The Fictional Man

by Al Ewing

  “Oh, it might not look like much,” Aspidistra said, gently wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with a fingertip, “but it’s proof that my father once loved me. It’s the only thing I took with me when I left home, you know.” She scowled. “And then I lost it to the first smooth-talking son of a bitch to get me into bed – this was in New York, you understand.”

  Niles blinked. “Um. What was his name?”

  Aspidistra looked at him and shrugged her frail shoulders slightly. “I honestly don’t remember. Fred something. He was a writer too, you know, or he said he was going to be one eventually.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where he ended up, and I don’t want to. I was fourteen, and he left me pregnant and stole the only thing I had in the world.”

  Niles sipped his tea. “It sounds ghastly,” he said, and then cringed at his own choice of words.

  “I grew up fast,” Aspidistra said, looking into her cup as if trying to read the tea leaves. “Well, I thought I did. I moved into a commune – I figured I’d raise Meadow better than my folks raised me, but I ended up making most of the same mistakes. Just a little flowerier, that’s all. More tambourines involved.” She rolled her eyes. “Little twit.”

  “Is that why she was being so overprotective on the phone?”

  Aspidistra shook her head. “Oh, she rebelled against all that peace and love crap. I can’t blame her, I was a rotten mother. She had a rotten mother and a rotten grandmother, and no father at all. I can’t blame her for her temper. Anyway, she ended up having me committed for a couple dozen years. Hell, maybe I even needed it. I had some bad decades.” She stared into the middle distance for a long moment, as if gazing into the deep, dark past. “The worst thing, though... the worst thing is that she doesn’t see me. She’s invented a character with my name and my face, who’s done some of the things I’ve done, and a whole lot more besides, and she’s invented a whole bunch of motives and reasons for that character, so she can hate it better. And then I’ve got to live inside this... thing she’s built.” She sighed. “And what the hell, I guess I’ve done the same to her. You ever do that with someone you love, Niles? Make a fake one just so’s you can pretend you understand them?”

  Niles hesitated, then nodded. “All the time.”

  She smiled, touching the front cover of the book. “It’s not worth it, you know. Not for anyone.” She leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for the book, sweetheart. Now get lost, huh? You don’t want to see an old woman cry.”

  OUTSIDE, THE SUN had nearly dipped below the horizon. Something about the quality of the light falling over the trees made Niles feel as if he was completely alive, utterly in the moment. His head was filled with ideas for the film – if they called him up and asked him for the pitch right now, he honestly thought he could just rattle one off into his phone.

  He opened the passenger side door. “Come on, Bob,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “wake up. It’s your turn to drive.”

  Bob didn’t move.

  “Bob?” Niles grabbed Bob’s shoulder, shaking it roughly. “Come on, wake up. Bob?”

  He kept shaking him, even after he’d phoned for an ambulance. Even after he’d noticed Bob wasn’t breathing. Even after he’d seen Bob’s eyes, open and glassy, and lowered the lids for him. He still kept shaking him. Shaking and shaking him.

  But Bob didn’t wake up.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BOB’S DEATH BARELY made the news.

  A couple of TV and radio stations mentioned it as part of their Sherlock Holmes coverage – Bob, as a public domain Fictional and one of three based on the same character, had some small amount of relevance to that, but not very much. Others attempted to make it about the huge box office success of Black Terror Rising, and at least one scandal-sheet attempted to get a ‘Curse Of The Terrors’ rumour going. But for the most part, his death was simply ignored – much as Bob had been for the best part of his brief life.

  Niles and Iyla had organised the funeral as best they could without actually speaking to each other. When necessary, they sent terse emails about dates, times and likely guests – at one stage Rob Benton was rumoured to be making an appearance, with some pundits even musing that he’d come ‘in character’ as the Black Terror, a ridiculous idea that Niles was glad to see quickly and firmly denied by both Rob and his studio. Rob, apparently, would ‘pay his respects in his own way,’ presumably from the grounds of his lush mansion in Laguna Beach.

  Which suited Niles perfectly. An appearance from Rob – Niles hated the implied first name terms, but thinking of him as ‘Benton’ just led to heartache – would have meant swathes of reporters, cameramen and other ‘superstar’ guests, none of whom would have given a damn about Bob or his life. The funeral would have become a circus, a media event, and the only way to stop that would have been to ask Rob not to come – not a particularly uncivil request, as Rob hadn’t been invited and he and Bob hadn’t much liked each other anyway, but one that would have sparked off a completely different media event. No, Rob staying home and raising a glass at the appropriate moment, or whatever he was planning to do, was by far the best thing that could happen. Let the day be for friends and family, not for publicists and producers.

  In the event, it all went off without a hitch. There were more guests than Niles had originally thought there would be – people who’d known Bob from the New Adventures, or through his voice work. Teri Hatcher made it, as did a few other members of the cast – though not enough to trigger any more than mild interest from the press, which Niles greatly appreciated.

  Bob’s ‘family,’ the technicians and writers who’d created him, put together a short speech which went down as well as it could have – a little laughter, more than a few tears. It took Niles a moment or two to recognise Malcolm Stuyvesant, the man he still couldn’t help but think of as Bob’s father. He said little beyond what was expected, but Niles could see where Bob’s sadness had come from. It was mirrored in the grey-haired man at the podium.

  Later on – as they were milling outside the chapel waiting for the cars to take them back to Iyla’s for the wake proper – Stuyvesant sidled up to Niles, a dour expression etched into his doughy face.

  “I understand you were the fellow who knew him best,” he said, quietly.

  Niles nodded. In the end, there was that comfort – that he’d had the chance to really know Bob, and not just his fiction, his idea of who Bob had been. That suddenly seemed very important.

  Stuyvesant watched the other mourners for a moment, then cocked his head, and in that moment he reminded Niles very much of Bob. “You probably know we... well, we had a falling out. Ontological reasons, you could say. I didn’t keep in contact with him, and perhaps I should have.” He took his glasses off and gently cleaned them on his black tie. “Anyway, I heard on the grapevine that he wasn’t a happy man. People tell me he was never... well, never very content.” He looked up at Niles, and stripped of the thick lenses his eyes were large, brown and sad, like a bulldog’s.

  Niles chewed it over for a moment, then shook his head “Not always. There were times when he was. On the day he died, he...” Niles had to poke at the corner of his eye for a moment to ward off tears. It wouldn’t do to break down in the middle of a conversation. “He seemed in good spirits. We had sushi.”

  Stuyvesant exhaled. “That’s good, that’s good. You understand, I feel a sense of responsibility.” He said it as though he were sitting in a confessional booth. “The sadness in him... it made for wonderful television. Those four seasons we worked together on Black Terror were perhaps the most worthwhile years of my life.” He looked up at Niles again, as if suspecting disbelief. “I mean it, I honestly do. That was a wonderful time – even towards the end.”

  Niles found his attention distracted suddenly by a broad-shouldered man in a brown raincoat and hat, standing across the road, his face hidden. It was a warm day, and getting warmer. He shrugged imperceptibly and turned back to Stuyvesant. �
�I don’t doubt it. If it’s a consolation, I know he felt the same way,” he lied.

  Stuyvesant nodded absently. “Well, it was good television. But... I don’t know if it made for a good life. I was so much younger then – there were things I didn’t consider. It really didn’t occur to me that there’d be a – well, an after for Bob, if you see what I mean. If I’d thought more about that, perhaps Bob might have been happier in his lot. I might have given him the tools to cope with it.” He lowered his head, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with a wince, then put his glasses back on. “Or maybe I’d have destroyed that spark he had. Created another bland, arrogant idiot like – oh, that new one, the one who pontificates about what people need and deserve. Bob was better than that, at least. He was the best of them all.” Stuyvesant stared into the distance for a moment. “He was... he was definitive. Yes, definitive.” He looked around. “There should be more people here, shouldn’t there?”

  “We didn’t want it to be a circus,” Niles murmured, absently. He thought about Bob – about whether the man he’d known would really have been happier just sitting quietly and waiting for a new film to one day come along, like Indiana Jones, or making endless tours of the convention circuit like Buck Rogers, or even building a new life for himself as the same character in a different setting, the way Ralph Cutner had. Whether he’d have preferred that to the tragedies of his life, to the urge to grow and change. To being real.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “Bob couldn’t be any happier and still be Bob, if you see what I mean. I think that made him content. And even when it didn’t, at least it was a kind of unhappy which was his.” He shook his head. “I’m not explaining this very well.”

  He cast another glance at the man in the trench coat across the street, who seemed to be lingering, moving back and forth as if making up his mind whether to cross and introduce himself. He turned back to Stuyvesant. “Did you know he wanted to be real?”

  The man hesitated a moment, looking around himself quickly. “Well...” He gnawed his lip. “Let’s say it wouldn’t surprise me. No, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.” He looked at his shoes for a moment, and then back up into Niles’ eyes. “It’s not something we like to admit, is it? That we might be creating... well, real people. That’s a little too much like playing God for us to be comfortable with, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Niles admitted. “I’ve never had a hand in creating a Fictional myself.” He paused, trying to think of something comforting to say. “You know, someone said something to me recently about Bob either being written badly or written very well. Personally, I’d like to believe it was the second one.”

  “You think so?” Stuyvesant asked. If Niles had said it, he would have been fishing for a compliment, but he understood that wasn’t what Stuyvesant needed.

  Niles didn’t think he could manage it, but he tried. “I don’t think you did anything wrong, Mr Stuyvesant,” he said awkwardly, and stuck out a hand. It was the only gesture of absolution he could think to make.

  “I hope not,” Stuyvesant sighed, clasping Niles’ hand and shaking firmly. “I hope not.” Then he wandered off to talk to one of the technicians.

  Niles looked around again for the man in the trench coat, thinking perhaps he should introduce himself after all, but he was already walking away, shoulders hunched, head lowered.

  “THAT WENT WELL,” Niles said dully, picking up the empty glasses after the wake.

  Iyla didn’t say anything.

  The author could feel her trying not to cry from across the room. It was something he remembered from their marriage – the particular microexpressions she reserved for hiding her sorrow and anger from him. He’d been the cause of that silent sorrow too many times to count. He hoped one day he could...

  ...oh, enough.

  Enough.

  It was time to do without the inner narrative, Niles decided. It no longer felt useful, either as a means of hiding his own flaws from himself or as a scourge to drive them out into the light. It just felt like what it had always been – a teenager’s pretentious attempts at self-definition.

  Let other people decide what he was.

  “Iyla?”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said, quietly.

  “Iyla –”

  “He went with you,” she said, the tears finally flowing, running down her cheeks. “His last day alive and he went on that damned road trip with you. To deliver a, a fucking children’s book.” She shook her head, turning away from him. “I argued with him about it. I told him if he wanted to run you around like a damn chauffeur he could take the Mercedes and do it in style. And then I called him a fucking idiot and slammed the door in his face.” She looked him in the eye then, and hers were so full of hate for him he had to look away. “Those were my last words. The last thing I ever said to him. ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’”

  “Iyla, I didn’t mean to –”

  Iyla picked up the glass she’d just put in the sink and hurled it at his head. He ducked and it smashed into the wall, raining shards. “You’re a fucking idiot!” she screamed, grabbing more glasses and hurling them. “You’re a fucking idiot! Fucking, fucking, fucking idiot!”

  Then she sank to her knees and started crying in earnest, great wracking sobs that burst out of her, shaking her whole body.

  “Iyla...” Niles started, unsure what to say. “Iyla, please... Bob wouldn’t want...”

  “G-get out,” she sobbed, not looking at him. “Just... just get out. Get out of my life, Niles.”

  So he did.

  MAURICE ALSO HAD a funeral. It was a lavish affair, crowded with celebrities, producers, publishers and paparazzi, with Aline Zuckerbroth in the central role, vamping for any camera that came along. No previous wives or massage therapists were in attendance.

  Niles stayed for fifteen minutes into the service, then quietly stepped out. Later, he returned to the diner, the last place he’d seen Maurice. It was closed, the door boarded up, tape crosses over the windows.

  On one of the empty tables was a single glass of water.

  HE’D BEEN EXPECTING Mike to call on the trip to Weaverville, and then on the drive back, after the ambulance had collected Bob’s body. He was looking forward to telling Mike to shove his pitch up his ass.

  But instead of Mike, it was a pleasant-sounding woman named Kourtney, “with a K,” who rang that evening. Mike was “very excited about his new position with the studio,” which sounded ominous, and Kourtney-with-a-K was now in charge of the Mr Doll project. She’d read a few of his novels – she made it sound like she actually had read a few of his novels, which was very flattering of her – and would he like to come in and pitch to them the next day? She understood if he couldn’t make it, of course.

  “Why not?” Niles had said, and the next day he met up with Kourtney, whose last name, delightfully, was Katzenjammer, and who looked a great deal like a mathematics teacher he’d once had. They met in a meeting room garnished with a few tasteful posters for films which had been medium-to-large hits, and one which had been a medium-to-large flop, which suggested a refreshing honesty on her part. It was by far the friendliest exchange he’d had with the studio yet – she offered him coffee and asked how he was doing, and he told her a lie that would save everyone needless bad feeling.

  “Well, then,” she said, smiling, “let’s get to it. Mr Doll. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  So Niles gave her his pitch.

  “HMM,” MS KATZENJAMMER said, bringing the knuckle of her index finger up to her lips. “It’s... interesting, I’ll give it that.”

  “Thank you,” Niles said, smiling. He sipped his coffee.

  “I’ve got a few notes right away.” She looked down at her ultrabook, which she’d been tapping on occasionally while he’d been pitching Mr Doll to her. “All right, first note, and it’s a bit of a biggie – no spies, no ’sixties retro, no explosions.” She looked at him over her half-moon glasses. “That’s what I call ‘ignoring th
e brief,’ Mr Golan. Not the kind of thing we encourage.”

  Niles shrugged.

  “Oh-kay,” Ms Katzenjammer said. “Now, all this about Fictionals and the nature of fiction – that’s nice. A little highbrow, but maybe we can work with it. If we did go ahead with this, though, and it is a huge if – we absolutely have to lose the Fictional-slash-real sex scene. I mean, ew.” She made a face. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s very daring, but believe me, Mr Golan, it’ll never play in Peiora.”

  Niles coughed quietly. “Well, I don’t consider Mr Doll to be a Fictional, exactly. I feel that, er, he becomes real over the course of the film.”

  Ms Katzenjammer flashed him a look. “No. Lose it.”

  Niles shrugged.

  Ms Katzenjammer ignored him, tapping the screen of her ultrabook with a fingernail. “Ditto this. The female character, the one who wants to be a Fictional.”

  “What about her?”

  “For a start, no she doesn’t. I know we wanted a little kink in there, just to spice things up, but that’s veering into the absurd. People don’t want to be Fictionals, and if they do, there’s something wrong with them. Just have her into some light spanking or something. Go for the Fifty Shades Of Grey audience. The movie, I mean, not the book.”

  “Is there a movie?” Niles hadn’t heard.

  “There will be. There always is.” She gave him another look. “More importantly – her story just seems to peter out. Does the protagonist ever go back?”

  “I don’t know,” Niles said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Yes, well, that’s what I call ‘not having a finished pitch,’ Mr Golan,” Ms Katzenjammer said testily, “and that’s not the kind of thing I encourage either. You’re on very thin ice right now. It’s only because I think the themes you’ve worked into it have such potential that I’m going to give you another chance at this.”