The Writer

by RB Banfield

  “It’s because you will be there, Sophie,” Rebecca said like she was defying a secret truce by announcing it. “Mother has talked to him about you non-stop, before you got here. Told him all about you.”

  Sophie looked at her grandmother horrified that she could do such a thing.

  “I might have mentioned you once or twice,” Susan said like it wasn’t anything important. “Nothing to be concerned over, dear. You know how a grandmother likes to talk up her children. I only told him about your writing. And he was very interested, actually, so it may not be such a big waste of time after all.”

  “No dumb hobby?” Kerry asked with a glance at his brother.

  “No unreachable dream?” added Jerry, gaining an approving glance from Kerry.

  “Boys, don’t be rude like that to your niece,” Susan chided. “We’re polite here to one another during the family meal. Always remember that.”

  Sophie tried to hide that she was perturbed at openly being called their niece. “I thought we weren’t going to say that word,” she said.

  “Our niece!” reacted Kerry, gaining a glare from Susan.

  “You can’t deny that, Sophie,” Rebecca said with a grin.

  “I don’t wish to discuss it,” she replied.

  “Enough of this subject,” Susan announced. “Kerry, tell us about your new school project, please.”

  Sophie felt her checks burn as she realised that she had overreacted to what was nothing more than playfulness. Like the three children, she did not have a father, but unlike them, she had never known who he was. To make it worse, Susan seemed to have decided that she would never know.

  There was one part of town where the street became so narrow that it should have been one lane but it wasn’t. Any experienced driver knew to be careful and courteous, and not go too fast, as any normal driver would have. But the speeding car went down there as fast as the driver could get it. He had been doing laps for a good hour, faster and faster, seeing no one except a car with two old people. They were given a good scare and he had a good laugh. The driver still laughed at that memory and went to have another shot of whiskey. He was nearly finished with the bottle and he needed to kick his head right back to get a good mouthful. Then he dropped the bottle onto his lap. In reaching for it too fast he bumped it further down, to his feet. Cursing, he fumbled a hand around under his legs, now and then touching it with his fingers but losing it again, like it was playing a game with him. With each turn of the wheel the bottle slid more, first under his seat and then up against the pedals. When he finally managed to grab it, he was leaning so much that he couldn’t see the road. There was a massive crunching noise that made the car shudder so violently that he left his seat and bumped his head on the roof.

  He continued driving for a few seconds, partly through letting his booze-soaked brain have time to comprehend what just happened, and partly in denial that anything had happened at all. His main focus was that he now had his bottle back in his hands and nothing else really mattered that much. It was more curiosity that made him he stop and spend some time trying to find reverse. When he found it he went too fast backwards. The car went over something so hard that he again bounced up out of his seat. He stopped the car and sat there for a full five minutes, laughing at the humour of it all. When he did stop with laughing he found the silence funny and so he took a while laughing at that too. Then he thought that maybe he should get out to see what he had hit. He hoped it was another letterbox. He dreaded that it was a deer and that his car might be covered in blood.

  Paul and Sarah Evans had an unusual relationship with Max and Jill Marshall. Sarah had been Jill’s best friend since high school, but when Jill started seeing Max, Sarah decided she wanted him for herself and seduced him. Max didn’t know how to tell Jill, but then Sarah became interested in Paul, so it was all over between her and Max. For Max’s part, he tried to tell himself that he was no longer interested in Sarah, and that it was a meaningless fling, that he was in love with Jill. He told himself that every time they prepared to meet with the Evans. When he laid eyes on Sarah he realised how little regard she now held for him. The last thing he was going to do was let her know how much Sarah had hurt him, and if it was not for Jill, he would never want to be in the same room with her again.

  To make matters worse, Paul had once been Jill’s boyfriend, way back when they were in their early teens. They were voted the most handsome couple in their school yearbook. Max always wondered if there might still be something there between them, especially when they would look at each other and smile for no obvious reason. Paul himself was someone Max would never want to befriend. He was a man blissfully unaware of how obnoxious he could be. If that wasn’t bad enough, Paul was also slightly abusive to everyone; just enough for it to never become a matter of discussion but it was always there under the surface. The only reason Max engaged in social meetings with the Evans was to keep Jill happy, and that, in turn, stopped her from picking at him.

  Over the previous week Jill had been acting unusual. Max suspected it was because she was unhappy with his latest book. The more she asked him about how it was coming, the more defensive he became. He hoped that meeting with her friend Sarah would take her mind off him and his work. All he had to do was pretend he was interested in whatever Paul said, and laugh in all the right places, and he would be okay. He would get through the evening and they would go home happy, and he would remind Jill every day for the following month or so.

  Sarah opened the front door and welcomed them in with her usual showy greeting. Jill went first, as she always did, allowing Max to take his time. Sarah made a point of admiring Jill’s lovely new dress, while lingering to hold the door open for Max to limp in. He put his crutch in the corner next to the door, as was his habit, not knowing if it was a good place for it or not. He saw pity in Sarah’s eyes and he appreciated that. He also liked that she knew not to ask him how his ankle was feeling. It had now been ten years since he had broken it, falling down twenty steps one stormy winter’s night. It had never healed properly and would flare up whenever the temperature turned cold. He still took painkillers and at times they did not help at all. Jill told people behind his back that the pain was psychological and he was only seeking sympathy and attention.

  Paul welcomed them as he usually did, by giving Max an overly strong handshake and pretending that he wasn’t limping. The main subject he preferred to discuss with Max was the latest sport results, no matter what the sport was. He never thought to ask Max if he liked, or followed, the particular sport he was centering on, but just went ahead and assumed he followed them all. Max was happy to pretend that he knew what Paul was talking about. Over time he had learned to deftly ask generic questions that sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

  “Really? How does that affect their next game? Interesting, I didn’t notice that. What was that other game they played when that happened, couple of years ago? Really, that long ago? Didn’t that player have that same injury before? Thought so. Must be injury prone. That new player looks good; what was his name again? That young guy. That’s right, that’s the one. But that old player needs to retire, or do you think he still has another season in him?”

  In reality, Max found most professional sport to be boring and time wasting. His passion was music, and he owned a collection of a wide range of styles, from opera to progressive rock. It was his own unique opinion that the middle ground between both were exemplified in the music of Elvis Presley. In Max’s younger days, long before his accident, he was something of a successful Elvis impersonator. Because of his weight problem he could only become Old Las Vegas Elvis. Under the moniker ‘Elivs’, dressed in the full white suit with slick black dyed hair and the full exaggerated arm swinging, he held more than a few weddings and business functions enthralled. The main problem was that his voice, while starting out quite well, could only last for about ten minutes—fifteen tops—until he started to warble and whine instead of rockin’ and rollin’.
Some days he felt good enough with his impersonation to go into work, on the bus and train, dressed as his hero, ignoring the jeers and celebrating the cheers. Looking back on those days now, he laughed at himself, wondering where he found the confidence to do such things. His singing lately was left to the shower, when he not so much Elivs but actually Elvis himself, in his prime.

  Their meal was going well; tasty spiral pasta dish with tuna and mushrooms, with spring onions and mushroom soup, topped with grilled tomato and breadcrumbs. Max thought of it as something intriguing at the start, turning to okay through the middle stages, until becoming a bit sickly towards the end. The wine helped.

  Paul was talking about the failings of some basketball team that only he was interested in, and Sarah was busy in relaying the latest gossip from the office where she worked—Max had forgotten where. And then Jill had to go and ruin the evening by asking Max a question.

  “Why don’t you tell everyone about your new story, Max?” she suggested.

  He heard the bitterness in her voice, just enough for him to notice and the others not. He had hoped to sit back with his glass of now room-temperature Pinot Gris and let Paul drone on and the girls titter. Now not only did he have to partake of the conversation, but he was forced to wonder if Jill was about to make a scene of it.

  “Yes, do tell us,” said Paul. “After the success of your last one, I’d imagine any kind of follow-up would seem like the hardest thing in the world. Don’t know how you do it, except for the money, of course. That I can understand. I’d write one myself, if I could ever find the time.”

  “His last book was five years ago now,” said Jill, which wasn’t exactly accurate.

  “Really?” asked Sarah as she went to sip some wine of her own. “It’s been that long? Where’s the time gone?”

  “It’s not much to talk about, really,” said Max, hoping that would be the end of it. “I start to worry that any mention of it, at this early stage, might jinx it.”

  “Come on, Max,” said Paul, “don’t go all humble on us. We’re your fan base.”

  “I, for one, would be very interested to hear what you’re working on next,” said Sarah.

  Max wondered if they were being serious, that they really were interested in his work, and if that was true then he owed it to them to be polite about it. Knowing that there was a slight chance that they actually did want to know, his ego got the better of him and he decided to actually discuss it with them. It was something he had only dreamed of doing, holding a dinner party enthralled by discussion about his latest book, and what his plans were for sequels and spinoffs.

  “I’m not about to give away any of the plot,” he said, “not at this stage, when I’ve just started it. But I can say this: It’s about a young woman who goes to live with her grandmother, out in the country town Gendry—you might have heard of it.”

  “Good trout there,” said Paul. “Some of the guys at work rave about the place. Not much of a trout man myself, but the guys who love it say it’s one of the best places you can go.”

  “So,” Max continued, knowing that the conversation could easily go off in the direction of Paul’s workmates, or trout, or the guys at his work, “this girl thinks it’s the perfect place, the right peaceful atmosphere and slow way of life. Everything goes fine until—“

  “Until she finds out she’s really a vampire?” interrupted Sarah. “You can’t go wrong with that angle.”

  “There are no vampires in this story,” said Max. “It’s a real life thing.”

  “Go on, Max,” Sarah apologised, “and I’ll not butt-in again.”

  “Yeah, anyway, in this house of her grandmothers, it’s a boarding house, a bed and breakfast place, and these strange people are there; her family and this other guy, whom she is yet to meet. They’re all a little odd.”

  “But she will meet this other guy at the right time?” asked Paul.

  “I’m just up to that part, actually. I’m not sure exactly how it’ll turn out, but she’s been invited to a party, and he’ll be there too. As I said, everything is going along fine for her with her holiday with her family, until she meets this mysterious guy.”

  “Dull, right?” Jill said to the others. “That’s all he’s got. No story, no ending, just all that dull stuff.”

  “You think it’s dull?” Max asked her, hurt that she would say that to them.

  “It’s not exactly sounding much like a page turner,” she added, not looking at him.

  “Jill’s right,” said Paul. “Sorry, Max, but you need more punch to it, more to get it noticed, to give the great masses a reason to read it, to go nuts over it. Like your last book did.”

  “The public didn’t go nuts over my last book …” Max started.

  “Tell you what you want to put in it,” said Paul, looking enthused. “A car crash, or a really nasty accident. Lots of detail about blood and guts. Go all CSI.”

  “I was reading a book like that recently,” said Sarah, “and you know what was in it? One of the main characters died; didn’t see it coming at all, and it was such a shock I had to take a minute to get my breath back. Isn’t that funny? I know the person’s not real, and yet I was genuinely sad when this character died. It was like I knew him. Guess that’s what happens when a book is really well written. You start to think of them as real people.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Max,” said Paul. “Kill off a couple of characters. The car accident, that’ll do. Kill off the girl—what was her name, your lead?”

  “Sophie, wasn’t it?” asked Jill.

  “The main character’s named Sophie,” said Max, knowing that Jill was enjoying their taunting, even if Paul and Sarah didn’t realise what was going on.

  “What better way to shock the audience?” asked Paul. “Kill her and make it quick and nasty, and violent. Give them a big shock, that’s the way to do it.”

  “Who says I want to shock my audience?” asked Max, losing interest and sitting back in his chair to study his wine.

  “Today’s audience likes to be shocked,” said Sarah.

  “You’ve got to think of your audience,” said Paul.

  “I think of my audience when I need to,” said Max. “And I’ll have a few shocks in there. But it’s not my main storyline.”

  “What kind of shocks?” asked Sarah.

  “You will have to wait until you read it yourself,” he said.

  Paul couldn’t disguise a laugh as he said, “I’m still getting through your last one. The one about cats.”

  “You didn’t finish it?” Sarah asked him.

  “I think I got to the halfway mark,” he said. “I think I did, anyway. I remember thinking how well I had done by getting there. I wasn’t going to let it beat me. I was going to get to at least halfway before I gave up. Where is the book, Sarah, do you know?”

  “I haven’t seen it for a while,” she said. “I think it was in the bathroom, last time I saw it.”

  “I can get you another one,” said Max, knowing he’d decline.

  “That’s ok; it’ll turn up,” said Paul.

  “What did you think of the ending, Sarah?” Jill asked her, watching for Max’s reaction.

  “I didn’t get to the end,” Sarah admitted. “I was hoping Paul would, so he could tell me what happened.”

  “Don’t worry; it’s not much,” said Jill. “The main thing is how much money it puts into our bank account.”

  They laughed at what they thought was a joke and Max finished off the rest of his wine.

  Since there was never anything to do in Gendry besides trout fishing, Sophie went to the party with the twins and Rebecca. Her other option was to sit around and gossip, or watch the wind move the trees, or see the birds doing whatever it is that birds do, or try some more writing of her novel. She might have gone to Sal’s, the only eatery in town, geared mainly for some random trucker, but that would leave her with nowhere to go tomorrow. Or the next day. The same people would be at Sal’s every day, and
they never really had any intention of going anywhere else.

  The Maxwell house itself was small, and son Taylor an only-child. His parents lived in a torrid relationship and he spent half of his life with them living apart, yet all still within the Gendry town limits. He was a big boy for his age and had a slight learning disorder, but he was a kind soul who went out of his way with his generosity to anyone he met. For his thirteenth birthday, his first in five years in which both his parents would be in attendance, all his friends, young and old, wanted to give him a special birthday to remember.

  A tall girl of about fourteen, her mouth a shocking display of braces, frantically waved her hands to gain attention. “Quick, you who are still standing,” she said while fighting to keep her voice hushed, “find somewhere to hide. Taylor’s on his way here right now. He still suspects nothing, so keep as quiet as you can, okay? Let’s try to make it a good one and give him a big fright, like the time when grandpa Watkins died.”

  Then she turned the lights out and issued a further warning to keep quiet. Sophie had been one of the last to arrive and she could only guess at how many people were hiding in the main living area. On one side of the front door was a dining table. The other was a sofa, two old chairs and small television. Most people were crouching behind the furniture, and for one horrible moment it crossed Sophie’s mind that she had nowhere to go.

  “Over here,” came a calming male voice behind her, and then she felt a warm hand on her arm, guiding her towards a closet.

  “Thanks,” she said. It surprised her how quickly she got into the fun of the event, despite not knowing most of them. She felt like she was a young teenager again. The presence of the mysterious man near her made her feel a type of nervousness she might have had when she was twelve.

  “He’s coming up the drive now!” someone else announced.

  An eerie quiet filled the room.

  “You’re Sophie, aren’t you?” the man asked her as they struggled to both fit into the closet, since there were at least two others in there with them, both children.