A NEW NOVEL BY ALVIN J. FLITMAN
by
Aaron Matthew Polk
Copyright © 1993, 2011
"Where do you get your ideas, Mr. Flitman?"
Dumpily built lady in the third row, fake pearls, rhinestone glasses, blue rinse in her hair. I knew what her question would be as soon as her hand went up, so I had my answer primed.
"From life, ma'am," I said. "A glimpse of something on the street, a chance conversation at a cocktail party, perhaps an old memory seen in a new light. The writer who keeps his eyes and ears and, above all, his heart open will never run out of ideas."
It seemed to satisfy her, as, indeed, it did everyone else at the little gathering. When it came time to leave the tiny auditorium in the library basement, the events chairperson, a pleasant, trim, business-like young woman in a tailored blazer, shook my hand warmly and handed me my speaker's fee. Another Friday night, another twenty-five dollars.
That's how much bullshit costs these days.
"Where do I get my ideas, you old bat?" I told my windshield on the way home. "From writers with talent. Show me an original property, and I'll spin you off a dozen on that theme. My Muse is cheap at twenty percent off the cover price for the work of better minds."
Here in the place I grew up, a factory town where people who lived off their imaginations were rare, I, Alvin J. Flitman, 47, divorced, no children, am a popular speaker at libraries and schools on the Kiwanis circuit. I am billed as an author, and bibliophiles and writer wannabes are invited to come and learn the secrets of the creative live from a professional.
Author.
Writer.
Creator.
Yes, there had been a time when I thought of myself as all those things. Now, I could scarcely summon the memory from under the heap of rejected manuscripts, overdue bills, and pay stubs from dead-end "temporary" jobs taken to tide me over until Publisher's Row discovered my tiger in the slushpile. On those infrequent occasions when that anointed body condescended to address me personally, the words "derivative," "familiar," and "trite" appeared with sickening regularity. One by one, all my dramatic twists and bold forays into uncharted territory fell to the blunt deadly sword that bore the inscription More of the Same.
My descent began with an attempt at category romance, a 40,000-word one-sitter replete with virginal heroine, cruel-but-handsome-hero, and the obligatory despoliation scene in Chapter Three, submitted under the pseudonym Felicity Bliss. It sold first shot out of the box to a small paperback firm in New Jersey. Several more followed, and I traded in my bodice for a Stetson and became Wolf Kincaid to shoot down the Adult Western department. From there to sci-fi, schlock-horror, and the inspirational press (I Found Christ in the Comer Pocket, by Brother St. Cyril, formerly Philadelphia Fats), at which point I quit my tollbooth job and began writing full time. I paid off one mortgage, took out another one on a bigger house in a better neighborhood, paid off that one, gave it to my wife as part of the divorce settlement, and moved into a large condominium on the lake. According to all the criteria of a material society, I was a success. But I wasn't an author or a writer or a creator.
I knew what I was.
Until recently, this hadn't bothered me greatly. It beat punching a time clock—although the unrealistic deadlines imposed upon me by the many publishers often kept me at the keyboard for days on end—and it provided most of life's luxuries. As of late, though, I was becoming more and more conscious that I was no longer young. My father died at sixty, and if there is anything to heredity then I had only a handful of years left with which to make my mark. I never try to fool myself. There's no way my books will outlive me. There were plenty of younger, greedier schlockmeisters out there who were only too willing to tread on my grave. No, my casket would have to be large to accommodate all the noms de plume I'd take with me.
Arriving home, I sought to drown such mortal thoughts in work and a little alcohol. I fixed myself a bourbon and water—a hackneyed writer's drink if ever there was one—and sat down at my Mac. I was halfway through Before the Wind, my prequel to Margaret Mitchell's classic, in which I postulated that Scarlett and Rhett had enjoyed a torrid love affair as teenagers. I hoped to get in another five hundred words before going to bed.
"Rhett. Oh, Rhett." Scarlett's lower lip quivered. "Is it true you're taking Melanie to the hop?"
Rhett daubed at a spot of mint julep staining his varsity letter. "Frankly, my dear, I don't recall giving you my pin."
"Oh, Rhett, you're so hard, so cruel for a sophomore. Is there nothing that inflames your passion? Nothing you want so badly it pains you?"
"Frankly, my dear, I'd sell my soul for an original idea."
I stopped tapping the keys, blinked. Now, where in hell had that come from? What would a pubescent Rhett Butler do with an original idea? I had obviously been letting my mind wander, entangling my daydreams with those of the characters. I moved the cursor and pressed DELETE. The screen glowed and went blank.
I was beginning to realize why they call it a cursor. I had only meant to junk the last line, not the whole passage. Take a deep breath. Drink. Now, try to recall the page.
I'D SELL MY SOUL FOR AN ORIGINAL IDEA
That figured. The one line I wanted to delete is the only one that survived. Fortunately, the lost passage wasn't that long. I could reconstruct it from memory. I was reaching to clear the screen when the green characters vanished abruptly, to be replaced, unbidden, by an entirely different arrangement.
AT YOUR SERVICE
Damn computers. Now it was regurgitating lines I'd written and forgotten. I punched the offending legend into limbo and placed my fingers on the home keys. "Let's see," I muttered. " 'Rhett. Oh, Rhett.' "
But the keys began falling away from my fingers, and not in the order I had planned. The screen responded.
FOR SALE
TONIGHT ONLY
AN ORIGINAL IDEA
THE BRINK
666 FAUST
Transfixed by the rattling keys, I never raised my eyes to the message until it stopped.
The Brink. Never heard of it. But it sounds like a bar, and Faust Street was close. Drinking alone was giving me hallucinations. I turned off my terminal and rose. It seems to me that the bilious green letters were a long time fading.
The building stood on the corner of the street that separated the city's better neighborhood from the slums, giving its two exposed sides a schizoid look. The front was clean and in good repair, with a decorative iron grille and its name in cheery red neon script in the window. The side where I parked my car was streaked with soot, hurled garbage, and filthy suggestions scrawled in moronic day-glo letters across the decaying bricks. I entered through the front.
Immediately I felt at home. The room was pleasantly warm after the chill outside, lit by rose-colored bulbs over the bar, and hummed with the conversation of contented drinkers and good Oldies music from the juke in the corner. The bartender was a skinny redhead in a green vest and leatherette bow tie that looked pink under the lights.
"What'll it be, mister?"
The bartender had a long jaw and a snub nose, freckles the size of dimes, guileless blue eyes, and ears that stuck out. I was reminded of Willie Gillis, Norman Rockwell's all-American boy. "You look like I oughta be asking you for your ID," I joked.
"Oh, I'm old enough. You look like a daiquiri man, am I right?"
That startled me. Never in my most exotic dreams had I ever thought of myself as a daiquiri man. The idea pleased me. It wasn't an original one, but it was at least different. "Sure," I answered. "Throw in a banana."
When he finished, I asked the kid to run a tab and took the drink to a corner booth. I began wondering how long I would have to wait. Hell, I wasn't even sure I was waiting, or for what or whom. The uncertainty involved excited me more than my first sip of the sweet and slightly sticky drink.
For all his apparent youth, Willie was efficient. I had drained my glass and was just thinking about catching the young man's eye when he was there at my table with another drink. This happened twice more, and I was enjoying a light buzz when I noticed that I was the only customer left in the place.
Strange. When last I looked, the bar was nearly full. I'll never understand the alcohol-conscious society. In my day, you stayed put in a joint on Friday night until they threw you out.
The record in the juke ended. The bartender went over there, fed in a coin, and made a selection. An awful shrill wailing of electric instruments ensued, sounding like banshees caught in a high-voltage fence.
"Can you turn that down, kid?" I shouted. "Our mush-musical tastes aren't exactly the sh-same."
"Sure thing, Alvin." The bartender pulled the plug. Silence screamed.
Only gradually did I appreciate the bartender's use of my name. By the time it sank in, he was sitting facing me on the other side of the booth. "Okay if I join you, Alvin? I get lonely these slow nights." He had a big broad ingenuous smile, just like Willie Gillis.
"I, uh, didn't catch your name."
"Names don't count, Alvin. You know what counts? Dreams. That's what counts."
In this light the bartender didn't look so callow; quite the reverse. There were deep folds around his eyes, and the eyes themselves looked painted on. The freckles weren't freckles at all, but shallow craters, as if his youth were flaking away like cheap glaze. He was beginning to strike me as incredibly ancient.
"Dreams?"
"In my work I hear a lot of them. Some are greedy. Most are just pathetic. Football hero, pah! Miss America. President, as if I weren't already up to my neck in them. Yours, now; that has real style. So simple, yet so profound. An original idea. There's a challenge to draw me away from my furnaces."
I was startled. "How did you gain access to my computer?"
"Alvin, Alvin. Who do you suppose invented the microchip?"
"You? But—"
"My best invention since Sweetest Day. But to be honest, I'm prouder of my daiquiris. Tropical drinks are my specialty."
"I'm starting to get it."
"Well, duh." He drummed The Death March with his fingers on the table. "So is it a deal? Your soul for an original idea."
"I don't want to make a fool of myself," I said. "Could you do some sort of trick? Just so I know who I'm dealing with."
"Taste your drink."
I hesitated, then lifted. I put it down fast. The glass was blistering hot. The liquid boiled over the top, scalding my fingers.
"An original idea," I said when I'd finished blowing on my fingers. "An idea for a book nobody has ever had, that the world has never seen. Memorable characters. A unique plot. A compelling setting that never occurred to anyone."
"Done." The bartender held out his hand.
Again, I hesitated. "That's it? Nothing to sign?"
"Not since Attila's time. He couldn't read or write." He waggled his fingers.
I grasped them. His hand was neither warm nor cold. We broke contact soon. "When does it start?" I asked.
"Whenever you call upon it. Just leave by the side entrance."
I stood up, feeling vaguely as if Willie Gillis had just cheated me. At the door, I turned. "How much do I owe you for the daiquiris?"
But I was alone in the bar. The air smelled scorched.
Twelve hours later, I wondered if perhaps I should have eaten something before sitting down at the terminal. By then I had typed 6,000 words, a personal record. Still, I felt neither hungry nor fatigued, and despite my intake at The Brink, not in need of a trip to the bathroom. It was as if my system were wired to the computer, fortifying and renewing itself with the same electricity that fed the circuits. It wasn't spirit writing. I was aware of every word, phrase, and sentence, and of thinking of them just before entering them onto the screen. And it was good. Not good, great. Not great, immortal. It was stuff to turn the literary world on its head, beguile the critics, and scale every best-seller list in both hemispheres. Nothing like it had ever been written before or would be again.
On and on I wrote, my fingers keeping up with the printer. Eighteen hours, thirty-six, seventy-two. The telephone rang and went unanswered, also the doorbell. My beard grew. Five days, a week. I began to worry if my magnum opus would end at all. I had read stories in which the Devil inveigled his victims into signing their own death warrants. Perhaps I was starving and didn't know it. Perhaps my bladder had burst already and was filling my system with poison. Years from now, someone would find me dead in the midst of the longest unfinished novel in history. I would burn in Hell without ever knowing the sweet nectar of my success.
And then, at the beginning of the eighth day, I stopped. My fingers typed THE END. The printer kicked out the last page. Precisely at that moment, the computer blew out its screen and collapsed upon itself like a demolished building. Green smoke poured out of the shattered glass.
Many hours later, rested, fed, and voided, I read the book from beginning to end in one sitting. Its beauty made me cry, its humor made me laugh until my sides ached. It was poignant and memorable. Best of all, it had never been done before. I express-mailed it to my agent and hugged myself, waiting.
Three days later, my phone rang.
"Alvin? This is Solly."
"Did you get it?"
"Oh, yeah. Wonderful stuff. I got to tell you, at first I thought you stole it—but, hell, I know your style. I didn't think you were capable."
"When do we go to auction?"
"Auction? No auction."
"Don't tell me you took the first offer."
"Well, no. I had drinks with a couple of editors, told them about it, let 'em take a few chapters back to the office. They loved it, just loved it."
"Oh, sure, I forgot. They've got to go to the board. How much should we hold out for? I'm thinking seven figures. Then there's the movie rights."
"Alvin, there isn't going to be an offer."
"What?"
Air blew on the other end; the diminutive agent had fired up one of his big Havanas. "Hell, Alvin, you know the racket. People in the gamble like to gamble on the tried and true. This book is too new. It scares them."
"You're hedging, Solly. Spit it out."
"It's the publishers. They're all a bunch of hacks. It's going to be the same story everywhere we go. If there's anything they don't want, it's an original idea." More air blew. "So, how are you coming with Before the Wind?"
I looked over at my demolished computer. Its bent keyboard reminded me of Willie Gillis's wide grin.
THE END
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