As I watched him, he cracked open an eye to look at me. “You’re late.”
I checked my phone. “By ten minutes!”
“Ten minutes is still late,” he replied, and sat up straight. I joined him on the bench and took another sip of coffee. The grains of sugar crunched between my teeth. He eyed the cup. “I miss coffee.”
“Connoisseur or lifeblood?”
“I liked the notes in some very limited roasts that I procured from—”
“Connoisseur, right. You’d hate this stuff, then. Definitely motor oil and sugar.”
He wrinkled his noise. “That sounds disgusting.”
“I drink the battery acid juice so I can go zoom-zoom,” I replied. “Okay so—why are we here? How is this going to help me? I’m wasting time. If I’m not writing, I should be helping my family with the funeral arrangements—”
“This isn’t a waste of time. Put your zoom-zoom juice down, take a deep breath, and trust me, yeah?”
I eyed him. “I’m keeping my zoom-zoom juice.”
He let out a laugh, said, “Fine, fine,” and motioned out toward the center of town. The man sitting on the opposite bench reading the paper. The mothers rolling their strollers to brunch. The kids playing hooky from school. The mayor taking a leak on a fire hydrant. (Hell yeah, stick it to the man, Mayor Fetch!) “This is a trick I learned—just sit and watch people. Set their scene. Imagine who’d they’d be.”
“Really?” I deadpanned. “This is stupid.” I began to get up, when he cleared his throat. I sat back down with a huff. “Do I have to?”
He raised a single thick eyebrow. I hated it. It was so—soperfect.
“Fine!” I threw my free hand into the air. “Show me the way, O great Jedi master.”
“Learn you shall, young Padawan.” Ben leaned toward me and nudged his chin toward a couple walking their Pomeranian. “They met on Tinder last week. One-night stand. But then they matched again the next night—and thenextnight—”
“Tinder does suck around here,” I agreed. “Not a lot of choices.”
“And on the fourth night, he called her up. Asked her on a date. They’ve been inseparable since.”
“And the dog?”
“A stray—kept following them around everywhere. So, they decided to adopt it. Together.”
I looked at him, baffled. “Wow, you’re sowholesome.”
“I know, isn’t it charming?”
“It’s annoying,” I replied. “It’s like you walked out of a Hallmark movie.”
He pursed his lips into a thin line. “Fine,” he replied, and motioned between the two of us, “then set this scene.”
“You mean between you and me.”
“Perfect dynamic. A refined editor and his chaotic gremlin of an author.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Call this practice—a warm-up. What kind of scene would we be?”
“The kind that doesn’t happen.”
“And yet here we are.” He cocked his head. “You write for Ann Nichols, for god’s sake. Your imagination has been praised as ‘illuminating’ and ‘masterful’—and I’m confident that it still is. So please”—he shifted on the bench to angle toward me—“give me a scene.”
“Well... we’re two people. On a bench.”