No, he was going to find a way to write that wasn’t for some paper that was in the litter box the next day. Some way to get it down fully and with some insight. Some understanding of what was going on under the surface of things. Maybe a book like The Grapes of Wrath, or Catch-22 or All the King’s Men. Or a movie like Citizen Kane or From Here to Eternity. Wouldn’t it be great to write something beautiful someday?

All of which he spouted off to Teresa Dessinger as he walked her to her car around midnight.

She stood next to her new Comet convertible, a red jewel twinkling in the parking lot light.

“It would be great,” she said. “But not everybody has the talent to write like that.”

“I’m going to try.”

She put her key in the door and the lock snapped up. “Come to work for me while you write your book. I can use you on the ‘Beach Cities’ editions. You can have Laguna Beach. It would be all yours. And I can pay you better than Overholt by quite a bit.”

“I disagree with your editorial policy.”

“Fine. You disagree with Overholt’s, too. Just write me some news and some features. I’m a liberal editor. Laguna is an interesting town. More going on than in Tustin.”

Andy felt as if someone had thrown open a window. Hell, knocked out a whole wall. More money. More liberty. Better beat. See Teresa Dessinger every day instead of J. J. Overholt?

“Give me a few days to think about it,” he said.

“The offer’s good until the middle of December. My writer is going to be leaving.”

She dug a business card from her purse, scribbled something on the back, and handed it to him.

“By the way, Andy, I know what kind of jobs you and Phil were talking about when I walked up. You guys aren’t as cool as you think.”

“I never wanted to be cool,” he said, wondering exactly what he meant. Trying to show her how determined he was? How cool?

MEREDITH WAS not waiting for him in his bed, as he expected. It was one of her nights to stay at his place but the only trace of her he found in his darkened apartment was a note on the neatly made bed:

Dear Andy,

I decided to go home. Fourth or fifth night you’ve not come home by midnight, just in the last month. I know you need to do your job and experience life to write about, so I’m not upset with you at all. Just feel a little wrong here with no you, and no real commitment. I know how much you hate that word. Maybe we’re just wrong for each other. Maybe we just want different things. I told you once not long ago that I had picked out four names for our four beautiful children. I really didn’t mean it to be funny or to scare you. But you can’t talk to me about maybe settling down, even though you stopped with college. You’re out in the world doing what you want and I’m still learning how to teach other people’s children to read and write. I don’t want to bother or upset you but I think my heart is breaking.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

M.

Andy stripped down and got into the bed. Looked up at the ceiling. Felt his heart racing inside his ribs.

Meredith Thornton had left him.

He wasn’t surprised but it still felt strange. He knew it was coming but not when or how. Thought it might involve that Alan teacher she worked with.

He went out to the kitchen and sat by the phone. Picked up the earpiece, then put it back in its cradle. Looked at the manuscript piling up by the typewriter.

He imagined Meredith in her apartment. Figured she’d be awake. Probably awake all night for this one. It puzzled him how much he could have loved her just three years ago. And how much less he loved her now. Back then she was all he could think about. All he wanted. She was everything good and desirable.

Now she felt heavy to him. Stifling, unhappy, impatient. It hurt him to see the disappointment he caused. It angered him, too, because he thought he was doing what was right. A writer lives. A writer experiences. A writer doesn’t settle down with his high school sweetheart in the town they grew up in, raise four children named in advance, and end up with a damn thing worth writing about. James, Joseph, Jennifer, and Jacqueline? How could he support them on a reporter’s wages? A writer rises above these things. A writer goes to New York. Or the jungle, like Clay.

He picked up the phone, heard the dial tone, put it back down.

Still, it worried him. How his love had just gotten used up. Was love finite? Were the poets and songwriters in some kind of conspiracy to make love sound longer-lasting than it was? Or was there something missing inside him, some part that wasn’t there? Look at his mom and dad. Both sets of grandparents. Almost all the aunts and uncles. Nick and Katy. The Thorntons. J. J. and Mae Overholt. Those ancient Dessingers.

He slid the manuscript over in front of him. Grabbed it and riffled the pages with his thumb. Three hundred and four pages. He’d stopped right in the middle of the scene where Tracy from California boards the train from Orly to Bordeaux. She steps over a pool of red wine from an old lady’s dropped bottle. Tracy ’s boyfriend, Robert, waits for her in a little village, uncertain whether he really wants her to come or not. Because of Anne-Marie. And because he needs freedom to write. What neither knows is that in less than three hours the train will derail and Tracy will be decapitated.

Andy had spent a summer in Europe after his freshman year of college and had lived every moment of this story. Kind of. He’d written Meredith a letter every day. Sometimes two. When she’d volunteered to quit her good summer job and come join him, he encouraged her to stay in Tustin.

Last month, after she’d told him the four children’s names, he’d asked her to read the manuscript. She didn’t really like it. Said she liked the style. And the California part, where they were happy. But mostly it just made her quiet.

Andy read the spilled wine section. Borrowed it from A Tale of Two Cities. He found Dickens sentimental but the wine was great symbolism. He pushed the manuscript away.

Fall Wine, by Andrew James Becker.

He picked up the phone and dialed Teresa Dessinger’s home phone off the back of the card she’d given him.

“I’ll take the job,” he said.

“Give me two weeks to get the reporter out.”

“You said he was quitting.”

“I said he was leaving. Good night, Andy. And good decision.”

He lay in bed for a little while. Just before sleep he felt a very small smile trying to get onto his lips. Too tired to move. Thought about what had happened. Felt free. Unweighted. Ready to live. Smithy of his soul and all that.

He slept better than he’d slept for weeks.

THE NEXT MORNING Andy got to the sheriff’s station an hour later than usual. Slight hangover. No promising stories. He stayed late to jawbone with the other reporters, fill them in on all the important press club business of the night before.

Back in Tustin, he found J. J. Overholt in his office. Roger Stoltz was with him so Andy went to his desk and thought about last night.

Stoltz came by a few minutes later on his way out. He was a man who never seemed to age. Same suntanned face and crisp mustache and cheerful brown eyes Andy remembered from nearly ten years ago. Same thick black hair, unruly like a boy’s. Andy instinctively disliked him.

Stoltz asked about Clay. When Andy said he hadn’t heard from his brother in months, Stoltz said he was doing an important and dangerous thing over in Vietnam.

“I’ll be glad when he’s back,” said Andy.

“Me, too. I’ll be glad when all our men are back.”

“You really think those Commies are a danger to us?” Andy asked.

“They want this country, Andy.”

Andy looked for zeal or imbalance in Stoltz’s eyes. Saw what looked like good cheer and conviction.