Writer's Block Read online

Fifteen minutes later, her email dinged with a response from Pippa Potts, the agent. Who in the hell named their child Pippa if their last name was Potts? And if Potts was a married name, Pippa should’ve taken a hard pass on doing that to herself. She’d have to ask if they met, but right now she concentrated on what Pippa had to say. Pippa had contacted the owners, gotten them to accept her offer, and drawn up a bill of sale. In a word, Pippa was impressive.

  Buying a house on the internet wasn’t wise, but Wyatt suddenly couldn’t wait to close the deal. The image of writing on her front porch while she sipped a drink and waved to the neighbors appealed to her recalcitrant muse. After months of looking at a blank page, she figured her muse had packed and taken a slow boat to Tahiti.

  “Why the hell not?” She studied the pictures again and printed the documents Pippa had sent. Maybe Realtors in Louisiana had alarms on their email that ensured no customer got away, no matter the time. She filled out the offer page, signed it, and sent it back. She was losing her mind. Should it be concerning that they’d accepted an offer well below the asking price, with no negotiation and within minutes of the offer? Nah. It would be fine.

  She scanned and emailed it all back, glad she’d at least written her name and contact information a bunch of times. It counted as actual writing. The excitement gave her the energy to change her sheets, and she fell back into bed. She felt like she could sleep for days, but that wasn’t in any way true. She’d gotten really good at lying to herself about a lot, but not that. Still, two hours or so would be better than nothing.

  Chapter Two

  The weather app showed the temperature outside was eighty, sunny, and humid. That made total sense to Hayley Fox since her plane was taxiing to the terminal in the New Orleans airport. What didn’t compute was the next day would be in the forties. That was an epic swing for Mother Nature and might prove there really was such a thing as climate change no matter what the science deniers said.

  “Have you been to the city before?” The old lady sitting next to her finally asked a question. Up to now Hayley had listened to the woman talk about her life and family drama as if Hayley was taking copious notes for a biography of the woman’s life. “Be careful with your purse.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve lived here since August. I just went home to visit my parents for a couple of days.” She glanced at her email, hoping their talk was now at an end and they’d never see each other again. This woman was like a walking word salad.

  Hayley made it outside with her small bag and was oddly comforted to be back. As a native New Yorker, it’d taken some time to get used to the laid-back attitude most New Orleanians had about pretty much everything. Although her parents were now farmers, they’d lived in the city while Hayley was growing up. After their retirement a few years ago, they’d literally bought a farm, and she’d waved them good-bye, staying on in the city and taking an entry-level job in publishing, right out of college. Two years later, she left New York to move up the publishing ranks. It was like paying her dues in the minor leagues before she got her shot at the big show.

  She was now the senior editor and acquisitions manager at Fleur-de-Lis Publishers, working directly with the acting publisher. Once her new boss, Marlo Aiken, knew she could trust her not to burn the business to the ground if left unsupervised, she’d made her responsible for a number of their authors. The move, the job, and her growing list of contacts were all part of her grand plan. Two years in New Orleans would open the doors to big New York publishing houses and a management position. Once she got all that, she could go home and go back to being ignored by everyone she came across on the street. New Orleans, she found, was the capital of Niceville. Everyone said hello.

  “Are you back?” Marlo asked. Her boss was great at her job but shit on the phone. It wouldn’t matter if she was Attila the Hun, though—the owner, Cornelius Washington, was Marlo’s dad. Cornelius had founded Fleur-de-Lis for numerous reasons, the main one being a great city deserved a publishing house, one that would concentrate on the talent prevalent in the South.

  “I’m almost to my car,” Hayley said. “Did you get the notes I sent yesterday?” Whatever this call was about probably meant a change of plans. Now that she was home, all she could think about was GW Fins and their panko Parmesan crusted grouper. She’d made a reservation for one for tonight.

  “I did, but we have a problem with a few of our current projects.” Marlo stopped, and it sounded as if she was taking some deep breaths, but Hayley knew better. Marlo was a chain-smoking, coffee-drinking workaholic who loved five o’clock cocktails. Her boss’s problems in most cases revolved around stuff she had no desire to do, and not actual problems.

  “What projects?” Hayley crossed her fingers, hoping it wasn’t one of the resident pain-in-the-ass children. Writers could be temperamental divas when you started editing their work. Cutting a paragraph—God forbid, two—was tantamount to calling their mother a whore. Some of them didn’t take it well.

  “The anthology you pitched me, for one. We assigned it to Cheryl, but she might not be ready to be thrown into the deep end just yet.” Marlo took a few more deep breaths. “That, and there was a false fire alarm, and the NOFD wouldn’t let us back in the building for three days. It brought everything to a halt, and we need to make up some time. Can you run by and pick up the file? I can have Cheryl bring it to you if you’re tired.”

  So not what she wanted to do on a Saturday night no matter how pathetic her love life was. Sometimes you had to put your foot down and narrow people’s options if you wanted to get anything done. She was in no mood for sweet and sincere after the lady from the plane. Cheryl was a recent hire, and they hadn’t gelled. She mostly kept to herself, which wasn’t a problem, but Cheryl was a little…different. Hayley knew her well enough now, though, to know Cheryl’s little quirks and that she was actually a shy pushover. Which was like being a vegetarian shark. Cheryl’s other problem was her belief God would strike her down if she worked on certain projects. Sex was at the top of that list, so Hayley imagined editing a gay sex anthology had sent her into a tailspin. The word fucking in any manuscript gave Cheryl the vapors, as some old Southern ladies would say.

  “Can I connect with her Monday? I promise I’ll get us back on track since it was my idea, but I’m exhausted.” It wasn’t a lie per se, but she couldn’t handle Cheryl after all the explanations she’d had to give her mother over the entire weekend about life in New Orleans.

  “You can wait until the end of the week. I just called to make sure you got back okay.” There was more heavy breathing, and then Marlo hung up.

  “Translation, I’m tired of dealing with my father and everyone in the office, so get back here before I throw my ashtray at someone.” She laughed at Marlo’s impatience with people. The written word was something Marlo loved, but people, not so much.

  The late afternoon traffic into downtown was like in any city, and she was happy to exit into the Quarter after forty-five minutes of stop-and-go. There was still a logjam of cars, but once she was on the other side of Esplanade, it was much quieter. The Faubourg Marigny was the neighborhood next to the French Quarter, and Hayley had fallen in love with it right off. Tourists flocked to places like Bourbon Street, but the Marigny was a more laid-back and eclectic place full of locals.

  Her house had been a deal, according to her father. Fred Fox was a retired trader who’d made enough money to do what he really wanted, and that was growing organic malt and hops. On Wall Street her father had the Midas touch, and that luck had followed him into farming. Every self-described brewmaster had him on speed dial. When she’d taken the job with Fleur-de-Lis, her father had pushed her to buy a house. Investment in real estate always trumped paying rent.

  “I’m home,” she yelled, even though her two cats, Truman and Hugo, were still at the sitter’s. Living alone was good because she didn’t know if she was ready to share space with anyone, but she did miss
conversation. If there was an app that would schedule someone to come over and talk for about twenty minutes and then leave, she’d sign up. And if they replaced conversation with uncomplicated sex, like, every third time, that’d be good too. Right now, she was fine talking to her two rescues.

  The house was way too big—and hot, since she’d forgotten to leave the thermostat at some tolerable temperature when she left—yet it also gave her the sense of the history in this place that’d survived. It was a work in progress, and she was enjoying the restoration process in very small doses, but she was taking a break. At the moment her electricity, water, and air-conditioning worked. “I can live with peeling paint and a yellow tiled bathroom.”

  Her mother wasn’t so sure. Esther Fox was a true-crime buff who probably knew more ways to kill someone than six serial killers combined. Hayley found this humorous, but she did worry for her father at times, especially now that her parents were together constantly with the quiet you could only achieve by being surrounded in malt and hops for acres. Their battle of the moment was window coverings, or Hayley’s lack of window coverings. According to her mother, she might as well put a sign on the front door that said Come in and kill me.

  She brought her bag upstairs and glanced out the naked window. The house next door had been vacant for years, according to the other neighbors, and she hoped it stayed that way. The last thing she needed was the place to turn into a crack house for squatters, or to have someone like George St. Germaine move in. George and his wife Karen lived on the other side of her, and the guy was like a friendly stalker if there was such a thing.

  “With any luck he won’t notice I’m back.”

  Hayley got naked and headed for the shower. Her talkative seatmate on the crowded flight home had one of those gagging perfumes that smelled like gardenias, and it clung to her now like bad lint. She had one more day to relax, so she was putting everything off until Monday. If the weather delivered on the promise of rain and cold temps, she’d stay in and finish the book she was reading or cook.

  “My life is so full.”

  Chapter Three

  All we need is a cashier’s check and your signature, Ms. Whitlock.” Pippa Potts sounded way too perky for someone who’d called Wyatt at six in the morning, which meant it was five in Louisiana.

  After a brief hello from Wyatt, Pippa had taken off like her commission depended on speed and word count. Ah, word count. Wyatt missed thinking about those, but right now she concentrated and added an uh-huh where it seemed appropriate. She was back to staring at her bedroom ceiling, contemplating if she’d accidentally taken drugs the night before. But no, she remembered everything she’d done. There was no way she’d remember her social security number if she was high or drunk. Today was a new day and along with that came a new list of things to accomplish. 1) Stare at computer for hours. Check. 2) Carry on mental conversations with dead parents. Check. 3) Buy old house sight unseen because she was a total git. Double check.

  She’d always preferred the British git to idiot. It made her sound refined. When other people went off the deep end, they bought things like cocaine or a high-end escort, not real estate.

  “They just want to make sure you understand you’re buying the property and contents as is.” Pippa lost some of her exuberance with that comment. “The Fuller house has been empty for about a decade, and the original owner’s great-great-grandchildren are finally ready to let go of it. The new family home is in the Garden District.”

  “I understand that, and I’ll be driving down, so give me a few days. I’ll hand-deliver the check myself. Anything else I need to send you in the meantime?” She had to get off the phone and make coffee. There was no food in the house, but the day she ran out of coffee, the apocalypse would be upon them.

  “That would be great. I’ll let Gator Fuller know your timeline. That’s the current owner.”

  “Their legal name is Gator?”

  “Gosh, no. Sam Fuller IV is the head of Fuller and Sons Produce but goes by Gator. Sam’s great-grandfather Sam and his wife Lydia purchased the house in the early 1900s when they decided to live in town. The family relocated to Uptown in the eighties, and the last holdout in the house moved after Lydia died at a hundred and two.”

  “The house has a long history then. Are they sure they want to sell? I’d imagine that much history would be hard to let go of.”

  “Gator and the siblings agree it’s time, so this should be easy peasy.”

  “Thank you,” she said, not giving Pippa the opportunity to add anything else. After using the term easy peasy, what more could you add?

  “See you in a few days then, Ms. Whitlock.” Pippa paused and giggled for some reason. “You aren’t the Wyatt Whitlock, are you?”

  “The writer, you mean? No, there’s about twenty of us in the city. We have a support group to help us deal with that question. See you soon.” It wasn’t a total lie. She hadn’t written anything in months. The English language had deserted her so completely that she was shocked she was still able to speak clearly enough to have people understand her.

  “Okay then, safe travels.”

  She hung up and scrubbed her face with her hands. There was no reason to spend another day in this house, wondering what the fuck had happened. The only dilemma now was that she didn’t own a car.

  “Your father owns a truck. Take that, and remember you still have a life. The old boom-boom happened to us, not you.” Her mother’s helpful reminders and humor made her sure that if this was insanity, she’d at least laugh her way through it.

  The cabbie she waved down talked her ear off all the way to Brooklyn, and she figured it had to do with the boredom of the job. Either that or her face and voice were the human equivalent of truth serum. Either way she now knew the best delis in the city and where not to buy bagels. The other wisdom she was blessed with was if you had children, not to have boys. They were all the spawn of Satan, especially if they were teenagers.

  “Thanks, and no need to wait.” She pushed some cash through the divider and walked off before the guy gave her any other helpful hints.

  Her parents’ house had been leveled in the gas line explosion that had damaged another ten homes on the block, so there was no going back there, but their two vehicles had survived. She’d placed them into storage until she decided what to do with them. Of course, if she had to decide right now, they’d stay here gathering dust until she died because she’d never sell them.

  She raised the door on the unit. Her mom’s Bug had a layer of soot on it, but her dad’s truck was just how he’d left it. The old thing cranked right up, and she took a moment to cry for the four hundred sixteen thousandth time since their deaths. Her dad’s 1975 Ford F-100 truck was a collectible, but he’d used it for work every day just like his father had done before him. All his tools were in the back, and she left them there as she drove back into the city.

  There was packing to do and bad news to break, and she didn’t have all day. She made the call to her agent Blanche Peron and held her breath to remind herself to stay calm. Blanche had gotten her job because of her drive and talent for the industry, but also for the name Blanche. It reminded Wyatt of The Golden Girls and A Streetcar Named Desire. Flawed but beautifully written characters were a weakness of hers. She also couldn’t help singing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” whenever she said her last name.

  “Hey, I’m down the street from your house,” Blanche said. “I picked up all your favorite snacks to power you through those late-night writing sessions. If you’re finally calling me, it must mean you have pages.”

  “That’s not the reason for the call.” She zipped her duffel and carried it downstairs.

  “You’re such a kidder. Just wait a few minutes and you can surprise me.” Blanche was good at her job because she possessed enough relentlessness for eighteen normal people. She was a human equivalent of a sledgehammer, and she a
lways aimed for the face.

  Wyatt was about to say something when she heard the doorbell and hung up to answer it. It was Blanche. If there was a way to schedule a root canal instead of having this conversation, she’d do it. There were times she was convinced Blanche actually worked for the publisher. Her mother had never liked Blanche and hadn’t fallen for the cute name. One more bit of advice she should’ve listened to, but luckily for her, her mother had eternity to remind her of all those mistakes.

  “I’m leaving for a while, so there aren’t any pages. What I really need is for you to get me out of my remaining obligations.” She grabbed the leather messenger bag her mom had given her and packed her laptop and sleeve of pens. Her parents had said they were the tools of a writer, and to do a job well you needed the right tools. They hadn’t done much good lately, but she could pretend.

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  Blanche had that high-pitched tone going, like a warning signal that made dogs bark for a five-mile radius. Instead of a fire, though, that tone marked the unleashing of the mood Wyatt liked to call I’m going to lose my shit.

  “You said you needed space, Wyatt, and I gave you plenty of it. Virgil’s expecting a manuscript next month. He’s been screaming for pages, and I’ve put him off.”

  “I don’t have any pages, and I’m not going to have any.” She scribbled a note for her cleaning lady and tried her best to keep the table between them.

  “What the hell have you been doing, Wyatt?” Blanche had her hands on her hips, and Wyatt was sure she did that to keep from hitting her. “I knew I should’ve come sooner.”

  “I’ve been grieving, Blanche. Remember my parents?” She shut the bag and shouldered it. “They’re going to want their advance back, and I need you to take care of that as well.” She put her hand up. “Actually, I’ll send it back myself.”

  “That’d be the worst mistake you can make. Virgil”—Virgil Billingsley, the editor in chief of the imprint that published her—“will blackball you,” Blanche said. “I know the last book wasn’t stellar, but it was a one-time thing. You’re still at the top, so giving up is career suicide.”