Foul Play on Words

by Becky Clark

  “In the shampoo?”

  “Well, on them.” She took everything from me and retrieved all new supplies from the cart. After she’d placed them in the bathroom, she asked, “I’m happy to make the bed while I’m here.”

  When I left that morning, I’d yanked the blankets up like I did at home. “No, that’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

  She made no attempt to leave.

  “You can go.”

  She stared at me.

  “Really. It’s fine.”

  More staring.

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  She let out a big breath. “Thank you!”

  She closed the door behind her, making a show of replacing the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside handle.

  It all seemed innocent enough, and her explanation was logical, but everything had been so confusing that I didn’t exactly know whether to believe her. I guessed I had no choice for the moment.

  I barely had time to call the Portland PD now. Those writers would just have to wait.

  “Can I speak with a detective?”

  “Regarding?”

  “A kidnapping.”

  “Your name?”

  I paused, debating if I should go real or fake. “Charlemagne Russo.”

  “One moment.”

  “This is Detective Kelly. You’re reporting a kidnapping?”

  I told him the story as best I could, leaving out everyone’s names.

  “You didn’t hear these alleged phone calls?”

  “No.”

  “This girl is twenty-five?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has disappeared before?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Do you have any evidence that a crime has been committed?”

  I was slow to answer, realizing where this conversation was going. “No.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Russell—”

  I didn’t correct his misunderstanding of my name, since this phone call suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. All the possible outcomes flooded my brain. I’d been thinking all along that the police would fix everything. A little piece of me kept thinking that Lance was wrong, that as soon as someone reported the situation, it would be out of my hands and into the hands of people who could fix it. Who could do something. Solve it.

  But Detective Kelly’s questions followed the exact path that Lance’s had.

  Viv and her history of tall tales and money problems loomed large.

  Nobody was worried about Hanna. She disappeared all the time. She was a twenty-five-year-old with a history of drug abuse. That’s what we should be worried about.

  And Viv? Her unpaid taxes and/or debt from Hanna’s stints in rehab would be mentally and financially crushing. The bank account for the Stumptown Writers’ Conference would be an attractive cash cow for anyone in her desperate position.

  Detective Kelly was still talking but I wasn’t listening. Embezzlement was a bigger crime than false reporting, but not as big as kidnapping. My brain whirred and tripped over itself chasing these facts, or whatever they were. Then it stopped as suddenly as if I’d flipped a switch.

  How dumb could I be? I wore my stupidity like a bright red clown nose, finally seeing myself as Lance and Detective Kelly did. Of course there was no kidnapping, no kidnapper, no ticking clock, nobody going to be killed if the ransom wasn’t paid on time.

  “—call me if you get any useful information,” Detective Kelly finished, then disconnected.

  I don’t know how long I sat with my phone in my hand, mind flipping and flopping about this kidnapping-that-wasn’t. As I sat, though, I felt anger churning the bile in my stomach. My jaw ached from clenching. My knuckles were white around the phone.

  Viv had kept telling me to butt out, so it was high time I did. Let her deal with her family and financial drama. It had nothing to do with me. Nothing. I’d promised her I’d help put on this conference, so that’s what I’d do. Not for her but for all those enthusiastic, hopeful writers out there, coming to fulfill a dream, or scratch an itch of curiosity, or step into their destiny. That’s who deserved my energy.

  How could I have been so wrong? Granted, I had plenty of experience being wrong, but that didn’t make it any easier or less disconcerting every time it happened. Crucial times. Life-changing times. I’d been clueless about my dad. Clueless about my agent’s murder. Clueless about my critique group friends. And now clueless about Viv.

  Fiction was so much easier than real life.

  A banging on my door jostled me from my anger and self-

  reproach. I heard Lily’s panicked voice. “Charlee! Charlee! They’re waiting for you in the critique session! You’re late!”

  I opened the door and she grabbed my arm. “C’mon!” She yanked me into her crisis and out of my own. I grabbed the stack of manuscripts and raced for the elevator. At least I could remedy this crisis.

  When I got to the Multnomah Room, I left thoughts of Hanna and Viv behind while I tried to channel my inner Lily, willing myself to be chipper and positive.

  “Hey, everybody!” I spoke extraordinarily loud and scared many of them with my enthusiasm. I modulated to my indoor voice. “Change of plans. I don’t know if you heard, but a big snowstorm stranded some of our faculty.” At their groans, I added, “I’m sure they’ll be here real soon, but for now, I’m taking over this Read and Critique session. I have your pages here, so when I call your name, you’ll read from your copy and I’ll follow along and make notes on these copies. We only have a few minutes for each of you, so let’s get going!”

  I called the first name. “James?” No response. I looked around the room. Twenty-seven terrified faces stared at me, but only one had a full-tomato blush going.

  I didn’t want to let on I was as terrified as they were. I’d have to listen closely to their first page—not even two hundred words—judge what worked and what didn’t, and then explain myself, all while being constructive, kind, and brief. How was that even possible?

  I nodded toward the blushing middle-aged man and said his name again. His eyes widened like I’d asked him to disrobe. He stammered and sputtered and finally reached for his computer. While it was firing up, I said to the rest of the group, “How ’bout all of you get your pages on your computer or out of your bag or whatever. I don’t want to run out of time and have to miss anyone.”

  Actually, that was exactly what I wanted, but the option seemed unavailable to me at the moment. I didn’t want to be responsible for crushing dreams or dashing confidence, and I knew that’s exactly what could go down with these on-the-spot critiques. Because it had happened to me.

  During my junior year, I paid twenty bucks for this type of critique of my writing at a conference my college had organized. Even at the time, I knew not to submit anything that wasn’t polished, but my naive idea of polished writing was definitely not the same as that held by the brusque New York editor who filleted and gutted both me and my manuscript like it was a Coho salmon. He yanked out my bones and ran a thumb up through my confidence, splattering it onto the floor where it disappeared, oozing into the carpet. I’d watched it fade into nothingness.

  In less than three minutes, I knew I’d never be a writer. I sat frozen in my seat, rigid and numb for the rest of the session, then fled to my hotel room where I hibernated, huddled under the covers eating room service nachos and watching bad cable movies on TV for the rest of the conference. I never told anyone.

  It took me six months to pick up that manuscript again, and when I reread it, I realized something. It was good. Not great, not perfect, but it had good structure, a roller-coaster plot, intriguing characters, and mostly the right words in mostly the right place. That asshole didn’t know anything.

  Three weeks later, I submitted a revision of it to a New Voices contest and won first place.

&nb
sp; So as I looked out at the terrified writers before me, I smiled. “Before we get started, I want everyone to take a deep breath.” I led them in a cathartic lung exercise. “Now I want you to repeat after me: I am a good writer.”

  “You are a good writer,” they intoned.

  “No! Say I …”

  “I …”

  “Am a good writer.”

  Twenty-seven voices repeated.

  “My writing may not be perfect, but it can be.”

  “My writing may not be perfect, but it can be.”

  “Criticism does not define me. I can take what makes sense and leave the rest.”

  “Criticism does not define me. I can take what makes sense and leave the rest.”

  “What that ninny Charlemagne Russo says about my writing is simply her opinion at this particular time on this particular day. She has been known to be wrong. In fact, she’s usually wrong. She puts potato chips on her peanut butter sandwiches, so her opinion is dubious at best.”

  Everyone laughed and visibly relaxed.

  “Ready, James?”

  After a nod and shuffling of papers, James read the beginning of his science fiction. I was thrilled he did so many things right—intriguing first line that pulled us into the story immediately, no backstory. But he could have grounded us in the setting better, and I pointed out a couple of places where he could do that.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have to try chips on my sandwich now.”

  Next up was a hackneyed young adult story with “frenemies” as the two main characters, of course, fighting over a boy, of course. I had a twinge when I thought about Hanna, saRAH, and Jack, wondering about their story. But the poor girl reading this one reminded me so much of AmyJo from my critique group. I knew that both aspiring writers wanted to ease the way into adulthood for some young reader and teach a tender-but-worthy lesson, but still, fiction for young people shouldn’t make that its main goal. I pointed out some language that could be less preachy, which the girl seemed to appreciate.

  So far, so good. No tears.

  Next up was an overwrought high fantasy, heavy on the world-building and Daddy issues. I didn’t know how to express how very terrible it all was. I stared at my page long after she’d finished reading. The hackneyed phrase “the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife” seemed very appropriate.

  Instead of offering a critique to her, I crossed the room. “I love the line about her clothes, but I need to think about this one a little more. Could you please email me the first three chapters? Put ‘Stumptown Writers’ Critique’ in the subject line. I’d like to read more before I formulate an opinion.” I wrote my email address on the dry erase board mounted to the wall. “That goes for all of you, by the way. One page is really hard to judge by, so I’d be happy to read more from all of you if you’d like me to. I know you paid for a critique, and if you want one from one of the other faculty members—you know, the industry professionals—I’ll see if I can make that happen.”

  “Even Garth?” someone asked.

  Garth? An industry professional? “Sure. Why not.”

  The author of the fantasy story smiled at me, relieved, perhaps knowing her work wasn’t ready for prime time yet. I wanted to tell her that that’s part of being a writer, too, but I didn’t want to embarrass her.

  We plowed through the rest of the submissions. More fantasy, more sci-fi, more young adult and middle grade, romance, memoirs, and mysteries—cozies, historical, and a private investigator premise that pissed me off due to no fault of the writer—read by all sorts of writers. Some overly confident, some so nervous it made me ache on their behalf. I had to restrain myself from wrapping them in a smothering hug and offering cocoa and a binky.

  Some excerpts sounded perfect to me, some far from it, but all showed flashes of brilliance, whether plot or character or language or voice.

  Five minutes after the session was supposed to end, we finished the last first page.

  “I’m impressed with the talent in this room. You are all writers and deserve a round of applause. For your writing and your bravery.” They clapped for themselves and each other, beaming and tittering with relief. “I want you all to remember that sometimes—whether you’ve written one manuscript or one hundred—you have to get the basic story down so you have something to revise. If there’s no glob of clay on the pottery wheel, there will never be a ceramic vase. If there’s no wool on the loom, there will never be a rug. The trick for a writer, of course, is to surround yourself with readers and writers who can help shape your work until it is a beautiful representation of what you envisioned. If you do nothing else this weekend, network with one another and organize a critique group if you don’t have one, either online or in person. Your writing pals will be some of the best instructors you’ll ever have.”

  I was sorry to have to end the session, and I think they were too, even though it had been mentally exhausting for all of us, but I had another session starting in five minutes. Most of the writers followed me to the Deschutes Room.

  I walked to the dry erase board and wrote my email. As before, I turned to the wide-eyed, obviously anxious writers already sitting there. I smiled in what I hoped was a calming rather than profoundly creepy way, waiting as the room filled with the attendees streaming in from my previous session. All the chairs were taken. People leaned carefully against the accordion walls or sat in the aisles and wrapped around the front wherever there was empty floor space. I hoisted myself to a sitting position on the table in the front of the room. “So, we’re going to do something a little different in this session. Every one of you is going to email me the first three chapters of your manuscript and I will critique it. And if you want a critique from a particular industry professional who got stuck in the storm, email me with their name and I’ll try to make that happen, too. But for this session, let’s talk about anything on your mind. You can read from your submission if you want, we can chat about the publishing business, you can ask me your burning questions about this crazy writing thing that turns otherwise normal and pleasant people into obsessive word zombies, or whatever else you want to talk about.”

  Nobody got filleted on my watch.

  Again, the session sped by. The attendees thanked me on their way out of the room, some stopping to ask follow-up questions, but eventually everyone trickled out to have a drink with their newfound friends before the opening night banquet.

  “Enjoy BarCon!” I called after them. Seasoned conference-goers know that all of the networking and most of the learning comes while hanging out with your tribe at the bar during a conference. Didn’t matter if you drank, just that you were there, soaking it all up.

  I considered joining them, but exhaustion slapped me silly. I needed to debrief the day to Ozzi, obsess over the weather back east, send snow-melting thoughts to the stranded faculty members, and then perhaps raid my minibar. Maybe not in that order.

  The lobby was packed with writers, dogs, and handlers. It felt like I could dip a bucket into the El Niño of words and noises shifting and surging around me and carry them all away with me.

  I picked my way through the thinnest part of the mob and saw what had drawn everyone’s attention. The agility course had grown more massive and elaborate. In addition to the hassock and pillow hurdles and the tunnel of chairs, there were now bedspreads draping the chairs instead of jackets, creating a more complete tunnel experience for the dogs. There was also an area with eight large, leafy ficus plants pulled from all over the hotel and set about two feet apart. Dogs weaved through them like on a slalom course. In another area there were ironing boards balanced on boxes and crates and used as fulcrums. I watched Scout run up one side of an ironing board, balance a bit in the center, and then use her weight to tip it the other direction so she could run down. She then shimmied through the tunnel, leaped over the hurdles, and ended the course by rac
ing through the slaloms. She skidded to a stop near Scott and pranced around behind him, soaking up the applause.

  “She’s great!”

  I turned to see Brad Pitt next to me. I nodded. “Sure is. I’m glad it’s raining so they have to practice in here. Otherwise I never would have believed this.”

  “I know. I was talking to Jack, the concierge?” When I nodded, he continued. “He told me the hotel is happy to let the dogs practice in here as long as there’s no barking and they don’t go into the bar or restaurant. He told me almost everyone here is either a dog person or a writer person.”

  “That’s probably true. The dog people won’t care and we writers spend all our time in the bar anyway.”

  “I’m no writer, but I have grown fond of that bar.”

  “You’re not here for the conference?”

  “Nope.”

  “I just assumed, since you’re local. Why stay at a hotel in your own town?”

  “I’m from the Portland area, but not Portland per se.”

  “Per se … you sure you’re not a writer?”

  “Almost positive.”

  “Then you must be a dog guy.”

  “Nope. Cats, actually. And too many of them. Came with my brother.”

  “The cats also cramp your style?” Perhaps it was judgy of me, but Brad Pitt seemed too old to have roommates, even if some of them were of the unappreciated feline variety.

  He sighed. “Yep.”

  “Bummer.” I was curious about his living arrangements and wanted to ask more, but applause and cheering drowned out any further conversation. We turned our attention back to the dogs.

  We watched as a terrier, then Shasta the brindle greyhound, then Scout raced through the obstacle course. A basset hound overturned the tunnel obstacle by getting tangled first in his ears and then in the draped fabric, so all action ceased while someone fixed it. The ears remained unaffected.

  “She won the quarterfinals in her class today,” Brad said, flicking his chin toward Scout.

  “Oh, I was so busy with my own stuff I didn’t realize their competition started already. They must have found some arena to use.”