The Gum Thief (17 page)

The one thing I did keep from my writing class was my essay on toast being buttered-"from the toast's point of view." I include it here in this envelope. Think of it as a fellow writer's inspiration to another fellow writer. Wait that last sentence came out wrong.

As they say in cheesy restaurants everywhere, Roger, "Enjoy!"

Bethany

Toast

I deserve better than to be forced to document my cruel fate at the hands of a pat of butter. What crime did I ever commit, except being crispy and golden brown on the outside-bearing the faintest bouquet of carbon-while being tender, fluffy and white, nay, cloudlike, on the inside?

And like I can't see the knife coming my way!
If
you wanted to scare me, it worked, and ... oh jeez ... it's not even butter, it's margarine. Oh dear God, it's not even margarine-it's a
spread-house
brand spread, bought from a Costco, at that. That's all I get in the end? Butter-like spread-type bulk purchased yellow goop? I don't even rate butter? Thanks. Thanks a
lot.
At least butter is a classy way to go. Even margarine has a certain Volvo cachet.

Well, that's life. During my childhood as a humble slice inside the loaf (four slices in from the front), I once had dreams. Maybe one day, as toast, I would bear an image of Jesus 01; if not Jesus, then
NASCAR
racing legend Dale Earnhardt or, failing that, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Instead, all I display is a golden brown toastiness distributed across my heated surface with about the same degree of randomness as craters on the moon, with a slightly darker browning in my midriff where I bowed slightly towards the toaster's equatorial grill.

I think it's actually mean to trick young bread slices into thinking that they, too, might one day harbour toast faces, let alone be sold on eBay for
thousands of dollars and make a wacky news story that goes viral.

Life generally blows. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are far worse ways
to
go than as toast-croutons and stuffing spring to mind-as well as the worst fate of all: blue mould, followed by a few hasty twists of the bread bag's neck, then you're plunged into the trash and live in an anaerobic limbo until the year AD 327,406, when a glacier scours you out of what was once the local landfill. My fate is to be toast. I suppose that's a small blessing.

Wait-wait-it's almost here, the knife. It's almost ready to dock onto my super-sensitive spot in the dead centre of my-nmghhh . . . aughGHHH!

Oh!

That was

That was

Do it again.

Oh
God,
they never told us about this, back in the loaf. Jesus, I'm crumbling all over the place.

I don't care.

Mnmmmglmph!

Ahhhhh .
..

Warm, drizzling rivulets soak my being; molten, swirling, sun-coloured puddles drench my cracked, scabby and burnt skin-my death so near. Already I can sense teeth coming my way, and yet the fear is gone. I feel free! I feel dirty! I feel submissive! I feel ...

I feel .. .

I feel .. .

. . . the end.

c+

Bethany, I didn't totally feel like I was being buttered, like I really
was
the toast. As a writer; you have to
empathize
. At Thursday's workshop, I want you to listen to some of the other butterings that will be read aloud. They'll give you a better feel on how to connect with your protagonist. I think that, collectively, we will arrive at a satisfying creative solution.

Bethany

Roger, You've missed five days at work now. Why are you skipping work so much? Are you sick? I feel ridiculous leaving correspondence in your basement suite's mail slot, but I've got no intention of knocking on your door. Leaving you this note is the extent of my act of reaching out to you.

My theory is that you're not sick at all. I think you're sitting inside your place, getting hosed and cursing the universe, probably because you're mad at your ex-wife and her lawyer.

I think you're going through a bad patch, but I also think you'll be out of it soon, so I'm going to write this and stick it through your door and then not worry about you anymore. You're certainly not missing anything at work, but I did this one freaky thing you might find interesting-and of possible use to you as a novelist.

After going to visit Kyle's grandmother's grave, I got to thinking about death more than usual, and I figure that someday you'll write the words
THE END
and
Glove Pond
will be finished. That's got to be sort of like death, don't you think? And unlike real life, in a book, you know exactly when the end is going to happen.

And because you know when the end is coming, you'll maybe feel some sort of pressure near the end, like,
Holy shit! This puppy's going to be finished in maybe five pages!
No
three pages! Augh! The end is near! The end is near!

And so here's my idea: I figure that the mental pressure of smashing into a book's end must squeeze something out of a writer. It must force them to cough up some sort of essential truth, because it's now or never.

With this in mind, I took the bus to the library and went into the fiction section and got a cart and chose a hundred novels at random from the shelves: potboilers, Nobel Prize winners, sci-fi, romance-everything. And I had a pile of coins and I went and photocopied the last two pages of each book and then I went to a coffee shop and read those hundred last pages looking for a common theme, and you know what? I found one. It's not in every book, but it's in most books. It's this: when a book ends, the characters are often moving either towards or away from a source of light literally-like carrying a candle into a dark room or running a red light at an intersection or opening curtains or falling into a well or-this list goes on. I circled all the bits about light, and there's no mistaking it.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Hope to see you soon, Roger.

Joan

Roger, You've had a week to digest the custody results. I hope you're over it and not getting all maudlin or shaving your head into a Mohawk or some other crazy shit. I'm writing because of-oh Christ. A few days ago I was in the living room, picking up empty coffee cups, and I looked outside and there was this girl staring at the house-early twenties?-one of those Goth kids, pretty in a way, if she'd trowel off all the white junk on her skin. Why do kids do that these days?

I didn't give it much thought, but an hour later I looked out, and she was still staring. So I opened the door and asked her what she wanted, and she blushed (I'm assuming, beneath all the white junk) and mumbled something and sort of half ran, half walked away. I told Brian about her at dinner, and he said maybe it was some kid who used to live in this house before we moved in and wanted to see it again. I've done that myself, at the old family place in Steveston (which, BTW, is a stack of condominiums now), and I left it at that.

And then yesterday she was back out front. I didn't want to freak her out, and so I used my nice face and my nice voice and asked her if she'd like to come in. To be honest, I was curious about her, and I remember how happy it made me to see my family's old place.

She was iffy about coming inside, and I was about to close the door, but then she said yes and came forward. I asked her if she used to live here, and she said no. I asked if she was selling something, and she said no, so I got exasperated and asked her what she wanted. She asked if I was Joan, and I said yes, and-she was
so
nervous-I felt sorry for her, whoever she was.

So that's when she said she wanted to ask me about
you,
Roger. And I thought to myself,
Dear Lord, please don't tell me that he's now into Harajuku death princesses,
but she read my mind and said, "No, no, it's not like that. I'm not his girlfriend or stalking him or anything like that."

So I asked, "What are you here for, then?"

And she said, "To be honest, I was a little bit curious to see what you look like."

I gave her my icy stare-yes, the one you know very well-and she said, "Actually, I think Roger's in a bad way right now, and I don't know what to do or who else to go to."

I asked what sort of trouble, and she said, "Unhappy trouble-depression, maybe? Alcoholism? He hasn't been to work in a week."

I almost smiled. It was so sweet of her to believe that your disaster of a life was something brand new rather than something that had been playing itself out over many moons. She was so green that I asked her to sit.

I cleared away some of Zoe's toys, and we settled on the couch. I got nostalgic, almost, because she's obviously at that stage in her life where she's living in the second-hand shops and has rings of RIT Dye in shades of black and blue and maroon all around her bathtub. I didn't ask if she wanted coffee, because she was so fidgety. I simply told her I'd make herbal tea, but then I stopped myself and asked her if she wanted a glass of red wine. She said yes.
It
was two in the afternoon, but so what. Once a kid's in school, Roger, the days drag on forever, and I've never been much for housework. Drinking in the middle of the day must be a habit I picked up from you. Ha!

So young Bethany told me about knowing you from work at Staples. Roger, you are truly the mayor of Failure City. The punchline? She says you're in customer service. She also tells me you're working on a novel, and that you're well into it. That
does
come as a surprise: you actually started something? Snowballs in hell, and all of that. She said it's a "sophisticated adult drama" featuring a pair of rival authors. You? Creative? Artistic? All I remember is you doing one failed walk-on in the local North Shore Players production of
Same Time, Next Year.
All you had to do was knock on the door and hand the lead her ice bucket, and you fucked it up. And then you had your fling with her. Oops, did I mention your fling? I guess I did. Well, that's all in the past now, and I've got custody, so all's well that ends well.

Roger; Bethany's a sweet kid, and she's smart, but she's also young-young enough to think I might either care about you or want to help you. I told her that you go through "dark patches," but the moment the words left my mouth I regretted it, because girls love helping guys through dark patches and I don't want her lost in your orbit. I was then going to qualify my statement by saying, "There's no hope in trying to help him," but that would have been gasoline on the fire. So instead, I said, "He snaps out of these things almost like clockwork. You watch. He'll be right as rain within a few days." That cheered her up, and hopefully stripped your pity party of glamour.

Speaking of your pity party, Roger, get on with your life, okay? We're divorced. I got custody. Brian and I are marrying in three weeks. You're living in the past. You're living on
Fantasy Island.
So you're writing a novel-that's actually good news, for once. Park all your emotional crap there. Quit your loser job at Staples. Get a real job. Get sober. You've probably decided that nothing can happen until you "bottom out." You're battling for last place, and you're the only person in the competition.

On a purely technical matter, next weekend I'll be dropping off Zoe for her monthly three··hour visit. Do you want me to drop her off at your place, or do you want me to drop her off at a custody-visit hot spot like the aquarium? Your call.