The Honey - Don't List

Maybe it’s the pessimist in me, but almost from the getgo I’m worried that the event is doomed. I wonder if, in three hours when we’re all done, I’ll find that it was just nerves making me feel this way or whether the tension seems as thick as the San Francisco fog to anyone else. Last night seems Smurfs’ Village–level utopia compared to this.

Although Rusty walks in right behind her, they head in opposite directions: Rusty to the snack-laden table on one side, and Melissa to a cooler of water on the other. While Rusty—oblivious to or intentionally avoiding his wife’s worsening mood—makes small talk with one of the bookstore staff, the event coordinator for the bookstore, Amy, goes over the schedule for the night to no one in particular: fifteen-minute talk, book signing, VIP photos and meet-and-greet to follow. Melissa aggressively opens a bottle of water, nods with tight smiles, and paces the room. She pointedly does not look at her husband.

Carey comes in loaded down with Melissa’s purse, a box of T-shirts for giveaway, Melissa’s lunch bag with her fresh squeezed juice, and about five other bags. Her skirt hem hits several inches above her knees and her tank top reveals smooth, tanned shoulders that make me think of biting. But her expression reads: I’m about to drop something. I rush over to help but once the load is in my arms, I give her a helpless apologetic look.

“Where should I put this?”

Carey laughs. “Do I get to have an assistant now?”

My first instinct is to tell her I have no problem with that at all, and then my brain snags on the echo of it, how desperate it would sound, and I’m quiet long enough that I just leave her comment without reply.

With a wink, she leads me to a table, standing close as she unloads things from my arms. She put her hair up into some kind of twist, but a few strands have come loose and fall prettily along her neck.

“I’ll take this.” She unhooks Melissa’s lunch bag from my finger.

Our eyes catch for a few loaded seconds. I’m thinking about how the first few times I hear a new song—even one from a band I love—I don’t like it. I resist the idea that something new could ever be as good as something old, but then slowly the new song works its way into my brain and I forget what it ever felt like to dislike it. Right now I’m looking at Carey’s face, thinking it’s like a song I’ve heard a few times now, and every time I hear it again I like it more.

“What?” Her eyes widen in horror and she reaches up to wipe her mouth. “Do I have crumbs on my face?”

“No, I just—” I pause, putting myself together. I’m developing a crush and I’m not sure what to do about it. “Let me know how I can be helpful tonight.”

Gratitude washes over her expression. “Oh. I will.” She glances across the room. “We need to get her to relax. She looks like a bomb right now.”

I follow her eyes across the room and we both take a deep, steadying breath. This is what we’re here for, right? Joe may be impossible to keep in the dark because he’s going to be with them unguarded on the bus for days on end, but here we have some control.

But I don’t know how to fix the tense mood in the room. Let me wrestle with the constantly changing world of city and municipal building codes. Let me navigate the complexities of engineering licensure or give me an impossible element to make possible in a final design. But handling emotions like this? Between two people I hardly know and who, quite frankly, probably shouldn’t be married anymore, let alone telling other people how to do it? I feel as useful as a leaf blower in a kitchen.

Thankfully, though, Carey knows how to manage Melissa’s proximity to combustion. She carefully makes her way over to the other side of the room. Beside Melissa, Carey looks so tall, but she bends, making herself smaller, speaking in a low, soothing voice.

Jesus, how many times has she had to play this role? For a beat, I’m mad about it—mad that Carey is only in her midtwenties and already having to be an assistant, usher, peacekeeper, travel agent, and who knows what else.

I feel intensely useless. Having no training in this sort of mediation, I am simply a body standing in the middle of a room. Trying to think like Carey, I walk over to Amy and make a show of looking at the schedule. She’s more than happy to explain everything again, and I’m able to keep an eye on Melissa and Carey. They’re not close enough for me to catch everything they’re saying, so I get only a bit of Carey’s murmured, “… okay? … great crowd out there.” And then Melissa’s soft, “… but the reviews. How am I supposed to … blood, sweat, and tears and—”