From the passenger's seat, she said, "Hey, what happened to your notebook?"
We were driving from our current hotel to the next stop on the tour. The drive would take an hour each way, and I was feeling relaxed and easy behind the wheel.
I replied, "What notebook?"
"Oh come on," she said. "You know which one. It's that black notebook you used to carry with you sometimes. Did you lose it?"
I hadn't.The truth was, I still had it with me. And I still made notes in it. I just didn't see the upside of pulling it out where Becka could see.
I said, "It's around somewhere. Why do you ask?"
"Because we were just talking about your next novel." She paused. "Do you know, when I first started, I was convinced that you had writer's block or something?"
"Oh yeah? Why's that?"
"Because you always had that notebook, and you'd be scribbling and stabbing at the pages, like the notebook had wronged you somehow."
I shrugged. "Maybe the notebook had it coming." I'd meant it as a joke, but there was more truth to the statement than she knew.
Undaunted, she continued. "I used to think you were making notes about your plot or outline or whatever. But now I think it's something totally different."
It was.But itwasn'tsomething I wanted to discuss. Still, I kept my tone neutral. "Oh yeah? Why?"
"Because whenever we're pondering your next book, and you want to make a note of something, you pull out your phone, not the notebook. So I'm thinking that probably the notebook's for something else."
She was right.
I asked, "Like what?"
"You tellme," she said with a laugh. "So…whatwereyou scribbling in there? Notes about the tour?"
I gave it some thought before saying, "Yeah. To-do lists mostly."
"Oh." She hesitated. "Probably I should've guessed that, huh?"
She practically had.
I didn't get it.For all Becka knew, I hadn't touched the notebook in weeks.
This wasn't the case, but Ihadbeen careful. And now I was curious. "What made you think of it?"
"The notebook?" she said. "I just realized that I hadn't seen it in a while, which was odd, because it seemed so important at first."
It still was.As I drove along the rural highway, I studied Becka from the corner of my eye. Even now, her wheels were still turning.
I'd met a lot of girls over the years. Some were book smart. Some were street smart. But none of them were like Becka, who had plenty of both – and made a habit of saying exactly what she thought.
And yet, when I'd first met her, I'd had her pegged as a different kind of person, someone who went through life with blinders on – someone with a lot of heart, but not a lot going on upstairs.
Almost from the start, she'd proved me wrong.
I liked it.
But it was still a problem.
Silently I compared the Becka I'd seen at her condo to the Becka sitting in my passenger's seat. They were the same girl.And they weren't.
That earlier version had been wearing blinders so big it was a wonder she saw anything at all.