My wife does very strange things to make herself comfortable while she's writing.
The first time I watched Sophie write, she woke up crying after a nightmare in the middle of the night and all of a sudden stopped and only said, "I need to write it." Until sunrise, she wrote in a notebook without moving from the place she picked on the deck of my ship she stayed with me at. This was back when I was Captain James Hook. Now I'm Mr. James Hooke.
Upon moving into her grandmother's home in London she inherited, she and I renovated her grandfather's study to her liking. We bought a new chair, desk, desk lamp and a daybed in case she didn't want to be at her desk. She hung up her diplomas on the walls and a framed photograph of her ancestor J.M. Barrie "in case" she "needed extra inspiration."
When we finished renovating and stopped to admire our hard work, she stopped and only said, "I need to write now." So she put me on the couch in the living room, taught me how to operate the television and told me to watch the VH1 I Love The New Millennium series to "get with the times." I was to write down any questions I had and she would answer my questions later.
"And don't come in the office unless something's burning," she told me. "I…I have stuff I gotta do." With that, she walked away.
The afternoon went by. Once I had peeked into the study and she turned to me and screamed, forcing me to flee. Then the sun went down. Six hours passed and I was caught up on almost an entire decade with many questions about the time back then and how absolutely bizarre the world is today. I decided to break Sophie's little rule again and peek into her study once more.
She lay horizontally in only a white sleeveless shirt and jeans, on her swivel chair, staring blankly at the laptop screen that displayed what looked like her email. I had yet to discover exactly how that worked, and now was not the time to ask. I turned the chair and said to her when she was facing me, "How'd it go?"
"Good," she said. "I wrote two hundred pages and sent it to some guy I know." She shut her eyes tightly and yawned. She lost her balance in her peculiar position and fell to my feet before I could catch her. All she did was groan and mutter, "That was stupid."
I tsked at her and scooped her up in my arms. "Let's get you to bed."
Her eyelids fluttered closed and she linked her hands behind my neck. As I carried her out of the room, her eyes abruptly opened again and she said, "He emailed me back and said he'd read it right away. I wanna wait for the email."
"Well, my love," I said, kicking the door to the bedroom open. "You can't always get what you want."
She sighed as I put her on the bed. When she was on she simply uttered, "Shit."
I pulled the covers over her and went to the other end of the bed. I sat to take my shoes, shirt and hook-hand off and then joined her. She pushed herself towards me and I put my arms protectively around her, kissing the warm flesh on her neck. A quiet moan escaped her and she said, "Tomorrow morning we're going to the drugstore and you're gonna learn the magic of home pregnancy tests."
Just before I could react, she fell asleep in my arms.
