Rainbow Rowell - Landline

The dog was a mistake.

Jeff German had insisted they use his dog, an ancient beagle that couldn’t take direction and that nobody else was allowed to touch. Then it turned out that the kid who played Trev was allergic to dogs, and his mom followed him around with an epinephrine pen the whole day. He didn’t end up needing it, thank God, but his eyes got all runny and puffy.

“It’s fine,” Seth said. “It looks like he’s been crying.”

“Let’s get rid of the dog,” Georgie said. “Let’s make it something else.”

“You just don’t like dogs. What do you want? A cat?”

“I was thinking an orphan.”

“Fuck no, Georgie. The network will make us keep it.”

Normally, Georgie would text back and forth with Seth while they watched Jeff’d Up. But her phone was plugged in on the other side of the room, and she didn’t feel like getting up.

She’d get up if Neal called.

Which wasn’t likely, not this late—Neal hadn’t called her back all day.

Georgie had tried him half a dozen times since lunch, and every time, the call went to voice mail. She’d tried his mom’s house, too, but got a busy signal. (It’d been so long since Georgie had heard an actual busy signal, it kind of confused her.)

She set her empty plate on the coffee table and pulled the afghan up over her shoulders.

“Awwwww . . . ,” the TV audience said.

Georgie looked up at the ceiling. Neal had painted a spray of flowers there. They started at one corner, then wound down onto the wall. Blue with white starbursts—she forgot what they were called.

Neal had picked out this house. In Calabasas. He liked the porch and the yard. The wide-open kitchen. The fact that it had a real second floor and an attic. (Their house in Silver Lake was one and a half stories, with the bedroom up in the half. Neal hated the way you could hear the rain hitting the roof at night.)

Georgie was five months pregnant when they moved in, so she couldn’t help paint. (Fumes.) Also, she and Seth were working as showrunners by then, so her hours were crazy—and also, she felt like garbage.

She felt like garbage that whole pregnancy. She gained more weight with Noomi. She had more pain. Her fingers got so swollen and purple that she’d stare at them while she typed, imagining she was Violet Beauregarde—imagining that Seth was going to have to roll her out of the writers’ room when she went into labor.

(She didn’t end up going into labor. Georgie was really good at getting pregnant, but not so good at getting the babies out. She never had a real contraction with either of the girls.)

Georgie had been relieved when Neal started painting the walls without her. At first he chose colors from the bottom of the paint strip—there were a few Georgie-bright rooms. But mostly this house was white. Or pale yellow. Or watery blue.

He’d started painting murals a few years ago, when Noomi grew out of her baby sling and was okay playing with Alice on the floor. Georgie came home one night and found a willow tree curling out of her closet.

Neal painted landscapes and seascapes. Skyscapes. (Was there such a thing?) He painted murals all over the house, never finishing one before starting another. Georgie didn’t ask why.

Neal didn’t like to be asked things. It made his jaw tense. He’d give you a flippant answer. Like, whatever you were asking, it wasn’t any of your business.

Like nothing was anyone’s business.

Like nobody should ask questions that didn’t absolutely need to be answered.

Georgie had gotten really good over the years at not asking questions. Sometimes she didn’t even realize she wasn’t doing it.

This house really was much nicer than their old house. . . .

Neal was better at picking out paint and arranging furniture than Georgie had ever been. Plus their laundry actually got done now that he did it.

“It never ends,” he’d say.

“We could hire someone,” Georgie would offer.

“We don’t need to hire someone.”

Their neighbors had a nanny and a cleaning lady, a lawn guy, a pool guy, and a dog groomer who made house calls. Neal hated them. “You shouldn’t need a staff of people larger than your own family. We don’t live in a manor.”

“Like the Malfoys,” Alice said. “With house elves.”

Neal was reading her the Harry Potter books.

Neal mowed their lawn. In worn-out cargo pants and T-shirts that he’d had since high school. He always smelled like sunblock, because without it, he’d immediately burn. Even with the sunblock, the back of his neck was stained red.

Neal trimmed the trees. Neal kept tulip bulbs in the refrigerator and sketched garden plans on the back of Whole Foods receipts. He’d pore over seed catalogs in bed and make Georgie choose which plants she liked best.

“Purple eggplant or white eggplant?” he’d asked her last summer.

“How can you have a white eggplant? That’s like . . . purple green beans.”

“There are purple green beans. And yellow oranges.”

“Stop. You’re blowing my mind.”

“Oh, I’ll blow your mind. Girlie.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

He’d turned to her then, pen cap in mouth, and cocked his head. “Yeah. I think so.”

Georgie looked down at her old sweatshirt. At her threadbare yoga pants. “This is what does it for you?”

Neal smiled most of a smile, and the cap fell out of his mouth. “So far.”

Neal . . .

She’d call him tomorrow morning. She’d get through to him this time. This was just—this had just been a weird couple of days. Georgie was busy. And Neal was busy. And time zones weren’t on their side.

And he was pissed with her.

She’d make it better; she didn’t blame him. Everything would be better in the morning.

Morning glories, Georgie thought to herself just before she fell asleep.

One missed call.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Georgie’d woken up on the couch this morning a half hour after her alarm would have gone off if she’d remembered to set it. She ran upstairs to take a shower, then threw on a new pair of jeans and the Metallica T-shirt. (It still smelled more like Neal than like Georgie.)

When she went to grab her phone on the way out, she saw the text alert:

One missed call

An Emergency Contact

That’s what Neal was filed under in Georgie’s contacts. (Just in case.) (Of something.) There was a voice mail, too—she hit PLAY but Neal hadn’t left anything, just a half second of silence. He must have called while she was in the shower.

Georgie called right back, got Neal’s voice mail and started talking as soon she heard the beep. “Hi,” she said. “It’s me. I just missed your call, but I won’t miss it again—call me. Call me whenever. You won’t be interrupting anything.”

As soon as she hung up, she felt like an idiot. Because of course he’d be interrupting something. That’s why Georgie had stayed in L.A., because she couldn’t be interrupted.

Fuck.

Georgie wasn’t any good that morning.

Seth was pretending not to notice. He was also pretending not to notice her Metallica T-shirt.

“It feels weird to be writing a different show in here,” Scotty said, looking around the writers’ room. “It’s like we’re doing it in our parents’ bed.” He was sitting in his usual spot at the far end of the conference table, even though there were eight empty chairs closer to Seth and Georgie. “I wish the front-desk girl was here to make us coffee. Georgie, do you know how to make coffee?”

“Are you kidding me?”

Scotty rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean that in a sexist way. I just genuinely don’t know how to turn on the coffee machine. You’d think they’d make that part obvious.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” she said.

Seth looked up at Scotty over his laptop. “Why don’t you go get us coffee?” he said. “We won’t need any fart jokes for at least a half hour.”

“Fuck you,” Scotty said. He frowned at the framed Jeff’d Up poster on the wall. “It’s kind of like we’re doing it in Jeff German’s bed.”

“Nobody’s doing it,” Georgie said. “Go get us coffee.”

Scotty stood up. “I hate leaving you guys alone. You forget that I exist.”

“I haven’t forgotten you,” Seth said, picking up his cell phone. “I’m texting you our orders.”

As soon as Scotty was gone, Seth wheeled his chair into Georgie’s and leaned against her armrest. “I’ve seen you work the coffeemaker.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she said.

“Does that mean you won’t man the whiteboard either?”

“I’m not your secretary.”

“Yeah, but you don’t trust Scotty to take notes, and you can’t read my handwriting.”

Georgie stood up, reluctantly, found a dry-erase marker, and started updating their progress on the whiteboard. She actually really liked being the one who wrote things down. It was like being the decision-maker.

Back in college, Georgie would type while Seth swanned around The Spoon offices, thinking out loud. Then he’d be all righteous indignation when the magazine came back from the presses: