A male novelist finds himself in a web of lies and aliases in his quest to get published. PhD candidate Mitch Samuel's life isn't going exactly according to plan: his girlfriend just dumped him (to be fair, he did forget to pick her up at the airport), his estranged father has landed in the hospital, and his literary masterpiece-one part Shakespeare, one part Steinbeck, and all parts lyrical epic-has been rejected for the umpteenth time. However, after a chance encounter at Starbucks with the queen of women's fiction- Katharine Longwell-who seems to take a liking to him, he senses an opportunity for literary riches, if not reputation. After telling her that his (imaginary) female cousin is an aspiring chick-lit author, he secures a promise from her that she'll help his "cousin" get published. The only problem is, Mitch needs a manuscript, and fast. Unfortunately, try as he might to get inside a woman's head by reading Vogue and Cosmo, watching Oxygen and Oprah, nothing seems to work. That's when his roommate Bradley suggests that he try a dance class at the studio where Bradley's sister Marie takes lessons. Self-conscious about his own skills, and unwilling to reveal his true intentions, Mitch attends the first class under an alias: Jason Gallagher, pharmaceutical rep. What could go wrong? Nothing, except that Mitch/Jason quickly finds himself hooked on dancing, and on the charming Marie. Who has no idea who he really is. Or that he knows her brother. Or why he's there. Suddenly, his novel-writing project is becoming a lot more than he bargained for...
Release date:
June 22, 2009
Publisher:
5 Spot
Print pages:
292
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Here’s what I’m doing around six o’clock when the apartment door flies open behind me: poring over Who’s Who in Greek Mythology, jotting down story ideas, nursing a frosty Guinness. Here’s what my girlfriend Hannah is doing: stumbling through the door
with her luggage. Here’s why it means big trouble: I forgot to pick her up at the airport.
She heaves her purse and her carry-on inside, then starts wrestling a lumberjack-sized suitcase over the threshold. The bag
gets stuck, but she promptly unsticks it with one of those vicious, shoulder-socket-ripping yanks, and rubber wheels slam
down on the hardwood floor with a heavy ka-junk. I can’t see her face, but I can see her hair, which is darker blond than it should be and plastered to her skull, and the
back of her blouse is sheer in spots and sticking to her skin. I didn’t even know rain was in the forecast.
“Here, let me help you,” I say, starting toward her.
She whips around to face me so fiercely that drops of water from her hair splatter my T-shirt and boxers.
“No,” she says—spits, really—and instantly I catch her drift: Back off. Shut up. Drop dead. Two of the three which I immediately
do.
It’s quite an accomplishment, schlepping all that luggage from airport to cab to apartment, up a flight of stairs—in a downpour—and
you’d think now would be a good time for her to catch her breath, say hi, maybe toss me out a window. Instead, she hitches
her purse high on her shoulder, balances the carry-on against her hip, and drags the bulging suitcase behind her, clomping
her way toward the bedroom, not even bothering to look back when she knocks into a table and sends a vase crashing to the
floor. She rounds the corner and is gone, and I’m left in the living room, thoughts and busted ceramic all to myself.
In hindsight, it seems like such an easy thing to have done, keep track of the time. After all, I’ve been doing it for the
better part of twenty years now, usually with expert success. So what happened this time? Something in the apartment should have reminded me of her, and that she was gone, and that I needed to pick her up. The TV. The sofa.
The coaster I was using. The vase that’s no longer a vase. Her stuff is everywhere, as it should be, I suppose: it is her apartment. How did I manage to make such a mess of things?
But the soul-searching must wait for later. She storms out of the bedroom like a tornado looking to touch down, and my gut
tells me I’m the nearest tin-roofed shed. Miraculously—or alarmingly—she swoops by me like I’m not even there and heads straight
for the kitchen. When a few moments pass and I don’t hear glass breaking, I ease myself that way and lean in the doorway;
this seems close enough for the moment. She’s changed into sweats, her hair tousled and frizzy, all her makeup wiped away.
She’s boiling the kettle for tea.
“So everything was fine in Houston?” I ask. She’d taken a trip there to visit her sister and brother-in-law and their new
baby, Hannah’s first niece.
She pulls out a mug from the cabinet. One mug.
“And your flight? Smooth sailing?” Smooth sailing? Shit, I’m already mixing my metaphors. That’s how rattled I am.
She gets out a lemon. And a knife.
I get the feeling this could go on for hours, days, maybe the rest of our natural lives—me speaking, her ignoring me—so I
figure it’s up to me to set things right.
“Look, Hannah, I’m sorry. Very, very sorry. I can’t say it any other way. I forgot to pick you up and it’s totally my fault.
But just so you know, I knew you were coming home today. I even made the bed.” She has to have noticed that. “I just lost track of the time.”
She blasts me with an icy stare. “You just lost track of the time?” she snaps, incredulous. “Jesus, Mitch. I talked to you
yesterday. I gave you my flight information. We said we’d get Chinese on the way home from the airport and have an early dinner,
in bed. I haven’t seen you for five days. Five. And you lost track of the fucking time?”
When she puts it like that—in other words, in English—I get exactly what she’s saying, no argument from me. I’m tempted to
save her the trouble and tell myself to go fuck off. Still, the least I can do is try to explain.
“I got caught up in my book, taking notes,” I offer. “I had my cell turned off, the answering machine unplugged.” I give her
a helpless shrug. “You know how I get when I’m writing.”
She squeezes the knife handle and stiffens her entire body, making it clear, yes, she knows how I get when I’m writing. And doesn’t think much of it. But just as quickly her expression changes and something
darker takes hold. Her eyes glaze over, her shoulders slump, all the life in her goes splat on the floor.
“Oh, god, Mitch. We need to talk.”
She braces herself against the counter with all her weight, as if it’s the only thing holding her up. But then, by degrees,
she straightens and stands on her own two feet.
“My sister was the one who always dreamed of the fairy-tale ending. Great marriage, house with a picket fence, beautiful children
at the dinner table. Now she’s got it, and she couldn’t be happier. For me, it’s never been quite so clear cut. Maybe yes
to all of it, maybe I’d pick and choose. But most importantly, let love come first, and we’ll see where it goes from there.
But you already know that.”
Right, sure I do, I nod. But here’s what I’m thinking: What the hell is she talking about? She never mentioned anything about
marriage or houses or kids or love coming around. Did she?
She gazes plaintively into her mug of tea, as if she’s searching for something inside. The clock over the sink ticks off the
seconds. Finally, she turns to face me.
“You don’t love me, Mitch. Not the way I want to be loved. And I can keep making excuses to stay, tell myself that no relationship
is perfect and what I have is good enough and maybe it’ll get better over time. Or I can take the blinders off and face the
truth. That after eight months of doing everything to be at the top of your list, I’m still stuck behind your writing and
Bradley and all the other things so important in your life.” She takes a breath to steady herself. “And that’s the way it’ll
always be.”
She bites at her lip because she’s starting to lose it, so I throw myself on the fire. “Maybe I’m just not capable of such
feelings.”
She practically leaps at me. “But you are. I’ve seen it, in glimpses. Remember my birthday, when you took me out for sushi, even though you hate sushi? You did it
for me, because you knew that’s what I wanted. Or when you surprised me with the de Sordi print. I just mentioned the guy’s
name in passing, and you did all the footwork, tracking it down, special ordering it. Do you know how great that made me feel?”
Yeah, I think I do. Because it made me feel pretty good myself.
She looks like she wants to go on, stay with those happier memories, but she wills herself to push them away.
“I can’t keep living this way, Mitch, getting bits and pieces of you. I deserve better. And maybe I don’t have it all worked
out, but I do know this much: I want someone who makes me a priority. Someone who carves out a place in his heart that’s just
for me, and when I go away for a few days, he notices. Because in some small way, I make his life complete. And I know that’s not
true for you.”
I’d love to tell her that she’s got it all wrong, if I could, without lying. “Maybe we should start all over,” I offer, to
be nice.
She gives me a look like that thousand-pound suitcase of hers just fell on her head. “Oh, Mitch. Is that what you really want?”
I know how it’d go if we did; we’d re-create what we had—for a week—then arrive at exactly this moment again. I drop my gaze.
“Good. Because neither do I. It’s been exhausting, it really has been. I don’t have the energy anymore. I think it’s better
if we just call it quits, now, before it gets too… Well, you know what I mean.”
I do. Before it gets too ugly.
Despite the reasonably amicable end to things, we both agree it’s best if I just leave now, get what I need for the night,
come back in a day or two to collect the rest of my stuff. So I grab my laptop and story notes and dissertation books, and
slip into my September-in-St. Louis uniform: cargo shorts, flip-flops, T-shirt. But by the time I make my way to the bathroom
for my toothbrush, water’s running inside. Hannah’s in there. Through the half-opened door, I can see her sitting on the floor,
legs tucked under her in an awkward way, head buried in her hands. She looks like a little girl, or a little girl’s doll,
all crumpled on herself. And even though the rush of water spilling into the tub is loud and forceful and drowns everything
out, from the way her shoulders are heaving, it’s not difficult to tell what she’s doing: crying. Sobbing, really. I pause.
Maybe I didn’t pan out as the greatest boyfriend, but what I’d like to do right now, if I’m being honest, is get this whole
ex-boyfriend thing off to a good start. Go in there and wipe her tears away, tell her again how sorry I am that I forgot her,
and let me explain how it is I could forget her and assure her it has nothing to do with her, it’s me, and why don’t I just hold her or soothe her or smooth her
hair back, which I have no intention of turning into a bout of breakup sex. But I don’t, because I don’t know if I could do
any of those things sincerely or insightfully or unselfishly. So I leave.
Bradley is sitting where he’s always sitting at this time on Tuesday evenings: Colchester’s. His girlfriend Skyler runs a
plant nursery, and this is her late night, which means Bradley grabs dinner at the pub. To see him sitting at the bar, brown
hair wavy and brushed back, three-days’ growth on his face, you’d think you were on a movie set: Hey isn’t that Matthew McConaughey,
and shouldn’t he be out banging on some bongos with his shirt off? But take another look, see if you can’t spot the guy who
translated his summa cum laude degree in philosophy into life as a rehabber, transforming rundown Queen Annes and Dutch Colonials
into something out of Architectural Digest.
“What’ll you have?” he asks with a smile as I belly up next to him.
“A pint. Of everything.”
“Ah, one of those days,” he says, taking a bite of his shepherd’s pie. “Let me guess. No love from Chaucer? Lost some breathtakingly
lyrical metaphor in your head before you could get it down on paper?”
“Nah, none of that.” I shift on my stool. “It’s Hannah.”
“Oh,” he says, obviously surprised. “Now there’s a switch. But don’t worry, Mitchell Samuel,” he drawls with an over-the-top
Texas twang, leaning closer. “The doctor is in.” We hate Dr. Phil. “Speak to me.”
There are lots of ways I could go with this. Tell him I spent her life savings on a Porsche. Tell him she’s in love with another
man. Tell him I’m in love with another man. But I opt for the truth. “We broke up.”
He drops the Dr. Phil shtick like a bag of rocks. “What happened?”
I shrug. “I’m not really sure.”
But after a pull on my bottle of beer, I go on to demonstrate that, in fact, I am really sure, by telling him how I forgot
her at the airport because I was writing, which upset her, so there was arguing and a few tears and a bit of a back and forth,
which led to our ultimate decision to go our separate ways. I don’t pull any punches, put the blame squarely on me, but I
expect at least a little sympathy from him, since he knows how the creative process can tend to sweep you away and cause you
to forget things. But more than anything he’s on Hannah’s side, which is to say that in this case, he thinks I’m a total ass.
But still, I’m his best friend, so he’s concerned.
“So how’re you doing with it?”
“Oh, you know.” And he does, because he’s been out with me when I’ve seen another woman and made some comment, not as crude
as, “Damn, I’d like a piece of that,” but enough that he’d get the idea that despite Hannah’s top-drawer pedigree—BA from
Northwestern, MFA from Iowa—and the fact we’re perfect on paper, I was never completely satisfied with that particular match.
(Unlike Bradley, who only has eyes for Skyler.) Besides, he knows I still have my novel.
Having a book that’s about to be published has a way of keeping your spirits up, pulling you through the dark spots and rough
patches in your life that might otherwise be a source of concern. Such as getting kicked to the curb. Again. I should’ve written
it a long time ago, like when I was five and my little sister Emily died of meningitis, or when I was ten and my father had
an affair and hit the road, or even when I was eighteen and found Sharon Manus making out with Colby Nash in the boys’ bathroom
at the prom. It would’ve saved me a lot of tears (and in the case of Sharon, a busted set of knuckles from punching a bathroom
wall).
“And Hannah?” he asks. “How’s she taking it?”
I hem and haw and roll my shoulders. “Okay. I think. I guess. She hated to lose a guy like me.”
“Right. So she dumped you, then.”
“Pretty much.”
He gives his head a little shake. “Mitchell, Mitchell. When are you going to get it together?”
Easy for him to say. He loves Skyler, so he just does what comes naturally. For the rest of us, being with people we care
about but don’t really love, we have to figure out the right thing to do on an hourly basis, moment by moment, woman by woman.
There’s a lot of hit-and-miss guesswork in that.
We discuss my moving back into the apartment Bradley and I have shared for the last three years (I had a feeling things might
fizzle with Hannah, so I never stopped paying rent: Who looks like the genius now?). It’s not a problem, since he spends all
his time over at Skyler’s now, meaning our place is mostly unoccupied. I suggest we celebrate my homecoming by heading back
to the apartment and watching a baseball game on cable, but he tells me that’s a no-go: He’s helping his sister pick up her
new furniture.
“In North Carolina?” I ask.
“What?”
“Doesn’t your sister live in North Carolina?”
“No, she lives in Chesterfield.”
I point west, toward the highway, a couple counties over, where my father lives. “That Chesterfield?”
“That Chesterfield. She moved back in April.”
So Bradley’s sister has been back in St. Louis for five months, living half an hour away, and this is the first I’m hearing
about it. Of course, maybe the fact that she’s lived in North Carolina the entire three years I’ve known Bradley, and I’ve
never met her, and she’s a hairstylist, and what would we possibly have to talk about (Me: “I prefer the elegiac wistfulness of Tennyson to the Romantic pessimism
of Housman; Her: “Like, I totally love mousse!”), maybe all that has something to do with it. For starters.
“I thought I told you,” he says.
“Nope.”
“Hmm. Anyway, she did. And she finally decided to upgrade from the furniture she came with. I told her I’d use my truck, save
her the delivery charge.”
“Need a hand?” I ask.
“Nah, she’s got it covered. Her studio friends are helping.”
“Her what?”
“Studio friends.” He pauses. “Apparently, she takes dance lessons and these are her ballroom buddies. I just hope someone
with a little muscle tone shows up so I don’t get a hernia.”
Much later, back at our apartment, I lie in bed, alone, worried I won’t be able to fall asleep. If something’s bothering me,
this is when my mind spins and whirls and nags me with thoughts, and I’m wondering if it’s going to do that tonight, get fixated
on what happened with Hannah, and suddenly I’ll get panicky and sweaty and realize I’ve made the greatest mistake of my life,
leaving her crying on the bathroom floor, not begging her to forgive me and take me back, and how could I be so stupid, and
will I ever be happy again? But before I actually get to those thoughts, I start thinking about margaritas, because I watched
a woman at the bar sip on one, and when was the last time I had a margarita, and have I ever had one without salt, and what’s
that brand of salt with the girl on the label carrying a container and spilling some, and isn’t she also holding an umbrella?
And then I fall asleep.
I teach an Intro to Comp and Lit class at the university. I had my choice of something less basic—American Transcendentalism,
The Age of Dryden and Pope—but I passed; I figure it’s hypocritical to complain about the planet’s general tendency toward
bad grammar and foggy thinking and not try to do something about it while these kids are still freshmen. Fortunately, two
weeks into the semester, I think it’s a solid group; they show up on time (noon, so how hard can it be?), don’t crunch their
chip bags, do good work. In fact, I see no foreseeable problems with the bunch. Except with Molly.
Molly is a knockout blonde (think Scarlett Johansson), extremely bright, and an excellent writer. In most cases, such a combination
of qualities would make her the anti-problem. But for each of those favorable traits, there’s an evil twin-sister one that
not only cancels the good ones out, it puts her in the red. Deeply. She’s pretty, but flaunts it. As in the T-shirts she wears
(the very, very tight T-shirts she wears), with messages like Yes, They’re Real, Stop Gawking; Bad Girls Suck; Future Trophy Wife. Subtle,
eh? She’s smart, but likes to rub your nose in it. Sometimes you have to delete your favorite bits of writing because they
just don’t work, and I told the class this is what Hemingway called “killing your darlings,” but Molly blurted out, “It wasn’t
Hemingway, it was Faulkner,” and I said, “You know, you might be right, but let’s discuss it later”; so next class, apropos
of nothing, not even bothering to raise her hand, she announces to the class that, yes, it was Faulkner, and goes on to read
the entire quote, and ask me if I’d like a copy for future reference. She’s an excellent writer, but thinks she has nothing
to learn from me. She asked me where I’d been published, and I gave her the name of a magazine she’d never heard of, and she
shrugged and said, “Is that it?” She’s the fly in my ointment, the banana peel on my stage, the pain in my ass.
Case in point: Today we’re talking about an Updike story in which a grocery clerk quits on the spot after his manager embarrasses
a trio of young girls who came into the store in their swimsuits. I want to focus on the final line: “My stomach kind of fell
as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” Why does he say this, and how will his world be hard? But Molly
has other ideas.
“What’s the big deal about wearing a swimsuit into a store?” She cracks her gum. “I don’t get it.”
Of course not. This from the girl wearing a shirt that says Ball Handler.
“It’s against the rules.” So says stocky Pete.
“So? The rule is dumb. They just went in there to grab a jar of herring snacks. For her mother.”
“Doesn’t matter why they’re there, or who they’re there for. Rules is rules, and they broke them.” Pete winks at me to let
me know the verb conjugation was no accident.
“Then I guess if there’s a rule that black people can’t use the same water fountain as whites, we should just accept that.
Or if there’s a law that says women can’t vote, that’s okay too. Since, as you say, ‘rules is rules.’”
Pete looks at me again, this time not so cocky. Donna piles on. “Yeah, exactly. I mean, men probably made those store rules.
They’re the ones who decided what everyone should wear. They’ve brainwashed women to be ashamed of their bodies.”
Thomas: “But if guys are making the rules, wouldn’t they say swimsuits are okay, since they’d want to see girls in swimsuits?”
Pam: “Not necessarily. Not everyone’s a pervert.”
Thomas: “So I’m a pervert, just because I like to see a little skin?”
Pam: “No. Just a man.”
Molly, shrugging: “The bottom line is, some people just can’t handle in-their-face sexuality. Look at the Janet Jackson Nipplegate
flap...”
And then we’re off, swept away, everyone worked up into a lather about sexism, ageism, the fashion industry, plastic surgery,
women as priests, wardrobe malfunctions, Justin Timberlake, and whether Britney would’ve turned into Britney if she’d stayed with him. And I find myself jumping in, on Molly’s side, not so much about Nipplegate or Justin but more on rules not always being rules, and before I know it, class is over and
I dismiss them, but I still have to collect their essays, so I’m scrambling around in the hallway trying to track them down,
and forget about a homework assignment or the last line in Updike or my entire lesson plan that’s been hijacked. And Molly?
Molly’s just yakking away on her cell phone, making plans for god knows what.
When I get back to the apartment, I give Brandon Suarez a call. Brandon works for a small literary press in Minnesota, and
he’s the guy who’s going to publish my novel. He’s also a former student. I thought I’d have to shoot a tranquilizer dart
through the phone when I sent him the manuscript—“You want me to publish your novel? Really? Are you kidding? Unbelievable! This is great! Yippee! I can fly!”—but once we got past the hyperventilating
and down to business, he told me to give him a couple weeks to look things over, which I have. Enough’s enough. But I don’t
get Brandon when I call, I get his machine, so I leave a message, telling him I’d like to get the ball rolling on this, take
care of any revisions, if there are any, while the semester’s still young.
My novel is called Henley Farm. It’s a sweeping saga about America that spans several generations of the Henley family and their relationship to the land:
think The Grapes of Wrath meets The Good Earth, with bits of King Lear and A Thousand Acres sprinkled in. Seven years and seven hundred pages to get it just the way I want it, and I won’t lie to you: it hasn’t been
an easy ride. You may have the impression that writing is all about sitting at Pottery Barn–style desks with scented candles
and ocean views and breezes gently rustling the curtains, or it’s hobnobbing at charming European cafés where the intelligentsia
discuss philosophy and beautiful women gather and you write poetry on the back of a naked lover. It’s not. Remember Jack Nicholson
in The Shining, running around with that ax and whacking through bathroom doors and screaming “Heeeere’s Johnny” and trying to kill people? He was a writer.
But as if writing the novel weren’t hard enough, the last six months have been worse. Trying to find an agent or publisher
or anyone who’s interested, sending out manuscript after manuscript, just to get them thrown right back in my face, sometimes
half a dozen before I’ve even had lunch. It’s been rejection on an epic scale, like going into a bar filled with a thousand
single women, in my best clothes with a bouquet of flowers, even wearing a splash of expensive cologne, and having them all
turn their backs, no peck on the cheek, no smiling hello, not even a second look. Talk about your dating disasters.
Finally, I shipped it off to Brandon. I hated calling in a favor like that, especially from a former student, and I know he
doesn’t have much of a budget and the first printing won’t be very large. But wha. . .
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