33.

I want to think I’m being magnanimous when it comes to Melody, but there she is, chatting gaily with Shia, them casting occasional glances in my direction, followed by the occasional giggle.

This is like high school etiquette, although I never truly engaged in it, always feeling like I was on the outer of some joke. Most people wouldn’t have let it bother them. Psychos would’ve stewed and plotted carnage. I was somewhere in the middle, stewing but impotent.

Can you believe he thinks he can teach me how to write good? I imagine Melody saying.

Have you read his books? Shia would shoot back.

Why would I bother? Melody asks.

I only tried one, but it’s sooo bad, Shia says (although this is just based on my speculation). She laughs. I couldn’t get past page three.

Well, that’s all you need to read to know a book.

I loved yours so, so, so much! Don’t worry about him. He doesn’t know a thing.

I can tell. Fifty, and still working, when he wants to be writer!

He’s a Grunch around here, too.

“Grinch!” I yell out to Shia and Melody.

They look at me, startled, like this is the first symptom of a stroke.

“Sorry?” Shia says.

In television and movies when there’s a moment like this, the character always tries to cover by saying something similar. Like, I could say, Grin! It’s a lovely day! Or, Cinch! It’s such an easy edit. Or, Bitch! No, wait, that would be totally inappropriate. Anyway, none of that works in life. You can never cover for stupidity – not really.

“Thinking aloud,” I tell them.

They frown, their chatter descending to hushed whispers, no doubt sharing how awful I am, and Melody no doubt telling Shia that it won’t be long until I’m out and she’s in my position.

That’s not just improbable but impossible.

But that’s what I imagine.

34.

I don’t know when I segued from enjoying editing, to feeling I was contributing to something that could be special (or at least good), to feeling it was becoming a duty, to it becoming a drain – something I dreaded, where I would immediately seek the word count, desperately count down how many pages remained, and would regard any partly-filled page (like the last page of a chapter) as a treat.

This is something else I’ve known – that I’ve gotten to into this juncture, and although I recognise it, I’m unsure how to extricate myself. Going on fifty, and not really qualified for anything else, but the one talent I did have now something that I approach with trepidation.

It’s why I grow pensive at work, and come five o’clock, I’m immediately out there and into my car, only to find that I’m still subject to another routine – Lana’s post-work call. She just about always call on her way home from work.

“Hey,” she says. “What’re you up to?”

“Just driving home from work,” I say.

“How was it today?”

I have to force myself to relay the Melody farce – at least it’s something different to the norm of my day.

“Maybe she does know what she’s doing,” Lana says, once I’m done.

“Her writing’s not very good.”

“It must be all right if she had a bestseller with her book.”

“The industry’s very politicised,” I say. “She sort of got a springboard because of what she wrote, and who she is. I don’t think it’ll have lasting value.”

“You might be wrong. Her writing might work because it’s simple. Not everybody writes with big words like you.”

I do not write with big words. She’s thrown this at me in the past. I once asked her to give me a sample. She cited that I used the word “oblique”. I didn’t know what to say after that.

“She might be more accessible,” Lana says. “Not like your last book – the Wunderland one. There was something missing with that.”

“What?”

“I don’t know – but it didn’t feel like your other two books. This one didn’t have something.”

“What didn’t it have?”

“I don’t know how to say it, but there was something you didn’t get.”

This is typical Lana feedback generally – so loose and unspecific. Not always. Occasionally, she’s said some good things. But mostly it’s this, and it’s riling me up because it is so uninformed. She has very rigid opinions about why my writing’s been unsuccessful. Once, she told me I should write something that would sell, like it’s that easy. In her head, I’m sure she thought she was offering advice nobody else had ever considered.

I feel my anger rising – the typical building rage that I’ve experienced so often with Lana during interactions like this. Years ago, I would talk reasonably through shit like this. I don’t even recall when that metamorphosed into this frustrated anger. But given what’s happened, I force myself to stay calm – well, to appear calm.

“How was your day?” I ask, although I have no interest whatsoever in her response.

I hear about her duties in painstaking details, that her boss came in late morning and brought crepes, and how Mel derided her because she made a coffee, but didn’t immediately clean the coffee machine, even though she explained to Mel that she was going to clean the coffee machine before she left for the day, although Mel insists that it’s cleaned immediately after use, although Lana protested that it’s still too hot to clean then, and cleaning it then means that the hot coffee she made would grow tepid.

“What do you think about that?” she asks, like I’m a king being asked to arbitrate some life-or-death matter.

“She’s pedantic,” I say. “You know that.”

“But do you agree with me?”

“Sure,” I say, and I do. “But what’re you gonna do? You know what she’s like.”

“I just don’t understand how she can’t see how illogical she’s being.”

And she extolls on that, like the statement isn’t enough of a declamation, but now she needs to build the case for something I already agree to. But it keeps the conversation going as I get home, pull into my drive, swap the phone to my handsfree, and then go into my flat.

“You home?” Lana says.

“Uh huh. I should make some dinner.”

“Do you want to come over?” Lana asks. “I’m making fish.”

Fish is not one of my favourites. I don’t hate it; it’s just not a food I’d immediately think of if anybody gave me a choice.

“Sure,” I say.

“About six-thirty?”

“Sounds good,” I say.

So I’m home with just enough time to shower, then jump back in the car, feeling tired and begrudging as I drive to Lana’s, some part of me looking forward to this, but another part feeling as if this is just like going to a second job.

Sitting through the dinner is like most of the dinners we share – she cooks well, she’s catering to my insane dietary needs (filtered through numerous intolerances I’ve accumulated over the years), and she’s always mindful that I (or Noah, her son) never want for anything.

When we finish, Noah excuses himself to go out with friends, while I help her clear the table, although she doesn’t wash up – funnily, I spot that now and think about it, even though I’ve always known that’s the case. She washes up after I leave. That’s never clicked before. She uses the time when I’m around to be with me as much as possible.

Afterward, we sit on the couch, and she cuddles into me, and again I like the contact because this aspect of the relationship feels right – this closeness, although I don’t know if it’s because of her, or there’s some innate need that I have to have that presence in my life.

“What’ve you got on this week?” she asks.

I tell her dinner with Ethan tomorrow, a meeting with Regina Wednesday, and a meeting with my wannabe film peeps on Thursday, then suggest we could do something Friday.

“I’ve got my girls night Friday,” Lana tells me.

Last time, she invited me for dinner on Friday – did she sacrifice that last time to cook dinner and have me over as an effort to reconcile the relationship, or did it somehow organically change? Luca said there could be changes.

“Oh, okay,” I say.

We sit around, watching her awful shows – things like The Voice, and all that so-called reality entertainment that she loves, but which I loathe on principal, but which she insists that I should at least tolerate because I’m showing interest in something she likes. I can see the merit in these shows, and might even flick through the talent-based ones if there’s a good act, but generally wouldn’t as a rule set aside time to watch them. The only exception might be The Masked Singer, but that would just be to see Dannii Minogue and her array of revealing bodices. I may have a Minogue fetish.

And the thing that whirlpools in my head is I want to write – I don’t know what, but I should be sitting at the computer writing, rather than wasting my time watching fast-food television that’s seemingly gratifying in the moment, but leaves me empty and queasy afterward.

“I should go,” I say.

“Already?”

But it’s like ten.

“I’m tired,” I say.

She walks me to the door, and we kiss on her doorstep.

On the drive home, I feel some regret at parting, like we should be together,  and when I get home, I decide to sit in front of the computer and try write for a bit, but have no fucking idea what.

So I don’t write at all.