The bookplates were square, colored strips with the author’s signature on them. But a bookplate with a signature did not equate to a signed book. A signed book meant you met the author, meant you spoke to the author, meant the author had some idea you were alive. The sticker had the cover of Breathe on it with additional gratuitous splashes of blood, along with the author’s Web site address. The bookmark was cheap and flimsy. Cillian would never use it.
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And then signed (but signed by whom was the question) at the bottom:
Dennis Shore
His hands balled up the letter, then let it go.
He left the post office with the wrinkled letter, the book plates, and the sticker all sitting on the table.
He didn’t want to have anything to do with them, or Dennis Shore, ever again.
Discoveries in the Dark
1.
I’m finished.
He wished he was finished with One of These Days, the tentative title for his current work in progress. But the title wasn’t the only thing tentative in his novel. Everything was tentative—the words, the characters, the story.… So tentative, in fact, that he hadn’t even started.
Dennis Shore, bestselling novelist soon to have the number-one selling book in the country, was lost for words. And he hadn’t been able to find them in some time.
He just got back from New York last night. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was late. After going through e-mail and voice mail and reading through his favorite Web sites and blogs, Dennis tried to write. But he wasn’t sure what to write about. He had vague ideas, but they all seemed so random.
“It’s about a man with a dark secret.”
Yet he hadn’t met the man, nor did he know exactly what shade was his secret.
He had a little over a month to hand the book in.
But the deadline didn’t matter as much as the fallout from his latest novel if anyone found out the truth.
Thinking about it made his head ache, along with his heart.
Empty Spaces sat on the corner of the massive oak desk in his office, seeming to pulse like a wounded, bleeding animal taking its last few breaths. The book had never been his and never would be.
He wasn’t sure how everything had gotten this far.
Grief, my man. That’s what grief will do to you. It will make you do things you once thought were unthinkable. And you can think of everything, can’t you?
Dennis had never thought the words would leave him. But much worse than that, he had never thought Lucy would leave him either. Lucy encouraged and motivated him and helped him along. And always, always, the writing came. She would give him random ideas or read bits and pieces and give him glowing affirmation or tell him to change gears and go down another path or try again. Lucy was his biggest fan and biggest critic. She was also the love of his life whom he had lost to colon cancer on October 30, 2008.
Six months before Lucy passed away, the block started. But of course it did. Because his whole life was suddenly blocked. There wasn’t a God above to pray to no matter how he wished there was. Not that he wanted help now—no, if there was a God, he wanted to curse him. But cursing the air did nothing.
He tried to write. Writing used to be cathartic, especially years ago when he first started Breathe after Lucy’s miscarriage. But in the midst of everything with Lucy’s cancer last year, the deadline approached and he had absolutely nothing. Rather than admitting guilt and lack of control, Dennis had tried to control the situation.
And now, nearly a year later, with glowing reviews celebrating a whole new level of success for Dennis Shore, he didn’t know what to do.
Especially since the inevitable had happened.
Cillian Reed had come knocking on his door.
The truth was that he had buried Cillian’s name along with a hundred other memories and details, hoping they would all just leave him alone. But Cillian was right—Dennis had stolen something from him. There was nothing subtle or clever about it. It was during the maelstrom, and he had simply sent off the manuscript doctored up with a few changes. Like the title. And the byline.
I didn’t think things through at the time because I didn’t care.
He knew it was all over. And part of him still didn’t care. Audrey would always be loved and taken care of, and the only thing she might have to suffer would be jokes about her father. Dennis, on the other hand, would be ruined. It would be over.
I can deny everything. Every single thing. And I can beat anyone in court simply because I have money.
But that was wrong. He had needed the money when he handed in Empty Spaces. And he definitely needed the money now to stay on top of his mounting bills.
And what about taking care of Audrey? How do you expect to do that without continuing to work, without continuing to write?
All of this made his head swim, and his head was the one tool he needed in order to write. Once again he was approaching a deadline, and he had nothing, absolutely nothing.
Dennis sat back down at the computer and looked at the screen. Nothing but white. Nothing but emptiness. Nothing at all.
That’s what his career would look like.
That’s what his life would become.
He wanted to burn every copy of Empty Spaces. He wanted to delete every e-mail about it and every review and every word of praise and acknowledgment.
Yes, he had stolen the book.
And yes, its author had stepped out of obscurity to introduce himself.
The lack of words… the mounting bills… the imposing deadline… the danger of losing his career… none of these scared him as much as one thing:
Cillian Reed himself.
2.
“Hey, Dad.”
Even though he’d heard this phrase a thousand times, it still warmed him like the morning sun. It had been a few days since he had spoken with Audrey. There were no rules or even mild suggestions from him as to how often she should call. But if it were up to him, it would be daily.
“How’s your week going?”
“Oh, it’s been crazy. My roommate, Nicole—she’s a lot like me and we haven’t been getting much sleep lately, but it’s been a lot of fun—”
One long run-on sentence—that was Audrey. As he listened to her, not worried about getting a word in, Dennis thought of what Lucy used to say: “She takes after you so much it’s scary.” He remembered asking his wife what she meant by scary. Who knew years ago that that single word would be used so often alongside his name? Dennis Shore equals scary. But Lucy just laughed. “She actually enjoys reading your novels. Now that’s scary.”
College seemed to be going well. It already sounded like Audrey had a whole dorm full of girlfriends along with a slew of guys who were interested in her. And that was no surprise. They should be interested in her.
“Just tell those fellas that your father’s slightly demented and that he’s been off his medication for a while now so he’ll gladly come up there and kick some collegiate tail if he has to.”
“I’ll kick some collegiate tail if I have to,” Audrey said.
“Yes, I believe you will. Just—you know what I always say.”
“No, what do you always say?” she asked in her full-on sarcastic voice.
“Be safe, and be smart.”
“I’ve never heard you say that.”
“I didn’t say be sassy,” Dennis said.
“You know I’m safe, and I take after Mom in the smarts department.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Don’t say that if you don’t believe it.”
“Don’t start sounding like your mother,” Dennis teased.
“Someone needs to.”
Audrey went on to talk about her classes. She knew she wanted to do something in communications—possibly publicity or marketing. Audrey did take after him in a lot of ways, incl
uding getting her writing talents from him. Lucy had never indulged in the arts—literature or music or film—not like Dennis. His wife liked to say he didn’t know anything about literature either. And he couldn’t deny the fact that even though he read a lot, he didn’t write deep, thinking-man’s prose. When you wrote a book that actually featured possessed rodents on the rampage, well, you weren’t going to be considered for the Pulitzer.
Audrey takes after Lucy in one big way, a way I’ll never know or understand.
After half an hour of talking about her classes and friends, Audrey asked him how his writing was coming along.
“Oh, little by little,” he said.
Little was definitely an exaggeration. That implied he had written something.
A title didn’t constitute writing.
“I bet you’re bored there all alone.”
He thought back to the days since dropping her off at college. A creepy, bruised girl had shown up, warning him about the book coming out, then had just walked away and seemingly disappeared. Then a guy named Cillian Reed accused him of plagiarism, a charge Dennis couldn’t deny. Now he waited and wondered when the stranger would contact him next. When, and how.
“Yep, I’ve been quite bored.”
He could see Audrey’s innocent eyes staring him down if she knew the truth. Dennis wouldn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything to say except that he had done something very wrong and very stupid.
“Well, don’t get too stir-crazy without me,” Audrey said.
“I won’t. Take care of yourself. And make sure you stay away from strangers, okay?”
“You too, old man,” she said, adding an adorable “I love you” that made the world temporarily stop and the stars fall from the sky.
After saying good-bye, Dennis walked back into his office.
The sun came in through two different sets of windows, illuminating the walls that showcased his writing career during the last decade. There were movie posters, framed album covers, a couple of photos with famous people, some book awards. But he ignored all of them and glanced at one picture on the wall. It was a shot of him and his wife, one of the last pictures taken before she passed away.
He was sitting at the dinner table making a joke, and Lucy sat next to him, laughing, her head turned slightly to the side, her face unable to contain the joy inside.
It wasn’t posed—not like some of those dreadful shots taken in front of colored backdrops, where some dull photographer went through the motions only to try to get you to buy over-priced sets of fifty pictures. Nor was it one of those where husband and wife wore matching outfits and happened to be strolling through a picturesque park. No, this was completely candid and real. This was how he liked to remember Lucy. This was how he liked to remember both of them.
I was probably making some sort of crass joke, knowing me.
He didn’t want to sit back down. He didn’t want to hear the silence pounding in his ears as he stared at an empty screen.
Sometimes he wished he had a full-time job again, a full plate of responsibilities that didn’t allow him the room to grieve, that didn’t allow him the time to break down. It was strange to long to be stuck in traffic, to be stuck in a cubicle, to be stuck in meetings, to be stuck in the corporate world. But maybe that would be better than simply being stuck in life.
Dennis sighed and left his office.
3.
It had started with a simple phone call.
It was close to a year ago, a month before Lucy passed away, when Dennis picked up a phone call from New York, assuming it was his editor. Just like now, and just like always, the deadline approached. Dennis hadn’t spoken with James for some time, so he assumed the call was a gentle checkup on his progress.
Instead some woman who acted like she knew him greeted him. He recognized the voice. But he couldn’t think of a name. “Yes?”
“This is Tara Marsh. Is this a good time?”
“Oh sure, Tara. How are you?”
“I’m fine, busy as always, getting ready for another crazy fall.”
He neglected to add that his wife was terminally ill and had only weeks left to live. Ms. Tara Marsh didn’t need to hear that.
Tara was one of the three people who worked on publicity for his books, and even though she never talked about her other authors or projects, Dennis knew her plate was quite full.
“I wanted to touch base about next week’s fund-raiser.”
“Sure,” Dennis said, having no idea what next week’s fund-raiser was about.
And then, even as she spoke about the details and his flight and the hotel arrangements, Dennis suddenly realized what she was referring to.
The fund-raiser.
With all the big shots in New York.
Where I have to read.
From my work in progress.
He gritted his teeth and went to his computer, opening his calendar. Yep, there it was, right in front of him.
Fund-raiser, Times Square, Saturday, September 13, 2008, 8:00 p.m., details to come.
“How does that sound?” Tara asked him.
“Great, thanks. Hey—can you e-mail me those details?” Even as he said it, he knew details were the least of his problems.
“I’ll plan on meeting you in the hotel lobby around six,” Tara continued.
Dennis thought with a sinking panic: I have to stand in front of a room full of—how many people?—and read from my next novel.
“And don’t worry about how rough the section you’ll be reading is,” Tara said. “No one will remember how different it is when the actual book comes out. I’ve already talked with James, and he’s fine with it, though he would like to see the section you plan to read ahead of time.”
Yeah, me too. “Thanks Tara.”
She continued talking, but Dennis didn’t say much. All he could do was look around his desk, which happened to be clean. Far too clean for his liking.
Cleanliness wasn’t next to godliness, not in his book, not for a writer. Cleanliness only meant he was blocked.
And he had one more week to get unblocked.
But in the midst of Lucy’s battle with cancer, his battle with writer’s block seemed lame, almost ridiculous. He refused to let it affect him or them.
And that’s how it started. That’s how it had come to this a year later, a book later, with still no words of his own accounted for.
4.
One sentence.
A whole morning and afternoon and evening and all he had managed to come up with was one sentence.
It was the opening line of the novel, and it wasn’t even very good.
Despite what everybody told him, Jackson refused to believe she was gone.
He didn’t have to come up with “Call me Ishmael” or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or anything that great. He didn’t even have to get this past an editor’s eyes. Greatness only came when the following three hundred pages of sentences built into a crescendo that served to magnify that opening line.
It was eleven at night. And even though he sat in a four thousand square foot home, he felt trapped, crammed in, stifled.
The rock music from his iMac blared, tunes no longer helping to inspire, just serving to block out this silence. He glanced at the sentence on his computer again. It looked as bare and lifeless as a skeleton in snow.
Refused to believe she was gone.
He looked at the photos on his desk. A wedding shot of Lucy. Pictures of him and Lucy with Audrey, one when she was a newborn, another when she turned ten. All around him were memories of Lucy and her life and her loveliness.
Refused.
She.
Gone.
Dennis shut off the music and set his computer to sleep mode. He shoved away the thoughts. They were ludicrous.
I know she’s gone, and I’m not going to write about her.
He went to the kitchen to get some milk before going to sleep.
This isn’t life imitat
ing art or art imitating life or any of that. I just can’t start it up this time.
Standing in his kitchen, he refused to believe that his block was solely based on losing Lucy. There was more to it. He just had to figure out what.
As he rinsed the glass in the sink, looking out the window that overlooked the lawn and the river, something caught his eye.
In the darkness, somewhere over the river, straight down from the house, something…
What was the word?
Glowed, he thought.
He rubbed his eyes and kept looking, but the image didn’t go away.
Dennis headed to the back door.
5.
The wet, recently cut grass stuck to his feet and ankles. It was still warm enough to wear shorts, which was fine by him. If heaven existed, though he knew it didn’t, it would be a place where you wore shorts and flip-flops all the time. Wait a minute—that was Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffet’s version of heaven. Either one was fine with him.
The wide backyard sloped downward, flanked by trees on each side that served as privacy barricades for the neighbors. The family who lived on the south side of his house was a friendly gang with three children ranging in age from junior high to high school. On the north side, however, he wished there were a few more trees and perhaps a few more miles between houses. He didn’t know the full story on the elderly couple living in the small, run-down house, but he did know they were unsocial and had a knack for littering their lawn with garbage that often blew over into his yard.
The sky was clear, and he gazed up as he often did when walking down toward the river. He remembered similar nights when he had taken Audrey down to the river’s edge and looked up at the stars with her. It was a cliché, but it was so utterly true: time did flash by. You do blink, and they’re grown up. When he was in his thirties, still changing diapers and getting up to soothe cries and finding Cheerios in the strangest of places, Dennis never thought it would happen. Everybody told him he’d blink and she’d be grown up and gone, but he never truly believed it.
There were other things I wouldn’t believe too.
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