Something Blue by Ann Hood

Author:Ann Hood [Hood, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6684-5
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-18T16:26:00+00:00

One wheelbarrow

NATHANIEL JONES IS FAMOUS. He is a genius, the boy wonder of children’s book publishing. He rules from a townhouse on Beacon Hill in Boston. At thirty-three years old, Nathaniel Jones has won every award, traveled to every continent, dated every beautiful woman. In pictures, he looks a little like Don Johnson on Miami Vice—unshaven, sexy smile, casual pale pink linen suit. His face is in magazines and subway posters selling Scotch and T-shirts.

Nathaniel Jones is all of these things, and he has summoned Lucy to Boston for a meeting. On the telephone, he sounded like a Hollywood producer. He called her babe. He said he’d send a car to meet her at Logan Airport. In the background, Lucy heard phones ringing and a song playing, over and over, about the wonderful world of children. The song reminded Lucy of the ride at Disney World where you float through canals and dancing dolls sing, in wooden shoes, kimonos, grass skirts, the same song, nonstop.

That is the song, “It’s a Small World,” that plays in Lucy’s mind all the way to La Guardia to catch her flight to Boston. When she got out of bed this morning, Jasper had clung to her. “Don’t run off with this guy,” he said, pretending to joke.

Now, at the ticket counter, she pushes away images of doing that very thing. Perhaps this is fate, she thinks. Nathaniel Jones sees the drawings for My Dolly and falls in love with the artist. “I must have this woman!” he decides. He calls, pretending to have a new project for her. He talks her into coming to Boston, where he will sweep her off her feet.

Lucy starts to laugh at her own imagination. Nathaniel Jones needs an illustrator, she tells herself. Not a girlfriend. She fights back thoughts of Jasper’s face as he watched her getting dressed this morning. She tries to keep her chest from aching so much. She worries, standing there in her black miniskirt and tuxedo jacket, that she is staying with Jasper because the alternative—being alone—is even worse.

She has thought of herself as independent, as self-assured, as brave. Didn’t she move to New York City all alone, knowing no one here? Hasn’t she hustled for these illustrating jobs? Once, she went mountain climbing. She has scuba dived. Can she really be afraid of life without a man? The thought frightens her. It is what she suspects is true of Katherine, who bravely left Andy and moved to Manhattan but desperately hands out her telephone number to any man who seems even remotely normal. Lucy still finds messages on her answering machine for Katherine: “Hi, I was sitting next to you on the A train. You said I should call.” “My name is Don. I bumped into you on Broadway. Literally. Remember? You dropped all those Magic Markers?” “Katherine, this is Vance from the bank machine. The one at Chem Bank? On University?” Lucy is suddenly worried that she is no farther along than Katherine.

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