“Love?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Why are explicit details about our sex life in what was supposed to be a young adult novel about unicorns accepting a troubled rhinoceros.”

“Ah. Yes. That. The publisher thought a different direction maybe.”

“This seems a very different direction. Although opportunities for a ‘horny’ joke abound.”

“Very adult of you to refrain.”

“She says, yet abstaining from offering an explanation.”

“She is working on that.”

“He’s listening.”

“The book sucked. I threw together a romance at the last minute to meet a deadline. And they say write what you know so I…”

“Wrote about my ‘magnificent throbbing-‘“

“Okay! So I was in a mood and we’d just gotten back from vacation and we’d had a lot of fun and it very much on my mind and, well, it was all I could come up with.”

“Us? Cast as a mysterious traveler possibly a spy and a disenchanted heiress looking for love?”

“It’s selling very well.”

“I imagine it is, it’s pornography with a dust jacket.”

“You’re for real? Not happy for me? For us?”

“You’re better than this. You’re better than unicorns and rhinos too! You’re as good as Madeline Miller, as Amor Towles, as Richard Powers! You can write like that! Why do you write drivel when you could write that?!”

“So what if I am? So what if this is it? Isn’t this enough? Isn’t this good enough? It’s selling so who cares? The deadline’s met, the thing is published, so who cares?”

“I care that the love of my life is scribbling with crayons on a silly placemat when she could be changing the world!”

“I’m not good enough for you.”

“No. You’re just better than this. It’s not about me. It’s about you treating your enormous talent like you’re somehow unworthy of it.”