Page 20 of Breakout Year
He had only so much laptop battery. So it was emails, and transcription, and more emails, and editing, and yet even more emails. Today, most of them came from Willow, Sue’s agent, who believed very seriously in only two things: astrology—Akiva was momentarily grateful that he was estranged from his parents so that she’d stopped asking him about his birth time—and making Sue piles and piles of money.
When he’d finally finished, he opened the document he’d been avoiding all day. This Gilded Land_Draft2_real_REAL. A book. His book, even if it wasn’t anywhere near ready to be a book. A set of half-formed ideas. A cast of characters he wanted to give Yiddish names as befitting their time on the Lower East Side. No, he should probably christen them things more familiar to the American palate. So, sighingly, Raisel became Rose.
He lit a candle, set his intentions—to write words, possibly good ones, possibly several thousand of them—then avoided writing in favor of scrolling social media. He should probably charge his laptop. He’d get up to do that in just a second.
A second he didn’t have, because the power went out.
Right, scratch that. He got a notebook, activated the flashlight on his phone. Wrote, or tried to. He probably shouldn’t run down his phone battery, just in case. Tomorrow. I can write tomorrow.
The rain didn’t stop Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday when Akiva woke up to the ping of rain on his roof, the ozonic smell of thunderstorms. He’d gone to sleep with his window partially cracked. Now the area by his windowsill was wet, the cheap paint already bubbling. He texted his landlord, got a thumbs-up in response that could mean anything. So he took pictures and made sure to mark them with today’s date. The first rule of anything: document, document, document.
He was going through his morning routine—coffee on, prayers said, emails answered—when a text from Eitan came in, a hi as if they were the kind of friends who just sent things like that.
Akiva: Do you ever sleep?
Eitan: Being awake is more interesting. Are you not a morning person?
Akiva: I am
Eitan: Then why are you grouchy?
Akiva: This is me normal
Eitan: OK, Oscar, well today’s game is postponed, so you wanna go out tonight? I could pick you up
Akiva checked his schedule. Bookstore event still sat at the top.
Akiva: I have to work.
For his trouble, he got a frowny face.
Eitan: I’m really looking forward to taking you out
One date. He’d agreed to one date. One date was what Eitan had paid for. One date was what Eitan would get. And not tonight.
Akiva: I’m available?—
So he cross-referenced his and the Cosmos’ schedule and sent a list of potential times, neat as making any other appointment.
The room was packed. Fuck. Akiva had spent last night—the part of it where he hadn’t been rewatching Eitan’s press conference as if that would help him prepare for their date and pointedly not noticing the faint lines that Eitan now had around his eyes—worrying that no one would show up.
The chairs weren’t empty, that was for sure. A table was stationed at one end of the store, a backdrop behind it that the publisher had sent over to advertise Sue’s catalog. At the other end of the store where Akiva was seated in the back row, some readers were chatting quietly, while others had books open on their laps as they scrolled through their phones.
One gave Akiva a look like he’d gotten lost on the way to somewhere else, even if he’d designed each of the thirty-six slides Sue was about to present. He tucked the tzitzit fringing the corners of his clothes into his waistband and tried not to let his answering smile turn into a glare.
He was wearing a name tag, the peel-off kind on which he’d markered Spencer Lattimore. The beauty of an alias was that he could disappear whenever he wanted, even if people now knew that Spencer Lattimore was a tall pale guy who occasionally used his tzitzit like a fidget toy.
He was contemplating the logistics of how best he could fade into the woodwork when two things happened: bookstore staff called the room to order and Eitan ducked in the door.
Fuck. Well, so much for this going smoothly.
To Akiva’s dismay, Eitan spotted him immediately.
“Hey!” Eitan whispered. Or almost whispered. Shouted, really. He settled himself in one of the two empty chairs in the back row—right next to Akiva. He wasn’t wearing anything obviously Cosmos-branded so was just a handsome athlete in a room full of people, a few of whom swiveled with an Is that…? No, it couldn’t be. He smiled, guilelessly, and folded his hands on his lap.
It’d be petty for Akiva to scooch his chair away, but that was what he did, moving to all of two inches from Eitan where he could think more clearly. “What are you doing here?” Akiva spit.
“Nice to see you too…” He eyed Akiva’s name tag. “Spencer.”
