Page 80 of Without a Clue

“And everyone was twice as bad as the rumors that preceded them. But then there was you.”

I purse my lips.

“I wasn’t even sitting down yet and had already all but called the case closed from whatever Mark had planned. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together—he’d hinted before at wanting me to be his replacement. I’d never given him much support on that front, but I never pushed against him either. I realized when I got there to lunch and saw his ‘friends’ what he was aiming at. And I knew what my answer was going to be before I even sat down.”

“You actually planned on saying no?” I say incredulously. “No writer on the planet would’ve said no.”

But I guess that really sums up what this group is about. A group of eccentric writers thinking uniquely and wholly in their own ways. I never thought about it that way, but maybe Nash truly fit in after all.

Nash shrugs as someone stops by our table and tops up our waters. “My work was hard enough at the time, and like I say, I wasn’t particularly driven to want anything besides what I already had. Problem is, at the time I was having trouble with just that: my work.”

“Which book was that one now?” I ask, thinking aloud. I mentally run through the titles, seeing all the covers in my mind. “Highway to Haven?”

Nash lets out a breathy chuckle. “Of course you recall it. It’s incredible how you juggle all of our books in your brain. Anyway, yes, it was. I may not have remembered the title, but I do know where I was stuck at the time: forty thousand words.”

“Everybody’s stuck at forty thousand words.”

“Not like this. I was stuck-in-the-mud stuck. Knee-deep-in-quicksand stuck. I wasn’t going anywhere, and hadn’t been, for five months.”

“Five months?” I say, giving a low whistle. “When was the book due?”

“Two months later.”

I shake my head. I’d heard all the author woes over the years. Two months to write half a book while in the middle of a creative freeze was no place to be.

“And you’d tried it all, I’m assuming.”

“Drafting poorly to throw words on the page. Setting alarms. New scenery. Morning work. Evening work. Reinforcement therapy. Punishment style. Everything. All it got me was twenty thousand words in the wrong direction that needed deleting.”

I wince.

“Twice,” he adds.

I wince again. “Ouch. So how’d you get out of your slump?”

“I’m getting to it,” he says with a twinkle, his blue eyes flickering in the dim light. He rubs his hands together as if he’s warming himself over a hot fire. He can say what he wants, claim he could switch careers at a snap, but Nash is a true writer at heart, a man who delights in telling stories—even the true ones.

“So I’m sitting there at the table with this group of people who are acting like they’ve escaped the mental ward, next to Neena currently asking me out—”

“She didn’t.”

“She did. And then you stalk in.”

I rub my face. “You mean glide, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I mean stalk.” He grins. “You stalked right in just like you always do”—he waves a hand at me—“the little five-foot twenty-four-year-old surrounded by a bunch of literary giants in one of your bookish cardigans and ballet shoes, and you take one look around, snap that phone of yours into your back pocket, and slam your hand on the table.

“Took you no more than ten seconds before Ricky was back in his seat, the table stopped shaking, Neena let go of my collar, Jackie had apologized to the owner of the establishment while providing only two more offensive remarks in the process, Crystal was satisfied with an order of some sort of breaded fish, and Gordon put away his hat. Even Hugh popped all the olives into his mouth at once and slid away the glasses like he didn’t know where they came from.

“Then next thing I knew you were sitting next to me, snapping a napkin and setting it on your lap like this was just another day in the life. I’m not even sure you realized just how much of an impact you made on everyone.”

“Oh, I did,” I say, recalling. “It was a particularly trying day. I did.”

“But then you really shocked me.”

My brain is flying through that day, but nothing comes to mind.

“You were talking to the waiter and said something to the effect of, ‘I’ll take the fish, and oh, by the way, Hugh, I’ve been thinking about it and I think you need to reveal the secret about the Roman dodecahedrons on page one hundred sixty-two. I think, but I’m not certain, that might give you the final zip you’re after.’”