Page 71 of Business or Pleasure

She scoops up the baby, who’s started to cry.

Sweetie, it’s okay, Mommy’s here. Wait. Where’s Laurie? You were supposed to pick her up from dance team practice!

BOB looks at the camera with an exaggerated guilty shrug.

ALL

Daaaaaaad!

chapter

nineteen

COLUMBUS, OH

Wolfing it Down: Vegetarian Cooking with Finnegan Walsh.”

Finn shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“Big Bad Wolf? The Story of the Least Villainous Man on TV.”

“I think you’re forgetting I didn’t play one of the werewolves.”

“But it’s much easier to come up with a pun that way.” I tap my fingers on the upright tray table. “I’ve got it. Howl-arious: 101 Finn Walsh–Approved Nerd Jokes.”

“You’re banned. Banned from making jokes for the next twenty-four hours. At least.”

I twist in my window seat to take a look up the aisle, toward the front of the plane. “Is it weird that we haven’t left yet?”

As though I’ve summoned it, a loudspeaker announcement comes on. “Good afternoon, this is your captain speaking. We’re experiencing some weather-related delays, but we should be taking off as soon as we get the signal from air traffic control.”

I open up my bag and pull out an applesauce pouch. I couldn’t take any more greasy airport food, and this seemed the least likely to make my stomach revolt.

“I think those are for children,” Finn says. “But I guess it’s fitting, since you’re only seven. Is that what you got at Starbucks when I was in the bathroom?”

“This is my emotional support applesauce,” I say. “Nowhere on this pouch does it say that it’s for children.”

“There’s a drawing of a child on it!”

“Ohhhhh, no, no, that’s actually just a very small adult. But I can see how you would get confused.” I lean into his face and suck hard on the applesauce pouch until he breaks and starts laughing.

He removes a thick book from his carry-on bag, a Tolkien biography. “Holler if you need me.”

I might as well take advantage of the delay, so I take out my laptop. Since we left Reno on Monday, the week has been nonstop work. Finn had an overnight trip to LA for some Nocturnals reunion press, while I holed up in Columbus, turning outlines into sketches of chapters. Whenever I struggled with his voice, I played back my recordings, or I texted him a question. He flew back for Comic Expo Ohio, and now we’re on our way to Pittsburgh.

Slowly, slowly, it’s becoming a book. I’ve always loved this part, watching as a flurry of notes and detached phrases become sentences, paragraphs. It feels a little like magic, expanding on his anecdotes, giving them a narrative structure.

Our editor has asked for the first five chapters as a status report, due tomorrow, and while I have three nearly complete, we might have to pull an all-nighter to finish the rest.

An hour later, it’s begun to snow and we’re still on the tarmac.

“We’re sorry, folks, but there’s a storm coming in from the west, and it doesn’t look like it’ll let up anytime soon,” says the pilot over the loudspeaker. “All planes are being grounded for tonight.” A wave of frustrated chatter rushes through the aisles as they go on to talk about booking people on the next flights out tomorrow.

“Shit.” I haul my laptop bag over my shoulder, picking at my black nail polish as we wait to deplane. I’m starting to feel bad about the specks of it I’ve left across the country, a colorful little trail of anxiety-confetti. “We have to turn this in tonight, and then the welcome dinner at the con tomorrow... maybe if we get out tomorrow morning, we can make it in time?”

Finn takes a few moments to think. “We’ll rent a car. It’s only three hours away. The storm is blowing in from the opposite direction of where we’re heading.” He tilts his phone toward me, showing me the forecast.

“In this weather?”

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