Phoebe orders herself a beer from the Drink Concierge.
“Are you holding office hours, Professor?” Jim asks, sitting down before she answers. She closes her notebook.
“Mostly just drinking now,” Phoebe says.
“That’s too bad,” Jim says. “I was hoping you could help me with my speech. Turns out, Miss Finnegan from the tenth grade wasn’t wrong and I actually am a shit writer.”
“A teacher said that to you?”
Jim looks at her notebook. “What did you write?”
“Are you seriously trying to cheat off my speech?”
He laughs. “Can’t we think of this more like a brainstorming session? A writer’s room?”
Jim looks at her like they are playing a game of chicken now. Because the stakes are high for the maid of honor and the best man. If they don’t publicly believe in the couple’s love, who will?
“I generally find office hours work best when we stay focused on the student’s problem,” Phoebe says.
“Fair enough,” Jim says.
“So what’s the problem?”
He says he could write a whole book about Gary, about what they’ve been through together.
“But I don’t know this new Gary who’s with Lila. I only know the Gary who was with my sister.”
“Don’t mention your sister,” Phoebe says.
“Then what do I write?”
“Good writing is driven by a question,” Phoebe says. “And the essay is the writer’s best attempt at answering that question. So let’s start there, with a question.”
“But what’s the question?”
“It’s a wedding speech, so the question has to be, Why are these two people perfect for each other?”
“Why is anyone perfect for each other?”
“What do these two bring out in each other that is special, unique? That nobody else in the world can bring out?”
“That’s two questions, not one,” he says. “And how am I supposed to know that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Is it?” He gives her that inquiring look again.
“Hasn’t Gary ever said anything about why he loves Lila?”
“Has Lila ever said anything about why she loves Gary?”
In all their talking, Lila has mostly listed fears and complaints—his beard, his gray hair, his family.
“He’s good to her,” Phoebe says.
“But Gary is good to the cashiers at the grocery store,” he says. “He’s good to everyone.”
Phoebe nods. Jim sits back in defeat. “This is a weird wedding, no?” Jim says.
“It is,” Phoebe says.
“Do you know what we need? What every writer famously uses when they have writer’s block. Drugs.”
“I think that’s just a myth.” Phoebe tells him about the writers who were famously derailed by drugs. But Jim doesn’t care. He was gifted a pound of edibles by one of Gary’s cousins who bought more than he could bring back on the airplane.
“I’ve never used marijuana,” Phoebe says.
“Spoken like someone who has never used marijuana,” Jim says. “I’ll have two weeds please.”
Phoebe laughs.
“How have you never smoked weed?’
“I think it’s as simple as nobody has ever offered it to me. It’s like people can look at me and somehow tell that I don’t want to do drugs.”
“That was the first thing I noticed about you,” Jim says.
IN JIM’S ROOM, he gives her a quarter of his edible.
