Page 24 of The Seven Year Slip

He arched a single thick eyebrow. It was a rather infuriating eyebrow, actually. Most of the time, guys would just nod when they heard what I did for a living and move on to... literallyanything else. “How’d you start?” he asked. “You majored in art history, right? So it wasn’t something you always wanted to do?”

“No...” I admitted, and averted my eyes and concentrated on a piece of chipped paint on the yellow table, scratching at it to uncover the sandalwood underneath. “I don’t know. I guess... the summer after college, my aunt and I backpacked across Europe.” This year, actually. The summer he was here in this apartment. I didn’t know why I was telling him all of this. I thought I had decided earlier that I wouldn’t. “I’d been thinking about what I wanted to do my last year of college, and I didn’t really want to be a curator, but... I loved books. Mostly travel guides. My aunt and I always bought one wherever we went. Just like there’s secrets in memoirs and confessions in novels, there’s a steadfast certainty to a good travel guide, you know?”

“I feel a similar way about a good cookbook,” he replied, nodding. “There’s nothing like it.”

“There’s really not,” I agreed, thinking back on when Iactuallydecided to be a publicist. “Strauss and Adder publish some of the best travel guides in the industry, so I applied and it turns out I’m really good at being a publicist,” I said simply. “So, I schedule interviews and podcasts, I get authors from one city to another, I pitch them to TV shows and radio shows and book clubs. I think up new ways to convince you to read a classic for the twentieth time even though you know it like the back of your hand, and I like it. I mean, I have to like it,” I added with a self-conscious laugh. “You don’t get paid that well in publishing.”

“You don’t in restaurants, either,” he added, watching me with the kind of rapt attention that made me feel like what I did was actuallyinteresting. He studied me with those mesmerizing gray eyes, and I began to think about how I’d paint them. Maybe in layers, navy mixed with a lovely shade of shale. “So, in a way,” hesaid thoughtfully, his eyebrows furrowing, “you create a travel guide of your own. For your authors.”

“I... never thought of it that way,” I admitted.

He cocked his head. “Because you haven’t seen yourself the way other people do.”

Other people? Or you?I wanted to ask, because it was bold of him to think he knew me from a few hours of conversation and plucking a pigeon from my hair. “I think that’s very nice of you to say,” I told him, “but it’s not that deep. I’m just very good at facilitating the sale of books. I’m good at spreadsheets. I’m good at timetables. I’m good at badgering people long enough and hard enough to get that sought-after interview...”

“And what do you do for fun?”

I gave a laugh. “You are going to think I’m the most boring person in the world.”

“Absolutely not! I’ve never met a book publicist before. Or anyone named Clementine,” he went on, and put his chin on his hand and leaned toward me, grinning. “So we’re already off to a great start.”

I hesitated, twirling my chocolate around on the table. “I... like to sit in front of van Gogh’s paintings at the Met.”

That did, in fact, surprise him. “Just sit?”

“Yep. That’s it. Just sit and look at them. There’s something peaceful about it—a quiet gallery room, people moving in and out like a tide. I actually make it a yearly thing for my birthday. Every August second, I go to the Met and sit on a bench and just...” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you, it’s silly.”

“Every birthday,” he muttered, marveling. “Since when?”

“Since college, actually. I studied him and other Postimpressionist painters extensively, but he always stuck out to me. Hewas—is”—I quickly corrected, trying not to wince—“my aunt’s favorite, too. The Met has one of his sunflowers, one of his self-portraits, and a few others.” I thought about it. “I’ve gone for about ten years now. I’m nothing if not a child of consistency and routine.”

He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “You’re the kind of person who sticks to the directions on the back of a brownie box, aren’t you?”

“Those instructions are put there for a reason,” I replied practically. “Baking’s a precise art.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ever color outside the lines, Lemon?”

No, I thought, though that wasn’t exactly true. I used to, just not anymore. “I warned you,” I said, downing the rest of my wine, and gathering our plates to take to the sink, “I’m boring.”

“You keep saying that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means,” he said in a very cheesy Inigo Montoya impression, and it was my turn to roll my eyes. The wine had made me warm inside, and relaxed for the first time all week.

“Okay, then come up with another word that means dull and uninteresting, tiresome—”

“Do you hear that?” he interrupted.

I put my plate on top of his and paused, cocking my head to listen. The ghost of a melody drifted through the vents from upstairs. Miss Norris playing her violin. I hadn’t heard it in...years. The strings sounded sweeter than I remembered.

He tilted his head to listen.

It took only a few bars to recognize the melody, and my heart clenched.

“Oh, I know this song!” he said enthusiastically, snapping hisfingers. “It’sThe Way of the HeartorThe Matters of the Heartor—no, wait,The Heart Mattered, I think? My mom loves that old musical.” He hummed a few notes with the violin, and he wasn’t that off-key. “Who’s playing it?”

“That would be Miss Norris,” I supplied, pointing toward the ceiling. Of all the songs to play, it had to be that one? “She performed in Broadway pits for years before she retired.”

“It’s lovely. Whenever my mom played this song, she’d put me on her toes and dance me around the kitchen. She’s not a big musical person, but she likes that one.”

I could imagine a tiny Iwan dancing around a kitchen on his mother’s toes.

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