by Al Ewing
Niles shrugged. “All right.”
“All right,” Ms Katzenjammer sighed. “If I think of any other notes, and I probably will, I can send you an email, can’t I?” She nodded to herself. “Yes, I can. Now, remember, we want secret agents, lots of sex – sex that’ll play in Peiora, mind you – and if you could, a nice big exploding volcano base. And absolutely oodles of ’sixties retro.” She frowned. “You can keep the, ah, existential elements if you absolutely must, but let’s not make the next one such a downer, shall we? And bring me a finished pitch next time with all the plot threads tied up in a neat little bow.”
Niles nodded, and stood up to leave.
“And this time make sure it’s got a happy ending!” Ms Katzenjammer said, getting up to shake his hand.
Niles smiled tightly. “I’ll do my best.”
WHEN HE TOOK the bus to Liz’s apartment building, a burly man in overalls was bringing in two tins of paint and a roller, and he held the door open for Niles in contravention of all the building security regulations. Niles thanked him kindly, and then ended up following him all the way up to the fourth floor.
Liz’s apartment was empty.
Every trace of her was gone – the books, the VHS cassettes, the piles of dishes. Even the smell of cigarette smoke was gone. Without the clutter, the apartment seemed vast. Most of the walls were now a gleaming white, and the painter Niles had followed up the stairs and into the apartment was getting to work on one of the few that were still the old colour.
“Sorry, friend, can I do something for you?” He said, eyeing Niles suspiciously.
Niles blinked, trying to take in the change. “I’m sorry, do you – do you know the woman who was here?”
The painter shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t. I’m just here to do the place up for the next tenant. You could ask the landlord about her, I guess.”
Niles nodded. “Have you got his number?”
The painter looked at him for a moment. “Sorry, friend, I don’t. But I could maybe pass you on a message.” He stood up, still eyeing Niles. “You got her name?”
Niles shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t.”
The painter looked at him for a moment, shook his head, then went back to his wall without another word. Niles wandered out onto the landing, digging his phone out of his pocket.
He looked through the numbers, and one by one, he deleted them – all the people he’d driven away – until only one number remained. The last person in the world who’d actually want to hear from him.
“Kourtney? It’s Niles Golan. Listen, about the new pitch – I don’t think it’s going to have a happy ending after all. No... no, I don’t think there is anything I can change.” He nodded. “Mmm. Well, I’m sorry too. No, I don’t think I’m going to be going back to novels. It turns out I’m not very good at them.” He smiled. “Well, nice to have met you.”
He swiped his finger to end the call, then deleted everything from the phone. The phone itself he left in the stairwell, along with his wallet.
He smiled, feeling suddenly very calm, and walked out of the building in the direction of the Victoria. She wouldn’t be there. He understood that. But someone would be – someone who could write him into something.
The evening light of Los Angeles was turning the world into a movie set. The fictional character who’d once been Niles Golan took a deep breath, smiled, and quickened his pace, already excited. He wondered who he’d be.
He couldn’t wait to find out.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank Richard E Hughes and Dave Gabrielson, original creators of The Black Terror.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Al Ewing is a fictional character invented by playwright and syndicated columnist Dwight Augenheimer. A background character in many of Augenheimer’s bedroom farces, he appears as the protagonist of the 2012 play The Reluctant Insomniac, in which he claims to have written for comics such as 2000 AD, Avengers Assemble and Jennifer Blood, as well as writing a number of “critically-acclaimed” novels for Abaddon Books, including Gods Of Manhattan and Pax Omega.
Over the course of the play, Ewing struggles with – and finally completes – a sprawling metafictional novel called The Fictional Man; however, a final attempted bit of cleverness in the biography section of the book leads, through a series of bizarre coincidences and mishaps, to the writer being marooned naked in the wilds of Alaska, pursued by a bear. Augenheimer has expressed a desire to further humiliate the character in future works.
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