Chapter 6: The Job Offer

That wasn’t what she was expecting at all. “What?”

Jennings let out a deep sigh. “My son, Steven. He’s a very intelligent boy.”

Babysitting? “How old is he?”

“Twenty-six.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay. Why does he need me to teach him to write a novel?”

“He has it in his head to do everything once, so that he can know what he wants to do.” Jennings leaned back, taking a sip of the water in front of him and rubbing a hand over his forehead.

“And you don’t like that idea, do you?”

He shrugged. “I want him to take up the reigns of the family business, naturally.” He held up one hand. “But he wants to write a novel.” He held up the other, like a scale. “So we made a deal. Which is where you come in.”

The food came all at once. Jennings dug into his food. He didn’t wait to cut it all up. He cut a piece and ate it. Autumn started working on her salad, cutting it with her knife before she started shoveling it into her mouth.

She gave him a suspicious look. Between bites, she asked, “What’s the catch?”

“The catch is,” he said, putting the water down, “if you fail, he goes back to work. Real work.”

She tried to ignore the implications that writing wasn’t real work. Lately, it hadn’t been. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. You get paid either way, Autumn.”

“How much?”

“Fifty thousand dollars. Not bad for three months work, is it?”

Autumn found herself, not for the first time since meeting Bruce Jennings, completely speechless.

***

The question, really, was why Steven hadn’t held the meeting himself? If his father was footing the bill, why did his father have to do the hiring? Wouldn’t Steven assume that whomever Mr. Jennings chose would be a bad choice? Did that mean Autumn was a bad choice? Had he picked her because she wasn’t qualified, because she wasn’t good enough?

She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. She tried to convince herself that she was good enough, that she was the perfect choice. She didn’t know how to teach. But she did know how to write, and she could help this guy write. Couldn’t she?

Autumn bought a pack of cigarettes on her way to meet him for the first time. She didn’t light up right away, but she was ready. Just in case. It had been three years since she had quit. But something told her she might need them again. Soon.

She had arranged the meeting with Steven. This time she wasn’t going to go into a fancy restaurant and have some concierge glare at her like she was unwashed and looking for a handout. If he wanted to meet her, he was going to meet her on her own terms. In the park, away from anyone else; no pretension, no introduction. She would just sit on a bench, looking at the fountain, feeling the water spray up against her bare shins whenever the wind blew in that direction.

Autumn had e-mailed Steven the night before. Told him to meet her right where she was sitting at noon. She’d arrived at ten, with pants that came down only to her knees and boots that came up only to her ankles. The wife-beater white tank top wasn’t warm enough, so she’d thrown on button down shirt overtop. This outfit came from her every day clothes rack. She hadn’t had time to get Ian’s approval, but she didn’t much care. Stephen was the student. Bruce Jennings was the client. She already had the job.

Autumn had the laptop out and turned on, with the same blank page sitting ready for her that had been there for most of her recent memory.

It felt almost like there was someone else that she used to be. Someone who knew how to write. Someone who could sit down, put her fingers on the keys, and just start moving them. Back when she could just look at the screen and read the story as it printed out in front of her, with no real idea of what was coming next or where it was coming from; just the joy of reading a draft as it poured its way out of her and onto the computer. It felt like that had been someone else entirely.

Now she sat for two hours, occasionally forcing out a paragraph or two, then erasing them and going back to playing solitaire. She was getting good though. It wasn’t rare for her to top a thousand dollars anymore. Maybe she should go to Vegas and try to live as a solitaire player.

Did anything else in the world say loser more than that?

As the hour drew closer to twelve, Autumn allowed herself the distraction of people watching. It wasn’t like she was being distracted from anything in particular. She was up twelve hundred dollars, but the page was still blank. There was still nothing coming out of her, no matter when or where she tried to write. All she could think about was how desperately she needed an idea. How once, so long ago, she’d had to write ideas down because she couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with them. About all the files on her computer that started out so brilliantly and then fizzled into nothing. About the three hundred or so paragraphs she’d written and deleted in the past week alone.

A man walked by with a child. He was an older man, kicking a tiny little basketball, which the kid ran after with glee. It was almost like a dog, only the kid tried to bounce the ball for a while before his grandfather kicked it away again.

A little girl came up and almost climbed into the fountain, but her mother pulled her back at just the last second. The mother smiled at Autumn, in that way you smile at someone you hope won’t rob you or at the very least won’t judge you as a bad person for thinking that you will rob him or her. Then she quietly scolded the little girl, Amanda.

There was a guy with a dog, too. Big dog. Black Labrador. Probably named Shadow or something. They ran past, the guy dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt that did little more than catch sweat and show off an admittedly impressive torso. The dog ran at his feet, looking up at him, playful and happy to be moving, running circles around him. With four legs, the dog had no trouble keeping up, even when the guy sprinted. Maybe that would humble him. From the looks of things, something should.