by Kit Reed
Hello out there, Audience? Judges? Whatever you are. This is Cynthia LaMott, speaking to you from The Confessional in the re-purposed Gothic chapel on my very first day at Strickfield. What a rush! First I want to thank Dame Hilda for founding the colony in memory of Ralph Strickler, her son, who died. Nobody will say how, but it was awful. Greetings from the great stone castle where many are called but few are, oh, you know.
Mom, they chose me, bad Cynnie, and not Leon, family crown prince and bum playwright, for this expense-paid summer in the castle; if you have to ask you can’t afford it, and fuck you.
Davy was very sweet about it when I got the callback because until last week, he thought we were equals. He’s a poet so it shouldn’t be a problem, but it is. A guy in a white suit hand-carried the invitation up four flights to our front door. By the time Davy and I opened it he was down in the street, getting into a cab. Davy made me jump for the envelope like this was a game, which it definitely is not.
I think.
Mom, it was for me! Time, place and dates engraved, with a note added in that farty, rich-girl handwriting you see in raised silver foil on every Aline Armantout best seller:
Welcome, writer-in-waiting. At Strickfield, you’ll do great things, and this year we’re starting something new! Do come. Your future depends on it.
xxxx A.A.
That’s all.
Aline herself followed up with a phone call, which is how Davy and I knew it wasn’t a joke. I wanted to ask about the something new but she said, “Congratulations, you are chosen.” Period. Davy gave me Swarovski crystals to prove he isn’t mad. Real writers don’t have day jobs so Davy maxed out his plastic to cover the rental car plus gas and snacks along the way to keep me sharp so I can sparkle at the Opening Night Banquet. Everybody, it’s black tie!
We drove forever to get here. Strickfield is in the middle of, like, the Black Forest. Who knew it was also shopping hell? No malls anywhere, you can’t even order online. In woods like these, delivery kids get hunted down and eaten by bears, and all the pretty things in their packages ripped to shreds. Riding up here, I could swear I saw wolves running along behind the car. They didn’t peel off until the castle gates opened up and then clanged shut behind Davy’s Zip car like a giant bear trap.
In spite of which this place is beautiful, although there are weird noises coming from the attic and rumors about the Thing in the Lake. Three months, all expenses paid, what could go wrong?
Well, one thing. Nobody warned me every single dinner is black tie. If I do this right I’ll be famous, my whole life is at stake and I’m sitting here thinking, what to wear, what to wear?
See, for dress up, I brought exactly one sexy dress and my Jimmy Choos that I got off a stall, I saw the guy glue in the label himself. Oh, and my present Davy bought to prove he’s OK with this—which was big of him, as, whatever the game is, we both know he just lost.
Entre nous, it’s just as well Strickfield’s just for the chosen, so he’s not allowed to stay. When you’re in love with a guy, the last thing you want is you and him both fighting over the same prize.
I hope Davy gets home all right.
I hope he won’t dump me if I lose.
Unless I’m scared he’ll dump me if I win.
Do I love being a writer more than I love my boyfriend, are we lovers or rivals or what? Not clear. I’m not a poet like he is, so we thought it was OK but it isn’t, and that’s just bad.
Which is more important, really, my one-and-only or this thing that I don’t even know what it is, that I have to do? Does wanting something bigger than I am make me a writer or is there more? It’s not like I can make out the size and shape of my ambition, all I know is that I want this, and I want it BAD.
Writers work alone but here I am, batched with people who fought, bled and died to make it here, so what’s that all about? Probably we’d rather hang out than work, so we’re putting off the hard part, where we have to sit down and bash our heads against a wall of words with nobody around to cheer us on. See, at rock bottom what goes on between you and your work is strictly private, in spite of which we cluster in these places, and it scares the crap out of me. Like we’re all in a footrace or a beauty contest, with only one prize.
“We expect great things from you.” They do. It was on the invitation, but what, exactly, is not written, here or anywhere.
So, are colonies like Strickfield really part of the process? You hear about one person every year when a Strickfield summer ends, and that person starts winning prizes, fame and fortune implied, but what happens to the rest?
I guess you stop hearing about them because the world only wants to hear about winners, right?
Which is why I have to win this thing! No prob. All I have to do is figure out the object of the game—and play the game, but, wait. What if the object of the game is finding out what is the object of the game?
Oooh, camera, I think I know how my novel starts!
Emerging from the dressing room, Stephanie was sweating thumbtacks that penetrated every soft spot in her body. The regulation satin thong gave her a humiliating wedgie. Her heart constricted under the mandated mini-bra. Her perfume stank and her head wobbled under the weight of her towering hair but she had agreed to enter the Miss Universe pageant and now, next-to-naked, she was heading into the blinding light, exposed like this, on the cavernous stage.
Oh, sorry. I was just. Never mind.
It was scary, coming up the walk, like the electrified razor wire on top of the wall was the only thing holding back those monstrous trees. Gnarly bushes loomed like predators crouched to spring. Then Miss Nedobity opened the great front door and everything got worse. Strickfield’s successes publish smarmy thank-you notes to this woman; they dedicate books to her, but she’s famous for being mean and nobody can figure out why sweet Dame Hilda left her in charge.
This pair of heavily armored boobs came out first, closely followed by the lady herself, with her fierce diamond dog collar and her fuck-you smile. She was all, “Welcome, welcome.”
Then she wasn’t. Wham, she slammed her clipboard into Davy’s chest. “Not you,” she said, and ticked my name off. “LaMott. You’re the last. Now, keep this sheet with you at all times.”
It was pink. It was headed: HOUSE RULES, which Miss Nedobity recited in case I couldn’t read. “No cell phones at Strickfield, we have a signal blocker so don’t even try. In case of emergency, there’s a pay phone in the office, computers but no Internet, no wandering in the halls after Lights Out and no outsiders.”
She snarled at Davy. “And no fraternizing with outsiders either, under pain.” She didn’t say on pain of what. “And you. You keep to the path when you go to your individual studios in the woods and you stay there until the dinner bell. Don’t even think about leaving the grounds. If you’re caught trying, you’re out, and believe me, the ride away from Strickfield is not pleasant, and whatever you do, never ever go down to the lake.”
“Not even to swim?”
“No! Read this sheet carefully, memorize it, and keep it on your person at all times because you must never forget even one of these important rules. Your room is on four, it’s 13A, take the rear stairwell, it’s down that hall and remember, you don’t interface with the others until the banquet. Cocktails at six. Now, go.”
Davy and I stood there blinking, like, Whatever happened to hello? He dragged my stuff inside in spite of her, while I studied the portrait of Dame Hilda above the fireplace and wished to hell she hadn’t died. See, Dame Hilda did all the intake interviews, and Davy looks like that portrait of her son. They say she was a sucker for cute guys, although they also say if you happened to be one and she asked you up for coffee in the Morning Room, watch out.
Now it’s this Miss Nedobity in her don’t-fuck-with-me diamonds and black polyester dress, and she could care less that Davy and I are in love. She a-hemmed until we kissed goodbye, and ripped us asunder so fast that I heard the pop and slammed the door on him. So I had to
lug all my stuff up four flights because Strickfield rejects don’t get past the foyer, Or Else.
The Or Else is spelled out in very small print. There are outdoor strobes and sirens so don’t even think about sneaking out, and if your boyfriend or girlfriend makes it over the razor wire … Well, there are Dobermans. Like they’re scared one of us will be caught having sex with, shudder, an outsider, although they don’t spell out which of us does what with which others after the gates clang shut.
You read books about Strickfield’s famous writers and their famous affairs, but is it, like, mandatory or optional? Miss Nedobity’s poop sheet doesn’t say. So, is one of the elimination rounds about the sex? Wait. Do you win if you have a lot of it and I should find someone—or if you don’t have it at all?
There’s a lot I don’t understand, like weirdness I hear overhead, or the hastily scrawled note on my door.
Results may be affected or determined by Outside Event. Outside Event? Affected or determined? Just tell me. Which is it? Is Strickfield really about art for art’s sake or is it something I didn’t know about?
Dear Davy, This place is big and creepy and I miss you already.
Department of conjecture:
1. Writers’ colony as first rung on the ladder to success, in which case I’m lucky I’m here.
Note to self: What makes you so sure?
2. Writers’ colony as penal colony like in Kafka, and we get tortured if we don’t produce?
3. Writers’ colony as Olympics, with elimination rounds based on number of pages we crank out?
4. Writers’ colony as pressure cooker of human emotions
a. Unexpected love affairs and concomitant infidelity
b. Artistic meltdowns
c. Jealousy and petty quarrels
d. Food fights
e. Potential violence sparked by honest opinions of rival’s work.
5. Writers’ colony as test match, the prize goes to the best?
Note to self: What is best?
6. Writers’ colony as narrative petri dish, as in:
You may wonder why I have gathered you together here.
Which?
None of the above?
All of the above?
Will I go home changed?
Will I go home at all?
—Oh, I know, I think I know how to start my book!
Now that she was at the destination she’d struggled all her life to reach, lovely Dahlia Eastwood shuddered, thinking: Something is not right. As she approached the manor, the outline of the monumental heap shifted slightly, as though without the occupants knowing it, something profound had changed. From somewhere within came a sound that might have been taken for a prodigious groan, as though the entity inside knew how beautiful she was, and that she had come here alone. The most frightening thing about it was that although she was afraid, she was not surprised.
I’m sorry, I got distracted. I was thinking about my. Um. Novel, which I’m writing this summer right here in my studio at Strickfield, right? Um, right?
Look. I have to go do wardrobe and makeup for the Opening Night Banquet, first impressions are so important. So, if you’re actually shooting this and it isn’t just a surveillcam, are we graded more on promptness or more on our personal look? Charm or number of words produced? Do I have to sell a whole novel to win, or what?
Look. Why don’t you just tell me? Like, is the winner the first one to make it to the top?
Or the last one still standing at the end?
The faces you meet are false faces we put on to meet you, and it isn’t just me wearing an expression that’s not my own. What the twenty of us are doing and what you think we’re doing aren’t the same.
Smile, girl. Put on your Swarovski earrings and crystal flash drive lavalier and go down and show yourself to the people. And suss them out.
Behold Cynthia LaMott on the grand staircase at Strickfield, beholding all the other wannabes milling outside the sliding doors to the Great Hall. Down I go in my simple, drop-dead little black dress. I put on Davy’s crystals to signify that not only am I better than the others, I am also different, although how I can make this dress look new and exciting every single night …
The people I have to beat are milling around down there in the foyer, talking and laughing like they belong, and! The clothes! Did every single woman bring designer dresses but me? I should be draining my debit card at Nordstrom Rack right now, because every single one of them is dressed to kill or maim.
To tell the truth, that foyer is a lot like the mezzanine at Nordstrom’s, with a pianist tinkling while people you’d kill to get friends with mingle in evening clothes.
You see the outfit. The smile, and nothing of the engine that drives me, not even a hint of what’s going on underneath the hood. While we scope each other I’m considering:
Is this a death match?
Dog show, with prizes for looks and grooming?
Arena, where we’re matched like gladiators?
Coliseum, with lions TK, outcome TBA?
Or is this really only about words?
It’s too soon to tell.
Idea: In the grand foyer all but one of the gifted, chosen ten fluttered like trapped pigeons, plucking at each other with anxious fingers. Maribel ran among them, asking, “Where’s Brad?” Here for less than a week, and she and Brad Fairchild are lovers, separated since lunch with no hint of where he went. Frantic, she starts the others buzzing, “Has anyone seen Brad?” They were already uneasy, ten strangers summoned to the dismal mansion for a reason, here because of Aunt Matilda’s mysterious note.
The day was ending like all the others, until the rhinoceros housekeeper shrieked, “Stay out of the library. Something terrible has happened.”
They were no longer ten.
Dear Davy, If only you’d seen me tonight, sexy and dressed to kill.
OK booth, I’m not supposed to be here, but if I don’t tell somebody, I’ll explode. One night at Strickfield and the pressure is intense. Standing right there on the stairwell, I started my watch list, and five hours later, it’s only half done.
People to watch out for:
Edwine Evergood, with her sweet Pre-Raphaelite smile and a bunch of stories I totally don’t get, in spite of which she’s actually published, but it’s a very small press. Wardrobe A+, potential hard to measure because her stuff is obscure but she already has a book. Is obscure a good thing and I should try it? Yuck!
Fred Fisher, he has a story under consideration at The New Yorker and he got his hunting memoir into Esquire, looks like a lumberjack even in black tie, either too nice or totally confused. Confused is good, but: Watch out for too nice. I could never write like Fred. Every page drips testosterone.
And then there’s The Great Profile. Suave. Way too suave. Sleek Mark Armitage is older, but not so old that it’s creepy, head of some bigtime ad agency and, wow, he got an MFA from Columbia nights, and wrote Trash in his spare time, slick but arty, already on the AWP short list. Plus, he’s too short to be trusted, it’s hard to explain. Stingray cowboy boots with the tux and he looks, I don’t know. Relentless. Like he could knock you down and walk right over you.
Serena Soleil. I don’t care what she writes, she’s tall and silky and so gorgeous that you’d just as soon she died.
By dinnertime I’d made some contacts, although it’s hard to figure out who matters here. I picked this old guy Cecil to eat with because he’s friendly, and too creaky to be a threat, like IBM gave him the gold watch so with nothing to do, he might as well write a book. Well, good luck with that. Unlike certain others who shall remain nameless I’m strong and the youngest if you don’t count Alvin Gelb, who is, face it, fourteen and easily confused, which means that whatever it takes, I can beat him out.
I kind of have to. The kid’s on the bestseller list.
Cecil says Andover let Alvin out before exams for this, probably because his father is Ted Gelb. He’s here in a hand tailored Armani tux, thanks to his f
amous dad, I bet that’s how he got published in the first place and I know it got him on that bestseller list, I mean, whose newspaper is it, anyway? He comes on all cute and preppy but if you ask me, the kid is shifty and way too smart to be nice.
Dear Davy, I wish I was back at our place, where I can work!
Explain to me please how being thrown together with others, everybody out for the same thing, can help me get good enough at what I do to matter in the world. I work at home! Alone, so how? Contacts, maybe. A big plus on my resume, that’s for sure, but in terms of free time and limiting distractions, a month in Solitary with no visitors and no Internet, no phone and no TV would be a lot less distracting. What does sorting out this jumbled mess inside my head have to do with anything we say to each other in this big, intimidating place?
At dinner Dame Hilda’s fat nephew Leslie gave the opening speech—Cecil says it’s sad that poor Ralph wasn’t here to cut the cake, terrible about what happened to him, whatever it was.
This Leslie used to come to Cecil’s birthdays when they were little, but he cried and went home before the cake. Miss Nedobity cut this one; it was bitter, like her. Every year bakers replicate the castle with all its turrets and crenellations, plus marzipan chimneys and slate roofs paved in chocolate, if I sleep on my cake will I have nightmares or can I dream this novel, and win?
We toasted Dame Hilda with pink champagne and everybody got a little drunk. Then Aline Armantout, who gushes like a game show host, led us down to the Garden of Forking Paths and turned us loose to find our studios in the woods. After breakfast tomorrow that’s where we go. Lunch comes in a basket under a checkered napkin, no fraternizing, and don’t even think about coming back to the big house before six. They want us to lock ourselves in and think Big Thoughts.
