Page 71 of The Rom-Commers

Sixteen

AND SO, THATfirst week, we settled into a routine: swimming first thing, then showering, then coffee, then sitting across from each other at Charlie’s dining table with our laptops back to back, surrounded by our various favorite writing accoutrements and good-luck charms—trying to ignore each other but not entirely succeeding. We found a sharing feature in Final Draft, which neither of us had ever used, and we forced ourselves to get acquainted with it.

My hope at the start was that we could just work quietly, like we were both used to, and send changes and questions back and forth via the internet without ever having to adjust our normal way of doing things. But of course that’s not how it happened.

I mean, there was a guinea pig on the dining table.

Every morning, like a ritual, Charlie brought Cuthbert out of his cage and loaded him into the barn, where he’d settle in and spend the day alternating between lounging and napping.

“I think I’m going to find the rodent distracting,” I said, the first time it happened.

“Don’t call him a rodent.”

I frowned. “Isn’t he… a rodent?”

“The point is, he’s going through a rough time right now.”

But maybe Cuthbert was a nice mediator. Writing in the same room at the same time with another person was, for the record, not my normal way of doing things.

Not Charlie’s, either. “I usually do this in complete human isolation,” he said, at one point. “I always think that should be the title of my autobiography:Alone Too Long.”

I nodded, likeNice. Then, wondering if all writers had a throwdown autobiography title, I went ahead and shared: “Mine isSomeday You’ll Thank Me.”

Another human in the room. While I tried to write. So weird.

It felt a smidge vulnerable, for example, to pull out my lucky sweatshirt—which had a hood that made your head look like a big strawberry with little green leaves appliquéd at the top. When Charlie first saw it, he said, “That’s—wow. That’s really something.”

“It’s my lucky hoodie,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t point out that it hadn’t brought me much luck. Then, quieter, I added: “My mom gave it to me.”

“No judgment,” Charlie said. “I have a lucky handkerchief myself.”

I looked at his pocket, which was empty.

“For awards shows,” Charlie explained, and touched the spot where I was looking. “My wife gave it to me before my first-ever nomination—and then I won. So I wore it again the next time, and I won again. And now I’m trapped. Every time I wear it, I win. So I have to keep wearing it.”

“That’s a powerful handkerchief,” I said.

“Right?” Charlie agreed. “After she left, I thought I should get a different one—but I don’t want to break my streak.”

Other secret writerly behaviors that got exposed as we worked together: I feathered the corners of pages while reading. Charlie absentmindedly tapped his heel on the floor. Charlie wrote exclusively with Bic ballpoints, chewing on the caps and blowing through them, which—who knew?—makes a whistling noise.

Charlie turned out to be a blue-ink person, while I was exclusively black. FYI for nonwriters: blue versus black ink is an essential identity issue. Much like Coke versus Pepsi, or the Beatles versus the Stones, or college-ruled notebooks versus regular. You can be one kind of person or the other, but not both.

I couldn’t help but judge Charlie a little—and I could feel him judging me right back.

I’ll also add that he was a fine-point-pen person, while I had joined the bold-tip community years ago and never looked back.

One-point-six millimeters or bust, baby.

The idea that we might do all our writing in a sleek, virtual, digital, nonhuman way was not sustainable, looking back. It wasn’t long before the dining table was covered with crumpled paper, marked-up printed scenes, snack wrappers, soda cans, spiral notebooks, water bottles, not one but two staplers, pencil pouches, a box of Kleenex, a printer attached to a long extension cord, various ChapSticks, highlighters, and old coffee cups—both paper and ceramic.

I personally liked it better that way. Visible signs of progress.

I got the feeling Charlie did, too.

And even though we both put headphones on, we pulled them off to talk almost constantly. I got to where I could sense Charlie pulling out his earbuds to ask a question or read a piece of dialogue. And can I just say? He had to really watch his pacing when he read to me out loud, because I’d get so caught up, if he slowed down too much, I’d jump in with what I imagined the next line should be.

And then Charlie would look up, and say, “No. But maybe that’s better.”

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