The Writer (4 page)

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.