Trouble (43 page)

“And
baby
?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Mmm,” she said, now wiping a fingerprint smudge off the charm.

“Don't mess with my head, woman. Are we pregnant?”

“
You're
not. I am.”

He froze, his heart thundering to a full stop while those dizzying words sunk in.

Dara was pregnant.

They were going to have a baby.

She squeezed his arm, a vague frown marring her forehead. “Is that okay? You always said whenever I was ready, so—”

Jesus. He couldn't even think.

“Yeah, but I … I didn't know you were ready. How long have we been trying?”

“Remember that night in front of the fire about a month ago?”

He blinked. Grinned. Flushed. “Yeah, but I didn't know. I could've … I don't know … done something,” he finished lamely.

She laughed. “You
did
do something. Very well, as I recall.”

Staring into her shining brown eyes for one arrested second, absolute disbelief gave way to purest joy, choking him up. Not too many things made him cry, but this news vaulted straight to the top of the list.

“Oh, no.” Dara pulled him in so he could press his face to her neck while his shoulders heaved and he let the waterworks flow. “Don't cry, my baby,” she murmured, rocking him as she rubbed his head. “Don't cry.”

Laughing now, he swiped the back of his hand over his eyes and stared at his wife. His love. His life.

“I always thought I couldn't love you any harder,” he told her.

“Yeah?”

“I was wrong, angel.” He kissed her smiling mouth. “I've never been more wrong.”

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking
.

—Steven Spielberg

I love editing, too, Steven!

In my case, there's something about finding the perfect words to convey the exact feeling/mood/sensation/atmosphere my characters are feeling that really makes my creativity flow. For me, this is when the work gets buffed and polished. If I'm really lucky, the manuscript will shine after a good edit.

Unfortunately, there's a painful dark side to editing, which is that sometimes an author has to ruthlessly delete her favorite scenes in the service of the novel as a whole. In other words, no matter how much an author may love her precious passages/scenes/chapters, and regardless of how much time she's spent, tears she's shed or blood she's spilt to get those ideas out of her head and onto the paper, if they don't carry their weight and make the novel better, they've got to go. No exceptions.

As William Faulkner famously said:

“In writing, you must kill your darlings.”

Where am I going with this?

The first edition of
Trouble
had some scenes that were, upon reflection, in dire need of killing. They were either duplicative of other scenes or, in the case of some of the scenes concerning Jamal, took the readers too far afield from the heart of the novel, which is the love story between Mike and Dara. So, in order to make the story tighter and better, they had to go. I deleted them from the text of this new edition.

Buh-bye, deadweight. Don't let the door hit you on the butt on your way out.

Aaaaaand … no. Can't do it. Apparently I'm not as ruthless as I need to be.

I'll have to work on that.

Meanwhile, here are those poor deleted scenes. Like Pluto, once considered the equal of Saturn and Jupiter, but now demoted to dwarf planet status, these scenes are—to me, at least—gone, but not forgotten.

Cheers!

October 2014

In the following scenes, deleted from the first third of the book,
Dara and Jamal forge a friendship while Dara and Mike fret about
Jamal's troubled life and future.

In the days after meeting Johnson at the justice center, Jamal took Dara under his wing. He introduced her to the courthouse and showed her where the clerk's office was and how to file pleadings. He taught her the ins and outs of the firm's computer system and fixed the copy machine for her when it jammed, complaining the whole time about how annoying she was because she always needed him to save her butt. Soon they were bickering like siblings.

“You're taking pretty good care of me,” she said to him one day, when he stopped by her office to see if he could bring lunch for her when he came back from the courthouse.

“Don't get excited.” He scowled. “This doesn't mean I want you for my baby mama or anything.”

One day she poked her head in his office to discover him poring over his GED textbooks. “Whatcha doing?”

“Waiting for a bus,” he said without bothering to look up at her.

Dara laughed. She'd long since learned to ignore his perpetual crabbiness and had come to think of him as the firm mascot—Baldwin & Co.'s own personal Oscar the Grouch, a thousand times grumpier than the original.

But before she could think of a comeback, Mike, coffee mug in hand, strolled by on his way to the kitchen.

“You two planning a revolt?” he asked.

“Jamal was just telling me how much he loves to study,” Dara said.

“I'll tell you what,” Jamal said to Dara. “It's a good thing you're cute because you sure ain't funny.”

Dara smacked him on the arm.

“Ouch! Can I get workers' comp for this abuse?”

“Don't let him fool you, Dara,” Mike interjected. “I talk to his teacher every week, and she says he's the hardest-working student she's got. Never misses a class.”

“Looks like I need to sue you and the teacher for violating my privacy rights,” Jamal said, flipping a page in his book.

A laughing Mike continued on his way to the kitchen. “Where'd you get the idea you had any rights around here?”

Dara loved to watch the two of them together. It quickly dawned on her that Jamal and Mike had a complicated and intricate relationship, like square-dancing partners, and they both knew the steps. They'd both pretend they barely tolerated the other, when really they'd kill or be killed for each other.

The other thing she quickly discovered was that Jamal was extremely bright. One day, when she'd gone into the conference room to review her notes before she left for class, she'd seen Jamal's books spread all over the table—and an open notebook. Glancing furtively around to make sure no one saw her, she snatched up the notebook, which was opened to a draft essay written in Jamal's microscopic but neat hand, and saw it was about on the streets. After a moment she sank into a chair to get comfortable; she didn't care whether Jamal caught her nosing around in his things or not. The essay was bleak and honest and horrifying. And astonishingly good.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jamal cried when he returned and found her.

“I'm reading your story” she said, unrepentant. “It's amazing.”

Jamal's frown creased his forehead and pulled his lips into a tight line. He snatched the notebook from her. “Why don't you keep your hands off my stuff?”

“Your story is really wonderful. You should submit it to some magazines and—”

“You think the fellas round the way want me to go publishing stories about how they run the neighborhood?” He cocked his head as if considering the idea. “Yeah. Good thought. I'm sure they wouldn't care if I wrote about the shootings and whatnot.”

She hadn't thought of that. “Well … You could change the names and—”

“Drop it, Dara,” he barked.

The fear in his eyes, plainly visible beneath the bravado, shut her up. She tried not to stare at him, but it was hard. What was it like for this boy who wanted to make a new life for himself in the same old neighborhood with the same old problems?

“Do you see any of your old … friends at home?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah.” His jaw clenched as he shoved his books into his backpack.

“Do they try to get you involved with … things again?”

Jamal's entire body tightened, and the scornful look he shot her actually made her flinch. Actually made her feel guilty for the sheltered life she'd lived with her two parents in their nice brick house in the suburbs, where the worst thing that happened was a drunk driver occasionally knocking down a mailbox.

“No, Dara,” Jamal said. “They were cool once I gave 'em my freakin' letter of resignation.”

He strode out, leaving her standing there, gaping, in the middle of his office.

The next morning, they ran into each other near the reception area.

Dara, who'd fallen asleep last night wondering if she'd ruined their fledgling friendship, tried to act normally.

“Hey,” she said, nervously smoothing her skirt. “Sorry about yesterday.”

There was a pause.

Jamal ducked his head and shuffled his feet.

“I didn't mean to be a punk,” he mumbled.

Dara brightened and waved her hand. “Oh, you know. I can be a little nosy sometimes.”

“I noticed.”

“Well, anyway,” she said earnestly. “You should think about what I said about having your work published, Jamal.”

His head came up and his jaw dropped. “Jesus! Don't you ever give up?”