Another dingy motel room tonight, after a few days of familiar surroundings at Benjamin’s apartment in Portland. I find myself drinking more often than usual on this tour, because there’s so many conceivable motivations for doing so: celebrating a successful book event, drowning out the memory of a poor one, just passing the time. Sampling local vintages.
I’m pleased to report we are now 19 events down out of 36, which puts us more than halfway through. There are still six weeks left to go, though, and I can’t quite believe there’s that much time left. I thought I would write something this evening, maybe wrap up the first draft of one of those sea stories, but it’s just not going to happen. Retreating into someone else’s prefab world via a book seems easier. We are due for a train ride of titanic proportions starting tomorrow afternoon, though, so maybe that will be a time for being trapped with my own characters and duking it out until one of us emerges bloody and victorious.
Two weeks until I see her.