Category: Fiction

4 At seven twenty-nine, I shift the bottle of wine and bouquet I brought into one hand and ring Margaret’s doorbell with the other. Heavy footfalls answer on the far side, and then the hot-pink door swings open to reveal Jodi in a different but nearly identical flannel, T-shirt, and jeans. “You’re on time,” she announces.

3 I wake with a splitting headache. There’s no way I’m hungover—I might be a lightweight, but my five sips of liquor last night couldn’t have made quite this impression. No, this is a kind of headache I am all too familiar with: caffeine withdrawal. Before I collapsed into my freshly laundered hotel bedding last night,

2 I spend my first night at the Grande Lucia Resort eating Twizzlers and googling Hayden Anderson while convincing myself the world isn’t ending. First I read a dozen rave reviews of his book. Then I stumble across a Publishers Weekly article that estimates its first year’s US sales to be upwards of two million. Lastly, just to

1 THERE’S AN OLD saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth. The guy who first said it worked in the film business, but it holds true for journalism too. We’re not really supposed to take sides. We’re supposed to deal in facts. Facts add up