Underwood, Scotch, and Cry

by Brian Meeks

  She chose to watch the clock. The minutes seemed to take their time changing, and sleep wouldn't come. At thirty minutes, she began to worry about not getting any sleep and how miserable she would be all day. The next half hour saw a mixture of thoughts about how lonely she truly was and whether she was getting fat.

  Ten years of stress had kept her at the same weight as the day she started. She knew the truth, but that didn't stop her from worrying about it.

  At 5 am, she was resigned to the pointlessness of trying to fight it, and she got up and took a shower.

  Winifred got dressed and had a flashback to college. Her stomach was churning like it had in the hours before a midterm exam. No matter how much she had studied, the butterflies were always present.

  As she tied a towel around her head, Winifred remembered her midterm nerves routine. Her roommate in the dorms had once said that donuts eaten during midterm or finals week didn't have any calories. It was ridiculous and funny. They had gone for fresh donuts many times, and they had always chased the butterflies away, so they would go find some other poor student.

  Winifred got dressed, packed up her laptop, and called a cab to take her to find warm glazed donuts. She was sure they would help.

  Two donuts and a cup of coffee were exactly what the doctor had ordered. Winifred wasn't tired, upset, or stressed. It was as if the clock had been turned back a decade. She did the one thing that had always made her happy. She opened her laptop and began to write a story.

  Chapter Twenty

  Arthur had texted Kat, but only to tell her he was calling it an early evening. The drink and whining to the bartender took all of the flirtatiousness out of him. He was in bed by 9:00.

  The sunlight of a new day seemed filled with hope and optimism. The searing words of the review stung less. Arthur made a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and sat down to write.

  Since he had cast Charlie aside, he needed a new protagonist. The apartment was too quiet. Maltese agreed and contributed a plaintive "Meow."

  "Did I forget to top off your food bowl? I know how you hate it when the food drops to the cruel three-quarters-full level."

  Maltese seemed pleased with the additional food.

  Arthur almost returned to writing but instead found a feather-on-a-string toy. The string was attached to a two-foot plastic pole and allowed for great cat play fun. Maltese loved the feather game and pounced.

  Arthur pulled up Spotify on his computer. Modern English sang "I Melt With You," as Maltese zipped around the room, hiding, attacking, and hiding again. There were few things in the world Arthur enjoyed more than playing the feather game, when all he could see was a single paw blindly darting out from behind the ottoman.

  The song reminded him of someone from high school. He couldn't quite remember her name, but he remembered her face. She was lovely.

  The word count on his computer remained at zero.

  At least it wasn't quiet. Maltese had gotten his fill of the feather game and had gone off to entertain himself. The Who's "You Better You Bet" seemed to be saying you better get to writing.

  His writing juices weren't flowing at all. What is our hero like? Arthur opened a new file and titled it "Notes." He started to list traits. Hero stands six feet two inches, dark hair, and piercing eyes. He debunks conspiracy theories for a living. He likes cats.

  Arthur took moment, deleted "cats" and wrote "dogs." This was a major literary departure, and it seemed daring in a grotesquely understated way. Arthur preferred cats to dogs and always included a cat in his stories, but he liked dogs, too. Why couldn't he give man's best friend a little writing love?

  It seemed like progress...barely moving at the pace of a swift glacier, but still progress. Mud Duck! That would be the dog's name. Arthur chuckled. His friend in college had gotten a puppy that was a golden retriever and chocolate Lab mix and named it Mud Duck. It was both the best and worst dog name ever.

  Mud Duck was a sweet dog. He liked peanut butter.

  Arthur continued to think about the hero. He lives alone in a trailer. Nope, that doesn't work. He lies alone in a house he built out of shipping containers in a remote spot in the desert. Arthur began to picture the scene like it was a movie. He could see a diner, and there were trailers off in the distance maybe a couple hundred yards away.

  Then like a flash he saw where the trailers were parked; it was an old drive-in movie theater. The backstory seemed to write itself. A town called Swallow Creek had dried up of residents sometime in the fifties.

  Arthur got up and walked around. He was trying to watch the people in the trailer park, get a feel for what they might be doing and who might live there. He could see a woman from a trailer walking up the road to the motel that was along the main road. She cleaned the rooms.

  The diner was set back from the main road about a half mile and was run by a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. Arthur didn't know his name yet, but he was sure he'd figure it out if he just listened to the customers chatting.

  That's the way his writing brain worked. He didn't write a story; he copied the movie that played in his mind and put it down in words. He saw Mud Duck wasn't actually the protagonist's dog but was more a pet of the entire community. The dog was a loner. So was our hero...Sloane Wolfe. Arthur had the name.

  He hadn't written a word, but he had their home—a place where the characters lived and made their lives before the event that changed everything. He had no idea what that event might be, but that was okay; it was time to do some writing, and whatever was about to happen would show up when the time was right.

  Sloane Wolfe didn't believe in God, politics, or aliens. He did believe in coffee, though, and with a religious fervor always started the day with a cup or three. He had his own ten commandments, and they were all differing variations of "Thou Shall Not Speak Before My First Cuppa." Those who knew him, and there weren't many, were smart enough to avoid the wrath that would come from breaking one of the sacred ten.

  There it was, the first seventy-five words. Arthur hit save. He needed his own cup of coffee. He then cut and pasted the first seventy-five into an email and sent it to himself along with his notes. If he were going to go hang out at a coffee shop to write, he would not be taking his laptop.

  Arthur preferred to write on his iPad and then transfer everything over to his desktop and make a copy for his laptop. Less than a year ago, he had hated all things technology-related, but he had now embraced it to the point where he had acquired so many devices that he was actually becoming less efficient with each new addition. Still, Wen had shown him the beauty of these gadgets, and he would forever love her for it.

  "Maltese, I'm off to the Morning Cuppa."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sometimes the voice in Arthur's head was more of a voiceover. It took him to that place where the world got quiet and the story took over. Writing was like love. It was like a long walk in the cool night air, holding hands for the first time with that one special girl.

  On the walk to the coffeehouse, he was surrounded by people in their own worlds—people living their own stories and trying to write happy endings. For a moment, the size of the bet he had made struck him in the gut, and he wavered. Then, just as quickly, he put the thought out of his head and went back to his story.

  The line at the Morning Cuppa was long, but Arthur barely noticed. He was imagining seagulls flying around a movie theater screen. They wouldn't be there in the desert. He made them disappear. Arthur pulled out his phone and Googled "desert birds."

  The Gila woodpecker, loggerhead shrike, and phainopepla were all interesting, but they didn't fit the image in his mind A zone-tailed hawk soared high above the screen, looking for a mouse to snack on.

  The barista took his order. Hipster Barry yelled, "Arthur! Hey, over here!"

  Arthur looked around and saw Barry at a table with a laptop. The barista handed Arthur his double mocha cuppa inspiration, and he walked over to Barry. "How's the writing going, my friend?"

>   "It's been great. I've had a few sections that went nowhere, and I just cut them and started again."

  "May I make a suggestion?"

  "Sure."

  "I never delete anything. If I write a scene that doesn't work, I save it to a file. There may come a time it will be perfect for something else, or at the very least give me an idea to build upon."

  "That's smart. I guess that's why you're the writer, and I'm only the wannabe."

  "Nonsense. You're a writer. You're doing it now. Writer's write. That's the only definition I believe in."

  "How about you? Any words being smithed?"

  "That sounds like something I'd say. Actually, I've just started my new novel."

  "Awesome, what's it about?"

  "Right now, it's about seventy-five words long. More than that I can't say, but I'm looking forward to finding out."

  "Can I read it?"

  "The first paragraph?"

  "Sure. Do you mind?"

  "Not at all," Arthur said as he set up his gear. He opened the email and spun the iPad around. "Here you go."

  Barry read it. "I'd definitely read more."

  "I'll definitely write more."

  Arthur's phone chirped, and he checked the text message. It was from Kat and read, Are you writing? He replied, Yes. I'm at Morning Cuppa.

  She wrote back, Good.

  Arthur took a sip of his coffee and looked at Barry. "How about we see who can bang out the next five hundred words the quickest."

  "I'm not a very fast writer," Barry said.

  "Then you'll lose...Go!"

  Barry laughed and started to type.

  Arthur had a sense of where he wanted to go with the beginning of the story, and it poured from the movie in his mind to the keyboard at his fingers with ease. The world went quiet for a little while.

  He learned that the name of the diner owner and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel was Malcolm Jefferies. Malcolm was black, but Arthur preferred to describe the colonel's ethnicity in more subtle terms. He mentioned that the colonel's grandfather had been a Tuskegee Airman. It had the beauty of providing a detail that most people would get, wrapped in a historical reference.

  Now he could see Malcolm. It made it easy for dialog to roll off the characters' tongues. Arthur just sat, listened, and typed. It took only about twenty minutes before he noticed he had hit the 575 mark.

  "I'm done with my five hundred, how about you?"

  Barry looked at his screen and did the math. "I only managed 323. Man, you are quick. It was like you turned on a faucet. How do you do it?"

  "I mostly wrote dialog."

  "How does that matter? A word is a word whether it's in quotes or not."

  "It's like Ping Pong. I have a character ask a question and then try to have the other respond with something clever...mostly."

  "What do you mean by mostly?"

  "Have you ever read Elmore Leonard?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "He was one of the greatest American writers of dialog in the last one hundred years. The thing I learned from his novels was that characters don't always answer the question that is asked. Sometimes they make assumptions or try to guess at the hidden meaning or even start talking about something unrelated."

  "I don't understand."

  "Have you ever talked to one of those people who don’t listen? You can tell by the look in their eyes they're already crafting their response without hearing what you're saying."

  "Yeah, I have a friend like that. Every time we talk politics, she never listens to my points."

  "I hate politics."

  "Just like Sloane."

  "Yep."

  "I think I understand. You mix in comments that are off topic to make it more like a real conversation."

  "Exactly, but I don't do it too often. Too much of a good thing becomes trite."

  "But how does that make you write so fast?"

  "Here, try this. Who are the characters in the chapter you're working on?"

  "There's just one guy, Sal, and he's alone in his apartment."

  Arthur smiled. "Did you hear that?"

  Barry looked around, "No, what?"

  "I think it's Sal's phone. Why don't you answer it."

  Barry started to type. "The phone startled Sal. He picked it up and said, 'Hello.'"

  "That's good. Who's on the other end?"

  "I don't know."

  "It sounds like a woman to me, and she sure seems angry."

  Barry's eyes lit up, and he said, "It must be Margo." The typing began.

  Arthur liked Barry. He seemed to have the same passion for words as Arthur and was a quick learner. Arthur checked his text messages, hoping there might be something else from Kat. Nothing. He typed back to her, 500 more words, How about you, are you writing?

  No, I'm getting a cup of coffee. Turn around.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A fuchsia satin top and slacks nearly burned out Arthur's retinas. Barry whispered, "Wow."

  A group of four was just leaving a larger table in the back. Arthur said, "Barry, six o'clock, better table, grab it."

  Barry looked over his shoulder. "I'm on it, dude."

  "Watch the dudes."

  "Sorry, my bad," he said. Barry grabbed his laptop and made for the table.

  Arthur packed up his gear, grabbed his coffee and the one Barry had left behind, and waited for Kat.

  "Who's your friend?"

  "That's Barry the hipster."

  "I think I met him the other night at the Salon."

  "Yes, you did."

  "He looks different."

  "He had on his hipster glasses.”

  They walked over to the new table. Barry stood up. "Hey."

  "What are you working on?" Kat asked, as she set down her bag and tea.

  "It's a screenplay that I had put away some time ago. Arthur motivated me to dust it off."

  "How's it going?"

  "I don't know how it's going to end."

  "That's how I write, too."

  Arthur excused himself to get another coffee.

  Kat pulled her laptop from her bag and opened it up. "I love writing in coffee houses."

  "What do you write?"

  "I write steamy adult contemporary novels that would melt the soles of your Keds."

  "Stuff like that Fifty Shades trilogy?"

  "Hotter, and better written."

  "Do you sell like her?"

  "Well, no. She made 95 million last year, but I do just fine."

  "That's cool."

  When Arthur returned, Barry and Kat were both pounding away on their keyboards. He set up his iPad again and jumped back into the story. The words didn't put up much of a fight; Arthur threw them down in just the right place. The imagery grew, and Arthur could see his characters come to life.

  Another thing seemed to happen. It was as if he were back in college. The energy all around made anything seem possible, even winning this stupid bet.

  Carolyn had been summoned to the seventeenth floor. It was where the old white men in suits worked. They had little understanding of her job but liked to tell her how to do it anyway.

  Dennis Huffen was a senior vice-president. He hadn't worked directly on a book in over twenty years, but he had taken credit for a number one New York Times bestseller as recently as last Wednesday. His office was a monument to both writing and corporate executive excess. Along one wall, the bookshelf contained a collection of first editions that would impress the librarian at the Library of Alexandria.

  Until the last couple of years, Huffen had kept in shape with thrice-weekly squash matches. He had blown a knee in a match with the CEO of a New York tabloid and started gaining weight thereafter. Huffen now resembled an Honoré Daumier politician.

  Carolyn closed the door behind her.

  "So, Carolyn. This Arthur Byrne seems to have pissed a lot of people off. Aren't you supposed to be keeping an eye on him?"

  "He apologized to Landon two days ago."


  "And yet, the St. Petersburg Times has a scathing review this morning."

  "Maybe it's just someone who didn't care for his book."

  "I'm someone who doesn't care for his book."

  "You said last fall you loved his writing."

  "What I no longer will admit to having said last fall is immaterial. In case you hadn't noticed, we’re in crisis mode until we figure out how to put an end to this digital ebook era."

  "Do you really think that's possible?"

  "We are book publishers! If we let Bezos win, our way of life will cease to exist, and the world will be a lesser place for it. Do you want the joy of turning a page on a finely crafted tome to be lost forever?"

  "No, but I don't think..."

  "I don't care what you think; just do something about Arthur Byrne. We need race horses in our stables, not worn-out nags."

  "I'll get right to work trying to sign California Chrome to a three-book deal."

  "If people want to read about the Kentucky Derby winner, then make it happen. I need you to pick some winners."

  Huffen's secretary poked her head in and said he had an important call on line five. Everyone knew there were only four lines on his phone, and it was meant as a not-so-subtle invitation to get out of his office.

  Carolyn headed back toward the elevators. She liked Arthur, though he drove her nuts, and she didn't care for her boss.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For a week Arthur had kept the thought of the wager out of his mind and focused on the novel. There had been stops and starts, but for the most part he had moved the story forward.

  Barry had been his coffee-drinking mate every day. Kat had joined them twice. He had managed to turn out over 2,000 words per day along with a fair amount of witty banter that had impressed Kat a little and Barry a great deal. Barry was an easy laugh.

  The storm clouds hovering over the city were so cliché that Arthur scoffed in their general direction. He wasn't about to let his lifelong fear of the inevitable conclusion of extended periods of happiness ruin his mood.

  His phone chirped out a blues riff. It was Carolyn, his personal storm cloud. He answered in a robotic voice, "This is Arthur, leave a message, or suicide note, at the tone. I'll be checking my messages first thing at the turn of the next decade...beep."