The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (ARC)

by Abbi Waxman

  “Shall I get the check?” asked Tom, his voice quiet.

  “Yes,” said Nina. She swallowed. “I should head home.”

  “Still time for a chapter before bed?” he smiled.

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  It turned out they’d both taken ride share to get to the movies, so they started walking south toward Larchmont.

  Tom took a deep breath. “So, I guess your busy schedule doesn’t allow for much dating?”

  Nina took a similarly deep breath. “Not really.” She paused. “And I’m pretty happy being single, honestly. I have plenty of …”

  “Friends?” finished Tom, and Nina nodded. “Me too. You never wanted anything more?”

  Nina didn’t reply for a moment, as they crossed Santa Monica Boulevard. “I’m not against it. I’m just not looking for it. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Tom replied, easily. He effected a Garbo-esque accent. “You want to be alone.”

  “You know, she never actually said that. She said she wanted to be left alone, totally different.” Nina shook her head. “I get it. I want to be left alone, too.” She looked at him quickly. “Not by everyone. Just by most people. I like a quiet life.”

  He snorted, “Have you thought about leaving LA? It’s not exactly a Trappist monastery.” A chorus of horns underscored his point.

  “I noticed that,” she replied. “But I grew up here; traffic is the rumble of the ocean to me.” They crossed Melrose. “What about you? Do you date a lot?”

  He shrugged. “On and off. I had a girlfriend for a while. We broke up a few months ago.”

  “Oh yeah?” Why did that make her frown, wondered Nina. Maybe because a few months didn’t seem very long.

  “Yeah. It ended badly, so I’ve been enjoying my own company for a while.” He sounded fine, but she wondered if he was still getting over it.

  “You’re not friends?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He was silent for a moment, navigating a busy cross street. “My brother says I’m a sucker for difficult women. He says I like a challenge.”

  “You disagree?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t think it’s as conscious as he thinks it is. I’m a fairly boring person, I think.”

  “Not to me. Not yet, at least.” Nina was glad she wasn’t looking at him, because she felt herself blushing yet again. Her cheeks were such traitors.

  “Well, thanks. Maybe ‘boring’ is the wrong word. I’m calm. I kind of take things as they come. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I guess,” said Nina, laughing. “I’m not like that, but I’ve heard people like you exist. Like unicorns.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re more common than that.” He stepped around a crowd of teenagers and found himself more closely at her side once they were reunited. Their sleeves brushed, and neither of them moved apart. “Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to people who have some kind of spark, you know? Sometimes that ends up being not such a good thing, but it’s true of my friends, too. Lisa, for example. We’ve been friends since high school, and she was always the brightest star in our group. Interesting. Different.”

  “She seems very nice.”

  He laughed. “Well, I don’t know if ‘nice’ is the right word, but she’s definitely her own person, and I like that.” They walked in silence for a while, and Tom was thinking about reaching out to take Nina’s hand when suddenly she said, “This is me,” and stopped.

  He looked up at the guesthouse. “So it is,” he said. “Do you know that cat?”

  Phil was perched on top of the gate, watching them.

  Nina nodded. “I do. He’s mine.”

  “What’s his name? He’s judging me.”

  “His name is Phil, and actually,” said Nina, “he’s judging me.” She looked up at Tom. “I’m really glad we ran into each other. I feel pretty good we didn’t send Harold out for potatoes.”

  “Me too,” said Tom, and stepped closer to her. She looked at him, then stepped closer still, tugging at his coat and pulling him into a kiss. After a few moments they stepped apart, and Nina opened her mouth to invite him in.

  “Well, good night, Nina,” said Tom. “Maybe we can do this again soon?” He leaned down and kissed her again, then smiled against her lips and turned away to leave. “I’ll text you, OK?”

  “OK,” she replied, watching him go with a little crease between her eyebrows. Crap, she thought. What went wrong there?

  But when she went inside her phone buzzed.

  “I wanted to come in,” he texted, “very, very much. But you were planning to be Garbo tonight, and I decided not to push my luck. Besides, as another actress said, tomorrow is another day.”

  She smiled, and picked up a surprised Phil and hugged him.

  “Watch the whiskers, lady,” he said. “They don’t stay gorgeous on their own.”

  Eighteen

  In which Nina fulfills her first family obligation.

  Sunday was usually Nina’s extravaganza of planning. She would sort out clothes for the week, plan her meals, make sure she’d read whatever she needed to for work and for the book clubs, make a proper shopping list and shop for groceries … It was her reset and recommit day, and she always felt like she’d crushed it by the time the evening rolled around.

  However, on this day, things were already out of whack by 10 A.M., and it was all Peter Reynolds’s fault. For the first time in her life, Nina had a family obligation, and she wasn’t entirely sure she liked it.

  Peter had texted her at nine, an hour he said was the earliest acceptable time to contact someone on a Sunday.

  Nina had still been asleep. Somewhat acerbically, she suggested he recalibrate and set her earliest acceptable time to eleven.

  “No,” said her nephew, “if I make an exception for you, I’ll need to customize my entire system, and that won’t work at all.”

  “You have a system?”

  “Of course. There is a standard weekday wake-up time, and a different weekend time. There is a time in the evening after which one cannot call anyone except good friends or lovers, and a time after which one can only call if there is an emergency.”

  Nina’s phone was lying on her pillow, on speaker. “I assume there’s a booty call exception to that rule.”

  “You assume correctly. See? It’s a good system. If I have individual wake-up times attached to everyone I’ll mess it up. I like to keep it simple.”

  “Well, I guess we all better bend to your will then.” Nina might have been a little cranky, still, and she was definitely undercaffeinated.

  “It would be best. Besides, you had to wake up in order to answer your phone, so no harm, no foul.” Nina could tell from his tone of voice that her new nephew was a morning person, that despicable breed. She said nothing, but turned her head and pressed it into the pillow so her phone slid down and rested in her little ear divot.

  Peter was still chirping at her. “So, I was wondering if you wanted to come with me today to visit my mom? She lives in Culver City, and I need to get my dog’s claws trimmed.”

  Nina opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. Nope, she had to ask: “What do those two things have in common?”

  “My mom’s a vet. She taught me a lot, but not how to cut dog claws without messing it up and making them bleed. The last time I tried, the house looked like a Quentin Tarantino movie for days.”

  So, here she was, at ten on a Sunday morning, sitting in the front seat of Peter’s car, with the world’s smallest greyhound resting on her lap. Neither she nor the dog were entirely sure this was a good idea.

  “So,” said Peter. “Something about your face tells me you had a good night last night.”

  She turned and looked at him incredulously. “How on earth can you tell that?”

  “I have mad skills.” He grinned at her. “I learned that phrase from one of my students, and I’m afraid it’s become a habit.”

  “I’m not sure anyone even says that anymore.”
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  Peter shrugged. “And yet I still do. You might conclude I don’t care what other people think of my vernacular, and you would be correct.”

  Nina and the greyhound rolled their eyes at each other. Then Nina said, “Well, I did, as it happens. I met this guy and at first I didn’t like him and then I did and we kissed and then I messed up and then I got another chance and this time went better.”

  Peter laughed. “Well, that sounds good, I think. Can I ask a round of rapid fire questions?”

  “Sure.”

  The greyhound swallowed nervously.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tom.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I think he’s a carpenter, but it’s unconfirmed. He smells of sawdust, but for all I know he’s homeless and sleeps in a sawmill.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he sexy?”

  “Very.”

  “Is he funny?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, I’m sorry, did you sleep with him already?”

  Nina shook her head. “I would have, to be honest, but the first time I invited him in he said no, and last night he left before I had a chance to invite him again.”

  “Hmm.”

  Nina looked over at him. “Do you think that’s a problem?”

  “No.” Peter slowed the car to let someone cross. “Just interesting. My observation of young men in Los Angeles—admittedly, I have a different cross section than you do, probably—is that they’re all ‘sex first, talk later.’ Maybe he’s from out of town.”

  “Not really. Pasadena.”

  Peter made a left and started looking for a parking space. “Ah well. Pasadenans are weird.”

  “They are?”

  “Yeah. Caltech is there. And the Jet Propulsion Lab. And CalArts, where all the great animators study. It’s a strange intersection of pocket protectors and Miyazaki movies.” He found a space and parked deftly. “Let’s go.”

  Peter’s mom, Becky, lived in a part of Culver City that Nina hadn’t visited in a while, and she was surprised to find it had become totally gentrified, with the requisite chain coffee place named for a whale hunter, a juice place, a frozen gluten-free yogurt store, and an organic grocery store where the carrots were priced individually. Peter rang the doorbell, and apparently his mother released a pack of hellhounds, who dashed themselves against the wood with the fury of a thousand wolves who hadn’t eaten in some time. Once the door opened, they were revealed to be three small mutts with enthusiastic tails and hanging tongues, whose only goal appeared to be declaring their undying love for Peter’s dog, whom they’d clearly met before.

  Becky was the woman who’d waved a peace sign at Nina back in the lawyer’s office, and she greeted her now with a lazy smile. “Hey, you brought my newest sister,” she said, kissing her son. “Ignore the mess.”

  Most of the time this is something people say when their houses are immaculate, and the idea is you say, ‘Oh, you should see mine,’ or something similar. In this case it really was a mess, and Nina found it enormously relaxing. She counted two more dogs, older and less enthusiastic, who nonetheless waved their tails at her from their sleeping stations on the sofa and floor. Several cats were watching her cautiously, or sarcastically—it’s always hard to tell with cats—and the whole place was covered with a fine patina of fur. There was a vague smell of woodsmoke and the inside of dogs’ ears.

  Nina and Peter followed Becky through the living room into what turned out to be the kitchen, which was marginally cleaner, at least in places. An older man was sitting at the table, deseeding an acorn squash.

  “Hi there,” he said. “I’m John. I’m Peter’s stepdad.” He waved his sticky hands at her. “Welcome to chaos central.”

  Becky clicked on a kettle and turned to face Nina.

  “Do you want a cup of tea? Coffee?”

  Nina nodded. “Whatever you’re having.” She looked around. Peter had launched into a conversation with his stepdad, and the dog pack had headed outside in order to run in giant circles and wrestle over a stuffed margarita dog toy. Why a margarita? thought Nina. Are dogs such big cocktail drinkers?

  Becky’s phone rang, and she made a face but answered it. She listened, smiled, then said, “Sure, but only for tonight.” She listened some more. “I’m not promising anything. Bring him over.” She hung up and shook her head, putting tea bags in cups and eyeing the kettle, which was made of glass. Bubbles, but not boiling yet.

  “John, you having tea?” she asked, and then with the next breath, “Do you like animals, Nina?”

  “Yes, very much. I have a cat called Phil, and I’m always wondering if I could handle a dog.”

  Becky nodded. “Cats are good. I have three or four dotted around the place. Or is it five? I can’t remember.” She looked a question at Nina as she held a teaspoon of sugar over her own cup, and Nina nodded. Becky gave John and Peter their tea, and sat down at the table with a sigh. “I’m not an animal rescuer, but I take animals from animal rescuers when they need to park them in a safe place. It’s not really fostering, because they usually move them somewhere longer term pretty quickly, but it takes the pressure off. I love them all, even the difficult ones.”

  “I think you especially love the difficult ones,” said John, smiling. He looked at Nina, “What you see in front of you is one of the softest hearts on the planet.”

  Nina asked, “And was that call another animal coming?”

  “Yes. A dog.” Becky motioned out of the kitchen window, which was tall and wide, and Nina looked and saw a large but cluttered yard, with a wire-fenced area in one corner. “I can take rabbits and chickens and things like that, too, in the smaller yard. I can’t take ducks, though, sadly. No pond.”

  “Are there a lot of lost ducks in Los Angeles?” Nina asked, surprised.

  “Oh God, don’t get her started,” said Peter, but it was too late.

  Becky shrugged. “Lots of lost everything, unfortunately. Do you know several charities airlift small dogs from our shelter system to other parts of the country where they don’t have so many? Other areas have lots of large dogs, but no small ones, and we have too many. They get snapped up elsewhere, and put to sleep here. Lots of people are working for animals, in this town. It’s as big a subculture as any.”

  John finished with his seed work and went to wash his hands. “So,” he said, over his shoulder, “you two are sisters? That’s funny.” He turned off the faucet. “Bill Reynolds was a pain in the butt, but he sure made pretty kids.”

  Becky rolled her eyes at Nina. “Ignore him,” she said. “I found him on the street with one of the dogs and he followed me home.”

  Peter laughed. “Are we going to keep him?”

  John flicked water at them both. “It was the luckiest day of your life.”

  “That’s right,” said Becky. “Best dog I ever had.” She smiled at Nina. “It’s weird to think we share a father, right? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “And I’m fifty-nine. He was twenty when he fathered me and fifty when he fathered you. Men keep on trucking, right?” She drank her tea, then leaned forward to call the dogs. “Only claws today, Peter?”

  Her son nodded. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Becky shrugged. “I’m doing it for him, not you, you lazy swine.”

  All the dogs piled through the door, and Becky grabbed the little greyhound and held him in her lap. She pulled a pair of nail trimmers from her pocket and swiftly clipped his claws as they talked.

  “Do you remember your dad very well?” Nina looked at her sister’s face, focused on its work and filled with gentleness. She suddenly thought of Tom, whose eyes were equally as kind.

  “Sure,” said Becky. “Not so much as a child, but from when we were older. He divorced Alice, our mom, and married Rosie when my sister and I were still pretty young. But we still saw him a lot, because that’s what Dad wanted. He liked the concept of fatherhoo
d, you know, the job description. He just didn’t want to do the actual work.”

  “Was he abusive?”

  “No, not physically, never. But he was a bit of a narcissist.” Becky grew more thoughtful, putting the greyhound down and watching the pack streak outside again. “You might have liked him; of course, he was charming when he wanted to be, or when he’d had a few drinks. He loved to hold forth on his grand philosophies of life, you know, give romantic advice, for example, which is ironic for someone who couldn’t stay faithful for twenty minutes.”

  The doorbell rang, and Becky stood up and nearly got knocked down by the pack as she went to open the door.

  John and Peter looked at Nina, who was finding all the noise and activity a little overwhelming.

  John smiled. “Like I said, chaos central.”

  Becky came back with another woman who was carrying a black-and-white collie mix and a handful of papers. The new dog had his tail tucked and his eyes were grave.

  The woman was talking. “His shelter name was Boris, but they gave it to him, so who knows, and he’s negative for heartworm and neutered and about three.” She looked over, “Oh, hey, John.”

  “Where did they find him?” John asked. “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Someone found him running on the street and brought him in. No chip, of course.”

  Becky took the dog from her and plopped him on the kitchen counter, where she could look at him without being swarmed by the other dogs. He stood there patiently, his tail moving very slightly at the end, its plumy feathers trailing. She looked at his ears, his teeth, his eyes, then moved her hands over his body, feeling for injuries. He waited, and his tail moved a little more when eventually she stopped and cupped his head, tipping it up. “You,” she said—and his tail wagged completely now—“are a good boy, and we shall be friends.” She kissed him on his nose, and he licked her chin politely. She lifted him down and opened the back door. All the younger dogs bashed their way out to run around and get acquainted. The humans watched, jealous of the ease with which they handled it.