aware none of this is too exciting, and nothing exciting really happens. It’s just us walking, sitting down at Peggy’s, ordering a cup of tea for each of us, and a slice of flour-less chocolate cake for me and a slice of carrot cake for us, and talking like we’ve always been together about things that aren’t that important. Is this a relationship thingy I’m no longer built for? I used to do this fine years ago.

Done, we take the walk back, and on the drive back to my place Lana suggests going to dinner tonight – something we haven’t done for a little while.

“What do you feel like?” I ask.

“I’m happy with anything,” she tells me.

“Thai?”

“Not Thai, though.”

“Pizza, then?”

“I don’t feel like pizza either.”

“What do you want then?”

“I’m happy with anything.”

I could point out that anything includes Thai and pizza, which she’s dismissed, but I’ve been in many of these conversations before and know that logic doesn’t get me anywhere.

“Indian?” I say, although we rarely eat Indian, as the spices upsets my stomach.

“I feel like a salad,” Lana says.

Since it’s only mid-afternoon, we go back to my place, and I’m so tired  I suggest taking a nap – she abhors naps. Naps are wasting time that should be used constructively. For me, though (and especially as I’ve gotten older), I need them occasionally as mini-recharges as it’s the only way to get me through the day.

I should know better, though, because when we lay on my bed, she curls into me, and I’m just drifting off when I feel her hand lowering to my crotch and, fortunately, one of my nap erections has formed, so I’m really hard.

This time I’m magnificent (I think I’m only ever adequate – at best), or as magnificent as I can get (we don’t overly explore different positions, since at my age missionary, cowgirl, and doggy is about as much effort I can wrangle out of my aching, sore body), and sex is longer than usual because my nap erections know no bounds once they’ve been launched.

Done, we clean up, and shower, then sit around, drinking a cup of tea, and music on YouTube. It’s wholly wasteful, and my mind keeps drifting to wanting to do something productive – or at least something that I think would be productive, like sitting down and writing, although I don’t know what I should be writing. But then, I also think it’s nice just so sit here and share this wastefulness together.

We end up going to this small boutique place, The Other Side of the Page, where I order some glazed chicken wings, and she orders a super salad that contains salmon, hummus, kale, pumpkin, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I never knew went together, and which I’d be too wary to eat.

“You’re quiet,” Lana says, once our food’s arrived.

“Tired.”

“You had a nap.”

“About thirty seconds of a nap,” I say. “You made me work.”

She giggles, like it’s the funniest, dirtiest little story we share together.

Then she inundates me with everything that happened since she came over last night: more details about the dinner she had with her siblings, who’s doing and saying what; then that my bed’s too hard, and I should consider a softer mattress; that she didn’t sleep that well; the work week she has ahead, along with a site tour that she’s doing with the boss; that she’s meant to be doing periodic girls night with her old school friends later in the week; and that she’d like to build a gazebo at her place – if she can afford it, so she might have to watch her spending for a little while – but she also wants to go on a holiday at the end of the year.

Done, we go back to my place, where I make us each a cup of tea, and then we throw on an awful movie – Insidious: The Last Key. The only thing that Lana likes almost as much as her romcoms is horror, but so many of them nowadays are reliant on jump scares rather than storytelling, they’re hard to invest in.

Lana snuggles into me, and I arc an arm around her. Again, that space being filled seems right. Companionship’s a weird thing, but this closeness does remind me of our early relationship, where I was sure I loved her and that our future would be together, only now it feels like I’m working against inertia, only it’s not hers but my own, but so much as happened since the start of our relationship that I think I can reverse this, and in doing that, I can find myself again, and a future, because none of the other stuff is working.

Come the end of the night, I see her out, and hug her and kiss her lightly before she gets into the car.

I always thought my life would be special but how many people think that? Outside of Tom Cruise, how many people get it? People say if you work hard, you’ll be rewarded, but in any form of the arts – books, music, movies – that’s not always the case.

Perhaps life’s just meant to show us that we are what we are.

And no more.

32.

Fast forward to my Melody meeting, because nothing that different happens Monday morning, other than Lana texts me to tell me she has her site tour, and her boss (whose name I never remember) has joked that she’ll have to wear a hardhat and ruin her hair. I can imagine she would’ve laughed uproariously at that.

So, anyway, Autumn tells me Melody has some concerns about the editing, and Melody says she doesn’t think I understand her voice. I fire off my spiel about voice being paramount to me – that the best voice could sell the worst story, but the worst story wouldn’t sell the best voice.

“I just don’t think you get me,” Melody says. “Because you’re a man.”

I’m aware now that Autumn’s immediately straightened in her chair, no doubt deciding to interject before I tell Melody she’s a fucking idiot, because in my position I have to edit everybody, and the job of a good editor (and this is one thing I take pride in) is to find the truth and empathy in anything they write.

“By saying that, though,” I say before Autumn can cut in, “you’re suggesting you’re only interested in an audience that doesn’t involve men, whereas I think your writing has the potential to reach … well, anybody.”

Melody softens at that possibility.

“I’m nearly fifty,” I tell her. “I’ve been writing over thirty years. I’m just trying to bring that experience to your writing. You’re free to reject any suggestions I make. But I just want you to consider them because I’m trying to help your development as a writer – because that’s what we do as writers: we develop. Evolve. Your writing’s good. But you want to keep getting better. That’s where I’m coming from. And I’m happy to talk to you about each and every suggestions. Maybe we can even get somebody like Shia involved, as she might be able to reflect your viewpoint.”

“That sounds good, but I think my writing’s already great. Excellent. You probably think of your own writing as always improving – that makes sense. What’d your two books sell between them? Maybe one-thousand copies? Less?”

Melody smiles, as if she’s trying to be empathetic, or sympathetic, but only leers in a way that makes me feel pathetic.

“My debut novel was a bestseller.” Melody laughs, like she’s just come to some self-discovery, although the laugh is so forced that I’m sure she rehearsed it – she just never got to use it the first time around. “Maybe you should be taking lessons from me.”

It’s not meant to be an insult – well, I don’t think so. She’s trying some throwaway that’s meant to offer context in a manner that’s not unkind, but it’s just disdainful.

“You don’t think I have anything to offer?” I say.

“I’m sure you do – just not for my book.”

“How about I go over it again?”

Melody smirks. “That way lies madness.”

The quote is, That way madness lies.

“I heard my grandma say that once,” Melody says. “She loved him – love Wilhelm Shakespeare. She’d quote him all the time. That quote always stuck with me. No offense, of course. Maybe Shia can look at my book, though. That’s a good idea at least.” She smiles at Autumn. “Can you arrange that, please?”

“Perhaps this is something we need to discuss further,” Autumn says.

But Melody’s already rising. “Thanks for seeing me.” She strides out the office, then detours to Shia’s desk.

Autumn gets up and closes her door. “I’m sorry,” she says. “She’s young and thinks she knows everything.” She comes back to her desk. “You’re a great writer. You know that, right?”

There was a time that I had the same infallible belief as Melody, but the rejections and lack of sales have pockmarked that, so everything Melody’s said has only articulated – and emphasized –  what I’ve already been feeling, and what I was exploring yesterday.

“Fuck it,” I say, thinking what I’d really like to do is shoot to me feet, storm out, and quit. It’s not so much Gainsboro, but this whole industry that’s rebuked me, so maybe that’s what I need to listen to. That draws my attention back to Lana.

“You know how sales work,” Autumn goes on. “We do our best with marketing, but there’s never any guarantee what people will buy. She’s popular at the moment.”

“I’ve got a question for you – when you and Dennis talk, what do you talk about?”

Autumn’s taken aback – from publishing and writing to relationship talk. She’s trying to catch up, trying to work out if this relates to the Melody situation, or if I’ve just skewed off on a tangent.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Like just in general conversation when you’re sitting home each evening, or when you go on a walk.”

“How’ve we gotten here?”

“I’m curious. Out of all the conversations you have, how many of them are useful?”

“Useful?”

“Not just meaningless chatter. Him telling you about his day. Or his family. He has a model hobby, doesn’t he? Battleships or something?”

“Planes from the wars.”

“That stuff.”

“That’s part of a relationship sharing that stuff – we don’t share everything. Like the planes – he has model plane friends he geeks out to. He’ll show me the models, and he might mention he’s found something new, but we don’t have in-depth discussions about that stuff. Like I won’t talk to him much about my writing. I guess it’s different for everybody – it depends where you align.”

I think Lana expects us to be entirely aligned, which is probably understandable for some people in relationships. It might’ve even been something I believed in once. But once. Somewhere, I diverged, although I don’t know if that divergence was reasonable or not.

“Are you okay?” Autumn asks.

“Yeah. Just trying to work some stuff out in my head.”

“Walk later?” she ask.

Some background: when Autumn and I developed our friendship, Lana would grow insecure. Intergender friends weren’t a thing in her universe. But I’d catch up with Autumn here and there because of work, although it was became something of a conceit. Lana would rage, and sometimes I’d assure her, and sometimes I would argue straight back that she was getting jealous over a friendship. It damaged our relationship almost irreparably. Now I think of some karmic balance – that those conceits earned receipts in the form of arguments.

“I’ll see,” I say, “because I’ve got some stuff to get through.”

This is the definition of cowardice, because I should tell her outright that right now I’m dedicating myself to my relationship, that Lana’s insecurity may be over the top and unjustified, but I’ve got to do the right thing by my partner, even though every instinct cries it’s unfair.

“Oh, okay,” Autumn says, and I’m sure she sees right through the bullshit.

I see the sadness in her face – it’s an imperceptible change, but I see it, feel it, know it’s there.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I say, but this is another conceit. We know the playing field now, and this is a cosmetic offer.

“Sure,” she says.