The Meteoric Rise of Simon Burchwood

by Scott Semegran

  "Don't give him too much to drink," Jason cracked. "He might go crazy and black out." He thought his joke was pretty funny and he laughed his maniacal laugh, wheezing and coughing and spitting all over the place. The flight attendant chuckled too but I think she was chuckling more at Jason's demeanor than his joke. He was laughing all over the place like a goddamn idiot.

  I ordered a Coke for myself and a beer for Jason and the flight attendant gave us that fake, sugary smile that she was so proficient at. I was hoping maybe Jason would drink a few beers and pass out until we reached New York. That would have been a treat. But after the third one, there was no sign of him falling to sleep. It was a goddamn shame. It's true.

  I decided that since I had the time to burn, I would work through a writing exercise that I did to keep my creative mind sharp. I was really disappointed that I didn't spend any time writing while I was in Montgomery. But can you blame me? My entire stay there was a bust: a creative bust and a personal bust. I grabbed my backpack from under my seat and pulled out the materials I needed. Jason was surprised as hell to see what I used to flex my creative muscles.

  "You have Mad Libs? What do you have Mad Libs for?" he asked. Then he started laughing like a hyena again, wheezing and coughing all over the goddamn place. It was a mistake ordering him all those beers. He was obviously getting drunk off his ass. "Those are for kids, right? We used to pass those around in school. Remember?"

  "Yes, I remember. I use these to keep my creative impulses sharp. It takes a lot of work to keep the creative mind active. Here, let me show you how it works."

  "I know how they work, dummy," he said, grabbing one of the Mad Lib booklets. He grabbed my pen too, the bastard. "You just fill in the blanks with your own words." He flipped through the pages to find a passage of interest.

  "OK. You do one first and I'll change what you have to what I'm thinking. How's that?"

  Jason selected the first passage. This is what it said with the blanks empty:

  "Exclamation!" she said adverb as she jumped into his noun and took off with his adjective automobile.

  He scribbled in his words, wagging his tongue as his pea-brain churned out the new phrases. When he was finished, he started laughing and wheezing all over the place. He was really starting to get on my goddamn nerves. It's true.

  "These are great! You'd never think grammar would be so much fun!" he said, laughing again like a drunken hyena.

  I took the booklet from him and read his selections. This is what he wrote:

  "Fuck!" she said pervertedly as she jumped into his pants and took off with his fucking automobile.

  He was a fucking genius, I tell you. It was obvious.

  "I don't know if that word is an adjective," I said, trying to keep my voice down. I pointed to the word fucking. I didn't want to have to say it out loud.

  "Who cares. It's funny." Jason was really amused with himself. I'm sure he thought it was the funniest goddamn thing in the world. "Let me see what you would put in there."

  I accepted the challenge and erased what he had in the blanks. I racked my brain for the most creative words to put there in place of his obscenities. It took me a few more minutes than it did Jason, especially since I was trying to be creative and not amusing. This is what I eventually came up with:

  "Eureka!" she said boastfully as she jumped into his seat and took off with his pristine automobile.

  I handed the booklet to Jason and he read what I wrote. He looked puzzled when he was finished.

  "That's not funny," he said, scratching his head.

  "It's not supposed to be funny. It's an exercise in writing."

  "But it's Mad Libs. They're supposed to be funny. You're supposed to pick words that don't mean anything. That's why they're funny. Your sentence is just normal."

  "Like I said, I'm not trying to be funny. I fill in the blanks with the appropriate words and then I rewrite them over and over, changing the words into as many variations as I can think of. I'm trying to exercise my mind."

  It was obvious that we weren't thinking on the same plane. In a way, I felt kind of sorry for Jason, especially since it seemed like he didn't take anything in life seriously. Maybe that's why his marriage was such a goddamn wreck. Maybe that's why he was such a goddamn pig. He thinks everything in this world should be a goddamn joke. And unfortunately for him, his life was a joke. It's true. Since he ruined the state my mind needed to be in to perform my exercises, I decided to put the booklets away. Jason watched as I grabbed my backpack and stuffed the booklets into the front pouch. He looked a little curious, like a child looking at something his parents didn't want him to look at.

  "Simon?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Wha'cha got in the backpack? You hold onto it and guard it like it's filled with gold or something?" he asked. He was really starting to drive me crazy with his questions and laughing and curiosity and goddamn drunkenness. I wished that he would just go to sleep and leave me alone for the rest of the trip.

  "I told you. I have my manuscript in here. It's the only copy I have. So in a way, it's kind of like gold to me."

  "Can I see it?" he asked. I was feeling really reluctant about pulling it out, especially knowing how Jason would probably handle it. I'm sure he would spill something on it or drop it or crush the pages and smudge the type or something. He was like that, you know. He was a goddamn disaster waiting to happen. But he insisted. "Please? I won't ruin it. I promise."

  He looked all sad and hurt like I was withholding his only glimpse at happiness. It was pretty goddamn pathetic. But I thought and hoped that maybe if I did show it to him, then maybe he would leave me alone. I conceded.

  "OK. But be careful. I'm serious as a nuclear war." I unzipped the main compartment of the backpack and pulled out my manuscript. I held it up like it was the goddamn Rosetta Stone or something. I kept my manuscript in a three-ring binder and it was --- pages of complete literary bliss. I don't mean to brag but it's true. Why do you think there was a massive bidding war for this manuscript?

  "Wow!" he said, and that's all he said. He looked at the mammoth manuscript with pure amazement. I'm sure he was thinking about all the hard work and long hours I put into bringing this book to fruition. "Can I read it?" He opened the binder to the title page and read what was there. It said: THE RISE AND FALL OF A TITAN by Simon Burchwood. But as soon as he read that I closed the binder as quickly as I could.

  "You'll have to wait like everybody else," I said, putting the manuscript back into my backpack, where it belonged. "You'll hear an excerpt at the reading tomorrow but that's all. I'll give you a copy of the book once it's released, especially since you're assisting me this weekend. It's the least I can do."

  "Thanks, I guess." Jason turned to the window and watched the ground proceed beneath us, thousands of feet down. I placed the backpack safely under my chair. I decided to close my eyes and try to get some rest. I knew I had a long couple of days ahead and this was probably going to be the only time I could get some sleep. I tried not to think about my trip to Montgomery or the impending stress I was going to face or the flight or anything. But that can last only so long sitting next to Jason. His mind and his mouth run a mile a goddamn minute. He never gives you a break.

  "I saw you talking to Patty Green last night," he said, still looking out the window. "I saw you talking to her at Mitchell's. How come you didn't mention it this morning?"

  "I didn't think of it, I guess. It was innocent enough."

  "Really?" he asked. I sensed a tone of sarcasm in his voice. Jason was really obvious that way. He had no goddamn couth whatsoever, just like his mother. It's true.

  "Yes, really."

  "Then how come I saw you kiss her at her house?" he asked. The question ripped through me like a sharp steak knife. "Is that how a married man is supposed to act?"

  "I didn't kiss her. She kissed me."

  "That's not what I saw. It wasn't like I was that far away from you two. I could see you perfectly from the backse
at of the Chevette."

  "I thought you were passed out?"

  "I woke up just long enough to see that. And that's all I had to see. You knew I had a thing for her in school. How could you do that to me?" Jason did have a thing for little Patty Green in school, especially after she kissed him while we were playing spin the bottle at her birthday party. He had a crush on her something bad, just like I did. We both liked her. But Jason actually told her how he felt. Like I said, he didn't have any couth. He just blurted things out like they were nothing. And to him, I had broken the code of male friendship: never tread on another man's girl. And even though I didn't do anything wrong, Jason was convinced that I had broken the sacred code. "That really hurt me, you know. That's why I got drunk at Mitchell's."

  "You got drunk because I was talking to Patty Green? I thought you got drunk because of Betty."

  "That too. I got drunk because of everything. Everything was fine until you came into town. That's when everything started to fall apart."

  Unbelievably, I tried to put myself in Jason's shoes. It was hard to do but I did it. I thought about how he must have felt seeing me kiss his childhood crush. And I wondered how he would feel if he knew his wife wanted to have sex with me so she could get out of their goddamn marriage. For a minute, I felt horrible, completely low to the ground. I felt like the lowest of the lowly bottom-feeders, a catfish sucking the shit from the bottom of the Guadalupe River. It didn't matter that little Patty Green had a thing for me, a thing that lasted since the first time I kissed her. And it didn't matter what I knew about his whore wife; nothing mattered from my perspective. Jason didn't know these things. All he knew was that his life was falling to pieces and he attributed my arrival as the catalyst for that. I didn't know what to say. It's true. For once, I was at a loss for words.

  "Jason, I don't know what to say. Really. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. But I really didn't kiss Patty. She kissed me. She must have been drunk or something. We did drink a lot of beer and all."

  Jason continued to look out the window at the clouds. He rested his chin in his hand and released a soft sigh.

  "What does it matter anyway, right? I'm married to Betty now. I have my own set of problems. What does an old flame mean now anyway?

  "It means nothing, really," I said. I placed my hand on his shoulder. I really felt sorry for him. He was acting like a really sad bastard. "And I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose. You have to believe me."

  "I believe you. Maybe I've just had too many beers," he whispered. And with that, he fell asleep. His head sagged to the side and rested against the window. He started snoring like a goddamn monster. Normally, I would have been pretty embarrassed. But this time, I was the one that felt like a sad bastard. I really did. It's true.

  The flight attendant came by with a small blanket and covered Jason. She flashed me that fake, sugary smile and said, "He's sleeping soundly, huh?"

  "Yes, he is," I replied. "He's sleeping like a baby." He was out cold and honking and wheezing away in his sleep. I tried to get some sleep as well but couldn't. So I pulled out the Mad Libs and continued my exercises. This is what I wrote:

  "You bastard!" she said remorsefully as she jumped into his car and took off with his friend's automobile.

  My word-choices seemed better suited each time I rewrote it. I rewrote the phrase twenty two times. But it was never perfect. I wanted to rewrite the entire phrase but what's the point? Sometimes, there's just no point to anything anymore.

  I stopped writing because my hand started to hurt, what, with the sore the size of a half-dollar in the palm of my goddamn writing hand. It didn't seem to be getting any better and when you feel as depressed as I was feeling, the pain seemed to be amplified. It's true. What was (at first) a little scrape burned more and more like a stab wound. And goddamn it if that didn't make everything seem that much worse.

  20.

  New York, New York. Before I knew it, I could see the sprawling metropolis from the airplane window spreading across the surface of the earth like a cancer. But what a beautiful cancer! The plane descended from the sky like a comet from God and I could feel the anxiety and excitement well up in me and throb in the pit of my stomach. All of my dreams were finally coming to light, finally coming to fruition right before my eyes. So many wonderful things were about to happen. Besides my literary debut at the Barnes & Noble flagship store, I was supposed to meet my editor and her staff for the first time. Through the entire goddamn publishing process, I never had a chance to meet them face to face. It's true. Everything was done over the phone and through snail mail and e-mail, from the initial submission to the first, second, and third revisions to the galley. In case you didn't know, the galley is the first typeset version of the book that the publisher sends to the author for final revisions and approval. Anyway, it was a long distance affair from start to finish. Initially, I often wondered what my editor looked like, if she was attractive or not, a blonde or a brunette, thin or full-figured, lusty or prudish, with a fair or dark complexion (don't you think of these things?). We spoke for quite some time without really knowing what each other looked like. Of course, she eventually had the advantage because I had to send a photo of myself for publicity reasons (of course). But I had the burning desire to find out what she looked like so I did some research and found a picture of her on the internet. I mean, it's pretty difficult forming a relationship with someone if you have no idea what they look like. It's true. How do you think all these women who write to prisoners actually get the courage to marry one of those bastard convicts? At least with a photo, you know what you are getting into. And when I found her picture, I was actually quite surprised to see that she didn't look anything like I had imagined. From the sound of her voice, I had imagined a tall woman who looked and carried herself like Susan Sarandon, the movie actress. You know, on the phone she seemed very smart and cunning and manipulative, logical yet emotional, and oddly attractive. But what I discovered was that my editor looked more like Aretha Franklin. I'm not kidding. From the sound of her voice, I had no idea that she was an African-American woman with a hefty frame and not a typical inflection in her voice that would have given her skin tone and heritage away. It's true. It's really strange how your mind can mold images for you from clues and tidbits of information it takes in. I guess you could say that my thoughts of her looking like Susan Sarandon could give some insight into what I think and like about women in general, what, considering that I really like Susan Sarandon's goddamn movies and all. But it's also interesting how your mind can mislead you like that. It's very interesting indeed. Not that it changed how we dealt with each other or anything. I mean, I'm not a racist or anything. It was just a tiny revelation. That's all.

  Anyway, Jason was snoring up a fucking storm. He was wheezing and honking and snorting all over the goddamn place. It sounded like he was going to choke on his own saliva or something. I mean, even the flight attendant came over and asked me if he was all right and if I should wake him up and see if he was OK and all. I didn't necessarily want to do that. I mean, I was actually enjoying not having to listen to him talk for a while. Even though he was snoring like a fog horn, he wasn't actually talking to me. So I told the flight attendant that I would check on him even though I actually didn't do a goddamn thing to stop the snoring. He didn't finally start waking up until the plane began its descent. Once the plane tipped forward and started heading down, Jason woke up like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him. It's true. He thought the plane was falling from the sky.

  "What's going on?! Is everything OK? Is the plane OK? Are we going to die?!" he asked frantically, spreading his arms out and bracing himself for a crash. His hair was kind of smashed on one side and sticking up on the other side.

  "Everything's OK, Jason. The plane's just getting ready to land. Don't you think everyone would be screaming if the plane was about to crash or something?" He stopped for a second and listened, validating what I just said. He rubbed the crus
t from his eyes.

  "I guess you're right." He sat up and adjusted his clothes and tried to mash down his messy hair (it was useless). Looking out the window, he discovered the city below us and marveled at its size and scope. "Wow, look how big New York is. It's incredible. I've never seen anything like it."

  "New York is an amazing place," I said, looking out the window as well. "It's not only a big city, it's the cultural center of the world, in my opinion. Anyone who is anybody in literature or music or television or theater has to make it here. I mean, there are other cities that are important to the arts but New York's the biggest and grandest of them all. If you can make it here, you can make it ..."

  "You can make it anywhere, just like it says in the song!"

  "That's right. Just like the song." I'm telling you, Jason was a goddamn genius. It's true. He could finish my sentences without batting an eye. I guess that's why we were such good friends.

  "I think the biggest city I've ever been to is Birmingham, or maybe Mobile. I don't know which city is bigger but neither of them are as big as New York."

  "There's no place as big as New York."

  By this point, the plane was in fast pursuit of the runway. Jason gripped the armrests of his seat like he was holding on for his life, clenching the plastic with the tips of his goddamn, grubby fingers. The plane hit the ground with a double thud and skidded its way to a complete stop, before turning to the terminal and approaching at a pedestrian pace. Jason exhaled a sigh of relief, expressing his gratitude that the plane had made it to the ground safely. It would be a short while before we got off the plane, considering that we had to wait in a goddamn line for everyone else to get their bags and their crap from the overhead compartments. And the flight attendant wasn't helping matters, standing at the front of the plane flashing her fake smile and big tits. It was all an exercise in patience that I was failing miserably.