He obviously hasn’t gotten very far in his googling. This is the photo most often used of her, the first to come up in any search. But looking at it now, all Greta can see is how nervous she was underneath, how much she was sweating beneath the heat of those lights, the slight irritation around the corners of her mouth, a result of the photographer’s repeated pleas for her to look at him without looking at him, whatever that was supposed to mean.
“You’re kind of a big deal too,” she says as she settles back onto the stool beside him.
Ben shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”
“Of course it is. You’re a bestselling author. And you get to do what you love.”
“I don’t love it,” he says with a shrug. “Not the way you do.”
She raises her eyebrows. “How do you know? You just met me.”
“I watched you play,” he admits, nodding at his phone, which is now resting on the table between them. Even with a beard, he can’t hide his blush.
“You did?”
“Yeah, just for a few seconds. But you’re really good.”
She begins to wave this away as she so often does, like it’s no big deal, like it hardly even matters. But then she changes her mind and nods. “Thank you.”
The bartender returns, and they order another round, and some appetizers too. It’s nearly five now, and the bar is crowded all around them. It’s almost alarmingly easy to forget they’re on a ship off the coast of Alaska, and the fact of it seems stranger and stranger to Greta every time she remembers.
“So how did you get started?” Ben asks, leaning an elbow on the bar. “Is this what you always wanted to do? Do you play any other instruments?”
“Ben,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to interview me.”
“What if I want to interview you?” He’s smiling a little, his eyes trained on hers.
She takes a long sip of her drink. “You don’t love it? Really?”
“What?”
“Writing.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not one of those people who’s been making up stories since they were a kid. I kind of backed into it.”
“By being a professor?”
“By being a huge nerd.”
She laughs. “Those aren’t the same thing?”
“Very funny,” he says, narrowing his eyes at her.
“But you’ll write more?”
He shrugs. “I’m under contract for another one, but I’m having a hard time getting started.”
“What’s it about?”
“Herman Melville.”
“Right,” she says. “Whales.”
“Among other things.”
“So what’s the issue? He’s just not Jack London?”
She expects him to laugh again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks somber. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I got my first copy of Call of the Wild at an estate sale when I was ten. My parents were buying a rocking chair, and when the guy found me reading it in a corner, he told me to keep it. I must’ve read that thing a hundred times. I loved it so much I wrote my college essay on Jack London, how I wish I had his spirit of adventure, how I’d never been more than fifty miles from my family’s farm and was ready to make my own way in the world. Turned out to be my ticket out of there.” He runs a hand over his beard, his eyes on the window behind them, where a layer of fog sits lightly atop the water. “When people talk about the way books can shape you, it always makes me laugh, because yeah, of course they do. But with me, it isn’t a metaphor. My life would quite literally be completely different if I hadn’t found my way to that book. Or, I guess, if that book hadn’t found its way to me.”
Greta smiles. “Nothing like your first love.”
“Well, it turned out to be a lot more durable than my actual first love,” he says morosely, then forces a laugh. “Sorry, it’s still kind of new. Being separated. Though I guess the two things are wrapped up together, in a way. I started working on Wild Song just after we got married, and it came out about six months ago, right as everything was falling apart.” He stares into his glass. “Anyway, now that story is over, and it’s time to start another one. I guess I’m just having a hard time turning the page.”
Greta isn’t sure if they’re talking about his books or his marriage now. “It can be tough to move on,” she says. “You pour so much of yourself into that first one, and then you’re supposed to do it all over again, just like that. There’s a reason they say seconds are cursed.”