“Ah,” he said sagely, “mommy issues. I knew it wasn’t daddy issues; you don’t have the personality for it. I knew it.”
“I don’t have mommy issues,” I said.
“You clearly do,” he said conversationally. “And I’m not a fan of Austen myself. Even Mark Twain didn’t like her.”
“So what about you?”
He shrugged, hands in pockets. “I was an English major.” He paused to smirk at me. “I’ve never been able to bring myself to like beer. I can’t stand TV procedurals. My sister is crashing at my place while she’s divorcing her husband. I . . . write things?”
“What things?” I was surprised that he’d inflected that as a question.
He shrugged again and we continued walking, but more slowly. “I wrote a novel once.”
I remembered reading that on Wikipedia. “Oh?”
He smiled ruefully. “Nobody read it. And everyone who did hated it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What did I say about apologizing?”
“Well . . . I don’t know what else to say.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Well, then, it’s not your fault, is it?” He grinned. “So you see, Alice Practice, I am no mere children’s book author, as you so scornfully put it. On the whole, I prefer the term failed novelist.”
“Man, you really like Closer, don’t you?”
“It’s woefully underappreciated.” He clapped once. “It sounds so much more depressing, doesn’t it? It implies hard liquor and chain smoking. Health risks aside, let’s face it, Alice, the power of smoking is, as I said, woefully underappreciated.”
“I wouldn't know. I don’t smoke,” I said.
“Of course you don’t. You’re too cautious.”
Labels: january brings few faces
