Page 74 of The Rom-Commers

“You’ve got a great voice,” I told Charlie.

Charlie shrugged. “He loves Freddie Mercury.”

I don’t want to sound insensitive, but at one point, I said to Charlie, “Won’t he eat if he gets hungry enough?”

Charlie shook his head, likeCommon misconception. “If he goes too long without eating, his health can start to fall apart. And the thing about guinea pigs is that they’re prey animals. So when they get sick, they hide it. Because the weakest of the herd are always the first to get picked off.”

“Cuthbert,” I said, in a tone of affectionate reprimand, “no one in this room is getting picked off.”

We both gazed at Cuthbert. Then Charlie said, “I don’t think he’s buying it.”

ONE NIGHT, WHENI’d been there for more than two weeks and was feeling very at home, Charlie and I had just come back from another trip to the market when we heard the high beeps of Charlie’s front door disarming and then a woman’s voice calling, “Charlie?”

I’d been handing Charlie cans of crushed tomatoes to stack on a high shelf in the pantry—but at the moment her voice sounded, Charlie grabbed me by the arm and yanked me in with him.

Then he pulled the door closed until the tongue caught in the latch.

“What are you—” I started.

But Charlie shook his head like crazy and lifted a finger to his lips.

It was not a large space. We were corralled tightly by shelves of food, with only room for about an inch between our bodies. Which made me suddenly both exquisitely aware of the electromagnetic energy around Charlie’s body… and aware that Charlie was also suddenly aware of mine.

I shifted to a whisper. “Why are we hiding in the pantry?”

“That’s Margaux,” Charlie whispered back.

“Who’s Margaux?”

“My ex-wife.”

Of course. Margaux. They’d been quite the power couple for a brief moment in time, the year when his movieForty Miles to Helland her documentaryWomen Aren’t Funny—which was just an hour and ahalf of women stand-up comics being hilarious on the topic of that very thing—were both sweeping up prizes on the awards circuit.

I’d read a few features on her, in fact, over the years. My big takeaway—and please don’t be alarmed—was that she, and these are her words, “didn’t like fiction.”

I’ll give you a minute.

This lady, who was married to one of the most celebrated writers of fiction in the world,didn’t like fiction. If I recall, she’d said that she “just couldn’t get into fictional stories” because they “weren’t real.” One of the articles, in fact, ended with her rhetorical question: “It’s all made up. It’s all fake. How can it possibly matter?”

So, yeah. That marriage was probably doomed from Day One.

I don’t know if they make red flags bigger than that.

Anyway—now she was here. In Charlie’s house.

“What’s she doing here?” I asked. Weren’t they divorced?

“She’s here to pick up Cuthbert,” Charlie answered.

“She just comes into your house?” I asked.

“She still has the code.”

That raised more questions than it answered, but okay. “I thought you guys weren’t close.”

“We’re not.”

Next, Charlie heard a sound that I didn’t, and he stood up straighter, eyes wide, likeOh, god, she’s coming this way.

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