Page 108 of How To Plot a Payback

We’d come straight from my flat after the dog park. My visit was unplanned. Everything about today was a surprise, right down to that very real and very unplanned kiss. Consequently, the world around me was his natural habitat.

I feasted my eyes upon it.

My mouth dropped open a little as I took in the Spanish architecture of the room. Surprisingly high ceilings. Narrow arched windows and two French doors that opened onto a concrete patio. Books with brown and black spines spilling out from the built-in bookcases framing an old fireplace, a pile of ashes surrounding three charred logs. I squinted for clues. It didn’t take long to see what I was looking for. I stepped toward them.

Framed pictures—older ones, mostly—of younger Finn in his English world. Finn standing among a group of people who looked strikingly similar. They huddled together on a cold, windy beach, arms tucked into sweatshirts, hair whipping, smiles wide.

Finn beneath a pile of children in Minnie Mouse nightgowns and plaid jammies beside a Christmas tree, the rug around them littered with wrapping paper. He looked the most carefree I’ve ever seen him.

Finn sitting around a writers table surrounded by coffee cups and laptops and take-out bags, looking sleepy and exhausted but happy.

A family man, loved children, enjoyed his work.

Essentially, perfect.

Miles nosed the aluminum pan holding the chocolate pie, so I moved along towards the kitchen.

It was small and outdated, but like the rest of the flat, a comfortable level of clean. A couple of dishes and an empty coffee mug in the sink, but tidy counters and a broom in the corner, recently used. I opened the fridge.

Orange juice. Half a pint of milk. Three apples. A few (ignorantly placed) potatoes. An abundance of condiments. Some takeaway containers.

He had never struck me as a cooking kind of guy, and his fridge confirmed this impression. Made sense. And frankly, I live similarly. After all, why slave away over a cooktop when you could just drop downstairs for a world-renowned pastry? There are too many things to do in this great, wide world besides cook. And too many people who have perfected the art of it for me to be loyal to boxed spaghetti. Isn’t it nice to live in a world where so many can specialize in their gifts, and we can enjoy the fruits of each other’s labors?

Laughter tinkled through the outside window. I closed the fridge and turned towards a little cubby, holding the rolled-up script.

His desk was littered with papers, and whereas the rest of his space was tidy, this certainly was the spot where he surrendered to the whims of his creative mind. His laptop rested on top of a stack of papers, which teetered precariously on a stack of writing and screenwriting books—from which so many bookmarks poked out that he may as well have highlighted every word.

Script pages strewn about bore his handwritten notes.

Blunt slash marks and unforgiving Xs aggressively cut out whole paragraphs of old pages.

The recycling bin beside the laptop was stuffed to the brim with crumpled papers.

A writer told me once that words on a screen read differently than the words on a page, and it was clear Finn felt the same way.

I laid the rolled-up script on his laptop, then paused, struck by the desire to snatch it back, to make a sort of scrapbook of the evening. A memento.

I was just picking up the script when my eyes fell upon a page beside the tower of books and papers. Something in my chest thudded as I read the heading, “Transgressions Against Finn Masters,” and banged all the way down to my toes as I read the words that came after.

Chapter 22

Finn

Wednesday, Rehearsals, Stage 2

“Has my office always been blue?”

Paula halts the rant she’s been on the past half hour about why exactly it is “necessary to the plot” that we bring on Julia Roberts as a guest star.

She looks up from the PowerPoint on her laptop, which she’s been holding out as she perches on my desk, her oversized T-shirt of Roberts’s face with the bold letters: BIG MISTAKE. BIG. HUGE.

But I’m not looking at her. No. I’m studying the walls with absolute wonder.

“This is a beautiful shade. What would you call it? Robin’s-egg blue?” I crane my neck and cry out, “Well, look at that. They even got the ceiling!”

“Finn.”

I look down to discover she’s frowning at me, her finger poised over the bullet point on the paragraph titled “Reason #33 Julia Roberts Is Perfect.” She says warily, “It’s always been blue.”