“You do write all the time.”
“I sit at my computer. I type a few words. A lot more disappear. I call it the Case of the Vanishing Manuscript.”
“Why don’t you just type more words and not delete any?”
“God, wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I’m serious: why don’t you? It’s just a story, Dash. You type one word. Then the next one.” Something changed in his face. What I might, if Will Gower had seen it, have described as a hint of good-natured devilry. “‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”
I wondered if my eyebrows could fly off my face. “Sherlock Holmes and Lewis Carroll in one conversation?”
He gave me that embarrassed half-smile and a one-shouldered shrug, but the question did seem sincere. From anybody else, I probably would have taken offense at the question. Scratch that: I would have gone into an icy rage, completely shut down, and retreated to Hemlock House to soothe myself with an abundance of snickerdoodles. But since it was Deputy Bobby, the question wasn’t just sincere. It was earnest. And, unexpectedly, I found myself wanting to answer it.
“It’s hard to put into words.” A grin slanted across my mouth. “I guess that’s my whole problem; everything is hard to put into words, which isn’t ideal for a writer. I guess—it’s like, I have this story in my head, and it’s so good. I know it’s good. And I’m not just saying that. I’ve read a lot. And what I’ve sent out, I’ve gotten good feedback on. I’m not going to be the next Bill Shakespeare, but I know I’ve got good stories to tell. And then I sit down to write, and it’s like—it’s like there’s this blender in my gut, all these bright, shiny blades, and they start spinning as fast as they can. Everything I do seems wrong. And every time I do something wrong, I realize everything else is wrong too. And there’s this part of me that thinks if I can fix just this one word and get it perfect, then I’ll be able to get the next one. But instead, I putz around and make it worse, and then everything else is worse, and there’s all that sharp metal whirling around inside me, all this light and glitter like teeth trying to eat me up, and—” I made a gesture with one hand. “Poof. The Case of the Vanishing Manuscript.”
Deputy Bobby stared at me. He had eyes the color of burnished bronze, and his pupils were huge in the low light. He’d clasped his hands again, and his knuckles blanched under the pressure.
“It’s hard to describe,” I said. “My therapists—notice the plural—have suggested a lot of reasons. I mean, I’m a perfectionist, obviously. And there’s a lot of pressure to perform because my parents are who they are. And I can’t remember the term from the DSM, but I’m a diagnosable whack-a-doodle.”
He still hadn’t said anything. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. I had a strange moment where I thought I remembered this—the way he’d seemed stunned, struck to silence by something. It had been with Hugo, I thought. Or when I’d been telling him about Hugo. And then the moment was gone, and I couldn’t call it back.
“Anyway,” I said into the stiffening silence, “please refer back to this conversation whenever you need a refresher on why I’m painfully single.”
Deputy Bobby jolted, and his face changed as though he were suddenly seeing me again. He worked his jaw. And then, in a tone I couldn’t decipher, he said, “Do you know what my dad said when I told him I was moving back to Portland with West?”
It was such a strange question, with such a yawning emptiness behind it, that I couldn’t answer; the best I could do was shake my head.
“He asked how I was going to find an apartment.” Deputy Bobby gave a jagged laugh. “And my mom said, ‘Good, now you can be a doctor.’”
“Jeez.”
He let his head fall back to thunk against the desk.
“I thought—” I stopped. “I mean, I just assumed you were going to be a police officer—”
“That would make sense,” Deputy Bobby said, and the words had an unfamiliar edge, “wouldn’t it?”
I thought about West, though. His anger. His fear that lay behind that anger. And, through the door that Deputy Bobby had cracked for me, if only for an instant, I saw a line of people behind West going a long way back in Deputy Bobby’s life.
“I didn’t mean to bring that up,” Deputy Bobby said. “My point was—I guess, parents are hard. I get that.” Then he gave me a sideways smile. “Even if they’re not famous.”
“The famous part is actually amazing. I go to fabulous parties with the Kardashians, and everything I own is made out of diamonds—”
“Even your underwear?”
“—and I’m offended you never once asked for my autograph.”
I got the goofy grin. Just for a moment. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”
“I’m sorry I, uh, tapped into a strong passive-aggressive ley line.”
“You didn’t have any friends when you were a kid, did you?”
“Deputy Bobby!” But I was grinning.
“It’s like one thing after another that makes zero sense when it comes out of your mouth.”
I was still trying to tamp down my grin—and working on my comeback, obviously—when Deputy Bobby stood. He held out a hand, and I let him help me to my feet. He had a nice hand, by the way. Strong. Defined. Solid. And it was funny, I thought, how you could know right away whether your hand would fit just right with someone else’s. (Tragic backstory reveal: my hand did not fit just right with Shawn Laffleur’s during the 6:35 p.m. screening of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He had popcorn fingers, and he gripped me way too hard. But we still made out anyway.)
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Deputy Bobby asked.
“Definitely not. I’m going to call all my friends and make them fly out here to prove I was popular.”
Deputy Bobby straightened my jacket for me. And then he gave me a look.
“It’s not right,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right.”
He nodded. “So, as soon as you’re out of my sight, let me guess—you’re going to break into Gerry’s beach house?”
“I actually didn’t know he had a beach house. Also, this feels like entrapment.”
“Maybe I should just arrest you right now,” he murmured.
“West would certainly have opinions if he found out you had plans to handcuff me.”
Deputy Bobby didn’t say anything to that. But, for an instant, his eyes came up to mine, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all. It was slow and small and sure, and I was suddenly painfully aware of his fingers still holding my lapels, of how close we were standing, of the cramped shelter, of the faint hint of that clean, masculine scent. If you’ve ever had a firework go off inside you—in a very, very, very good way—you know what I’m talking about.
“I’ve decided to enter a monastery,” I said.
